In the 4th episode of SH@25, Editor Kat Kourbeti sits down with tabletop game designer and SFF critic Kyle Tam, whose young career has taken off in the last few years. Read on for an insightful interview about narrative storytelling from non-Western perspectives, the importance of schlock and trash in the development of taste, and the windows into creativity we find in moments of hardship.

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Episode show notes:

• Visit Kyle Tam's website for her full credits/bibliography
• Follow Kyle on BlueSky @percypropa.bsky.social
• Read Kyle's reviews for SH on her author page
• Back the project Kyle's work is next appearing in, Devil's Due, on Backerkit
• Find more links to Kyle's work, as well as recommendations and links to other media we talked about, as you read the transcript below.

Transcript

Kat Kourbeti: Hello, Strangers, and welcome to Strange Horizons at 25, a 25th anniversary celebration of Strange Horizons Magazine. I'm your host, Kat Kourbeti, and it is my privilege today to welcome you to another episode that looks back at the history and impact of Strange Horizons on the speculative genres.

Today's guest, Kyle Tam, was first published with us in 2022 and has since gone on to publish several tabletop games and reviews and criticism of science fiction and fantasy media of all sorts, actually, in Strange Horizons and elsewhere. I'm really looking forward to diving into a very multifaceted career, which despite only starting a handful of years ago, shows no signs of stopping.

It's great to have you here, Kyle.

Kyle Tam: Hi, thank you for having me.

Kat Kourbeti: We're so happy you're here. So you're like a very multi talented person, and you have like loads going on in the non fiction space, which is how Strange Horizons came into your life, I think.

Kyle Tam: Yes.

Kat Kourbeti: I'm very interested to find out about aspect of your work, but also all the aspects of your work.

So tell me a little bit about where of your writing starts to come from, the things you're interested in.

Kyle Tam: I began writing, I think, like a lot of people who write on the internet do, with fanfiction. I think that's the classic origin. And it's actually a bit how I ended up, weirdly, gravitating to Strange Horizons. Just walk with me on it.

So, I like fandom. I like a lot of IP things, but I think what's most relevant is I used to write a lot of fiction related to Warhammer 40k and the Black Library. And then there's this great collective called Cold Open Stories. So, for those who aren't familiar, Cold Open Stories does these anthology short fiction contests, where people can submit different works related to Warhammer 40k and get published, and I actually inadvertently heard about Strange Horizons because Joyce (Chng), I believe, is an editor and writer with Cold Open Stories.

So obviously, I was looking through their works and I was like, what is this magazine? Because I really liked her work for Cold Open, and then I ended up finding my way to Strange Horizons.

Kat Kourbeti: That's amazing. I love Joyce. I think they're a great writer, first of all, but also a great champion for voices from the Global South and just like voices from elsewhere that aren't just what we would consider your typical science fiction writer. That's so interesting.

So did you end up submitting to this anthology call?

Kyle Tam: I did. I ended up submitting a couple of stories that are with Cold Open. I think they're still up, but a little harder to find (Editor's note: here is The Tale of the Mirror Unfettered). I've never successfully submitted to the Black Library. I do apply. I've applied a couple of times. I know Joyce has as well, and I think a hundred thousand people across the world have tried.

It's really hard. It's really hard to get in, but I guess it's because writing for an IP is so very different to writing original fiction, because especially with Warhammer 40k, they have a very specific take on that world. It is the grim darkness of the far future where there is war, so there's an expectation of violence, even when you don't want it to, kind of has to be ingrained into the work.

And that's actually what I really liked about the fabric of Strange Horizons, and what a lot of the magazines do now outside of IP. I think specfic is in a really cool place, just right now. I think it was Rick Holland posted something really great, which is just like, the magazines now are printing work that is so much better and just so much more imaginative and creative than what was being published by the big authors like 20, 30 years ago. Like, we are living in the science fiction they were writing about.

Kat Kourbeti: Absolutely. Gosh, with a lot of, especially all this AI stuff that's happening right now, like we—

Kyle Tam: Oh my god.

Kat Kourbeti: —are living in someone's science fiction vision for sure.

But I do agree with that statement, actually. I do think that because of the liberty of being able to just start an online magazine, and just come up with your vision and just start publishing, there are so many more avenues to tell new things. And I hear you about Warhammer, the very specific world that they have. I've spoken to a lot of people for whom that was their beginning, whether it was short fiction like that or through the Black Library, and it's at the same time liberating because you get your sandbox to play in, kind of in the same way that fan fiction can provide you with that framework at first to start on and then you can build your own, whatever it is on top of it, but at the same time, perhaps that limitation can be contrary to what your vision and what your kind of intention is as a writer.

