Strange Horizons, File 770<\/em>, and elsewhere have published pieces about the state of speculative fiction in different countries, but I wanted a place where this kind of “report” would come out in every issue. The goal is to hop around the world consistently, offering readers glimpses into speculative fiction written in, say, Estonia or Norway or Korea or Indonesia. It’s difficult sometimes to find who you need to email to find out that kind of information, but I know so many great people who know so many great people who know…you get the idea. We can do this.<\/p>\n\n\n\nSecond, I wanted this magazine to teach me<\/em> more about SFT. This is pretty selfish, I suppose, but I wanted to gather people for each issue who could talk to me about translation from Turkish or Maltese, about convention panels on SFT, about interesting SFT being published, about vintage SFT that readers might have a hard time finding even online. I wanted all of these people who know about translation or literature or editing or conventions or publishing or… etc. to give me information on so many topics, but of course I also wanted to share it with the world. What good is it to find out something cool if you don’t share it with other people? We’re humans; we like to discuss stuff.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThird, I hope that this magazine, in gathering information and presenting it in a pleasing format, will draw in readers who wouldn’t otherwise know that this world exists. They might be long-time Anglophone speculative fiction readers or even people who aren’t wedded to a particular genre. The materiality of the magazine itself (ok, it’s digital, but you know what I mean) would act as a catalyst for bringing in new readers and writers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The magazine format seemed more appropriate for this endeavor, since it captures a moment in time, different from a scrollable website. If I could have, I would have had this magazine printed, as well, and distributed across the country and the world, but that will have to happen at some point in the future. I’m a huge fan of texts I can hold in my hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The World SF Newsletter<\/em> (1976-91) did similar things to this magazine, but was often a place where the organizers and writers reported on the conventions they attended and the grand plans that they had for establishing a true world sf sphere. Sometimes the newsletter had reports from around the world, sometimes it published essays about the work that needed to be done to spread the world about international sf, but it was more of an aspirational publication than Small Planet<\/em>, which is a “this is where we are” kind of publication.<\/p>\n\n\n\nI’m a stickler for routine, so I plan to have several ongoing columns that you can count on in each issue: reports from various countries, interviews with authors\/publishers\/translators\/editors, reviews of vintage SFT, highlights of forthcoming books, essays about an issue in SFT, and an opportunity for people to write about books they want translated. I plan to include two other tidbits that I’m really excited about: “Crossing Borders,” in which I will highlight 2 or 3 SFT texts from very different languages that take up the same theme or issue (i.e. Vietnamese and Norwegian texts about time travel); and “Source Language Spotlight,” where I’ll present a short report about the SFT from various languages from 1960 up to the present. There’ll be news, a fun stat, and a very<\/em> fun excerpt I call “Blast from the Past” from one of those older world sf magazines I mentioned earlier. There will be a lot, though, in “BftP” from the World SF Newsletter<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nI hope you’ll read Small Planet<\/em> and tell other people about it (the next issue is out August 31). This is a fascinating world and one worth sharing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In my previous essay on this site, I discussed the fact that several international sf magazines have risen and fallen over the years. Many of them offered speculative stories in English translation from all over the world, enriching the genre and introducing Anglophone readers to stories, traditions, and cultures with which they were unfamiliar. Thankfully,<\/p>\n
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