Reading science fiction like it matters since 1989.
As an Argentine science fiction writer working out of Buenos Aires, I envy writers based in large markets. I personally have the advantage that my first language, reading- and writing-wise, is and always has been English, but many of my countrymen need to learn to write in the tongue of Shakespeare or face the stark realities of publishing in Spanish.
Due to its being a tiny market, comparatively speaking, the Argentine publication process for debut or little-known writers consists of approaching a publishing house that will invariably be delighted to publish your award-winning manuscript ... as long as you foot the bill. Yog’s Law (“Money flows to the writer”) is notably absent in any serious publishing conversation here. This reality is reflected in the often uneven quality of the work published in South America: nuggets of genius have to be mined from a quantity of dross produced by people whose only meaningful qualification was that they simply had the funds to get it done at that particular moment in time.
I always thought Portuguese, a language that far fewer people speak on a worldwide level than Spanish, would present a similar prospect.
But I forgot the Brazil factor. Brazil is one of the top ten economies in the world (ninth as I type this), and it has been growing strongly for the past fifty years, driven by a population of two hundred million people and a respect for civic responsibility that, as an Argentine, I find almost Scandinavian compared to the rest of the continent. It’s no longer a country with a future; it has a present.
That present translates into its literary output. If writers have a market, they will be able to sell their books.
But I hadn’t thought all of this through when I was invited to the Odisseia de Literatura Fantástica, a science fiction convention in Porto Alegre. I truly didn’t know what to expect other than that the caipirinhas should be decent, but what I found was a uniformly delightful group of science fiction and fantasy writers. It was a purely Brazilian event, aimed at the domestic market for books in Portuguese, but even so, everyone was nice to the Argentine guy with his English-language books. They didn’t even mention the fact that our national team hasn’t won the World Cup since 1986.
It was an eye-opening experience, but more importantly, it allowed me to snag four books which, taken together, represent a reasonable cross-section of what is being published and sold in that great country to the north of us (way down south for US readers). The four books were from three different Brazilian publishing houses, so they also give a nice idea of the variety of editorial taste.
The books are: AnaCrônicas: Pequenos contos mágicos, by Ana Christina Rodrigues; Sagas Vol.1: Espada e Magia, an anthology containing stories by Cesar Alcázar, Duda Falcão, Georgette Silen, and Rober Pinheiro; Bazar Pulp, by Cesar Alcázar; and Ouro, fogo & megabytes, by Felipe Castilho.
AnaCrônicas: Pequenos contos mágicos translates as AnaCrônicas: Short Magical Tales, and it does precisely what it says on the tin. Of the four, it’s the one that most closely matches what I would have expected if I’d walked into a random bookstore in Brazil and purchased a fantasy book by a local author with my eyes closed. In fact, it’s just about what I would have expected if I’d done the same thing in any bookstore anywhere in South America.
That doesn’t mean it’s bad. It isn’t. Some stories are more memorable than others, but they’re all well-crafted pieces. Rodrigues is a very good writer whose main shortcoming in this context is that her work does precisely what I expected. Her stories take the fairy-tale format, sprinkle some Poe and even some Celtic references onto that base, and then reimagine everything through the lens of magic realism.
While this might sound fresh and new to English-speaking audiences, it is the staple food of Latin American literature both inside and outside of the sf/f genre and it has been since Gabriel García Márquez published One Hundred Years of Solitude. It plays very well to the audiences who insist that magic realism isn’t fantasy but actually just speculative fiction in a dreamlike state ... and therefore valid literature.
This book is the baseline against which the others need to be compared and coincidentally was the first of the quartet that I read. To this point, Brazilian fantasy had shown me little that was unexpected.
That changes as soon as you pick up Sagas Vol.1: Espada e Magia (Sagas Volume 1: Sword and Sorcery) or Bazar Pulp. I’ve decided to write about these two books together because they share sensibilities, publisher, and format: a small size about half that of an American mass-market paperback.
Each of these contains a collection of short stories, one from various authors, the other a single-author collection. As you can probably tell from the titles, both books pay homage to the origins of sword and sorcery in the 1930s but really much more to the subgenre’s revival in the 1970s; the feel is much more aligned with the mature, gritty Conans and Kulls of the continuation writers. (So is the art, of course. Sword and sorcery is intimately linked with its art), while the small format and general look and feel of the books give more than a passing nod to the graphic novels that they have to compete against in the marketplace.
Now we’re talking. Finding these books in Brazil is refreshing for a number of reasons but mainly because, if one were to search the major US short story outlets for new s&s stories in the traditional vein, one would be forced to conclude that the genre is no longer viable. If the pro magazines and major-publisher anthologies are to be believed, no one wants to read that stuff anymore. Or, at least, no one wants to read new stories in the subgenre that follow the old style. Classics are accepted but only with a certain reticence.
In Brazil, on the other hand, a major publisher is pushing attractive versions of the same kind of s&s that people were reading—and are still buying loads of—in the US in the glory days. This isn’t fan fiction or homage; these are excellent contemporary writers telling the stories of characters that are 100% theirs. These stories deserve their place in the sun in a major market, even if they would never find a place in the pages of any of the larger pro magazines in the US today.
A particularly memorable character is César Alcazar’s Cao Negro (Black Dog). Anyone who can confront the supernatural across a field of corpses with that much equanimity deserves his place among the barbarian heroes.
Unlike AnaCrônicas, these represent something unique in a region where most fantasy fiction is reprinted from the English-speaking world: original work by local authors that has both the quality and the presentation to duke it out with the imported material ... and win, with the bloody sword to prove it.
The final book we’re looking at today, Ouro, fogo & megabytes (Gold, Fire, and Megabytes) is also the only novel of the quartet. It’s a young adult book, which shouldn’t be a surprise: the YA category is just as popular in Brazil as it is everywhere else.
I will admit to being biased against this book. I generally avoid the Young Adult genre like the plague, so I left it for last of my Brazilian acquisitions.
That shows just how much risk there is in judging a book by its cover (or, in this case, its subgenre). This novel is surprising on many levels. Not only does it move away from South American standard fare in conception with no magic realism in sight anywhere, but it goes one further and creates a believable present-day milieu where gamers and ancient magic clash while the rest of the world lives on, oblivious. Shades of The Matrix meets Harry Potter, perhaps, but extremely well done.
What sets Ouro apart is that it isn’t just a generic novel. This one wouldn’t make sense anywhere but in Brazil. The cultural references are purely local and the magic system is based on Brazilian myths and beliefs.
The final battle against the evil enemy is absolutely satisfying, but the book’s popularity still allowed the publisher to put forth two sequels set in the same world. In a market where this book has to compete against not just the local offering but Harry Potter and Twilight books, it’s quite an achievement.
In summary, the state of Brazilian science fiction is surprising. Most of the rest of Latin America is a wasteland. Books are translations or tiny editions paid for by the author. The breadth and quality of this small sample of what can be bought in Portuguese in Brazil caught me completely by surprise and underscores just how much more vibrant the sf/f genre is there than it is in my native Argentina or in other countries around the continent.
Of course this isn’t meant to be an exhaustive analysis of the country’s genre output; it’s just an impression based on a small selection. I also imagine that behind this solid façade there is a lot of enthusiastic volunteer work and writers who don’t make as much as they should—as there are everywhere else. But the foundation is there, and it’s very impressive.
Gustavo Bondoni lives in Conesa, Argentina.
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