So it's interesting, but I'm glad that a couple of your pieces got in there. That's really cool. We'll link everything in the show notes for people to have a read.

So did you first start off as a fiction writer then, would you say?

Kyle Tam: Yeah, I definitely—I blame my uncle for this. He had all these, those big Best American Science Fiction and Best Science Fiction of the Year anthologies. And I grew up on those, just reading those, devouring them. And I'd think to myself "wow, I'm going to grow up, I'm going to be like Ursula K. Le Guin. I'm going to be Harlan Ellison. It's going to be so easy." And then you grow up and you start to write and you're like, actually, it's really hard. It's not that easy.

Kat Kourbeti: The challenge is immense. And do you always write short formats, or have you tried longer works like novels, or maybe something in between?

Kyle Tam: I think everyone tries their hands at novels, whether you actually finish it or not. I think just the act of finishing the novel or finishing any piece is a great accomplishment in and of itself. I'm working on the novels, but in the meantime obviously I have submitted and done some short fiction, but not as much as I think the nonfiction stuff like the review and analysis. I'm also primarily more known in the tabletop space, where actually I've crossed paths with Joyce in a lot of strange ways, which is why I think we've become, I won't impose and say friends, but we've become people who like regularly talk and connect, and have that kind of appreciation for each other. And I really respect her, especially because she is like me, in that we're both pushing Southeast Asian voices in writing.

But coursing back, the second way I crossed paths with Joyce is that she, I think, was on the committee for the Indie Game Design Network, because the Indie Game Design Network does a yearly sponsorship program. And I believe it was, I applied in 2022 and they sponsored me for 2023, for tabletop writing.

So I primarily do a lot of tabletop game writing. I make my own independent games. I've also done a lot of supplementary writing for some IP publishers, which is also what you were saying earlier about like, playing around in the sandbox and being constrained by the rules is especially prevalent when you're writing for an IP. I've written for Paizo, I did work on Howl of the Wild. I did two pieces for them, which is one short, very short fiction piece, and then one which was stat blocks. And doing stat blocks is, the numbers do my head in, because you really have to balance out the parameters. Oh my goodness.

Kat Kourbeti: I'm a big tabletop fan, but not really a numbers gal. The tabletop games that kind of rely on that sort of mechanic are not really for me. A lot of my tabletop friends don't mind that at all, and that's great. But for me, I'm more into it for storytelling,

Kyle Tam: Yes.

Kat Kourbeti: The easier you make that for me as a player, the better I'll respond. But I totally love seeing the different things that exist, and especially in the independent space.

So talk to me a little bit about that. How did you get into tabletops in the first place?

Kyle Tam: So I think that one of the really great things that has come out just out of anything in general is the desire to do jams, whether it's a game jam, music jam, writing jam, whatever. I got into the tabletop space because of a game jam for a great game called Artefact. It was a jam based on the mechanics that are in Artefact. I believe Artefact's from Mousehole Press, just for that linking. Great game, great designer.

But in any case, I ended up making a short game called Beloved, which is a solo journaling game which kind of puts you in the shoes of a Toy Story type toy, where you're growing up and you're being passed from child to child, and you're talking, and you're writing your experience of what it's like to be a toy that is loved, but also abandoned and what that might be like. And I really enjoyed that, and I realized, I'm not going to be annoying and say, wow, I'm amazing at it, but I really like the flow when compared to writing fiction. Because I think with fiction, it's very difficult in that you're creating a very fully realized story from plots, characters, and you have to propel that forward. But when you're creating a game, especially a tabletop game, you're creating half the story, you're giving the players just enough so they can write the other half. Because one of the most frustrating parts when you're writing your own stories is really, you have to come up with everything from scratch.

And I think part of why people really, as you say, really take to tabletop is the ability to tell stories. And someone's just giving you a bit of a nudge.

Kat Kourbeti: That's so interesting to me because as a writer, I find that I'm challenged in leaving those gaps that other people would fill. I'm more keen to like, tell you that full story. This is what happens, that's it. It always fascinates me when I talk to people who do interactive fiction or tabletop gaming or any kind of video game writing, because you have to leave those gaps purposefully and leave those kind of different choices that perhaps people can make, and anticipate that and respond to those choices. I find that very interesting as a writing method. I think it's a different skill set to a lot of typical prose skills.

