A Lot Has Happened
A lot has happened since our last post.
Some of the news is sad. We lost two people who were an important part of Blaft's publishing journey right from the very beginning. In September, Natesh Muthswamy passed away. He was an incredible artist with raucously weird ideas. He painted tigermen experiencing colourful epiphanies, wrote bizarre screeds about evolution and technology, and designed brilliant lighting for some excellent theatre plays. We fell in love particularly with his line drawings, like this one:
When we launched Blaft in 2008, one of our first 3 books was a collection of these drawings, called when this key sketch gets real tongue is fork hen is cock when this key sketch gets real my baby eagle's dream comes true.
In 2021, he lost most of his vision due to diabetic retinopathy, but kept drawing anyway. "I've lost my focus," he said, "but I can manage with what is left. I draw a lot of baby elephants now." Shortly afterwards he published a second volume of line drawings called Before Becoming Blind.
There's a tribute video up on YouTube showing a bunch of his work.
He was the best sort of madman, and we'll miss him.
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Then, in November, we lost Indra Soundar Rajan, one of the most famous and prolific Tamil pulp fiction authors--probably even more famous as the screenwriter of hit television serials like Marma Desam.
His hundreds of published novels are a heady mix of crime, romance, horror, mythology, and snakelore -- often centering the tension between Hindu religious belief, superstition, and rationalism.
We published several of his stories in translation: Jeeva Yen Jeeva ("The Rebirth of Jeeva") in The Blaft Anthology of Tamil Pulp Fiction Vol. 1, Kottaipurathu Veedu ("The Palace of Kottaipuram") in Tamil Pulp Fiction Vol. 2, Uchiyile ("At the Peak") in Tamil Pulp Fiction 3, and the standalone novel The Aayakudi Murders in 2018.
In 2007, before our company launch, translator Pritham Chakravarthy and I traveled to Madurai to meet Indra Soundar Rajan. He took us to Meenakshi Amman Koil and we signed our rights agreement (the first we'd signed with any author) on the sangam stone, an ancient slab of black rock which was supposedly used during the legendary first Tamil sangam around 300 B.C. It was a pretty special kickoff.
As Peer Mohammed Azeez wrote in this tribute to the author: "With his passing, we lost a man who was in constant amazement of our traditions and tales, which kept him going till his last breath."
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But not all the news is sad. We are really excited to have two new titles out this month.
The first one, The Blaft Anthology of Gujarati Pulp Fiction, translated by Vishwambhari S. Parmar, has been printed and bound and has gone out in the mail to our Kickstarter backers and our favourite indie bookstores.
Read this blurb from Booker-award-winning translator Daisy Rockwell:
"Blaft does it again! Gujarati Pulp Fiction is a showstopper, full of thrills and chills... as well as startling feats of science, enchantment, and feminine wiles. Vishwambhari S. Parmar's translations are hip and fun and bring alive the pulpy goodness of the original tales. There are also many not-to-be-missed extras, such as fascinating author bios, original illustrations, and 'jokelates' from original editions. I was riveted, astonished, mesmerized!"
The book contains 12 stories and a gallery of colour plates featuring amazing cover art:
You can get your paperback copy in our webstore--within India, we can ship this in time for Christmas. The ebook will be releasing in a few days. People who ordered signed copies via Kickstarter will need to be a little patient, too.
We are planning a slightly delayed launch for this book in January in Ahmedabad. Updates soon!
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Our second anthology is at the printers and launching in two weeks. This is The Blaft Book of Anti-Caste SF, edited by R.T. Samuel, Rakesh K., and Rashmi R.D.
This book is so full of wild rides I don't know where to start. There's an incredible line-up of authors, translators, and comics artists, and we're super honoured to have been able to work with all of them.
We've got a launch event scheduled at Champaca Books in Bangalore on December 21, where R.T. Samuel and several other contributors will speak about the project. We hope you can make it!
There's another event either January 4th or 5th in Delhi (watch this space), and yet another one in London (wow!) on January 29th at the Common Press.
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These are strange times; there are lots of disturbing and scary things going on in the world. We hope you're all doing your best to say sane and healthy, build community, and advocate for a more just and peaceful planet. In the midst of all that, if you have any leftover energy to support an indie press and read some quirky fiction and weird zines, we'll be greatly appreciative. ❤