Hi, I'm Saqer. I'm an academic. I used to spend a lot of time translating short science fiction into Arabic, but haven't published any yet because reasons. Maybe that will change some day, and maybe I'll get back to it.
I also spend a lot of time listening to audiobooks of scifi novels, and the usual scifi podcasts. I spend a lot of time also wondering about backstories of minor characters and societal myths and languages in scifi.
My academic alt is @saqeram@scholar.social
I'm pleased to note that even https://dolphin.town, my Mastodon server where the only letter you are allowed to post is "e", has seen increased activity in the last few days.
Thanks Eeeeelon!
So next week I've left next week's class as TBA, and decided I'll make students read poetry for a change.
I've decided on 2 poems by Makhosazana Xaba, but I'm being indecisive about which of M. NourbeSe Philip's poems from She Tries Her Tongue to bring to class. I'm also bringing Louise Bennett's Bans O'Killing to class.
Recs?
Hi, I'm Saqer. I'm an academic. I used to spend a lot of time translating short science fiction into Arabic, but haven't published any yet because reasons. Maybe that will change some day, and maybe I'll get back to it.
I also spend a lot of time listening to audiobooks of scifi novels, and the usual scifi podcasts. I spend a lot of time also wondering about backstories of minor characters and societal myths and languages in scifi.
My academic alt is @saqeram@scholar.social
Something else you might enjoy if you're interested in Palestinian speculative fiction is the reading list I put together on my website: https://soniasulaiman.com/readpalestinianspecfic-reading-list/
introductions, activitpub, spritely, musk
Oh hey, Elon Musk is buying Twitter eh?
Hi, did I ever mention that I worked on a decentralized social networking protocol called ActivityPub, the most popular in the world right now? Oh hey, you're probably using it right now! https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/
Or did I mention that we're building next-generation internet tech over at @spritelyproject? https://spritelyproject.org/
It's all true!
if you use fedi like twitter, i think you will have a bad time. foss culture has lots of problems, and foss ecosystems face structural challenges in responsiveness and accountability that corporate services don’t. if you can, create an account on a small instance. lock your account. post unlisted. make some friends and cherish your dozen specific mufos. go public to get weird replies.
fedi is not twitter. it can be worse, but it can be so much better too.
I’m consuming a lot of horror these day, and I just googled “apple head doll” and I’m horrified. Anyways, that’s all because of @ethereallad’s story “Dessiccant” on @NightlightPod https://nightlightpod.com/episode/312-desiccant-by-craig-laurance-gidney/
I've been out of it. But I'm back to reading poems today.
Brigid Nemeton's #poem "A Training Session" is really interesting with this gestalt consciousness arising in it, and also the podcast version is interesting to hear.
I dug around the Strange Horizons archives and found a poem that suits my mood all the way back from 2000 by Wendy Rathbone titled "Grief"
And let me tell you: the five elements improved my mood.
Yesterday I ended up reading Anna Cates's "Three Triolets"
The description of the outsides were cool, but I had to look up eglantines.
Okay, maybe two more! "Particularities" and "Consistencies" by S. Qiouyi Lu
The nice thing about both poems is the notion of home. I like Consistencies more only because I like the equal character length in each line.
I guess I post links to two poems at a time pretty regularly so today both #poems are by Dominik Parisien, both published in Uncanny.
1. Afternoon with Grandparents
2. To a Dying Friend
https://uncannymagazine.com/article/afternoon-with-grandparents/
So to catch up with a few more #poems. I stumbled on these translations by Kenji C. Liu of Morio Hayashida.
Three poems, link to the Translator's Note, click next for each poem:
1 Where to Go
2 Winter, Twenty-Four Years Old
3 Sick in a Foreign Country
http://waxwingmag.org/items/issue22/42_Liu-Translators-Note.php
I'm reading Ashley Bao's "a siren whispered in my ear one night"
This #poem plays with my feelings about home and the changes in a home.
https://arsenika.ink/poetry/a-siren-whispered-in-my-ear-one-night/
The #poem for December 6 is Valerie Valdes's "Making Accommodations"
This is quite a brilliant poem and the metaphor is quite lovely (at least from my perspective as a hobby bookbinder)
As usual I'm catching up, but just in time Strange Horizons just published 3 #poems for their Mexico special issue. The poems are by Raúl Gallardo Flores, Ruperta Bautista Vázquez, and Gabriel Ascencio Morales, with translators Juan Martínez and Morgan L. Ventura.
I'm linking the podcast, but the page links to the individual poems for your reading.
http://strangehorizons.com/podcasts/podcast-mexico-special-issue-poetry/
Translator (he/they) of short scifi fiction and poetry (mostly into Arabic) and academic.