How would you say that you approach a story that is a game or, is intended to be a game, and how do you leave those gaps intentionally?

Kyle Tam: I think the first thing I tend to do is, obviously you'll have the base concept for a game. And then what I like to think about is "what are the themes I want a player to think about as they play the game?" Because not every game has to have a purpose, but a lot of what I'm designing when it comes to either a game system or an adventure is, what do I want the player to think about, and also what kind of choices do I want them to make? Whether it's as simple as are you going to loot this or not? Like, when you design, there has to be purpose in what you're placing where and why you're placing it there. And then when we talk about that, leaving the gap, it's because you also have to understand there's someone, whether it's a game master or it's the players themselves, who will be telling parts of the story, which is why I started with and why I like that solo journaling space, because a lot of it comes down to scenarios and questions.

It's a what if. So you're saying, okay, this is the situation, how are you going to deal with it? I can't tell you how to deal with it, because there's probably a hundred different ways that a thousand different groups would deal with this.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, that's really cool. I can't say that I've played too many solo journaling games. So that's very interesting to me.

Kyle Tam: What kind of games do you usually play, out of curiosity?

Kat Kourbeti: I think it would mostly be like, maybe with a small group, or like a one on one type thing. I really like—or used to anyway, I haven't in a long time played—the White Wolf games, so like the darker world that exists within our own and, Vampire the Masquerade, and Werewolf, and Changeling, and Hunter.

Kyle Tam: Yes. Oh, I love Changeling, Yeah that's where I got my start, which is a very weird start, I think, compared to most people. A lot of people, their first games are like Dungeons and Dragons. I think I got spoiled because my first game was Lacuna, but the first game I really big time played was Wraith: The Oblivion, which is a very weird introduction to role playing games, may I say. That was, like, the most depressing, the most grim introduction to tabletop gaming I could have had. And I played like three campaigns of that.

Kat Kourbeti: Wherever there's a door, we take it. Yeah. I used to to play live-action, so LARPing, in the White Wolf world, with my mates back home in Greece. A friend of mine designed this beautiful Changeling campaign, that we played like in the streets of my hometown, there was like a whole treasure hunt that we had to go around and find all these clues and solve a riddle, and then come back and then he'd be like dressed in this other costume and have this other character going on... and that really opened up my world to a different way of telling stories, which was collaborative. There's a system that you have to—I think, instead of dice, we had playing cards, where we would draw a playing card and we would, "well, you know, succeeded or not succeeded" or whatever.

But ultimately that doesn't stand in your way of telling that story. And I love that.

Kyle Tam: No, it doesn't. And I think it's great because such unexpected things happen. I don't act, but I have a number of friends who do, and it's really like that "yes, and" thing, just being able to build on energy.

Kat Kourbeti: Absolutely. And I think the biggest part of it is who you're playing with, and what they're bringing to the table. That's why, like, the solo journaling stuff is a very different world to me, cause I've only ever done things with other people. So having that just be you and the game and just responding to those things, I'm interested in that. I would definitely like to try it.

Kyle Tam: Yeah, I think it's something that because I started seriously writing basically at the start of pandemic and the start of a lockdown, was my only choice. It was either that or you'd try to like Skype or Zoom. But it was easiest for me to do solo journaling, cause I had so much time to myself to think and be stuck in my own head. But I didn't want to be in my own head, so it was nice to be in someone else's head. Being in a character's head.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, fair enough, I think. I found myself, during covid, being unable to think about my fictional stories, it all felt a bit too difficult to leave the headspace that I was at, which was just intense despair and anxiety. And I couldn't quite find my way back into the fiction that I used to just do routinely before, and so now I'm working my way back to that eventually, hopefully.

It's interesting seeing how people responded to the kind of intense changes that the pandemic brought, and how for some people that became a window that they could then maybe go through and try doing something else. In my case, I got into podcasting, which is why I'm talking to you today. I got into Strange Horizons specifically in 2020, I started volunteering here. And yeah, it's been an interesting realisation of "Oh, I should have been doing audio the whole time," because I really love doing this.

But yeah. I'm looking at all of your games, you've done a fair bit by yourself. And then you've also contributed to a bunch of stuff. I know it's difficult to pick from your children, but is there something that you would recommend people kind of start with or check out first, or perhaps your favorite one, if you have a favorite?

