Recently, Emad El-Din Aysha, a member of the Egyptian Society for Science Fiction (ESSF) and the Egyptian Writers’ Union, invited seven well-known Latin American science fiction writers to a round table discussion of their views on science fiction in their own countries, across the broader Latin American region, and in comparison to Arab regional and cultural themes. The outcome offers readers a rich experience of learning about Latin American science fiction and Arab and Islamic cultural influences in the region. The discussants were as follows: Michel Encinosa Fu, Cuban writer, an editor and a translator, Leonardo Espinoza Benavides, Chilean science fiction author & editor, Daniela L. Guzmán, Mexican speculative fiction writer, Javier Fontecilla, Chilean screenwriter and novelist, Luis Carlos Barragán, Colombian writer and illustrator, Cristina Jurado, Spanish genre author, editor, translator, and science fiction promoter, and Sascha Hannig Núñez, Chilean fantasy, horror and science fiction author.
Notes: 1. Photos and Bios of the discussants follow this article. 2. The terms science fiction and science fiction and fantasy are frequently abbreviated as SF and SF&F.
Emad El-Din Aysha:
Just let me point out that this is a tremendous opportunity. Looking at science fiction in another country is always a boon for comparing and contrasting, but here we are talking about an entire conglomeration of countries. Let us begin with some general cultural questions. Arabs as you no doubt know, think of themselves as a single people and lament the lack of political and economic unity among our countries. Is this the case in your part of the world? Do families have relatives from other countries and cross borders frequently? Is it perfectly normal for a person from one Latin American country to move to another in pursuit of a career without this being considered migration or relocation? Is it easier for men to move, or women? Are authors more ‘mobile’ than other white-collar professionals?
Leonardo: I do believe there is a common cultural heritage that brings us together in the Spanish-speaking world, mainly Latin America and Spain. This allows for a common ground for understanding, sharing, and working together. Even though the history of our nations has not been the one of a Wonderland, recent years has provided an evident desire to stay more connected, to stay more in touch, closer to each other, and the results can be seen in the flourishing of our science fiction literature as a regional community. I think we realized we truly enjoyed being together.
Daniela: This is a complex question and it saddens me a bit to admit that I don’t think we Latin Americans treat each other as a single people as much as we would like to believe we do. We certainly think of other Latin American countries as our siblings, so to speak, and we recognize we all share a cultural heritage and a distinguishable collective identity and idiosyncrasy, but discrimination and prejudice between our peoples also exist.
Mobility is not extremely common, as most people in Latin America who want to move center their efforts on getting to the United States. Moving to another Latin American country is generally not seen as something that would improve your life, however, some people do move because of their job, marriage with people from another nation, political reasons, or just for the sake of the adventure.
I have to clarify, however, that I’m specifically speaking about Mexico and here our position is probably unique: we share borders only with the United States and with Belize and Guatemala, and the obvious place where people want to go is the US. Going to, say Colombia, Argentina, Bolivia could be almost as expensive as traveling to Europe, so it’s not something remarkably accessible. I think mobility might feel different for people in Central or South America, where more borders with similar countries are shared, but I can’t speak of this from first hand experience.
Anyway, some mobility does occur, but how this is perceived depends a lot on factors in which the discrimination and prejudice I was talking about play a role. If, let’s say, an Argentinian or Uruguayan comes to Mexico, they are generally well received. People from Argentina, Chile, or Uruguay are often seen as “superior,” since those countries received a fair share of immigration and cultural influence from Europe during the 20th Century, thus their inhabitants are perceived as whiter, richer, and more cultured, and their migration is received as a positive influence for the country.
In general, anyone from any country who is whit-ish and not poor would be warmly welcome, whereas anyone who is poorer and more brown could be frowned upon.
If a poor Salvadorian, Honduran, or Guatemalan fellow comes to Mexico with the intention of crossing the US border, but then decides to stay here because they see they can pursue a better future than in their homeland, they could face some discrimination. It’s pitiful, but there are Mexicans who say that people from Central America should stay in their countries and not come here to take the jobs and the government funding that belongs to the Mexicans, because we are already pretty fucked up here to afford helping others.
In recent years, there has been a huge Venezuelan diaspora. A fair share of Venezuelan fellows have relocated to Colombia, Argentina, Mexico, and other countries to escape the political and economical disaster of their homeland. They are generally received with solidarity and they adjust and blend well with us. Here and there you can see the surge of the Venezuelan restaurants and almost everyone has at least a Venezuelan acquaintance, friend or coworker.
I don’t think gender plays a huge role in mobility and I wouldn’t say authors are far more mobile than people from other professions. The aspirational thing rich and privileged authors do is moving to the United States, Spain, or elsewhere in Europe. Middle class and poorer authors tend to move from the little towns and cities to the big metropolis of Mexico City, but moving to other places in Latin America occurs, but is a bit less common.
Javier: Sadly, we don’t have a feeling of unity like the one you describe. From my perspective, in Chile, changing countries is called migration. Even though the borders between Latin countries offer flexibility for other neighbors on the continent, mobility towards them is not as frequent, unless it is for business. The authors are not within this mobility, which makes it difficult to be published in other regions, despite sharing the same language.
Luis: There is a higher level of unity than in the Arab world, yeah. As I lived in the Middle East for some years, I do have a feeling that we have more openness to other Latin American countries and people. For instance, we don’t even need a passport to cross the border with many of the LATAM countries. I’m Colombian but I have relatives in Ecuador, and in Mexico, and it just feels very natural. It’s the same for men or women, my relatives are all women, not an additional problem, except the typical dangers of street harassment, etc. Also, when I was in Egypt I sensed a certain animosity against certain countries surrounding Egypt, in Colombia you’re less likely to listen to comments like that, but I understand that things are a bit different between Peruvians and Chileans. For historical reasons. And between Bolivians and Argentinians. Regarding author’s mobility, I truly don’t know. But I travel a lot now. I’m living in Ecuador.
Sascha: I believe that, even though there is a Latam-identity, broadly sustained by common history, language and some cultural traits, each nation in the region has its distinctive politics, economy, and overall societal characteristics. There have been attempts to connecting technologically, economically and even politically some nations in the region (actually, across most countries in Latam you don’t need a visa or even a passport to cross the border). Families do live across other countries, but that is also due to the large migration waves that the continent has seen in the last 150 years (pretty recent). For example, Argentina had several waves of Italians coming from Europe, and many have an Italian passport. Most recently, because of the hectic political processes in the continent, some people had to leave and relocate to other countries because of these sensitive situations, and they are considered relocations. As for moving to the US, this is mostly to find a job and then relocate with families. As for authors, there is a cross-national community (again, the language has a lot to do with that), I’ve personally collaborated with projects in the US, Peru, Argentina and México. I often travel to Peru to help with projects, events and to disseminate science fiction in general.
Emad El-Din Aysha:
Do you have many authors in exile from neighbouring countries? The US has a sizeable Cuban community but are there little Havanas elsewhere in Central and South America? There are many Iraqi neighbourhoods in Arabic countries, and not just on account of the Iraq War. Again, intellectuals in exile from the time of Saddam or even before was a key factor. All of this is fruitful subject-matter for literature, science fiction included.
Michel: For Cubans, it has become natural to have not just some relatives but whole family swarms living abroad. Over sixty years now of non-stop migration. Mainly to the US, until the 20th century nineties; from then on, to virtually anywhere on the globe, economical reasons on top since that decade too. Some families here have kept track of their relatives abroad and stay in touch day by day with their lives, including extended family branches over the years. In other cases, such as with mine, we have totally lost contact with them. Still, I do have lots of friends, mostly of my generation, living outside Cuba, and with every passing year I learn that one or other has left the country too, for good. Professional migration is very common now—scholarships, work contracts, etcetera–. As for writers, some I know have migrated and somewhat succeeded—some published books, a relative local or global relevance earned, in the best case scenario–; others have almost or completely quitted writing—had to prioritize making a living, and then, keep on struggling on a day-to-day basis–. It also depends, of course, on how you “land” abroad, the circumstances, available starting support, your own proficiency as a writer and self-promoter, many things… Including changing your perspective of what to be a writer is about and what you should do as a writer in a competitive world. Anyway, when you read the works of a Cuban writer who has been living in another country for a few years, even if temporally–say, going back and forth, shared citizenships–you can tell so many differences on the spot—it would take books and books of reviews and essays to get into that–. Anyway, of course migration and its circumstances have been reflected over the years in our science fiction. Illegal space “drafters,” the longing, the polemics involved… at, say, a galactic scale.
Leonardo: As far as I can tell, as a Chilean SF author and editor, currently serving as a director of our SF&F Association (ALCIFF), we are not faced with that scenario right now. There might be an isolated case that I’m not aware of, but I personally don’t know any exile SF author currently working in Chile, nor a Chilean one in another Latin American country.
Daniela: Authors and people in exile certainly exist, but they are not extremely sizable communities. During the seventies and eighties, a not insignificant amount of artists flew from countries that endured repressive dictatorial regimes, such as Chile and Argentina, so it’s not uncommon to find exiled authors, painters, photographers, actors, who moved to Mexico and made their careers and lives here.
As mentioned before, there’s also a sizable amount of Venezuelans living in Mexico and other countries in Latin America, but their presence in the literary and specially in the science fiction world is yet to be fully seen and felt.
Javier: Yes, we have many authors and artists who reside in the United States and in various countries in Europe. The local market is very small, which limits options for those who want to write for a living. Unfortunately, the Chilean Science Fiction market is even smaller, in fact, it is considered merely a niche.
Luis: Not in Colombia. Although now we have thousands of Venezuelans, but these are very recent migrants, from about five years ago. So there hasn’t been enough time to create a new culture, or little Venezuelas. In the early 20th century, we had a lot of migrants from Lebanon, and there are several writers of Lebanese origin in Colombia, none that write science fiction, though.
Sascha: In 70s and 80s, Caracas became the little Havana for south American authors fleeing dictatorships such as Chile, Argentina, etc… A world-known case of this is Isabel Allende, who’s first book, La Casa de los Espíritus, was published in Venezuela. Nevertheless, this hub for culture and literature has been eroded by the +20 year long Chavista government.
It is truth that Cuban authors (artists in general) often flee to the US. Nowadays, many Venezuelan authors and artists have also fled the country because of persecution or instability conditions, such as Rayma Suprani or Moisés Naim. Chile has become a hosting country for many Venezuelan authors. Nevertheless, Spain became the first target destination for people flying. First, because of the language affinity, secondly, for its “easier” migration policies and third, because it has become a hub for creativity and joint migration.
Emad El-Din Aysha:
How different are your dialects across your continents and do you write in these dialects? I ask because in Arabic we write in classical Arabic but speak colloquial Arabic. Classical Arabic is a wonderfully picturesque language but can be restrictive, especially when it comes to dialogue and swear words; tacky and cheesy and archaic expressions. Is that a problem you have writing in Spanish and Portuguese?
Michel: It depends, I guess. In the best case scenario, that is, writers with an at least decent level of know-how, we use our dialects when they matter—local stories, characters of local origins–. When it comes to plots that develop in a more global “size,” some of us tend to go more “generic”. Thing is, our dialect “traits” down here in Latin America are quite “personalized” for each country—words, rhythm, speech turns–. Non-literary example: I just can´t stand to watch films or series when dubbed in Spain or Mexico. It’s just so shocking for me—needless to say, perfectly natural for Spanish or Mexican folk, I guess–. Still, for instance, Colombian translations are more “generic,” a lot more “audience-friendly” for the non-Spanish or non-Mexican people. That, I believe, counts for literature as well. Now, I, of course, have used Spanish, Argentinian, Mexican and so on “language traits” for some characters of mine who hail from those countries or cultures. I don´t really know about Arabic, but in Spanish, you can tell and reflect those “traits” in writing just as perfectly as when ordinarily talking. And that also goes for the diversity of manners of speaking within the boundaries of a single Latin American country. In Cuba, you can tell a Santiago city-born and grown guy from a Havanan, right on the spot, from phrase one. Now, when it comes to style, well… baroque, colloquial, educated, gang-slang… it depends on the context, the characters, the narrator… We use our language to the extent we can use it; our actual knowledge of it and its variations, our preferences, what the work requires…
Leonardo: When it comes to Spanish, there are many accents and regionalisms around! It’s fun and it’s great, and we do use them in our texts, specially nowadays. It’s not uncommon though to still find some stories that evidently try to stay a little bit neutral (sometimes they feel as if they were translations from English), but as a stronger SF identity develops, the more regional and varied it gets. And, as I said, it’s great! (On the other hand, we are still short of Portuguese translators, so there is a gap there).
Daniela: We don’t have a separate classical Spanish and colloquial Spanish as you do in Arabic, but we have a huge richness of local dialects. Spanish varies wildly not just across countries but across regions of the same country. Also, European Spanish differs greatly from Latin American Spanish.
So we experience a curious phenomenon. Since Spain dominates the publishing landscape, the largest publishing houses operate in Spain, and most translations are made by Spaniards, a lot of what we read is written in a Spanish we can perfectly understand, but that belongs to a foreign dialect.
