Fish Eats Lion by Jason Erik Lundberg

Fish Eats Lion Reviews

• 
  Matthew Berryman

  I first travelled to Singapore when I was just 8, and have been there half a dozen times since. It's a place with a unique mix of cultures and history, and the stories in Lion Eats Fish capture this well. Last Time Kopitiam by Marc de Foite, the tale of a trader sent to Singapore who is "quite adept at handling futures and derivatives", captures historical and modern Singapore well. There are a number of “flower punk” stories—think steampunk but with a healthy dose of botany, and I really enjoyed these, particularly ‘Agnes Joaquim’ by Ng Yi-Sheng; they seem to fit Singapore quite well. I read these at a time I was watching David Attenborough's Kingdom of Plants, and both have sparked in me a new appreciation for the amazing world of plants. A few stories fell flat for me, I just didn't connect at all with the imagery / characters / background, but overall I really enjoyed this collection of short stories.
  
  Highlights for me were The Disappearance of Lisa Zhang, by Dave Chua, which was well written and with characters that had real depth, and Story of the Kiss, by Stephanie Ye, which is the finest short story I've ever read, an exploration of love from an interesting perspective. I will be looking for more short stories by these two authors.
  
  My sincerest apologies to Jason, the esteemed organiser and editor of this collection, for the delay in this review that I promised quite a while ago. It's been a busy and dark year, and only now am I able to catch my breath, and enjoy the beautiful stories he has collected
  
  Highly recommended. 9/10.
  
• 
  Derek Lim

  In writing this review, I was considering the ways these 22 stories were conceived and executed. Broadly speaking, I identified three approaches.
  
  The stories I first recognized as forming a potential group (8 of 22) were marked by a sense of melancholia. Stories like Ben Slater's 'Punggol' or Justin Ker's '010011010100010101001101010011110101001001011001' focused on some feeling-turned-obsession, and combined this with a sense of place. In Tan Ming Chua's 'Open', the core of the story is a realization that the characters come to have, and I thought this was well done; but overall, I think my favorite piece from this group is Jeffrey Lim's 'Last Supper', which despite its slightly strained premise, delivered characters and place with a real sense of life.
  
  The second group of stories (9 of 22) I discerned hewed closer to the 'speculative fiction' brief, in that it is a fantastical premise that the stories turn out to be built upon. In the best examples, the premise becomes a catalyst for further exploring an already interesting relationship or thought. I thought Ng Yi Sheng's 'Agnes Joaquim, Bioterrorist' artfully melded some different flavors of historical imagery, towards the worthy end of challenging our relationship towards those histories.
  
  Stories in the third group (just 2 of 22) had in common the transparent acknowledgement of the project of imagining a future dystopia. This is a rather specific criterion, and I suppose if I had not left this group for last this would have been a bigger category; a dystopia can be read into many of the stories quite easily.
  
  Overall the weaker stories for me tended to rely over-much on either a sense of melancholia (and, say, allowing the world evoked to become dominated by clichés), or on a fantastical premise to generate interest where there is really not much to consider.
  
  If you've been keeping count, you'll realized I've only placed 19 of 22 stories in categories. The remaining three really stood out for me, in terms of being really well executed.
  
  Yuen Kit Mun's 'Feng Shui Train' achieves a narrative voice that is both fresh and arrestingly familiar - what, I suppose, might be the paradox that gives rise to a sense of authenticity. Also worth comment is Yuen's protagonist's journey, which was delightfully rendered, drawing from a range of pop traditions and applying them with a light touch (though I suppose anything heavier would have ruined it!).
  
  Another great technical achievement was Daryl Yam's 'Apocalypse Approaches', which blends the melancholic and fantastic into something effectively phantasmagoric. The unsettling dream begins from the first sentence and never stops.
  
  Last but not least, JY Yang's 'Where No Cars Go' achieves what felt most for me like a fully realized alternate world, with a familiar surface but a thrillingly different under-layer. The story was well served also by a tight cast of characters.
  