Kyle Tam: It's hard to choose favorites, but I think since we're talking about my trajectory, and I started during lockdown pandemic, I think probably the one to get the best sense of my style is Moriah. It was written, really, and created as a direct result of my frustration and, as you say, the despair of being in lockdown. At some point you're grappling with the reality of the situation of this pandemic, everything that is happening out in the world. But the essence of Moriah is that you are a group that are taking a pilgrimage up a holy mountain to try and petition the gods of the world to prevent this immense disaster, which has befallen everyone as a result of greed and the destruction of the world. It's a bit strange mechanically, because you do have dice, and you are trying to overcome obstacles by rolling dice, but you can also augment the dice and the rolls and numbers by giving up parts of yourself, like literally sacrificing parts of your body or your memories, or even if necessary, if members of your group sacrifice themselves to the mountain. And then when they do that, they are no longer players in the technical sense, but they become part of this Greek chorus of game masters who are watching and who bear witness and they narrate and push the obstacles against you. And this is really me grappling with the crisis of faith, which is living in a global pandemic, and also just trying to make sense of what was happening in the world.

But it was something that resonated a lot. People seem to really like it. I think, because as a game, it's easy to say "it's not a typical role playing game". That's what everyone wants to sell. But I wasn't really designing it for people. I designed it for me, and then I released it and then people were like, actually, no, I'm really vibing with this. I'm like, Oh, that's good. I'm glad you like it.

Kat Kourbeti: Accidentally connected with a bunch of people. That sounds fantastic, actually. Just turning that desire to turn back the clock and prevent a disaster, I feel that very strongly. So yeah, definitely will check that out first, I think.

So let's talk a little bit then about your journey with your analysis and articles, and your nonfiction. A lot of what you've written is about anime, which I personally love a lot. I was actually reading your article about isekai, or the literary significance of isekai, which I wasn't aware of very much at all. And so it was really cool to read about.

Kyle Tam: Yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: How did you get into writing about other media like that?

Kyle Tam: I think I got into it the same way a lot of Twitter pundits do, by posting on social media, and then realizing that 140 characters on the site formerly known as Twitter was really not a lot, and it got very annoying to just make it as like different separate threads. I used to post this kind of thing on tumblr, cause I was trying to do like creative non fiction as well, but stuff ended up becoming more like a rant and less like a fiction type piece. So I was like, okay, let's rework this a little bit. Like many people, I love to talk about my specialty interests in a parsable form. So I ended up writing a lot about anime, sometimes I write about video games. I think once I wrote about Trixie and Katya, who are on I Like To Watch. That's fantastic. Everyone should watch that, I think.

I like the analytical form just because I grew up in a family that likes media, and we like to dissect media. All the shade to Todd Phillips's Joker. I watched that with my family, and when we came out of the theater and we're in the car going home, and I'm in a family of six. All of us dislike the movie, but for different reasons. The whole car ride home is just a full discussion. Full blown.

Kat Kourbeti: That's fun. I think, in fact, it's more fun to dissect something you didn't like and finding the reasons why, because that can really inform your taste. It can bring out into your consciousness the things that you're unconsciously thinking about when you're consuming something. Which is why I always tell people, even if you watch something that you hated, it's never a waste of time because through that you'll respond to something and then it's like, oh, okay, I understand myself a little better now. And maybe, in the same vein as saying, I like this genre or this type of thing or this director, you can then also say, I don't like this. And now that I know why, it just makes me a more informed consumer of media and stuff, but also a more informed creator.

I think it really helps if you're a writer or a creative of any type to find those things and to name them and then be like, I hated that. Why? That can just explain a lot of things. So I think that's great. And I think that's great that your family's like doing that just as a habit.

Kyle Tam: Yeah. We're just like a talkative family. Also, what was important to me, and I think is important when you look at the stuff I've written for and about for Strange Horizons, the importance of garbage. Schlock and trash. Because I make it a personal point not to trust people who only read highfalutin stuff or who only watch prestige shows.

Like, you have to watch a little bit of the lowbrow to understand. I'm interested in opera and I like wrestling, and this is something that always confuses my dad because he's like, why? These are so far apart. And I'm like, well, yes. But also no. Because kind of the concept which binds wrestling and opera together is that this is exaggerated emotion as expressed through the peak of human physicality, whether this is human athletics, or this is through human vocal prowess. But it's always with the essence of telling storylines through impressive solo or joint action. And that's something that carries through in both mediums, but it just looks different, and I find that fascinating.