We spend our youth reading European Spanish authors and translators so, when people begin to write, there’s this strange temptation to do it using that same language that sounds “literary” but that is interwoven with a lot of words we seldom or never use in Mexican/Colombian/Argentinian Spanish. I have even heard this as a criticism to young aspiring writers: “You write like an Anagrama (a huge Spanish publishing house) translation.”
The temptation to write like an Anagrama translation is even bigger because there are people in Spain who look down on our local dialects. I have read opinions on the lines of “European Spanish is formal and official, whereas Latin American Spanish is informal.” I usually can’t believe people who say this are serious, but they are. They mean it.
Some Europeans don’t want to be bothered with reading in a foreign dialect, so big Spain-based publishing houses tend to favor works written in a more “neutral” version of our Spanish.
However, a lot of local authors and publishing houses assert the right to write and publish works written in our local dialects and reclaim the orality, the colloquial voices, the full color of how people speak in the streets. This occurs more so in realistic literature, but colloquial language is often reclaimed in speculative fiction as well.
Luis: Not the way you have it in Arabic, Spanish is very standard in every country; we have regional, and a few word variations, but these are not hard to understand. Well, except the Chilean slang that can be very heavy and foreign to many. The Spanish we write is the same, there is no difference like Ameya and Fos’ha[colloquial and classical Arabic]. Actually, I was very shocked at this when I was in Egypt. Having those dialects, so different from each other. Some authors try to write with very few regional words, while others accentuate them to give it a more local look to the work, which also makes it sound more natural, and less stiff. Normally you can read a book full of slang from different countries and still understand most, if not all of it.
Cristina: There are many variants of Spanish: people have different accents and local words called “localismos” that enrich their way to speak. Generally, all Spanish speakers understand each other, although some words may differ geographically in meaning. As an editor, I personally love those variants and look forward to read them: the cadence of Argentinian and Chilean Spanish, the lively Mexican dialect, the colorful Cuban accent… they are unique and beautiful. Portuguese is trickier to understand for Spanish speakers, but still is not difficult to follow when read.
Sascha: It depends on the country. Most Latam countries teach Castilian Spanish in schools. Even though dialects vary from country to country (and Chile is a very clear example of a grammatically and contextually different variant of Spanish), the written language is neutral and characters only use local speech if it is needed for the story. For example, there is a character in my book Deltas that speaks with Argentinian register, and that’s reflected on his dialogues but not on the narrative.
Emad El-Din Aysha:
Another cultural question. Palestinians are very fond of categorizing and separating themselves into diaspora Palestinians, Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza, Palestinians who migrated before the 1948 War, the 1948 Palestinians inside Israel itself, etc. Do similar labels hold for Latin American peoples who are from the North or South or who grew up in the USA, etc.?
Michel: Well, in the particular case of Cuba… The migrations back in the early 60´s when the Revolution took power, the follow-up migrations in the 70´s and 80´s, then the migrations in the 90´s—mostly fleeing from the economic crisis–, and then, today´s migrations… Different moments in history, different predominant reasons, and therefore different outcomes in terms of how those migrants see themselves or how we see them… Wow, my brain is just spinning! Anyway, to try to summarize: … wait for it… still trying… almost there… uh, no, not there yet… Ok, let´s give it a shot: I take that, maybe, those categories or labels that you mention regarding migration spring out of political or ideological reasons. Who “betrayed,” who “sold him/herself,” who “gave up,” on the negative side, while in the positive, who “aimed for succeed,” who “took the right decision,” who “managed to get rid out of here…,” maybe? Perhaps I am totally wrong as to what you mean, if so, I apologize with a deep Japanese style bow included (I´m a manga and anime fan)… As for Cubans, I believe that except for a small number of migrants and migrant-descendants, who are engaged in their so-called “political fight” against the “Cuban regime,” most of us, here and abroad, have skipped over the years and actually since decades ago now, such labeling and the limitations they would imply, I guess, for our continuing relationship. You are there, I am here, and that´s it. How can I help you, how can you help me? Have you gotten rich out there already? Are you still struggling making a living down there? We compare, we discuss about things, we share whatever possible… I´m thinking of my friends here, mainly, and some elder migrants I’ve met. Sorry if I can´t be any more abundant here…
Emad, my friend, your questionnaire truly seems to call for full essays!
Leonardo: I would say the main category we have is just related to our countries of origin: a Chilean author, an Argentinian author, and so on. The other important category, and one that can go beyond national frontiers, is the one related to someone belonging to an indigenous ethnic group (which for the Chilean case, it’s rare when it comes to SF). Then, within our country, you may find categories related to geographical places (say, urban versus rural), and also in terms of an author being part of the LGBT community.
Daniela: I think this occurs especially with Latino people who live in Latino countries versus Latino people living in the USA. There’s a difference between being a Mexicano from Mexico and being Mexicoamericano or Chicano, but the Chicanos are probably the ones making the distinction, since we Mexicans from Mexico see ourselves as “default” Mexicans and don’t really think much of labeling ourselves.
Javier: Each Latin country that speaks Spanish has its own way of speaking it, colloquially. In the case of Chile, a fast version is spoken, which tends to shorten words and use diminutives. At the time of writing, we use a more neutral and easy-to-understand version. On the other hand, there are other countries in the region that speak Portuguese, Dutch, among others, but I ignore that idiomatic reality.
Luis: Not so much, I don’t think so. Maybe that happens with Cubans? Maybe those who migrated to the USA and those who stayed. But I’m not very aware of that. And when Latinos migrate to the USA, even though they’re Americans, I think many times they keep the category of Latino. There’s a word: Chicano, that was popular before for referring to Americans of Mexican descent, there was a whole movement in the 60s to the 80s, to empower them against certain discriminatory measures, and sometimes the term has been used pejoratively. Hunter S. Thompson has a great article about that movement.
Sascha: I believe that it can happen in the US but in Latin America, you don’t see it. Even in Japan, not only do all Latin Americans share their common culture, but origin does not matter much. In the case of the Venezuelan diaspora, you don’t differentiate the ones living in one or other country.
Emad El-Din Aysha:
Also, do Latin Americans think of Spain as the ‘mother country’ and do they have any loyalty to the royal family in Spain? I’m getting these terms from Indians and their relationship with England and the Queen!
Michel: As for Spain, the “mother country”… it´s just another country for us. Still, over the years it has become relevant for some people who have somewhat close Spanish roots—no idea myself up to what generation—and form very looong lines outside the Spanish embassy in order to obtain a certain degree of Spanish citizenship or at least the possibility to travel to meet their newly found relatives. Tracing of family trees, genealogies, and stuff like that has become a good source of income for some resourceful people, too, in labor terms.
Leonardo: That’s a cool question. We certainly don’t have any kind of loyal relationship with their monarchy, though! Independence was kind of a big deal a few centuries ago. Jokes aside, I think, after all, it just feels like we belong to the same family, no hierarchy currently involved, just, you know, like a family meeting with cousins from abroad.
Daniela: This is another complex question. At least here in Mexico I would say there’s a very tiny, conservative, and very aspirational stronghold of the population who maybe sees Spain with the vague nostalgia of the “mother country”?
I don’t know, I’m thinking anecdotally of my grandfather. He loved bullfighting, the “fiesta brava”, as well as Spanish culture in general, so he certainly had a bit of that nostalgia for the mother country.
I don’t know if this kind of sentiment has entirely died in younger generations, but I think it probably exists, here and there, especially among the aspirational whitish elite, the so called “Whitexicans”.
However, this is not common at all for the general population. The national narrative as well as the information we receive from the public education system is completely antagonistic to Spain. The indigenous heritage is exalted while the Spanish colonization is seen with repulsion, so I very happily can say that loyalty to the Spanish crown or the Spanish royal family is something that doesn’t exist here. I can’t really talk about how this is seen in other Latin American countries.
Javier: No, absolutely no. Spain was the nation that subdued our people and there is no question about it. We are also known that that was an historical period, something in the past. But, for the same reason, we like to keep our distance and apprehensions.
Luis: Ugh. Some people do. Some people call Spain the Motherland. Nothing related to the kings of Spain, nobody cares much about them, but more to their Spanish origins, if they have any. But I think the majority follow the anticolonial trend, thinking of the colonial period as a horrible part of history full of slavery, cultural annihilation, destruction. Recently many statues of our colonial history have been damaged in several areas of Colombia. Conquistadores, kings, Columbus, all of them have been torn apart. Which implies that the views on our colonial history have changed dramatically. In the 90s this would have been unthinkable.
Cristina: As a Spaniard from Spain, I’m conflicted by this question: my country committed horrible crimes in Latin America. As the colonizer, there is nothing motherhood-like in my country’s involvement with the Americas, but that it’s just my opinion. I’m really ashamed about it.
Sascha: There isn’t such a thing as loyalty, independence has been around for over 200 years in some nations. Nevertheless, the king of Spain sometimes visits Latin America as a government figure. As mentioned before, a lot of people are now migrating to Spain and there are reconnection attempts by the Spanish community with the former colonies. An example of this: most Spanish contests (even local), allow Spanish speakers to participate regardless of nationality. Moreover, the Real Spanish Academy rules the language grammar and consolidation of vocabulary.
Emad El-Din Aysha:
How important is the native American, non-European heritage to writing in Latin America, and does this hold true of Science Fiction as well? What about Arab expatriates – Lebanese, Syrian, Palestinian – do they put pen to paper in this genre?
Michael: Our heritage has been put to use in our works by some SF writers, yes. Although here in Cuba, authors who have dealt with it mostly refer to the more “center and south continental” cultures—the Incas, Mayan, Aztecs, etc…–. There´s very little of our own national native heritage left, not as “interesting, plot-useful, picturesque,” or whatever, as the others I mentioned, that´s for sure. They didn’t build big stone temples, nor raise full-grown empires with enigmatic—theoretically alien, for some SF lovers—knowledge and skills… They were just tiny tribes of fishers or very small scale farmers who left almost no records behind them, just some tools and pottery. And our island´s rather little population of “indians” was swept off the face of the Earth rather swiftly and with “professional efficiency” by the colonizers. Then, African slaves were brought in, massively, over a couple of centuries. We owe a lot more to Africa than to our original inhabitants in cultural terms, a LOT more; and to the Spanish, of course. That said, I reckon I have little knowledge of how has the topic been issued outside Cuba, when it comes to SF. Sorry.
Leonardo: The native/indigenous heritage holds a special value for Latin America, no doubt about that; but I believe, at least for Chile, that the Mestizo heritage has been the preponderant when it comes to our narrative. We do have a desire to find and promote Chilean SF from a native perspective, but it hasn’t been very abundant. It’s a work in progress, I would say, and I’m confident something wonderful will show up one of these days.
Daniela: The native American heritage is extremely important and this holds true for science fiction and also for fantasy. Latin American fantasy is often drawing from elements of Amerindian cultures to create their fictional worlds.
Also, we must remember that these cultures are not dead, so it’s not uncommon that authors, especially if they come from indigenous backgrounds, are still immersed in contexts where they can tell you they themselves or their families have seen nahuales (people who can transform into animals) or chaneques (goblin-like creatures), so the magical/fantastical imaginary of the native American cultures is pretty much alive, thus it makes sense that it commonly appears in fiction.
As for science fiction, well, I would say our peoples are obsessed and marked by the trauma of colonization, so it’s not uncommon that we delve a lot in the uchronias and the what if the Spanish had never come, and what if the native cultures had flourished freely and developed their own technology or what if they had fought back and won. It’s common to see variations of these topics in Latin American science fiction.
As for the heritage of Arab expatriates, I’m afraid I don’t have a lot of information about this topic.
Javier: It is becoming something important, but the beginnings of Chilean science fiction, it did not try to reflect or portray that facet of our culture. Things changed with “Ygdrasil” by Jorge Baradit, where that was considered, inventing the so-called “Cyberchamanism” and changing the local sci-fi landscape forever.
Luis: Native American culture is more or less important in literature, yes. I think even more in countries in which such culture was more powerful or resisted more fiercely to be conquered. The case of Mexico, Chile, Perú and Bolivia are special, and they have had their own Indigenist movement in literature, which had expressions in other countries, but of less visibility. Indigenous culture represents the resistance to the colonial power, so it has also been associated with leftist movements, literature, and art. They, have been and still are, subjected to repressive measures. Their land being taken, their lives being nullified, even used as slaves, many being poor, or denied some of their rights as citizens, if not killed, quite directly. There has been some interest in sci fi writers to imagine many different scenarios in which the Native American peoples or their ideas are of great importance. Some of those cases are: Guerrilleros, Una salida al mar para Bolivia, by Ruben Mira, Ygdrasil, by Jorge Baradit, De Cuando en cuando Saturnina, by Alisson Spending. There’s also some uchronias in which it’s the Aztecs who conquer Spain, and a videogame called Aztech that imagines a futuristic Aztec world. I have tried to integrate these topics into some of my stories, just being careful to not appropriate their culture in any way.
