Reviews

Fish Eats Lion: New Singaporean Speculative Fiction by Jason Erik Lundberg

russlemania's review against another edition

4.0

Admittedly Fish Eats Lion is one of my first few dips into local literature, and it doesn't disappoint! I picked it up and read it under the eyes of an aspiring speculative fiction writer looking out for how writers merge our cultural nuances with sci fi/ fantasy tropes. There were some stories that felt a little too heavy handed with the shoe horning of cultural colloqualisms, but they were offset by other stories written with great fludity, and embraced our local flavours under a really unique lens. Overall I enjoyed the stories very much, and their cultural relevance provided me a new dimension of appreciation as a Singaporean reader.

My favourite stories were "Agnes Joaquim, Bioterrorist" by Ng Yi Sheng, "Big Enough for the Entire Universe" by Victor Fernando R. Ocampo and "Feng Shui Train" by Yuen Kit Man.

This book also introduced me to LONTAR The Journal of Speculative Fiction, a literary journal focusing on Southeast Asian speculative fiction by the same editor. It is extremely encouraging to see a platform for Singaporeans to submit their own weird tales, and maybe some day we'll start having our own little sci fi/ fantasy writers conventions as well. But till then, it's time to start writing :)

mc_j_ho's review against another edition

3.0

This collection of Singaporean speculative fiction was a a bit of a mixed bag. A few of the stories were really great, well realized explorations of the unknown set against the backdrop of Singapore. Some of them were disappointing and dull. Perhaps most frustrating of all, some of them seemed to be non-speculative fiction that had been altered at the last minute to jam in a speculative element, seeming to be more afterthought than anything. Nevertheless the best stories were a delight. Overall maybe the editor just needed to wait a while longer for more submissions? 2.5/5