  Commenting on the anthology as a whole, I think the abovementioned stand-out stories alone were worth the purchase. Add to that the several other stories that were also very well done, and I think there is much here for a reader to enjoy.
• 
  Ryan

  To be frank, the majority of stories in this eclectic collection of 20+ pieces I found to be so so. A few were more to my taste, which are the less whimsical and more realistic ones. Or ones where the story seemed to be going somewhere and had an ending. Many others were a tad too artistic and abstract for my liking, the imaginative musings of their characters taking surreal turns and then abruptly terminating with no seeming conclusion. Inevitably there were quite a few that turned to the supernatural and/or horror as the basis, presumably hoping to appeal to a larger local audience that are attracted to the mystical Far East theme. These did not hold much appeal for me personally.
  
  While I found less than half of the stories enjoyable out of this collection, mainly those with a more sci-fi or alternative history bent, this book deserves praise for encouraging similar works by local or regional writers in the so called speculative fiction genre.
• 
  Michael

  Not all the stories in here are winners, but those that are, offer a truly unique view of speculative fiction with a Southeast Asian flavor - from family ghosts and magic lucky numbers, to living cars and a Singaporean post-apocalypse. Plus, you can catch some earlier writing from authors like JY Yang, who went on to write the Tensorate series.
• 
  Margaret

  This anthology promises much but fails to deliver. Some stories, such as Marc de Faoite's 'Last Time KopiTiam', evoke Singapore but fail to make it tangible for the reader. The other stories mistake thinly-sketched spec-fic ideas for decent plot and nuance.
  
  Nice cover art by the way.
• 
  Adan

  A mixed bag of speculative short stories, but mostly good stuff. The stories by The Centipede Collective and Dave Chua are the clear winners.
• 
  Oh Hwee

  Didn't realised there're so many good writers in Singapore, in Sci Fi some more!
• 
  Russlemania

  Admittedly Fish Eats Lion is one of my first few dips into local literature, and it doesn't disappoint! I picked it up and read it under the eyes of an aspiring speculative fiction writer looking out for how writers merge our cultural nuances with sci fi/ fantasy tropes. There were some stories that felt a little too heavy handed with the shoe horning of cultural colloqualisms, but they were offset by other stories written with great fludity, and embraced our local flavours under a really unique lens. Overall I enjoyed the stories very much, and their cultural relevance provided me a new dimension of appreciation as a Singaporean reader.
  
  My favourite stories were "Agnes Joaquim, Bioterrorist" by Ng Yi Sheng, "Big Enough for the Entire Universe" by Victor Fernando R. Ocampo and "Feng Shui Train" by Yuen Kit Man.
  
  This book also introduced me to LONTAR The Journal of Speculative Fiction, a literary journal focusing on Southeast Asian speculative fiction by the same editor. It is extremely encouraging to see a platform for Singaporeans to submit their own weird tales, and maybe some day we'll start having our own little sci fi/ fantasy writers conventions as well. But till then, it's time to start writing :)
• 
  Moushine Zahr

  This book is composed of several short stories written by various authors falling in the category of science fiction. Some stories are set in the past and others in the future. Like many short stories books and science fiction books, I rated this one 3 stars right on the middle. Some stories were interesting while others not. Some I understood the behind story meaning while other I felt clueless about the subject treated. I found one story quite morbid. Those, who've read my reviews before, know I barely read science fiction novel and not attracted to the short stories genre. There is a bit of everything in this book, which gives a sample view of various authors from Singapore.
• 
  Jarrod

  This collection of Singaporean speculative fiction was a a bit of a mixed bag. A few of the stories were really great, well realized explorations of the unknown set against the backdrop of Singapore. Some of them were disappointing and dull. Perhaps most frustrating of all, some of them seemed to be non-speculative fiction that had been altered at the last minute to jam in a speculative element, seeming to be more afterthought than anything. Nevertheless the best stories were a delight. Overall maybe the editor just needed to wait a while longer for more submissions? 2.5/5
• 
  Sabrina Loh

  I wish there were more anthologies like this in Singapore; speculative fiction practically does not exist in the country. This is a great and productive start; Singaporeans need to dream more and exploit their dreams for their fiction like what these authors here have done. A rich, confounding, exciting and surrealistic read.
• 
  Wong Ting

  "Punggol" by Ben Slater captured my heart. And the book opened my eyes to the world of Sci-Fi. Never was a fan, but I think I am slowly changing my mindset on it now.