Regarding the Arab expatriates, that’s a bit less visible in the sci-fi world. While there are some writers that deal with these migrants, Gabriel García Márquez deals with some of them in a few of his stories, but I don’t think they’re a major force. There’s Juan Gossain, who wrote La balada de María Abdala, about a couple of migrants from Lebanon in the north coast in Colombia. It’s realism, and I think they’re portrayed in the most realistic way.
Sascha: Depends on the author, but most writers assess their heritage within the work, either directly or indirectly. It is also important to address that these are multicultural countries, in which the native American culture mixes not only with Spanish but also all the incoming migration waves. For example, my mother is Chilean and my father was German, so I tend to mix both cultures in my writing with Chiloe’s island native folklore. It is not secret that these Native American syncretism had a huge impact in Magical Realism, a Genre that is said to be originally from Latam and that has permeated other authors and countries’ production around the world.
Emad El-Din Aysha:
What about Arab and Islamic topics and themes? They certainly appear in magic realism from your part of the world, and I would love to know at the very least how Arabs and Muslims are portrayed in your works?
Michel: In my personal work, you mean? I have been playing, for years long now, with a SF idea for a short story, involving the massive translocation of people due to the everlasting conflicts in the Arab world and the impact that phenomenon has on individuals, families, cultures… Some time travelling, too, maybe… But truly speaking, I have no actual idea of what I´m to deal with when writing such a story. I can imagine, yes, I can project, I can reason, I can do historical and factual research, I can try to go as far as to get in such character´s shoes… but… I just can´t see how I could be able to be really… real. I can´t be there, plain and simple, a phenomenon like that, centuries long, and the diversity of cultures, religious approaches and interpretations and differences… Say, I´m still struggling with the Sunni and Shia and so on issue… And I hold these things to be fundamental, if I´m trying to write about the Arab world! Right? While, actually, I still haven´t really proficiently nailed the topic of all the different protestant branches in the Christian faith worldwide… Anyway, as long as I´m not able to trust myself to do it decently right, I refuse to disrespect you all with a rather simplified, likely biased, “Hollywood like” and “picturesque” Arab related short story. That´s how I work. In the case of the Arab world, I just need to know more, in order to feel more. And then, and only then, write it down. So for now, sorry, no Muslim characters for my part. Still quite “alien” for me, regretfully.
Leonardo: The Palestinian community in Chile is believed to be the largest one outside of Palestine itself, and their migration dates to more than a century ago, most of them being Christians. This migration deeply integrated to the Chilean culture overall, and nowadays many cultural aspects of Chile are related to this diaspora, such as words we normally use. There are important politicians with Palestinian descent, and there is even a football club named “Palestino.” Same thing happens, but to a lesser extent, with Lebanese and Syrian descendants. I personally have friends who can trace ancestry to each of these groups, but are “culturally Chilean,” if that somehow explains this integration I’m referring to. Now, when it comes to Science Fiction, an Arab topic is not common, and Islam even less. I can mention, though, as perhaps a rare example, an SF short story I published on the collection “Más espacio del que soñamos” (“More Space Than We Dream Of”), titled “Mustafá.” The story actually deals with this feeling of mixed, intertwined cultural elements, and how complex and deceiving many symbols can be, as we witness the protagonist, Laijil al-Safí, desperately and suddenly trapped on an ethical problem involving a cat. “Mustafá” received a positive review on Amazing Stories—but no translation is available yet.
Daniela: Arabs and Muslims have presence in our imaginary mainly via the presence they had in Spain. I would say they are a bit exoticized as they are commonly portrayed as intriguing, mysterious, and wise characters; magician or even trickster like. They appear in the story to show wondrous things to the main characters. Probably we need to work on more rounded and full-fledged representations of Muslim characters.
Javier: To be honest, we are still trying to separate our vision from the “orientalism” imposed by the Anglo culture.
From what I’ve read, we don’t usually write about the Arab or Muslim reality, maybe there are, but I haven’t discovered them yet.
Luis: I think, unfortunately, the portrayal of Arabic or Islamic topics in literature in this area has been very orientalist. In A Hundred Years of Solitude there are some characters from the Middle East who can perform magic tricks and carry wonderful objects. The works of Juan Gossain, or Santiago Gamboa are a bit more realistic. There’s a Colombian sci-fi writer called Rene Rebetez who wrote a book about Sufism and science, it’s called La Odisea de la Luz, something like the Odyssey of light, but the book itself is not really a sci-fi novel. In my novel El Gusano, I did place the action in Egypt and Syria, based on my experiences and my closeness to Islam, and I talk a bit about the war in Syria.
Cristina: I can say that Arab influence is more present in the South of Spain, in several legends by Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, one of my favorite authors as a teenager. There is a connection with Magic Realism, but I’m not sure the cause is the Spanish colonization. I believe that ancient civilizations share similar wisdom and sensibility regarding the afterlife or the relationship with nature, for example, and Magic Realism’s connection with Arab topics can be attributed to that.
Sascha: In Chile there is a large Palestinian community that creates art in general. Islamic topic is not widely touched upon as the Arab community in the country is majorly Christian. I understand this gets more attention in Colombia and Venezuela.
Emad El-Din Aysha:
Dear Leonardo, here’s an especial question for you. You’re a medical doctor, a practicing medical doctor. It might not surprise you that an awful lot of writers in Egypt and the Arab world are medical doctors themselves or at least graduate from med school. Dr. Hosam Elzembely, director and founder of the ESSF, is an ophthalmologist, as a professor and with his own medical practice. Alaa Al-Aswani, author of The Yacoubian Building, is a practicing dentist. Is this a common pattern in Latin American countries too? Do many authors have to pursue a ‘proper’ career elsewhere, such as medicine or engineering or law or the civil service, and write science fiction and literature on the side? Do you have fulltime SF authors in Chile?
Leonardo: Yes! I think we share that pattern, I’d say, and probably due to the same reasons. As you may infer, we don’t have any SF authors in Chile that can live off their SF literary career—none. It’s a small niche in a relatively small country, and many continental aspects make it difficult for a wide Spanish-speaking-world publication, so the books are usually confined to a single country, and we just do our best to send copies abroad—as our big transnational/international publishers usually don’t publish Science Fiction. At least new platforms are emerging to solve this, as well as regional projects to reimagine the way we share our SF literature (I’m personally involved with other SF publishers in a project to achieve a multi-country non-centralized-edition publication, some crazy regional experiment—I’ll let you know if it works!). Now, going back to the medical field. One of our earliest SF writers was a physician, Dr. David Perry, who published a futuristic novel back in 1931. Then, in the 80s, we had a very important SF author doing political SF, Dr. Francisco Simón Rivas. And, nowadays, I can mention Dr. Héctor Olmedo, who writes both fantasy and SF; Dr. Aarón Szewkis, with realism and fantastic literature; Dr. Roberto Sanhueza, odontologist, and two-times UPC award-winning author; and myself, a dermatovenereologist—some of which you can indirectly enjoy through my novel “Adiós, loxonauta”, about a duo of space dermatologist: one being human, the other one being a descendant of the Chilean recluse spider. Now, when it comes to my clinical practice, in my case, after many years, I have finally managed to distribute my week to have enough time for the physician-writer schedule (kind of!)—and I love it.
Emad El-Din Aysha:
Do publishers cultivate authors and how do authors promote their works? Do you have literary agencies? Is there a clear body of laws governing all this that people actually stick to?
Michel: Briefly, since I´m not Leonardo, but I still want to contribute. Most writers in Cuba—not just SF writers—have an “actual” job. Here, you just don´t go writing full-time unless you are already able to make a living out of it, publishing abroad and winning prizes—mainly in Europe–on a regular basis, or if you decide to run the risks and survive somehow until you make it—whatever that means–. Having significant others depending on you—kids, elders, etc.–, especially, drive you away from running such risks. Now, since in Cuba there´s no actual literary market (that´s a whole topic, I know, how does it work here to be published, how much are you paid, how it works economically speaking for the publishing houses… but it would take longer than a simple paragraph), there are no agencies nor agents, we usually represent and present our work ourselves, the publishers may support or not SF depending on their likes or knowledge of it… It is hard. For some, SF is still quite politically suspicious; for others, SF is for kids and youngsters—space battles with colorful laser beams sound FX and superpowered heroes–. Boy, it IS hard. As for a “clear body of laws governing all this”, here we have the Ministry of Culture, which is supposed to dictate the cultural policies of the country and its cultural products… But I feel like such a purpose is kind of blurred when it comes to many areas, there´re lots of no man´s lands, it´s simply too hard for any institution to centralize all that… So it usually comes down to how those who direct the subordinate branches and organizations and whatever feel they serve those high purposes in the best of manners. There´s a degree of censorship, of course, but during the last two decades it has been rather focused in plain and direct anti-government speech and the like… Easy to spot, in the case of literature, all you have to do, as a publisher or editor or style corrector, is to read it and flash a red light right away. So we writers simply get to know, after a few experiences and usually mild crashes with a wall, what´s best for us, when publishing inside our boundaries.
Leonardo: It’s all about the specialized small publishers: there you’ll find the science fiction! As I have mentioned before, it’s a small market—you can picture the limitations—but the last ten years have seen these beautiful, amazing blooming of publications, by these specialized small publishers, that have enriched so much the Chilean science fiction scene. Puerto de Escape, Cathartes, Tríada, and Sietch, just to mention a few, the latter one—Sietch Ediciones—being my current publishing house. It’s truly a team/community activity and effort, and I am very pleased of how things are developing here in Chile; and there is much more to come, for sure! Now, in terms of promotion: it’s mostly about literary festivals and social network. As for the question about a body of laws: yes, it’s regulated, and we stick to it (legal inscriptions, payments, taxes, and so on). And, lastly, about the literary agencies: no, we don’t really have those for the SF scenario.
Daniela: Another complex question. The big publishing houses do cultivate and promote their authors, however the extent and the efficacy with which this is done is sometimes questionable. There are authors who publish with big publishing houses and yet they go by pretty much ignored and unpromoted.
Also, a lot of science fiction happens outside of the big publishing, mainly supported by small independent presses, but this publishing entities have limited capacity for promoting their authors. Both authors who publish big and small often have to get their hands on their self-promotion, mainly using social media, organizing events and presentations, striving to be published in magazines and anthologies, and trying to win contests and prizes so their names get more acknowledged by the public.
Literary agencies exist, but it’s very very hard for an author, especially for a science fiction author, to get represented by one.
I don’t know of any clear body of laws that governs the literary world.
Javier: There are no such things as literary agencies in Chile, and the authors are in charged of its own promotion, unless you are under the protection of a large publisher, but for Chilean science fiction writers, that is extremely difficult and rare.
The local laws who protect culture are still in development. In my opinion, we still do not have the right legal structure to sustain the whole cultural machinery, but we are in the right direction.
Luis: In Colombia publishers do cultivate authors, but not very strongly, I have published my novels with three different editorials. Which sort of means that they don’t care too much whether I publish with other companies. They don’t help me write, or pay me for writing something new, all they can do is publish once I have finished the novel and given it to them, I have heard of cases of more famous authors that have an exclusive contract which means that everything they write belongs to the publisher, but that’s only for bestsellers, I think. Right now the promotion of the books is done primarily online, but also inviting the authors to give lectures or have panels with other writers, or having a presentation at the book fair, the publishers also send the books to be evaluated by booktubers, or critics that publish in the newspaper.
I don´t know of any literary agency.
Yes, there is a clear body of laws related to authorship and copy rights, and they are followed to a certain degree, but also, every publisher has its own rules when they make you sign the contract, so it’s relative.
Cristina: There are very few SFF authors in Spain with agent. It seems that agents are not interested in a type of literature with a small niche, such as fantasy, science fiction and horror. It is, in the majority of cases, simply not profitable enough.
Emad El-Din Aysha:
Are there sci-fi associations and forums and conventions in Latin American countries? What is the readership like, the age groups and gender division? Are you connected to what happens in the US and Canada, or continental Europe?
Michel: We used to host SF international professional conventions in Cuba; on a yearly basis, for some time, really. Back in the late 90´s and the early 2000’s. They were pretty good. A decent amount of audience. Some folk coming from the US, Latin America, even Europe sometimes… Writers, magazine publishers… We don´t do those anymore though. The people who devoted those years of their lives to struggle to get them done got exhausted, I guess… Still, we hold some national level conventions, rather on the fandom part. You know, cosplayers, interviews with writers, screenings and light lectures on the most popular things going around… We do have a quite strong fandom here, really. Very diverse, yet pretty unified when it comes to sharing. Many SF readers and viewers, many youngsters. About what´s going on regarding forums abroad, not too many of us are able to really keep track.
Leonardo: The first Chilean SF&F Association was founded in 1975, the “Chilean Science Fiction Club”, so we have a long tradition related to that. The current Chilean SF&F Association is ALCIFF (Asociación de Literatura de Ciencia Ficción y Fantástica Chilena), founded in 2017, with more than 100 active members as of 2021. And we do try to stay in touch with the rest of the world: this year, ALCIFF members will be participating at Worldcon (Discon III), and we were also involved with FUTURECON, an SF convention that connects all the continents, all the way from Santiago to Beijing. In terms of Chilean readers, to answer that question, an ALCIFF member (Cristóbal Villegas, anthropologist) conducted research about this (published in ALCIFF’s website, just in case you are curious): the average Chilean SF reader age was about 30 years old, and 70% identified as men.
