It seems, to use the old cliché, only yesterday — and yet so long ago! — that the first Apex Book of World SF anthology came out and, alongside it, the first post on the accompanying World SF Blog appeared.
I am writing this introduction some time before the actual book comes out, as is always the case. The World SF Blog, started in February 2009, has recently celebrated four years online, and has just, as I write this, won the BSFA Award for Best Non–Fiction. Only some weeks back, it was given a special Kitschies (the “Black Tentacle”) Award, for “an outstanding contribution to the conversation surrounding genre literature”. This seems as unlikely as doing an anthology of international SF/F short stories had seemed to us back in 2008 or so, when Jason Sizemore of Apex and I first began to kick the idea around. Neither of us, I think, imagined those awards, nor the changes in the landscape and discourse around speculative fiction that has emerged, nor that we would be publishing a third volume — the one which you are now holding.
I am, naturally, excited about this anthology. I got to include more longer stories this time, and it is a thicker volume than its predecessors. Women dominate — twelve to five (one story is a collaboration). I was able to draw on a wide range of sources, many more than I had access to in 2009, amongst them the excellent Afro SF anthology (edited by Apex Book of World SF 2 contributor Ivor Hartmann), anthology Breaking the Bow, edited by Vandana Singh and Apex Book of World SF contributor Anil Menon, and even the World SF Blog itself! In that I am indebted to my two excellent fiction editors for the site, first Debbie Moorhouse and later Sarah Newton.
As before, these stories run the gamut from science fiction, to fantasy, to horror. Some are translations (from German, Chinese, French, Spanish and Swedish), and some were written in English. My thanks in particular go to the indefatigable Ken Liu, who continues to translate Chinese SF stories into English, two of which are reprinted here. The authors herein come from Asia and Europe, Africa and Latin America. To me, their stories are all wondrous and wonderful, and showcase the vitality and diversity that can be found in the field. They are a conversation, by voices that should be heard, and I am, once again, tremendously grateful for the opportunity to publish them.
Lavie Tidhar
London, April, 2013