Kat Kourbeti: Absolutely. And I highly agree with you on the importance of garbage. And I think everybody has something that they're interested in that would be classed as garbage or considered lowbrow or whatever. And if you don't, you're lying to yourself.

Kyle Tam: Yes.

Kat Kourbeti: Tell me a little bit about your Strange Horizons journey. You've published two pieces with us in the nonfiction category. The first one was a review of Outer Ragna volume one.

Kyle Tam: So that comes back to the appreciation of garbage. I say garbage, but like the light novel format is something that's exclusive to Japan. They're lighter weight novels. They're not as long, they tend to be illustrated with a couple of black and white or color illustrations in each of them. It tends be stereotyped into a number of genres, like isekai, the Another World stuff, or these dreckish romance or power fantasies. And part of what I wanted to do in my nonfiction work, not all of it, but some, is just to bring a more critical and also more appreciative eye towards what would be considered low forms of media.

So in this case, even though this is a light novel, still has some measure of literary and cultural significance, especially when you consider the context that it was written in. First, Outer Ragna is certainly a flawed piece, but the themes that I think it tries to tackle in terms of 'by what measure is one considered a god or divine?' What is the nature of belief between men and their God, and how does that manifest? It is something that I think is an important theme. And I think this was certainly an interesting way to explore it.

That's one of the great things that speculative fiction really does is that, it allows us to live and experience another world, but also abstracts themes and questions that we have in our world. And it allows us to recontextualize, reframe and just think about these from a new point of view and just challenges our preconceptions.

Kat Kourbeti: Absolutely. I'd never heard of Outer Ragna until I read your review. So it's really interesting to me how light novels are considered, you know, lowbrow or something when a lot of media that is really enduring that has come out of Japan, started off as light novels. And media that's like very famous and very lasting. Can we talk about the Fate games, slash light novels, slash anime? I recently rewatched Fate Zero to get my partner into it, cause it's favorite of the installments.

Kyle Tam: So good.

Kat Kourbeti: Oh man. And all of that started as a light novel. So in the same breath it's like, oh well, that's silly or it's nonsense, but actually, there's a lot in there about war and about what does it mean to have a wish, to desire something so bad? What would you do to get that in reality, and what if, what you wish for isn't really what you want, but you get that anyway? The idea that's like somehow less worthwhile because it's a light novel, because it's shorter, because it may have illustrations, because it's aimed at a younger audience, because of the speculative elements, like all of those things, don't necessarily make it any less worthwhile. So I'm totally with you on that. A hundred percent.

Kyle Tam: Yeah, for sure. It's a lot of the stigma that's around speculative fiction and anime, and not just the light novels, but just the idea that these are not necessarily as cultured or as highbrow. You don't see as many speculative fiction pieces of any kind up for the major literary awards when they have just as much merit. And arguably, the authors of spec fiction have as much, if not more, staying power than those of literary fiction. If you think about Bram Stoker, most famous for Dracula. Mary Shelley, most famous for Frankenstein. H. G. Wells. Just like, how many notable old time authors wrote speculative fiction instead of literary fiction?

Kat Kourbeti: I certainly come from a country where that's the normal approach. Speculative stuff is considered less interesting, less cultured, less valuable, and there's definitely a resistance to enjoying anything like that seriously, by a lot of cultured people. It's considered lowbrow, which to me was never my response to any of that. And as I grew older and that response never changed, my mom at one point said, "when will you write a real book?"

Kyle Tam: Oh no.

Kat Kourbeti: Which, the answer is never. Cause if it's not speculative, I'm not interested. It's just, that's the typical Greek response to things like this, and I've spoken to a lot of people from different places.

Certainly, I think you're based in the Philippines, right?

Kyle Tam: I am.

Kat Kourbeti: That's a Filipino approach too, is it not? There's a push against it, not that there's no speculative writers, right? You guys have a really rich tradition, and especially currently. And I've read a lot of Filipino work being published right now, and I know that there's a lot of publishers who do that. There is a push against that narrative—

Kyle Tam: Yes.

Kat Kourbeti: —that it's not as interesting or as cultured or whatever, we still have to fight against that mainstream approach, which is quite frustrating, I think.

Kyle Tam: It is frustrating, especially in the light of, I don't know if it's quite the same in Greece, but we have such a strong tradition of horror and the supernatural. Literally, I was at a recital with my mother yesterday, and we're just casually walking and she's like, "this is the kind of place that has ghosts in it. Let's walk faster." It's part of your everyday life. It's terrible to say, but horror and the supernatural and the fae are so ingrained into daily life. So to put that kind of speculative fiction as like lesser... we live with this. We are surrounded by it on all sides. It's just a different way of appreciating our culture, really.