Daniela: There exists an Asociación Mexicana de Ciencia Ficción y Fantasía (Mexican Science Fiction and Fantasy Association). It was created in 1992 and it organized a few conventions, but these haven’t taken place since 1997, and the Association seems to be pretty much inactive nowadays.
In 2020 was held the first edition of the convention Mexicona, which continued in 2021, and its first in-person events will be held this September 2022. It’s a small event held in Mexico, but it gathers science fiction, fantasy, and horror writers from all the Latin American space.
The readership used to be traditionally male dominated, but in recent years women are getting more and more interested in reading science fiction. This occurs at the same time that women are also occupying spaces as recognized authors, editors, and promoters of science fiction and other speculative genres. Women who weren’t necessarily science fiction readers get into science fiction because they intentionally want to read more women and a lot of the currently acclaimed female authors in Latin America are actually writing speculative genres: Andrea Chapela, Mónica Ojeda, Fernanda Trías, Mariana Enríquez, etc.
As for the age, I would say a lot of the readers are under the age of 40. Older people tend to feel like the genre is “not for them.”
I think the readership is not especially concerned by what happens in the US and Canada. Most people read the authors that get translated into Spanish, but are not especially interested in keeping up to date with every detail of the English-speaking conventions, publications, and the yearly Hugo and Nebula winners. Some people do, but they are probably not the majority.
Javier: Luckily, we have the ALCIFF (Literature Association of Chilean Science Fiction and Fantasy) but it is still at a very early stage of development.
We do not have conventions that are held annually, but if there have been meetings, sadly many of them were discontinued due to the COVID pandemic. I hope they come back soon.
To talk about the local sci- fi readers, its necessary to talk about the identity of the local readers in general. The Chileans are not very intrepid in his reeding habits, they rarely investigate other genders or authors. For example, if they like horror books, they will only concern themselves with reading Stephen King. With that in mind, I can say that science fiction is read in Chile, but from world-renowned authors. The Chileans do not dare to explore local production.
Luis: Yes there are! I think this is a very exciting moment for sci-fi in LATAM, because we are seeing the birth of several alliances among independent publishers around Latin America, so this is the moment those are being born. Right now the most powerful association of sci-fi and fantasy in the Spanish speaking world is in Spain, the AEFCFT, they have forums, a contest, and the ignotus awards, which are given to several categories. In Chile there’s the ALCIFF. In Colombia we only have some clubs, of which Ciencia Ficcionarios is perhaps the most important, and a bookstore, Mirabilia, that has organized a yearly contest, and panels with editors and authors. We also have a major event called SOFA, which is a fair, like the comicon.
The readership, in Colombia, is limited to the niche of science fiction fans. Unfortunately. So it’s not that popular, most of the people I know who like sci-fi are between 20-40 years old. I have no data about gender, I find it somewhat equal.
Cristina: In Spain there is the AEFCFT “Asociación Española de Fantasía, Ciencia Ficción y Terror” (Spain’s Association of Fantasy, Science Fiction and Horror), with an annual convention in the fall called Hispacon. This con tries to feature authors and panelists from Latin American countries. No one knows the readership, but it is still a minority.
Emad El-Din Aysha:
What do Latin SF writers themselves read? Do you grow up on a steady diet of translated SF from the ‘golden age’ of SF, with Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, James E. Gunn and H.G. Wells or do you read translations from continental Europe? Please list your favourite authors, SF or otherwise?
Michel: I read a lot of things, including “mainstream” and classics. That´s what SF writers feed on anyway, right? I read a lot from the SF classics, and also from the eastern Europe (socialist) authors from the 70´s and the 80´s; the USSR would send those books down here, translated and printed, by the tons. Mostly politically correct, that was the idea, anyway, to promote a socialist or communist future for the galaxy and the demise of the capitalist way and the collective work being more important than a sole individual´s ambition and so on… Still, some things “slipped” here and there, works that were actually critical with their system, or not so politically biased and simply a good read. My favorite authors, wow, I still stick to my own classics: Frank Herbert, Ursula K. Leguin, Orson Scott Card, Robert Heinlein, Lois McMaster Bujold… and many others, really. I just mentioned the ones I think I have re-read the most. Or some of them, at least.
Leonardo: I would say that most of the time Chilean SF authors begin by reading American and British science fiction, translated to Spanish. Then comes Stanislaw Lem and the Russians. And, finally, out of curiosity, Chilean science fiction is found. This is probably going to change, I imagine, as nowadays we have more Chilean SF than ever! And about my favorite authors, that’s hard to choose! There are so many authors I admire and influenced me that it’d be impossible to mention all of them. But, if I must do the exercise of picking contemporary ones that I look forward to, I’d say Gabriel Saldías Rossel (Chile), Martín Felipe Castagnet (Argentina), Luis Carlos Barragán (Colombia), and Elaine Vilar Madruga (Cuba).
Daniela: We definitely grow up on a diet of golden age SF authors. If you are interested in science fiction as a young person, probably the names you’ll hear and look for will be Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Philip K. Dick, Arthur C. Clarke… Those are widely translated and published in accesible collections. Nobody grows up reading local legendary science fiction authors like Gerardo Horacio Porcayo, Bernardo Fernández or Angélica Gorodischer. You probably get to those once you are already a reader of the genre and once you get interested in learning what science fiction has been produced in our countries.
My current favorite science fiction authors are Chinese or of Chinese origin: Liu Cixin, Ken Liu, Ted Chiang, Xia Jia. Other favorite authors are Margaret Atwood, David Mitchell, Jorge Luis Borges, Franz Kafka, Fiodor Dostoyevski, Mariana Enríquez, and Guadalupe Alemán Lascurain.
Javier: I grew up reading the kind of books that are imposed on you at school. Mostly realism or naturalism. But in high school, a young teacher changed the reading program and added A Brave New World and The Martian Chronicles. Instantly, I fell in love with Science Fiction.
As a teenager, I read a lot of Isaac Asimov shorts stories, but at that time, a local publisher re-launched the local classic Los Altisimos by Hugo Correa, and it became my favorite book ever since. Much later, I paid off my debt to other classic authors such as Clarke and Philip K. Dick to name a few.
Luis: I first read some classics. When I was a kid I read H.G Wells. Asimov, Contact (that Sci fi novel by Carl Sagan), Brave New World by Aldous Huxley and 1984, by George Orwell. All of them translated to Spanish. Then, when I was at Uni, and after Uni I started reading everything I could find of sci-fi, which unfortunately ended up being very anglophone: William Gibson, Arthur C. Clarke, Philip K. Dick, Frederik Pohl, Clifford Simack, Jeff Van der Meer, Michel Houellbeq (maybe the only French one), Frank Herbert, Octavia Butler, John Wyndham. All of those. Bear in mind that at the same time I was reading a lot of Latin American literature, and other classics, and I was also interested in discovering what was being written in Latin America and in Colombia in sci-fi and fantasy.
My favorite authors would be: Kim Stanley Robinson, Stanislaw Lem, James G. Ballard, I love Ramiro Sanchiz, maybe my favorite Latin American sci fi author. I love Ursula Leguin, and Mircea Carterescu, which is not exactly sci-fi. There’s also Monica Ojeda, who is an Ecuatorian author, she is brilliant, she writes horror. And in Colombia, there’s a novel called Opio en las Nubes, by a not very well known author, I don’t think he has ever been translated, called Rafael Chaparro Madiedo, that book was very influential to me.
Cristina: As far as I know, there is a real “invasion” of Anglo-Saxon SF, with lots of translations from the US and Great Britain, mainly current works and not so much “classics”. Just recently there is an interest in classic female authors, underrepresented during many years, like Octavia Butler.
Sascha: I believe Latam writers read and explore. They push themselves to read beyond the traditional influences and create to open worlds beyond what they read. I started with authors such as Orwell and read Ray Bradbury at a young age. I’ve also read H.G. Wells and Verne, who I consider a science fiction writer. I also enjoy counter-factual history such a Philip K. Dick’s work. Nowadays I really enjoy a much more “human centered” science fiction, as Kazuo Ishiguro presents, and not long ago I read a couple of books on time travelling such as “The Unhappenings” that I widely enjoyed.
Emad El-Din Aysha:
Do you read each other’s science fiction? A Mexican author reading something written in Chile or Cuba? A Columbian SF writer reading something written in Brazil? And is there a generation gap, with authors starting from scratch and not reading what their predecessors wrote, even in the same country?
Michel: I have read terribly little of Latin American SF outside Cuba. My bad. Some short story anthologies. A couple of novels… That´s it. Among so many things to read, I reckon I should give it some self-acknowledged priority. In fact, I have been reckoning that for years. Sorry again. As for generations gaps… one thing that´s being puzzling me over the last two decades, is that so many young people are devoting themselves to writing without almost any reading. They´re SF fans, they´ve seen films and series and read comics… and that´s it. Then they want to write novels… three part sagas, and three books each part, 600 pages per book, just out of the blue… And when you come to read what they do, you find out that they can hardly spell simple, basic words right, let alone the style and so on… It´s… It´s… I don´t know how to put it. Weird? Outrageous? WTF? Funny thing is, on the other hand, many of them do know how to come up with pretty decent characters and sometimes they even excel at plot structure, conflict development, etc… Potential future scriptwriters? Maybe that´s it. Maybe they just still believe that literature is the way to go if you want to become relevant as a creator. Actually, in the present state of things, they don´t have a future as scriptwriters here—no film, TV or comic national market to put their skills for the test and compete for recognition–. If such markets did exist, well, perhaps they would find out the true direction of their creativeness´ products.
Leonardo: Absolutely! As you can read on my previous answer, we do read each other’s SF across Latin America, in my case being what I read the most. Authors and readers involved with the topic usually stay in touch with what’s happening around. With Brazil it’s harder, because of the language limitation, but we still try to keep in touch. In terms of generation gaps, I think it flows naturally, and it’s more connected than separated.
Daniela: Yes, thankfully we have amazing recent anthologies like “El tercer mundo después del sol” compiled by the Colombian Rodrigo Bastidas, which is a great place to start reading the science fiction written across the subcontinent.
Also, I think science fiction writers tend to group in more or less well defined communities connected by social media, so I would say a lot of science fiction writers not only read each other, but actually work with each other and participate in different activities such as book clubs, magazines, anthologies, promotion of science fiction, academic work, etc.
I would say in some sense there is a generation gap. I personally started writing science fiction after reading science fiction written elsewhere, especially in the United States, and didn’t develop the curiosity to find science fiction written in Latin American until I was already trying to publish my own science fiction.
At the time I was working mostly by myself and I wasn’t connected to any sort of community, so I wasn’t even well aware of who my predecessors were or what works they had published. Science fiction is still very niche, it lacks promotion among the general public, and you will never find a lot of the authors if you aren’t purposefully looking for them or involved in workshops, events, or social media circles that discuss them. I don’t think my experience is unique, so probably other young authors have experienced that generation gap as well.
Javier: Yes, and I love to. Recently, I had de pleasure to read El Gusano from Luis Carlos Barragán and instantly I became a fan of his work. Generally, I try to read as much as I can about science fiction from all possible territories, but sometimes it is difficult to keep up with the enormous pace of production.
Luis: Yes! We read each other a lot! The greatest problem is the distribution of the books, because works that get published in Bolivia are hard to get in Mexico, and ETC. But I think most of the authors I know have been very interested in reading books from other Latin American authors. And some of them are really genius! I have read Sci fi from Argentina, Chile, Mexico, Cuba, Colombia, Perú, Uruguay and Ecuador. I’m not sure about the generational gap. In Cuba, Chile and Argentina they have very good authors and books from the 60s and 70s, and I think they are still being read and published. In Colombia our history of sci fi is poorer, and the authors of the past are seen in a more negative light. I read a few Colombian authors before I started writing sci-fi myself, but I didn’t know about the very old ones from the early 20th century until later. I think most of the very old, 19th and early 20th century sci fi novels are not read very often, I would say, in most of Latin America. They’re not even that easy to get.
Cristina: I read a lot of short stories by Spanish and Latin American authors. I tend to read contemporary authors, though.
Sascha: I’ve read local more traditional science fiction (such as Elena Aldunate), read some steampunk authors such as Sergio Meier or Alberto Rojas and colleagues’ work at Alciff with the recent publication “Mundos Alternos”. There are also other media that touches on science fiction as “Case 63”, a podcast on a time traveler trapped in a mental hospital.
Emad El-Din Aysha:
You can guess ‘why’ I’m asking these questions, given the state of local science fiction reading in the Arab world!
Now some questions on the ‘content’ of Latin science fiction. Is there a sharp distinction in Latin science fiction between science fiction and surrealism and magic realism, and which of these genres is more popular among the readership?
Michel: In Cuba, magical realism has always been quite “officially” praised by our cultural authorities. It is very “Latin American,” therefore, an expression of our identity, culture, etc., etc., etc… SF, for the same “authorities,” is still like heavy metal, alien and suspicious. We writers and readers usually draw a line between them, for we know when we are in the presence of one or the other, but that doesn´t mean that we don´t mix them whenever we feel like it, quite consciously, though. It´s fun to mix, and we love to mix. We are a mixed culture, a true raw model of extreme mixing…! A friend of mine writes stories about urban wars involving Afro-Cuban deities and powers in a cyberpunk near-future Havana, and it´s a terrific read! As for the readers, I believe the young are going more after the SF. Magical realism seems to be out of their scope of interests; some cultural detachment involved there, I suppose, as compared to the former generations.
Leonardo: There is no “sharp” distinction within the Fantastic Literature, as a global term including the fantastic (think about Borges and Cortázar), science fiction/speculative fiction (think about what we usually mean by “science fiction”), “fantasy” (in quotation marks, as the concept refers to the anglosphere concept of fantasy), horror/terror, and the weird/new weird. This is mainly because this type of literature has always been hybrid around here. Genre labels are not as common as in the US, for example. Also, just to show the differences in conceptualizations, in Spanish the distinction between “literary” and “genre” does not exist as it does in English, not in the exact same way. In Spanish there is no such thing as “literary fiction,” you wouldn’t find that concept naturally expressed, even though the “realistic/mimetic”, and its derivations (drama, historical, thriller, etc.), is probably the most popular, particularly historical fiction—Chilean historical fiction, to be even more specific. Note apart goes for Magical Realism, and its history, more like a movement rather than a mode of writing.
Daniela: The distinction is at least a bit blurry in my opinion. Anthologies and publications often focus on science fiction AND other adjacent genres such as horror, the weird, the fantastic, anything that comes from the imagination. Even if they promote themselves as dedicated to science fiction, they sometimes end up conflating science fiction with anything fantastic or often with magic realism. It’s harder, although not impossible to find pure science fiction in Latin America. I co-edited a short lived magazine called Primero Sueño and only a tiny fraction of the submissions we received could be classified as strictly science fiction.
I think a big factor is maybe that, since the colonial concept of enlightened science and progress was never fully established here and a big portion of the population still coexists with the fantastic, the magical, the superstitious, and the religious, local science fiction also tends to be a bit tainted by that.
As for popularity among the readers, definitely magical realism has the largest reading base of all these genres. Most of the Latin American readers enjoy magical realism because, locally, its existence is almost equivalent to the concept of “contemporary literature.” Magical realism is even read and studied as part of the curricula in middle and high schools, whereas readers who enthusiastically enjoy science fiction are just a tiny fraction of readers in general.
Javier: Magic realism is often more accepted among the big and famous authors. Isabel Allende wrote La Casa de los Espíritus under that category, for example, but I believe the surrealism and Science Fiction are more popular between readers.
To clarify, as a writer, Sci-fi is another realm. Is not well received by local critics, because there are a lot of prejudices about how complex or valid as a literature is. If you ask me, they talk from the ignorance.
Luis: I don’t think there’s a very clear bridge between magic realism and sci-fi, at least not in Colombia. I do think that most of the sci fi written here is its own genre, but there are a lot of mystical elements in it, and also elements of pure realism, or that kind of street – poverty realism, with gangs and crime. What you could say is that sci-fi in Latin America is mostly soft sci-fi. There are very few authors of hard Sci-fi and very little known. Instead, there’s a lot of social problems being addressed, with some lack of interest of technical details, and some religious ideas. When you link that with indigenous themes, then you get a rare mix of gods and cyberpunk, like in the case or Eric Mota or Jorge Baradit. Which genre is more popular? Among all the readership of Latin America? I suppose magic realism, but not any new author, only the old ones from the 60s- 80s. These magic-realism classics are the most widely read. Sci-fi is starting to grow, just as more authors publish new stuff.
Cristina: Again, I’m not an expert but it seems to me that “magic realism” is a label designed by non-Latin Americans in the first place. Reality of certain groups in many parts of Latin America is horrific enough, so there is not much difference between horror and everyday events.
Emad El-Din Aysha:
How do you define science fiction compared to fantasy and fairy tales, for instance?
Michel: Aha! I also write heroic fantasy, don´t you know? Trying to put me in an uncomfortable spot here, my tricky friend? Ok, seriously… For me, fairytales are the other thing. Good fantasy has it´s inner logic, thoughtful worldbuilding and can´s be written without an acute realism. It´s about stories that happen in a different world, where different historic, social and natural–and so on–laws apply, and it has to feel real. Like good SF. For me, the difference lies in the context you prefer for the stories to take place, the elements involved… As for a definition of SF itself, well, maybe the projections in the future of our fears about the present we live, the yearning for a past not experienced, and the delight in toying with them—past, present and future—to entertain oneself and, luckily, others.
Leonardo: I like to start this type of discussion with a simplified yet practical dichotomy: the realistic versus the fantastic. Of course, they can touch each other, but it’s useful as a comprehensive macro-approach. Where is science fiction located? No consensus has ever been reached, as you probably all now. A great Chilean literary theorist, Luis Vaisman, published a famous proposal in 1985 where he declared science fiction as belonging to realism and not the fantastic, as opposed to, say, the classical definitions of Darko Suvin or James Gunn. Not only that—and you may know this as well—because if we were to reach a consensus about SF belonging to the Fantastic, then we have the second great division: the Sumerian/ancient origin (Gilgamesh, Aristophanes, Lucian of Samosata) versus the scientific/industrial revolution origin (Shelley, Wells, Verne), the latter one using concepts like proto-SF and such to make a distinction with the past. And although the term “science fiction” was popularized by the US/UK Golden Age of it, nowadays the name refers to something much larger, and has no “owner” whatsoever. I personally believe that it goes all the way back to the origins of literature itself, that a path can be traced, even though the name may be confusing at first hand. How do I define science fiction? As follows: Science fiction is any literary creation that, having a natural and rational link with reality, is shaped by a dimensionality that necessarily exceeds it. I called that approach the fantastic-fractal model, and published a paper about it (but it’s only in Spanish). Here is a translation of the abstract:
Literary fractalism arises as a reaction to the nominative problematic of science fiction, as a synonymic, conceptual and referential proposal, in the face of a historically counterproductive indeterminism. As a cognitive and linguistic complement, it offers a unifying conceptualization through which its variety is understood from an irregular, intrinsic and coherent dynamism. In the fantastic-fractal model, the fractal is that which, having a natural and rational link with reality, is shaped by a dimensionality that necessarily exceeds it. This proposal also offers a journey through the historical panorama of Chilean fractalism.
Full article can be found here! I’ll try to translate it one day:
Daniela: I think what’s generally considered as science fiction are stories that involve some sort of scientific or technological element or stories that deal with the future or some version, distortion or speculation of it, whereas fantasy involves magic, mythical creatures, and stories set in an indeterminate past or a secondary world.
Javier: Science fiction is about logical exaggeration. It takes elements of current (or past) science and extrapolates them to new horizons. Fantasy and fairy tales do not have that scientific, logical, or technological element. They endow reality with other laws. Dragons and unicorns do not have a logical explanation (for example, evolution) they are just there and are endowed with special abilities (also with a lack of scientific approach) that the animals around us do not have.
Luis: Is this a test? Hehehe. Well, I define sci-fi as whatever is concerned with sciences, in which the plot has devices that use technology, or in which the elements can be explained through scientific thinking, there is logic. There are possible or near possible outcomes or reasons for the plot to happen. While fantasy and fairy tales do not attempt to explain the devices using sciences or tech, or solve the plot with devices that make sense in our world, following the rules of physics, or social sciences.
Cristina: For me, the difference is in the scientific ingredients. If we are in the realm of the possible, I define it as science fiction. If not, it is fantasy.
Sascha: I’ve read a little bit of everything, but there is a clear influence from Magic and magical realism on science fiction, specially on the “science part”. It might sound weird, but science often ends up explaining science. It is more of a soft science fiction than a real hard-explanatory one such as the Chinese. In my work, the paranormal is always tangled with the science.
Emad El-Din Aysha:
What does ‘modernity’ mean to you? To Arabs, it means clean streets and people behaving themselves without having to worry about punishments!
Michel: Oh, boy. Briefly. For me, “modernity” implies a decent—in many terms–Internet access, not having to struggle for months long to solve the problem that a broken basic home appliance represents—one of our bedroom´s ventilator fans just burned out overnight, actually last night, we´re still in the middle of the Caribbean looong summer, we don´t have air conditioning (can´t afford it), no idea how much it´s gonna cost to fix it if we decide to go that way…–, a way of living fitting of your profession and work rate… To see that things work the way I believe they should—the city, the services, the society itself–. Woah! I guess, in sum, that for me “modernity” means the “availability of things” or at least of certain things, regardless of, say, their price… Just to know they are there, and you have the choice to go for them or not.
Leonardo: Less social inequalities and better distribution of wealth. Chile underwent a massive social outbreak in 2019 to express such discontent and to demand for a change. It led to a new constitution being written right now —as I write this answer—, the only one in the world to have gender parity, constituted by 155 representants chosen by democratic vote. Times of changes and challenges! Won’t be easy, it never is, but we do hope for the best: a better Chilean society.
Daniela: I don’t think I can speak for all Latin American people and science fiction writers, but probably modernity means to us something along the lines of technology being widespread and accessible, clean streets with clean and high-tech infrastructure, a government that is free from corruption and where laws and justice actually exist beyond the nominal, law abiding citizens, and cities where you feel safe because they are free from violence and crime.
Javier: Personally, modernity means chaos. Almost a cyberpunk reality, but without the cool part. Overpopulation is something that really concerns me, even more that pollution itself. Humans are the main problem now, and we don´t want to talk about it, we shift the blame to the aggravating symptoms we create.
Luis: Ugh. That’s a complicated one, I think it depends on who you ask. Most people just might say it means clean streets, nice futuristic buildings, cars and telephones. But other people might tell you that it’s a colonial category that sets an ideal of development to which people have to aspire that does not take into consideration local customs, and that could well be a destructive force. For example, in many regions, modernity is industry, oil pumps, or mines, which slowly erode and destroy natural places, like the Amazon, which is being slowly destroyed by industries operating in Brazil. Removing people from their traditional lands, and enriching a small minority while it tells the rest that they have to aspire to a very European lifestyle.
Cristina: The concept of “modernity” in my country has been hijacked by technological progress. Something is “modern” if it is in sync with the latest technological advances.
Sascha: For me, modernity is a state in which humanity embraces a set of institutions that fosters the pursuit for a better way of organizing society and quality of living, by finding solutions to problems.
Emad El-Din Aysha:
Arabic and Islamic science fiction is often very concerned with biology, not so much physics and outerspace exploration. Things like teleportation and faster than light travel tend to take second place to topics like cloning and genetic engineering and longevity and cures for terminal illnesses and medical diagnoses. Not to mention ‘spiritual’ health and how the soul affects the body.
You often find a scene in a story where somebody is about to be defeated then some memory or sense of duty or spiritual motive reenergizes the hero’s body and helps him miraculously recover and win the day. Does anything like that happen in Latin science fiction? Is physical fitness and manliness an issue too?
Michel: From the Cuban SF perspective… no, I don´t think so (this is regarding the second paragraph of the question). That sounds like the awakening of a last spiritual force resort you often see in, say, Japanese manga… or superhero or martial arts films. We tend to be more… realistic, maybe? Yes, a hero can drag himself after being beaten or shot or whatever after near death long enough to get to… somewhere, but no mystical energies involved. Most of us are atheists, BTW, or at least agnostics. As to physical fitness and manliness in the sense of alpha males or imposing characters, well, we as Latinos are a very macho country, indeed, but we who write SF tend to be critical towards these preconceptions, even mock at them. We just love characters who are fat, or ugly, or handicapped in one or the other way, in sum, far from human physical “perfection”—I mean, come on, we are not writing scripts for Indian or Turkish soup operas–… such characters, I was saying, provide better stories. Not to mention we have lots of excellent female writers… Come to think about it, our best SF does tends towards feminism, quite strongly. My own best main characters tend to be girls or women… of the fighting, imposing, even warrior kind, so to speak.
Now, regarding the first paragraph of the question (sorry if I inverted the whole thing), we have had trends, like anywhere else. Biology and genetics, galactic exploration and wars, informatics and artificial intelligence… I believe we cover the whole spectrum, or almost. No particular emphasis, except for the authors´ own preferences or personal field of knowledge, of course.
Leonardo: Perhaps related to my previous answer, modern Chilean SF tends to deal with social and philosophical aspects of the human experience. Neither physics nor biology tend to be a dominant aspect of our body of work, although you will certainly find elements of it. The focus lies within the individual quest for finding sense in all this madness that life is. Chilean SF can often be very existentialistic in this regard. As an example, I think of Arturo Sierra’s “Mundos por venir/Worlds yet to come” (Sietch Ediciones, 2021) where, even though the story mainly takes place inside an interstellar spaceship and there is an evident concern for rigorous astrophysics plausibility, in the end it’s all about the protagonist searching for those worlds to come, as a pursue of a desired yet unattainable state of existence (the author, himself, majored in philosophy). Another example can be found in “Cobarde y viejo mundo/Coward old world” (Puerto de Escape, 2019), by Gabriel Saldías Rossel, where you’ll find detailed accounts for a future where Buddhist robots have dominated many lands. Notwithstanding the historical plausibly presented, the focus lies within what it means to be human, reflect on those robots’ meditations.
Daniela: You often find a scene in a story where somebody is about to be defeated then some memory or sense of duty or spiritual motive reenergizes the hero’s body and helps him miraculously recover and win the day. Does anything like that happen in Latin SF? Is physical fitness and manliness an issue too?
I don’t think I have seen a similar pattern in Latin American science fiction.
Javier: Yes, it happens to the new writers, but I think is fault of the T.V Shows and movies they watched. In most cases, first-time writers feel the need to write, but they lack the literary experience, it is there that they overlap what they have seen in movies into their texts. That’s where they get that cliché.
Luis: I find it hard to pinpoint to a typical theme. I think the most popular topics are very cyberpunky, close to dystopia with a local taste: Evil corporations or entities, and rebellious organizations or people that try to overcome the system. Or people who live in the border of this system and they just go on with their lives, suffering the effects, sometimes finding some sort of spiritual understanding of the world. There’s a lot of weird now, with many horrors that are indescribable, maybe some sort of collective anxiety of the future, and living surrounded by so much violence. I don’t recall many heroes, maybe Leonardo’s Adios Loxonauta is an exception, it’s a bit brighter of a future, with a hero.
Manliness? Nah, only as a problem to be solved. There’s a lot of feminists and LGBTQ authors now, (me included) that have been trying to undermine the typical macho culture here, thinking of many different genders and sexes and forms of relationships. Angelica Gorodischer’s character: Trafalgar, is a very macho guy, but I don’t think it’s typical.
Cristina: There is definitely an interest in Spain in what makes us “human”, both physically and mentally. This is the closest thing I can think of.
Sascha: There is a wide variation of science fiction. I believe different eras and authors have pursue different ways of tackling those topics. I’ve read a lot related to exploration and time travelling, but there are a variety of stories.
Emad El-Din Aysha:
We’re also very concerned with turning the deserts green in Arabic science fiction. What about you? Do you prefer urbanity or forests of green?
Michel: I´m a lot more familiar myself with the urban environment… So most of my fiction deals with cities and the like—orbital or satellite settlements, underground nets–, though of course I have to deal a lot with forests and plains and rivers and mountains when it comes to my fantasy. For such tales, I go back to my youth—ah!–. As a young man, I used to go for weeks, with friends, “into the wild”, so to speak, we climbed up a few mountains and usually travelled cross country, that is, avoiding roads and the use of vehicles, on foot all the way there and back… Still, by sheer nature I go urban.
Leonardo: Ecological science fiction, in particular, has just started to gain some level of importance around here, mainly because of a recent encounter with the international Solarpunk movement, mainly from Italy and Brazil. That started something here, no doubt about it, and we will see what the authors will come up with. I can think of JP Cifuentes Palma and Alicia Fenieux working further on that. Now, when it comes to rural versus urbanity, I believe you’ll find both in Chilean SF, both with their own identity. Santiago and Valparaíso, two of our principal urban centers, produce a lot of urban SF. The most recent one I read, and one of my favorites, was a book called “Morfopunk” (Santiago-Ander, 2020) by Pogo, who is also a legendary punk musician from Chile. He imagines a chaotic futuristic Santiago, truly punk and rebellious in its essence. On the other hand, the rural science fiction has a special beauty to it, something that feels to be brought from the deeper roots of our culture. Say, Cristian Briceño, who writes stories set in the southernmost regions of Chile (near antarctica), or M.M. Lou, who writes from the north. Then you have the central valley, with all the harsh farmer history. A story of mine, “La herradura entre las zarzamoras/The Horseshoe Among the Blackberries”, deals with that scenario, the emotional depth of the countryside from a SF perspective, and it’s currently undergoing preproduction for a short film adaptation by Chilean filmmaker Jorge Zavala. Hope you get the watch that!
Daniela: Most of the local science fiction I’ve read occurs in the huge decaying megalopolis, but it would be nice to have some forest for a change.
Javier: Forest green. If it were up to me, I would remove the small towns and villages, to increase the land available for wildlife. In addition, it would delimit the cities, stopping their expansion. Megacities are a serious problem.
Luis: We’re very urban. If we care about the ecosystem, it’s in negative situations. The fear of our very diverse natural landscapes being destroyed. I have read several short stories like that. The Colombian, Juan Álvarez has a novel called Aún el Agua, in which the planet is very damaged ecologically, and some bioengineered women must restart the cycle of water. The can also talk to the water.
Cristina: Concerns about our environment are growing in sf literature, with anthologies dedicated to the topic like the anthology “Aún Podemos salvar la tierra’ (We can still save the world).
Sascha: I personally prefer forests and green, but I understand that humanity struggles with nature on its path to modernity. Both to transform and dominate nature.
Emad El-Din Aysha:
Are aliens – first contact, alien abduction, alien invasion – big in Latin science fiction? Or is Latin science fiction much more local and Earth-bound in its focus? (This is something that has been said about American contra British SF). And what do each one of you like to write about, your personal preferences?
Michel: I have very little alien—non Earth–presence in my written SF so far. But I do have some novel projects involving alien full cultures and civilizations, though, for a future kind of military and espionage space opera saga. It took me quite some time since I started writing SF to venture my fiction into deep space and deep into the future, simply because I wanted to do it right—and it´s still in the project, no more than 300-400 pages for now, simply exploring the characters and plot possibilities… As for Cuban writers, some others have always written about alien contacts, way beyond first contacts, I mean, fully established multispecies and multicultural universes, humans simply playing a small part in the big game. As for abductions and invasions, some authors dealt with those themes in our early actual SF, over forty-fifty decades or so ago, not so much now anymore. Actually, I feel like we have been mainly Earth centered all along. Even alien civilizations and galactic wars and conflicts are brought into our SF, they are usually an extrapolation of what we have down here on Earth—and in so many cases, in our own continent and country–.
Leonardo: I can speak for Chilean science fiction, and we do have a good number of aliens in our stories (once again, myself included: it’s hard not to ever write an alien story being a science fiction author, right!?) I can mention Michel Deb’s saga, “Orbe,” a Space Opera where the alien invaders mirror our own human aspect (but they are quite evil… as are we?), or Javier Fontecilla’s exobiology adventures.
Daniela: No, definitely our science fiction is more Earth-bound. We are probably still waiting for our great novel about aliens. But, for now, a lot of our science fiction focus rather on new technologies impacting the daily lives of common citizens, the repercussions of climate change, the daily life in collapsing societies… Definitely more Earth-bound themes.
Personally, I also tend to majorly write about Earth-bound settings and topics, but I have in mind two novel projects about first contact: one set on Earth and the other one involving a Mexican group of Catholic missionaries traveling in a spacecraft and encountering an alien civilization. I hope I get to write them someday.
Javier: Latin science fiction is quite flexible when it comes to its forms of expression. There are stories with aliens, and how we relate to them, there are also those more focused on local issues and with a less cosmic treatment.
While answering, I was reviewing my past readings, but I couldn’t come up with a specific example of abduction. Maybe we haven’t explored there yet.
Luis: Aliens are not that popular, now that I think about it. But there’s some good exceptions. In Colombia Antonio Mora Velez has some interesting aliens, Mexico has plenty. I do write about aliens, a lot. I am writing a trilogy about Earth getting in contact with a federation of highly developed alien civilizations, and helping Third World countries reach a higher level of life, transforming our planet radically for the best. My stories are very urban, with lots of religious elements, I’m fascinated by computers and artificial intelligences, I also dig the rebel topic, with characters fighting the corrupt government. Transhumanism is also one of my favorite topics, spies, regular people becoming exceptional and merging with some sort of technology. The idea of meeting an alien entity that is difficult to understand, like in Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris, or strange forms of sexual relations.
Cristina: I write about everything: first contact, abductions, artificial beings, invasions, pandemics, environmental disasters, postapocalyptic scenarios, transhumanism… but I cannot speak for my fellow authors. There is a lot of variety in Spanish sff.
Sascha: I do think there was a close relation with aliens and UFO’s in an earlier stage. For example, Los Altísimos by Hugo Correa was quite notable for its time, and even the Comic Books Manpato explains its time travelling technology based on alien influence.
Emad El-Din Aysha:
Are conspiracy theories popular in Latin science fiction? Do you have Masonic lodges and the CIA and cabals ruling the world from the behind the scenes?
Michel: Conspiracy theories… I don´t think so, not at least in Cuban SF. No fearsome, dark, mysterious organizations spawned from the early eras of men lurking from the depths of society… Not our thing, so far. At least, not in my readings. We are usually aware of all of it—the books and documentaries, etc.–, but we don´t seem to feel like putting it into what we write, maybe because it always tends to sound like some sort of farfetched modern fantasy?
Leonardo: Oh my, yes, they are very popular! They are usually considered as another genre, though, I believe; most of them deal with either conspiracies arising from Chilean history or Masonic lodges, as you mentioned, so it’s more of Historical fiction, in a way. I’m no expert at all in that topic; haven’t read that much of it!
Daniela: I think I have probably read something along these lines, but I haven’t seen the topics as being predominantly popular.
Javier: There have been stories written about that, but I don’t feel like it’s massively popular. Specifically, I was thinking of Lluscuma or Synco, both by Jorge Baradit. I’m sure there are others, I just don’t know about them yet.
Luis: Not to my knowledge.
Sascha: Yes. In Chile, Francisco Ortega has touched upon conspiracy fiction with his saga Logia. While other authors explore theories such as the lost city of El Dorado and other issues related with regional politics.
Emad El-Din Aysha:
Latin America has a long and proud history of resistance literature. Does this extent to science fiction too?
Michel: In Cuba, our science fiction resistance usually reflects future visions of the North-South relationships, not just the US and Latin America, but the whole world from a North-South point of view. Projections of power axis shifting or moving around the map, new world orders… and how it all turns into similar results… It´s usually pessimistic, when it comes to portrait “a better world”.
Leonardo: Latin American literature is wonderful, I dare to say (but then Literature itself is, isn’t it?). We do have a resistance tradition, an experimental tradition, a place where opposites meet, in every possible sense, allowing for some special flavor to our stories. Progress and precariousness, poetry and pain, new and old, mixed continuously. Although I notice those resistance elements in our work, I think we still have more to do, and that we are just on the brink of something new to come, more powerful than before in terms of Chilean SF. I’d pay attention to Andrés Olave’s work.
Daniela: Definitely some science fiction is political and rebellious in nature and definitely some of it is written as a means to resist, but I can’t say this exists as an organized and well-defined phenomenon.
Javier: Absolutely yes. The book El Informe Mancini is the best example. Just by looking at the cover you can get an idea. Lluscuma and Synco are also a good example of resistance literature.
Luis: Totally. See De cuando en Cuando Saturnina, Guerrilleros, Habana Underguater. And many others.
Cristina: I don’t think there is any literary genre as political as science fiction, in which we can anticipate social, economic, and tecno-scientific changes. SF authors are best placed to present hypothesis about how society will react to different scenarios, and to propose alternatives. I also believe that to dedicate your life to a minority type of art like writing sf is in itself a revolutionary gesture.
Emad El-Din Aysha:
What about political satire?
Michel: Ah, we do have a lot of that down here. At times, it even seems too much of it, makes you want to take a break from it and read something different, less self-politically reflecting. But there are excellent political satiric works in Cuban SF. Humor has always been one of our strong sides when it comes to writing. All sorts of extrapolations, the absurd… Sadly, some of these works—not all of them–have a constant flaw: you have to be Cuban to actually enjoy them, they are too local—the references, the situations, even the characters–; if you´re not Cuban, you would be missing over half of the jokes and ironies.
Leonardo: Proper political satire can be found at the foundations of the Chilean Fantastic Literature. “Don Guillermo” (1860) by José Victorino Lastarria, a novel with satirical criticism of the different political parties of the time. Another one is Pedro Sienna’s “La caverna de los murciélagos/The Cave of Bats” (1931), a satirical parody about society. Then, I would say, a literature shift happened. The original satire gave way to a dystopian wave, which came with Chile’s dictatorship, with a deeper emphasis on the rawness of the events that took place. Where still feel those waves; satire is not as strong as it once was, but you never know when it will return to the SF fields.
Daniela: It exists, but then again I don’t have the impression this is a trend or a sizable phenomenon. I think the vast majority of local science fiction I have read doesn’t focus on criticizing or satirizing current political events, even if its themes are somewhat political in nature.
Javier: I’m sure there are, but if I’m honest, I think Chile has a tendency to criticize politics from seriousness, not comedy.
Luis: Some. I would say that in Colombia, Imenez by Luis Noriega, is a satire of the political elite, or the social classes in which our society is divided.
Sascha: Both political issues and political satire are often portrayed in Latam literature. In some cases, these relations are indirect, touched upon with symbols and topics. In others, it is much more direct, using political characters directly.
