Just How Universal is Speculative Fiction?

For almost as long as I have been a reader, I've enjoyed stories that speculated about what was around the corner or lurking within the innermost recesses of our shared imaginations/nightmares. One of the first books I remember reading was Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are and from then on I was hooked. As a young boy growing up, I read graphic novel adaptations of classics such as A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer, The Three Muskateers, and many other stories of the adventurous and/or fantastic from all corners of the globe.

It wasn't until I was twelve, however, that I was introduced to J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-Earth, but strangely enough, while I enjoyed his story greatly, I was not inclined to read similar-styled books for another ten years. Instead, I wanted to read imaginative works that explored the human condition and psyche in various ways. I became enamoured with stories such as Stendhal's The Red and the Black and Zola's Germinal and Nana. Even within these psychological/naturalist stories, I sensed a glimpse of the speculative, of the queries for something more than what was at hand.

When I finally did start to read genre fantasy/science fiction late during my grad school days, I read these works as just one more way of addressing human longings rather than as merely escapist pulp fiction or as imitators of a prior masterpiece. However, I couldn't help but notice one other thing lately as I've browsed the various online fantasy/SF communities: the lack of transcultural fantastic literature being discussed.

As some know, I'm drawn to the ways in which various cultures have interacted and repulsed each other over the centuries. It seems strange to me, having read great works of imagination from cultural groups on each of the six permanently inhabited continents that when discussing works of Fantasy or Sci-Fi, almost all of the dialogue concentrates on a very small handful of nations. While I understand that the United States is the publishing capital of the world and that American cultural mores tend to sway global tastes (much to the chagrin of many), it does seem strange that there is very little talk of speculative fiction from places outside North America, Great Britain, and to a lesser extent Scandinavia, Poland, and Russia.

I've had to do quite some digging to find available works from other traditions. One such work, available in English translation, is the collection entitled Cosmos Latinos: An Anthology of Science Fiction from Latin America and Spain. Reading these stories, which span a period at least as long as the genesis and heyday of Anglo-American SF, gave a different perspective on the interaction of people with tekne. For fantasy, I read in the original Spanish the works of the Argentine greats, Jorge Luis Borges, Adolfo Bioy Casares, and sometime Buenos Aires resident Horacio Quiroga. There's something amazing in these stories, something that makes their relative obscurity in North America all the more saddening, considering American willingness to read and enjoy works by Dumas, Hugo, and Cervantes, just to name a few.

I guess after this rather rambling essay that I better address the readers with a question of my own: What works of literature do you read or know about that aren't from the Anglo-American heritage that you believe would make for excellent additions to a master list of great speculative work? Listed below are some of my recommendations:

Gabriel García Márquez, Cien años de soledad/One Hundred Years of Solitude
Jorge Luis Borges, Ficciónes
Adolfo Bioy Casares, la invención de morel/The Invention of Morel
Alejo Carpentier, los pasos perdidos/The Lost Steps
Horacio Quiroga, Cuentos de amor, de locura y de muerte/The Decapitated Chicken and Other Stories
Oliverio Girondo, The Scarecrow and Other Anomalies (bilingual edition)
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Le Petit Prince/The Little Prince
Shlomo DuNour, Adiel
Italo Calvino, If on winter's night a traveller
Alberto Fuguet, Mala onda/Bad Vibes

Hopefully, there will be some reader comments suggesting more, as any recognition given to deserving works is a very good thing.