Ambient Music Night at the World Culture Hub

The first live music event at the World Culture Hub, my first own event location in Second Life, will take place on Saturday, September 28th, starting at 11:00 SLT / 19:00 GMT / 20:00 CET. Jana Kyomoon and Torben Asp, who I first met during the science fiction week in Virtual Cologne last year, will each play an hour of ambient live music. Following it I look forward to an aftershow party with DJ Hameed (the same remarkable young man from Pakistan who exclusively translated a story for my literary evening about Saadat Hasan Manto on September 8th).

I hope many of my readers, collaborators and SL friends will take the occasion to gain a first impression of what I created in recent weeks in SL. If you don’t know them yet, be assured that Jana and Torben are great artists that are always worth listening.

The location’s SLURL is

 http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Kreativdorf/69/52/21

 

 

 

 

 

World Culture Hub in Second Life

After two weeks of work I have just completed the basic structure of the World Culture Hub, my new location for multicultural culture events in Second Life, located in the Kreativdorf sim, close to Thorsten Küper’s aka Kueperpunk Korhonen‘s renowned Kafé Kruemelkram.The goal was first to create a number of spaces and buildings for readings, exhibitions and live music, fusing the archtechtural syles of various cultures, evocating a certain style and atmosphere,. without any strict claims of authenticity. With more than 500 prims left thers’s plenty of capacity for the coming content.

Here some views of the site. First the Oriental Yard and the Asian Wing, then the Indian Pavillon and the Zen Garden, all on the Eastern part of the site:

And here, on the Western side, a view of the Tribal Hut and the Tiki House and two further ones of the Meditarranean Gallery with the site office in the upper floor:

Guests are welcome to visit the World Culture Hub in it’s current, still somewhat vacant state. The site’s SLURL is

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Kreativdorf/68/8/23

Reviews of “Moloh”

I’ve recently found the first online reviews of Moloh, A. R. Deleanu’s Romanian translation of my novella “Der Moloch”, Kurd Laßwitz Preis winner of 2008, that has recently been published as a separate volume by Millennium Books. I can only refer to what Google’s dubious translation service provides, but it seems that my book is well-received. One reviewer suggested that young Romanian sf writers could learn something from my work (which is flattering since I’ve always admired the originality of Romanian science fiction). Here’s another review.

Presentation of the German Science Fiction Award

I have been invited to receive the Deutsche Science Fiction Preis (German Science Fiction Award) on Saturday, October 26th at the Muccon 2013 in Garching near Munich. The award presentation will be at 14:00 local time in the main hall. At 15:00 I will also read from my winner story “Zur Feier meines Todes” (“Celebrating My Death”).

Starting the World Culture Hub in Second Life

Beginning with the international science fiction magazine InterNova – that I co-founded in 2005, relaunched as an e-zine in 2010 and that is now awaiting a major update and redesign in collaboration with my new co-editor Fran Ontanaya from Spain – I became not only interested in literature, especially in short fiction, from all over the globe but in the idea of world culture in general, the appreciation, exchange and mutual influencing of arts and traditions from various cultures. One of my future projects that is currently in its planing stage is the Internet World Culture Repository, a kind of Wikipedia of world culture, a comprehensive website with information about arts and cultural traditions from all over the world, especially those that are rarely appreciated beyond their place of origin.

It was planed to later complement this website with the World Culture Hub, a multicultural event and information center in Second Life, and to slowly interconnect the two projects. As it turned out the chance to start the World Culture Hub in Second Life was presented to me earlier than expected. I have just acquired a piece of land of about 6.200 m² with 1.500 prims in the Kreativdorf area, exactly the sim where my SL brother-in-arms Thorsten Küper’s aka Kueperpunk Korhonen‘s renowned event location Kafé Kruemelkram is and where I recently established a SL writer’s office with my fellows Sven Klöpping and Christian Kathan. It may take some weeks before something definite shows up on this ground. I first have to make myself familiar with the intricacies of building in Second Life and to research about the architecture of various cultures that I plan to fuse into a beautiful place for events, meetings, discussion and information. It will only be light version of what the World Culture Hub, I hope, will finally grow into. But it’s a start.

For those of my readers and collaborators who are interested to know what these projects are about, I recommend that you download my manifesto “Unity in Diversity and the Idea of World Culture” (the file Iwoleit_Manifesto_0.7.pdf is now available via the download widget on the left). A second document – the technical concept for the Word Culture Repository website – is almost completed and will be available soon too. Please feel free to contact me if you are interested in these projects.

Major short story writers: Saadat Hasan Manto

My new series of literary evenings in Second Life about major short story writers of 20th century world literature continues on Saturday, September 7th, with an event about the legendary Indian/Pakistani journalist, story and screen writer Saadat Hasan Manto, My good SL friend DJ Hameed will exclusively for this event translate Manto’s most famous story “Toba Tek Singh”. Thorsten Küper aka Kueperpunk Korhonen has again been invited as a story reader.  For the third time this year my favorite place in SL, the Mumtaz Taj Mahal, will be host of one of my events. The literary evening will start at 12:00 SLT / 20:00 GMT / 21:00 CET. The location’s SLURL is http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Danbi/222/168/25

With about twenty visitors in the course of the evening the first event of this series on August 24th about Japanese writer Ryunosuke Akutagawa was well-received. Thorsten Küper did a marvelous job with his intense reading of Akutagawa’s story “Kesa and Morito”. All visitors agreed that our charming hosts at the Kaishi Chou Okiya & Hanamachi provided a beautiful and atmospheric setting for an event like this. Below some impressions of the evening. More are to be found on Burkhard Tomm-Buk’s blog.

German Science Fiction Award for “Zur Feier meines Todes”

It has just been announced that my novella “Zur Feier meines Todes” (“Celebrating My Death”), included in my first story collection Die letzten Tage der Ewigkeit, published by Wurdack last year, will be awarded with the Deutsche Science Fiction Preis (German Science Fiction Award) as best story of the year. The winner of the novel category is Andreas Brandhorst for Das Artefakt, published by Heyne. Following my winning novella are three stories by Karsten Kruschel, Matthias Falke and Michael Marrak from the issues #19 and #20 of Nova, the German science fiction magazine that I edit with Olaf G. Hilscher.

The German Science Fiction Award is bestowed by the Science Fiction Club Deutschland (SFCD), the oldest and largest German science fiction club. After 2002 for “Wege ins Licht”, 2004 for “Ich fürchte kein Unglück” and 2006 for “Psyhack” it’s the fourth time that I win this award, more than any other writer in the story category. Adding two Kurd Laßwitz Awards – bestowed by the science fiction professionals in Germany, Austria and Swiss – for “Der Moloch” in 2008 and “Die Schwelle” in 2011 all of my so far six novellas have been honored with one of these two major German sf awards.