Emad El-Din Aysha:
What about cinema and television? The only Latin American science fiction movie I’ve seen is the wonderful Sleep Dealer by Alex Rivera. That level of skill and nuance at world-building couldn’t have come out of the blue. Please fill me in on sci-fi cinema in your respective countries. And what are the stats for television and cinema? Do they make good money, do they have a large fan base, do they win prizes and awards, locally and internationally? Do you have your own version of Star Trek or Star Wars?
Michel: Cuban cinema “official”—state run, that is–institutions seem to hate SF. As for independent filmmakers, they always crash themselves with the budget issue. I have been approached, over the years, by some independent filmmakers who want to adapt my stories into films or short films or series, and after toiling for some time with different projects, scriptwriting, sketching, even casting. None of these projects has succeeded. Budget, budget. Wardrobe, gimmicks, locations, special FX, etc… Even thoughtfully and painfully simplified and reduced… No way. There´s a general lack of local infrastructure in terms of any kind of the necessary resources here to produce SF media. And no actual experience, really. Very few of our independent filmmakers actually know how to make films. Still, we did have a Cuban SF-fantasy TV series aired back in the 90´s, Shiralad. It seemed great to us, back then. It was pretty well produced, considering the extreme lack of resources and all, decent photography and sound—it´s opening theme has become legendary for us–, cool casting, too. The script was kind of cliché, but, hey… Any other TV SF series produced here—not too many—has been, really, a total fiasco. Awful. Silly. Totally embarrassing.
Leonardo: I wouldn’t say that we have a clear SF cinema tradition. I can’t really think of that; just, occasionally, we’d get a movie of such. But keep in mind that, even though I’m a passionate and avid SF reader, I’m usually not that involved with the audiovisual SF world! I’m very unknowledgeable when it comes to Star Wars or Star Trek, for example. Nonetheless, I can tell that, currently, some directors are starting to pay attention to the genre and getting in touch with the local fandom. I already mention the case of filmmaker Jorge Zavala, who got involved via book trailers (and actually won international awards for them), and I’d also mention Pablo Roldán, whose short film “A.D.A.M.” got plenty international recognition.
Daniela: I’m sorry that my cinematographic culture is very poor. The only Latin American science fiction movie I remember watching was 2033, a Mexican dystopian film from 2009. I think it involved militarization, drugs, and some religious topics, so it felt authentically Mexican in its core themes. I don’t remember it as outstanding, but I was nonetheless happy to see a full science fiction movie that had at least a decent production and worldbuilding.
The state of television and cinema in Mexico and I guess in all Latin America is quite deplorable. Movies have very little funding, they are exhibited in movie theaters for extremely short periods (the average Mexican movie is only in theaters during their release week, then they are removed), the audience in general has a poor opinion of Mexican cinema and couldn’t care less about watching or supporting local made movies, etc. I can imagine making a science fiction film must be a titanic effort, so I’m not surprised that we don’t have many of those.
Javier: I’m a filmmaker, I studied because I was inspired by The Empire Strikes Back (the ’97 version) that’s why it hurts me to say this, but Chilean cinematographic science fiction almost doesn’t exist. The first Chilean science fiction film was Ogú & Mampato en Rapa Nui (2002) and the production does not extend to more than twenty films. Local production capacity cannot afford a genre film by today’s standards, and competition with US blockbusters destroys our efforts.
Nevertheless El Circuito de Román (2011) It is an underrated film and I recommend it whenever I can.
Luis: Oh, you would be disappointed. There isn’t a lot out there. Sleep Dealer is a rare beauty. There’s a lot of B type of sci-fi in Mexico, also in Colombia. Very, very bad quality. The goods ones are La Región Salvaje that’s Mexican, Bacurau that one is Brazilian, Ayer Maravilla fui, is also Mexican, there’s a series called 3%, available on Netflix, also Brazilian. There’s a very low budget one called Cord, that’s Colombian/German. I worked on a sci fi animated feature film (I painted some of the backgrounds) that will be premiered soon called La otra forma (The other shape) here’s the trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkFF71joEkQ&ab_channel=RTVCPlay
Sascha: I don’t have the expertise to answer to this question.
Emad El-Din Aysha:
Could you imagine a Latin science fiction movie like The Wandering Earth, where people from a Latin American country save the entire planet from impending doom? You’d be amazed to hear that a comedy series on Egyptian TV had a scenario like that, with a team of Egyptian misfits saving the earth from a killer meteorite, with another more recent TV series (COVID-25) was a horror science fiction epic where an Egyptian medical doctor helped combat a zombie virus. There are such ambitious notions in ‘written’ Arabic science fiction but filmed science fiction is something else entirely.
Leonardo: That Egyptian TV show sounds awesome! When it comes to a Latin American country saving the world, well, gotta say my first instinctive answer is no, accompanied by a little innocent laugh. I don’t know, I think we see that concept as something way too foreigner, you know? An American thing. In case of nuclear doom, for example, you see the maps depicting the radiation effects, and all that comes with it, and all the time the southern part of Latin America (Chile being there) is safe. So… You see? We did have a superhero once, Mirageman. He was cool. (It as parody film.)
Daniela: I would love to see a movie like The Wandering Earth but with Latino characters, yet I’m sorry to say I don’t see this happening in the near future.
Javier: There was a Chilean TV show called Gen Mishima, which was very interesting and well produced. It was about genetic experiments on children, who then developed powers. The focus was investigative, with detectives and conspiracies. Unfortunately, it was canceled after finishing its first season.
Luis: Yes! The trilogy I’m writing is about Colombia becoming the most developed country and guiding humanity to a new world order in which politicians no longer are necessary, and they use alien technology to create a system of absolute democracy. It has a lot of action and giant robots. If it became a movie, that would be amazing!
Sascha: There have been pilots of movies very similar to that, so I don’t find it difficult to imagine.
Emad El-Din Aysha:
If Alejandro Jodorowksy’s adaptation of Dune had been produced do you think it could have been a game-changer for Latin science fiction and cinema?
Michel: No idea. I only recall some very general aspects of what´s Jodorowsky´s production was aspiring to be, his desire to involve monsters such as Orson Welles, Dalí, Pink Floyd, Giger or Moebius. How about putting a Chilean director oin the big stage of world SF cinema? Wow. Would it have involved filming extensively in South American locations, maybe founding the basis for production infrastructure for future worldwide acclaimed SF films? We´d wished. We´ll never know.
Leonardo: A galactic game-changer, no doubt about it.
Daniela: I honestly don’t think so. It wouldn’t have been the first time that a Latin American filmmaker makes an outstanding science fiction or otherwise speculative movie. Alfonso Cuarón made Gravity, and we also have Guillermo del Toro, who is extremely respected for his horror/dark fantasy works, but the fact that Latin America has given birth to very talented persons and outstanding filmmakers who have succeeded in making internationally acclaimed movies doesn’t change the systemic conditions that render the cinema world very difficult and inaccessible in our countries.
Javier: Maybe, I’m not a big fan of that project. I think it is very easy to idealize and speak from what could have been.
Luis: Mmmm. Maybe, yeah, Although, all the production was becoming very Hollywood like, with very anglophone stars. Now there’s Guillermo del Toro, and Alfonso Cuarón, they’re both Mexicans, but they both make movies in Hollywood, which hasn’t changed the panorama of sci fi cinema in LATAM.
Sascha: I believe that Latin American directors often take part in the film industry, but are not recognized as Latam exponents. For example, Guillermo del Toro has a series of blockbuster titles both in Spain and the US and has provided a Latino vision for fantasy and fiction projects. Case 63 will soon have a Hollywood adaptation and comics such as Locke and Key have Chilean screenwriters. So I believe Dune would have been yet another milestone in the Latam portray of fiction. The gap is to push for these works to be interiorized by the region.
Emad El-Din Aysha:
Have any of you watched Terminator: Dark Fate, set as it is in Mexico? Did any of you feel this was hollow pandering on the part of Hollywood?
Michel: Well, if I remember right, back then when it was filmed, illegal migration into the US and everything involved—politics, abuse, etc.—was a somewhat frontline media topic. Maybe there was some statement there? No clue, haven´t really thought of it. Taking the action off the US and putting the focus somewhere else… maybe it was cheaper to film in Mexico? Maybe Mexico looked more “war-zone like” for the purposes of the film–the urban contexts and landscapes, that sandy dry color palette filter that Hollywood tends to use for Latin American countries? Granted, there was some logic to it, if you—Sarah Connor—are a wanted criminal in the US, Mexico is usually—for Hollywood–just the right next place to go (and we know that she´s had these Mexican “contacts” since in between Terminator I and II, the lady went guerrilla training… and who knows what else). Anyway, honestly, I haven´t devoted myself to truly analyze how should I read, politically, the choosing of this scenario. Now, if I was Mexican myself… I mean, we did have some thoughts of our own when small parts of Fast & Furious 8 and Transformers 5 were filmed in Havana, and how they portrayed us—even if it was for a few moments–.
Leonardo: I did not watch it, but I can imagine what you say. It’s a Hollywood thing. I try to stick with films such as Arrival or Stalker. In the Chilean case, we have the Mandalorian (actor Pedro Pascal is Chilean), and there is Chilean slang in the TV series “Picard”, as a character is played by Santiago Cabrera, Chilean as well. Which is really cool.
Daniela: I haven’t really watched it.
Javier: To be honest, I loved the film.
I have a video library, where I own a Blu-ray copy of Terminator and Judgment Day. I ignored Rise of the Machines, Salvation and Genesis, but I really enjoy Dark Fate. The approach to the feminine force, the image on the loss pleased me, and the action scenes also contributed. So, I had to buy a copy.
Luis: I saw it. I guess it’s part of the policy of being extra inclusive, which might seem a bit like capitalization of minority identities in USA. Just like gay, black, indigenous, Indian. I don’t have a problem with that, except it is fundamentally capitalist. Are our identities being used for some sort of dark merchandising strategy? Perhaps. But also, USA is a very diverse country. Only 60% are white, so that means that being more realistic with the people who work and live there, means being inclusive. And I like that. As a gay Colombian, I like my identities existing in the most consumed media, because otherwise they would be invisible. The problem is how they are portrayed. Slowly the stereotype of the Latino as the sexy dancer who is a maid and very good looking might have to open up to many more diverse approaches.
Emad El-Din Aysha:
The Global South is clearly in vogue now. Afro-Futurism has had a major impact on science fiction and genre literature and is almost a household name, and now the term Arab Futurism has been touted. What would Latin American Futurism look like in your eyes? And what impact would you believe it could have?
Michel: Personally, hard to say. Like I said earlier, we tend to pessimistic views down here in my country when it comes to the local future. In a short story of mine, Cuba doesn´t even exists anymore as a country, is merely a ground basis for a monstrous superwide speedway that runs over the Caribbean connecting Florida and South America, in a point presumably around what is Colombia nowadays… In most near future Cuban SF, Cuba is a pretty twisted, weird place, in many diverse aspects, depending on the author. In far future Cuban SF, there are very few references to the Americas at all, as I recall… As for what´s going on with this subject in general Latin American SF, like I have embarrassingly told you before, I´ve no idea.
Leonardo: Latin America has its own literary tradition, a very strong one, more so when it comes to the Spanish-written texts, all the way from Don Quixote. In that sense, I don’t picture the Latin American community adopting a label such as “Latin/Latino Futurism.” I can imagine that arising from the US Latin American community, though, absolutely, as their context is different, I think. A different situation allows for such identity and cohesion, perhaps. But when it comes to the many countries of the continent, the Latino concept can easily fall into a second category in respect to your respective nationality (I feel more “Chilean,” than “Latino,” if you make me choose a label, to simplify what I want to say), and in that way different literary movements emerge spontaneously, always shaping and reshaping the regional imagination, not necessarily aiming at a science fiction that deals with the “future.” Peru and Bolivia are working on Neo-Indigenism; Brazil is quite involved with Ecofiction; Argentina and Colombia are reimagining the New Weird; Chile is rethinking if SF is closer to realism rather than the fantastic; and so on. There is always something impactful and interesting to be found around here! Multitude of pasts, presents, and futures.
Leonardo: Peru and Bolivia are working on Neo-Indigenism; Brazil is quite involved with Ecofiction; Argentina and Colombia are reimagining the New Weird; Chile is rethinking if SF is closer to realism rather than the fantastic; and so on. There is always something impactful and interesting to be found around here! Multitude of pasts, presents, and futures.
Daniela: I would love a concept of Latin Futurism that embraces hope and decolonialism. I would love to see stories of Latino peoples thriving, surviving global catastrophes, crafting our own spacecrafts and traveling through space, creating transgressive technology, destroying the Western concepts of capitalism and nationalism, imagining our own political and economical structures, healing our multiple generational, political, and colonialist traumas, solving our longstanding problems with corruption, dictatorships, violence, poverty, gender inequality…
I would love to see worldbuildings where the multifaceted elements of Latin American cultures get to shine instead of poorly trying to replicate the dominating cultural environment we are commonly fed via the US literature and media.
I’m not sure what impact this could have, but it would be nice for a change to be able to imagine futures where we’re not merely struggling, surviving, and further decaying into societal colapse.
