[Poem] The Robo Sutra appears at Expanded Horizons

In the 40th issue of Expanded Horizons, my poem, "The Robo Sutra" appears for the first time. The mission of Expanded Horizons is "to increase diversity in the field of speculative fiction, both in the authors who contribute and in the perspectives presented. We feature speculative fiction stories and artwork, as well as essays about speculative fiction and fandom from diverse points of view."

"The Robo Sutra" asks a number of questions Lao would ponder if were fully enabled to incorporate aspects of our culture and heritage within our everyday lives. What does life in Laotown look like? What would be a unique approach to addressing classical issues in robotics? What might be the consequences of being run by a Lao artificial intelligence? All of these and more I make a modest attempt to address. But you can consider it all for yourself here.

The other contributors to this issue are:

Tade Thompson
Tade Thompson lives and works in the United Kingdom; however, he grew up in Nigeria where he received most of his education. He is Yoruba and tends to bring this sensibility to his fiction. His speculative fiction has been published in Ideomancer and Twilight Times, among others.

Malon Edwards
Malon Edwards was born and raised on the South Side of Chicago, but now lives in the Greater Toronto Area. Much of his speculative fiction features people of color. He serves as a Grants Administrator for the Speculative Literature Foundation‘s Older Writers and Gulliver Travel Research Grants, which provide $750 and $800, respectively, for writers of speculative literature. Feel free to drop him a line at eastofmars.blogspot.com.

Victor Fernando R. Ocampo
Victor Fernando R. Ocampo is a Singapore-based Filipino writer, technopreneur and bar-keep. His work has been published in The Philippines Free Press, the online magazines Bewildering Stories, Expanded Horizons and the World SF Blog, as well as the anthologies Fish Eats Lion: New Singaporean Speculative Fiction and The Ayam Curtain, an Anthology of Very Short Fiction.

His story “Here Be Dragons” won first prize at the Romeo Forbes Children’s Literature competition in 2012 and is being published by Canvas Press. “Synchronicity” won a 2012 Mariner Award in the Short Story category from Bewildering Stories, and an earlier version of this story, “Resurrection,” was an honorable mention selection by Ellen Datlow’s for her “Best Horror of the Year” in 2011. Follow him on Twitter @VictorOcampo

Be sure to check their work out, too!

For fun, here's a video of real live Lao robots in action from 2010: