Image source: Tekumel Foundation I have been wanting to write about Professor MAR Barker for about five years but for one reason or another this post slipped through the cracks until now. I first came across the work of M A R Barker around 2006. He has been described byContinue Reading
Writing about HWJN has been on my list of to-do things for a while but it is only now that I am able to post anything about it. HWJN is the brainchild of Ibraheem Abbas and Yasser Bahjatt who published the novel via their own publishing company Yatakhalayoon in 2013.Continue Reading
Aziz M. Osman is a Malaysian director who has directed a number of Science Fiction movies in the Malay language. Here is a sample of a few of them: XX-Ray is a Malaysian Science Fiction movie directed by Aziz M. Osman which came out in 1992. It has been calledContinue Reading
This is a couple of years old but I have gotten it as a reference from multiple people so I thought I should post it for reference. Thanks to Hal H. and Ellen K. for the pointer. While it doesnt go into much detail, it does give one some hintsContinue Reading
Now that the competition is over and the anthology is also out, I figured it would be great if we could ask the winners what was inspiration behind the stories and what new and exciting projects that they are working on. Here are mini-interviews with the winners and their thoughtfulContinue Reading
Better late than never I always say, the wait is over, I give you the Science Fiction short story anthology based on the first Islamicate Short Story contest. There are a total of 12 stories in the anthology and the first three stories are also the ones which won theContinue Reading
Strength of Stones by Greg Bear in a novel with an interesting premise. After a series of conflicts on Earth in the 22nd century a group of Jews, Christians and Muslims settle on a planet named God-Does-Battle. They live in massive computerized cities which are programmed and governed by strictContinue Reading
Tilsm Hosh Afza (طلسم ہوش افزا): I have gotten some emails over the last few years to comment on this book. Tilsm Hosh Afza is a collection of 12 short stories from the well known Urdu author Ashfaq Ahmad from Pakistan. The title of the collection is inspired from theContinue Reading
Rani Banjarian, an undergrad student from Vanderbilt University, has won the 2016 Dell Magazine award for his short story Lullabies in Arabic for Undergraduate Excellence in Science Fiction and Fantasy. Here is a relevant excerpt published by Dell Magazines. “Lullabies in Arabic” by Rani Banjarian 10 years before A rowContinue Reading
Usman T. Malik is a personal friend who is also an award-winning speculative fiction author. He is also from Lahore, Pakistan. He is the first Muslim and Pakistani to win the Bram Stoker Award for Short Fiction and was the finalist for the Nebula Award twice in a row. HisContinue Reading