Javier: It´s hard to say, but, I would bet on a greener, more ecological future. Perhaps I am transferring my own wishes to this answer, but Latin America has a very strong relationship with nature, almost indivisible. About the impact, I would like it to contribute to the fight against global warming, overpopulation, and the exploitation of natural resources.
Luis: We are building it, I think it’s a bit harder to point out, because our identities are mega diverse. Many different cultures, many different forms of living. When I think of Latin Futurism, actually I think of many sub genres: Tecno-shamanism, precolumbpunk, neo-indigenism, Latin New Weird. It’s a mix of a pre-Columbian past, salsa, cumbia, reggaeton, crimes, corruption, solarpunk, hope, collective healing and aliens. Theological epiphanies, ayahuasca operated mechas and spaceships. Cocaine robots, space stations built by the Incas, and tango dancehalls in zero gravity.
Cristina: First and foremost, Latin Futurism in my eyes is a movement created and managed by Latin American authors and editors, far from colonial interests. I hope its impact will be long lasting and paramount.
Sascha: Latin futurism would be an ethical intricate comment using science fiction to address all kind of man-nature-machine relations.
Emad El-Din Aysha:
A final and related question. How do you think Latin Futurism and genre literature in your world should cooperate with other bodies and fields of sci-fi across the Global South? Should joint novels and anthologies be written? Should there be active cooperation between science fiction associations? What shape should this cooperation take?
Michel: Like the good old Master Yoda said: “Do, or do not. There is no try”. That would be my motto in this matter. If SF from the Global South is to really become the thing, then it has to either take the thing out of the North´s hands or at least force them to share it—market, acknowledgement, etc.–, or to make it the thing that matters to ourselves. This second option means we have to become the first choice for our own public. We have to see ourselves as the ones that matter. To “triumph” usually means to enter their market. That has to be changed, from the roots. Easy to say, hum?
Anyway, to wait to it to happen with the “natural” course of events—in the short, mid or even long term–, I´m afraid is not realistic. They are the ones who have been established for over a century; the “northwestern” culture and its rules. They buy or take something from us only if: 1. It suits their purposes, namely, if it´s done the way they want it done, their visions, their preconceptions for their main public (customers), and so on; and, 2. It is temporally, ad hoc convenient—politically, economically– to put some focus on us and our points of view, but only if our work represents no threat to their public´s spiritual health (very bad business).
So, to come on top, or to build up our own thing in at least equal terms, it would take for us to convincingly, thoughtfully, deliberately, get to become our own first choice producers and publishers and whatever, to find and put to use our strength in numbers, to launch joint projects, of course, of whatever kind; to bring down our so many language barriers by doing our own translations of our common work, to find some serious and resourceful people to become the nodes of this effort, to be carefully selective with what we issue in order to win our own public´s numbers for us… Really, this goes a lot further than SF. It involves media influence worldwide, in a world where the Global South´s own media is, from my point of view, still struggling.
Phew, I sounded a bit belligerent back there, didn´t I…? Please, bear with me, today I´m in one of those moods…
Now, I´ve always considered myself as a skeptic person, pessimistic and the lone wolf type. This is of course contrasting with the almost “militant, war cry” speech of my previous paragraphs. But that´s the thing. “There is no try”. Not just failure, but also a too long fight, burdened with timidity and self-diminishing considerations, and no visible results in the near horizon, brings only discouragement. Fatigue, doubts, remorse for the time and brains and everything else invested… And that´s it, it´s over with. That´s what usually happens. I´ve seen it, quite up close. So, for all those out there with the energy and the know-how to go for it and make it happen… “Do, or do not”.
Leonardo: I think the biggest next step, overall, is more translations. The stories are already out there, but still we can’t read them all, because of language barriers and market limitations. English allowed a global connection, but the time has come to read from all over the world, all the way from China to Chile, including Egypt! It won’t be easy, but I think that’s what’s going to open the doors for a cultural future. It’s not the same to write directly in English when it’s not your native language; the importance of translations is truly remarkable. Projects such as the international online convention FutureCon (where the Chilean SF&F Association, ALCIFF, participated) are the starting points, I believe. That’s where I’d say cooperation is vital—just getting to know and read each other.
Daniela: We should definitely cooperate more. I think different peoples from the Global South are all subjected to the same system where the dominating science fiction comes from English speaking countries. We are all trying to make a space for us in that sphere while at the same time we’re trying to build and expand our own local science fiction spaces.
I think we should pay more attention to building those spaces where we don’t need to ask permission from the dominating English-speaking science fiction to exist. And, to that end, we should join efforts and build ties with other peoples from the Global South who are also creating their own spaces. We should probably work on more translations, so the Spanish speakers could easily read the Arab, African, South East Asian authors and vice versa. We could definitely work on joint anthologies where we could read a bit of everything that’s being produced elsewhere in the world; we could join efforts for more events centered in the Global South like Futurecon. We definitely need to read and translate more of each other instead of spending all our efforts reading what’s produced in English.
Daniela: We should probably work on more translations, so the Spanish speakers could easily read the Arab, African, South East Asian authors and vice versa. We could definitely work on joint anthologies where we could read a bit of everything that’s being produced elsewhere in the world; we could join efforts for more events centered in the Global South like Futurecon.
Javier: Yes, and yes. I believe that every window of distribution, publication and writing is useful to help build a better tomorrow. It is thanks to past science fiction that we can foreshadow certain changes and aspects of our present. In this scenario, cooperation between different countries and their artistic expressions are vital.
An anthology sounds like an ideal window, it allows to expose and present authors that, for other countries, were unknown.
Luis: Yes, of course! We should join forces, I think we all have been to heavily influences by the global north, and we need to make space for our own stories, our own problems, and cooperation among ourselves is key to change that hierarchical history we have been subjected to. We need to get to know each other better. Let’s do it! Anthologies, maybe awards, or even a southcon. With authors from Latin America, Africa, South Asia.
Cristina: I really hope so. There is so much more in common in the global south that what I look like in the first place. I cannot wait to see anthologies and novels across many of its territories. Cooperation is also a way to resist: collaboration is the opposite of competition, and it’s my believe that, in the long run, can be a more fruitful and healthy exercise when apply to arts.
Sascha: Of course, I’ve collaborated in trans-national anthologies and the combination of worldviews and ideas is very enriching. I truly believe that the interaction of different visions of the future will merge into a more accurate idea of what cosmopolitanism science fiction is, even if disaggregated. A way could be to generate a “year based” anthology, for example: 2120, and all authors could write their vision of something happening on that year on their all little corner of the world.
End
Many thanks to all of you for your participation!
Emad El-Din Aysha
May 2026
The discussants: Photos and Bios
Michel Encinosa Fu (Havana, 1974) is a writer, an editor and a translator. He is a member to the Cuban Union of Writers and Artists (UNEAC). He writes, equally, heroic fantasy, science fiction and social novels. His published titles include Sol negro. Crónicas de Sotreun (Ediciones Extramuros, La Habana, 2001; Gente Nueva, La Habana, 2014); Niños de neón (Letras Cubanas, La Habana, 2001); Veredas (Ediciones Extramuros, La Habana, 2006); Dioses de neón (Letras Cubanas, La Habana, 2006); Dopamina sans amour (Casa Editora Abril, La Habana, 2008); Enemigo sin voz (Casa Editora Abril, La Habana, 2008); Vivir y morir sin ángeles (Ediciones Unión, La Habana, 2008); La cuarta estrella (Gente Nueva, La Habana, 2013); Sol negro. La guerra sin ti (Letras Cubanas, La Habana, 2013); La guerra de Bianca (Gente Nueva, La Habana, 2015), Lo mismo que quieres tú (Letras Cubanas, La Habana, 2015) and La espada sin nombre (Cubaliteraria, La Habana, 2021). His works have been included in anthologies in Argentina, Brasil, Colombia, Spain, EE.UU., Italy and Peru. He has participated in each and every International Book Fair in Havana since 2001, presenting his own books, and offering lectures and readings; also in International Work Fairs in Gijón (Spain) and Montevideo (Uruguay).
Leonardo Espinoza Benavides (San Fernando, 1991) is a Chilean physician-writer & editor specialized in science fiction. As a doctor, he is a specialist in dermatology and venereology but has also studied General Astronomy at the Andrés Bello University and is a member of the Multidisciplinary Association for Studies in Biology and Astrobiology (AMEBA). He currently lives in Santiago de Chile with his wife Daniele and their little dog Hulky.. As a writer, he is best known for his short story cycle “Más espacio del que soñamos” (2018), set for a cinematographic adaptation by filmmaker Jorge Zavala, and “Adiós, loxonauta” (2020), recognized as a ‘book worth your consideration’ by the International Latino Book Awards. He’s currently serving as director of the Chilean SF&F Association (ALCIFF) and is an associate member of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA). From 2008 to date, his short stories have been published in Chile, Argentina, Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela, Cuba, Mexico, Spain, and the United States. Publishers Weekly highlighted his story “Octobers/October,” anthologized by Crystal Huff, calling it ‘vivid’ and rooted in Chilean history. As an editor, he works at Sietch Ediciones and has overseen the SF anthologies “COVID-19-CFCh” & “Pacífica.”
Daniela L. Guzmán is a Mexican speculative fiction writer. She graduated from Clarion West Writers Workshop in 2021 and internationally has published fiction in Strange Horizons. In her country, she has been awarded the FONCA and PECDA writing grants from the Mexican government, her short story “Santa Teresa nunca fue fan de Pokémon” won the National Short Story Award Jesús Amaro Gamboa in 2019, and her short story book “Un tlacuache salvó este libro del fuego” was included in a list of the best speculative fiction published in Latin America in 2021.
Javier Fontecilla (1989) is a Chilean screenwriter and novelist, known for the featured film Volantín cortao (Cut Down Kite), which was awarded the Public Choice Award in the 2013 Valdivia International Film Festival, and for his novel El arca (The ark), winner of the 2021 International Latino Book Award for best Science Fiction novel. He recently published Animales Salvajes (Wild Animals), and was included in Cyberpunk, a thematic anthology of the subgenre in Chile, with his short story Economía Circular. He is currently an active member of the Chilean SF&F Association, ALCIFF.
Luis Carlos Barragán, born in Bogotá, Columbia,studied Fine Arts at the National University of Colombia and History of Islamic Art at the American University in Cairo. He is a writer and illustrator specializing in science fiction. He has published three novels: Vagabunda Bogotá (2011), winner of the 10th prize from the Cámara de comercio de Medellín and shortlisted for the Rómulo Gallegos, El Gusano (2018), shortlisted for the Isaac Asimov award of the Ateneo de Puerto Real, Spain, and Tierra Contrafuturo (2021); and a short story collection: Parásitos perfectos (2021). He has also published numerous short stories in anthologies and magazines and his paintings have been used for cover art of several books, mostly of science fiction.
Cristina Jurado is a bilingual author of science fiction, fantasy, horror, and other hybrid genres, as well as editor, translator, and sf promoter. In 2019 she became the first female author to win the Best Novel Ignotus Award (Spain’s Hugo) for Bionautas. Her recent fiction includes the novella CloroFilia, her collection Alphaland and many stories in various venues, such as Strange Horizons, Clarkesworld, Apex magazine, and The Best of World SF by Head of Zeus. She has worked as international editor for Apex magazine and has co-edited with Lavie Tidhar The Apex Book of World SF #5, focused on speculative fiction around the world. Distinguished as Europe’s Best SF Promoter Award in 2020, she started to work as a contributor of the bilingual quarterly Constelación magazine. Her works are available in Spanish, English, Italian, Romanian, Chinese and Japanese.
Sascha Hannig Núñez (1994, Santiago de Chile) is a Chilean fantasy, horror and science fiction writer known for her work within the Steampunk literary genre, especially the “Allasneda” series. She is one of the youngest science fiction writers in her country, and the youngest to have published a Steampunk novel in Latin America. She has been published in Spanish, English and German, in four countries. Her latest novel “Deltas” was released in August 2020.
Special thanks are due to Juan C. Toledano Redondo, Professor of Hispanic Studies (WLL), Co-Editor & Founder of the academic journal Alambique (Sci-Fi and Fantasy)
Emad El-Din Aysha is an academic researcher, sci-fi author and freelance translator and journalist currently residing in Cairo, Egypt. He was born in the UK in 1974 to a Palestinian father and Egyptian mother, completed his PhD in International Studies in 2001 at the University of Sheffield and has taught at universities as diverse as the American University in Cairo and Heliopolis University for Sustainable Development. He has a regular SFF review column in The Liberum online newspaper and formerly wrote for Egypt Oil & Gas and The Egyptian Gazette. He has two books to his name, the nonfiction ‘Arab and Muslim Science Fiction: Critical Essays‘ (McFarland, 2022), and an anthology in Arabic that has recently been republished – ‘The Digital Hydra’ (2026) – see below. He also had the honour of publishing a story with the first ever anthology of Palestinian SF (Palestine+100) and the award winning Thyme Travellers, and is a member of the Egyptian Society for Science Fiction regularly represents Arab literature at forums like Balticon and WorldCon.
Cover Image. A NASA composite photo of the Earth and Moon with Latin America in frame.
