In celebration of National Hispanic Heritage Month, we’re revisiting this excellent 2023 article from the NYTimes that highlights a powerful new set of Latin American science fiction writers. Historically, American writers had a stronghold on the international sci-fi publishing market. The piece discusses how the Latin American sci-fi literary community has managed to pave their own path, and eventually reach reachers beyond the Spanish-speaking world.

Across Latin America, shelves labeled “ciencia ficción,” or science fiction, have long been filled with translations of H.P. Lovecraft, Ray Bradbury, William Gibson and H.G. Wells. Now they might have to compete with a new wave of Latin American writers who are making the genre their own, rerooting it in their homelands and histories. Shrugging off rolling cornfields and New York skylines, they set their stories against the dense Amazon, craggy Andean mountainscapes and unmistakably Latin American urban sprawl.

The avalanche of original science fiction is timely, arriving as many readers and writers in Latin America feel choked by the folksy tropes of magical realism and desensitized by realist depictions of the region’s struggles with violence.

Read the full piece here.