LONTAR #10

This tenth and final double-sized issue of LONTAR presents speculative writing from and about Singapore, the Philippines, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Korea and Vietnam. Inside these pages, you’ll find: sightings of a strange astronaut in an infinite library by Victor Fernando R. Ocampo, illustrated by Eisner winner Sonny Liew; the meeting between weretigers and Sang Nila Utama by Manish Melwani; the enlightenment of a politician’s wife by Cyril Wong; a Pygmalion-esque tragic romance by comic artist Drewscape; weaponised merlions in WWII-era Singapore by Kevin Martens Wong; an unexpected offer of omniscient immortality by Eliza Victoria; gods and mango tree spirits united in song by Vida Cruz; post-apocalyptic satay cookery in Marina Bay Sands by Wayne Rée; domestic strife and changeling tigers by Natalie Wang; the magic of folding origami cranes by Topaz Winters; a panadería that guarantees pregnancy by Gabriela Lee; surrogate speaking to the dead by Patricia Karunungan; a dating app for interdimensional monstrosities by Marylyn Tan & Graeme Ford; and speculative poetry by Kevin Minh Allen, Davian Aw, F. Jordan Carnice, Genevieve DeGuzman, May Chong, Lawdenmarc Decamora, Joses Ho, Judith Huang, Sithuraj Ponraj, Bronwyn Sharman, Lakan Umali and Natalie Wang. Also included is a special supplement: the exciting conclusion of Dean Francis Alfar’s brilliant novel Salamanca, winner of the Palanca Award Grand Prize for the Novel and the Gintong Aklat Award for Literature. LONTAR is the world’s only biannual literary journal focusing on Southeast Asian speculative fiction. Our many contributors have won major literary awards in Singapore, the USA, UK, Taiwan, Japan and the Philippines.