Kat Kourbeti: I agree with that. I think for us, it's certainly superstition and not, I don't know if I would call it horror—folk horror, maybe. There's always stuff about places being cursed or haunted, because we've had a really bloody history in our recent years, even. My city has only ever been independently Greek for 100 years, 112 now, but we were under Ottoman rule for 500 years, so there's a lot of stuff about oppression and not being allowed to have your own culture and your own language and your own religion and things like that. And all of that has seeped into some really dark kind of folk horror, which can be seen in a lot of the work of Greek speculative writers, like Eugenia Triantafyllou and Avra Margariti and Eleanna Castroianni, who have all been published by Strange Horizons, they almost exclusively write folk horror, and it's because it comes from a real place of, that stuff is in our culture, absolutely.

And so it's just frustrating, as someone who wants to write this sort of stuff, to have always felt this rejection outright. Your genre is lesser, your area of interest is childish. But that's not really true, if you think about it.

Kyle Tam: Absolutely. That being said, people brag a lot about the Marvel movies, me included, but I think if there's one thing that Marvel and this whole kind of nerd wave has really done, it's pushed that culture so much into the mainstream that now speculative superhero action, more fantastical things are now being more accepted. Even if I think Marvel really needs to stop, but I think it's great that we're starting to see more people be like, oh, okay, this is a thing for everyone. It's not just for the nerds. Now the nerds is everybody. But now it becomes, oh, so when you write a novel, can you like sell it as a movie? Can you sell it to Netflix?

And I'm like, I don't know. Please don't ask me about optioning.

Kat Kourbeti: Where do we even begin with that? Yeah, it was very interesting seeing the effect of not only Marvel for the Greek audiences, but Game of Thrones. And how the show had such an impact, it got mainstream, grandmothers in the street were into Game of Thrones, the people who would laugh at speculative sort of stuff before, they were then really invested in the Stark saga.

Kyle Tam: Yes.

Kat Kourbeti: And it's like, ah, so now you're into fantasy.

Kyle Tam: Yeah, I mean that being said, I asked my mom, cuz she really hates fantasy stuff. We watched Lord of the Rings with her, she calls it "too much world building" and we're like, okay. She binged six seasons of Game of Thrones in a week in prep for the last season and I was like, what is this? What? Why? And she's like, no, it's like my teles. It's that intrigue. It's the backstabbing.

Kat Kourbeti: It is like the teles. Yes!

Kyle Tam: It is. That's why she was so into it That's why we watch House of the Dragon together, she's like, it's like the teles series.

Kat Kourbeti: That's the thing. It's what we were talking about earlier. The operas and the wrestling. It's all just high drama, high stakes, conflict. And I think what happened, especially with things like Game of Thrones, is that they felt grounded because the magic was in the background and not really like actively being used.

Kyle Tam: Yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: It was an easier way for people to get into it, because it was just watching almost like a historical drama, despite the fact that it wasn't our history necessarily. And I find that really interesting that that allowed people to drop those inhibitions and just enjoy.

Kyle Tam: Yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: I will say, in my lifetime, certainly, I think you're a little younger than me, but in my lifetime, certainly watching nerd culture become more mainstream has been amazing. There's not one, I think there's multiple anime figurine shops in my hometown in Greece now. We, I think, didn't have any when I was growing up and I was getting into anime. We had to order stuff to the comic book stores and hope that we can get stuff from abroad. But now there's multiple places.

There's cons in Athens. There's cons in my hometown. Cosplay is a thing. When I cosplayed it was just this strange thing, walking down the street with my friends in wigs and just attracting a lot of really strange looks. So it makes me happy to see teenagers being able to just enjoy that stuff openly now, and not have to really rummage through the—

Kyle Tam: Yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: —through the stuff from abroad and see what we can get.

Kyle Tam: Yeah. I think that's the same for fantasy and regular comic books. But if we're talking about anime, I'm not the expert, but I know that the Philippines has an interesting relationship with anime because during the martial law era my parents lived through, I didn't live through it, but they said that there wasn't a lot of foreign media that was allowed to come into the country. Of the little stuff that they were allowed to watch was anime. So you've got like a subset of the population where they know these like obscure ass anime like Candy Candy and Vultus Five. And I'm like, what is this? And they're like, that was what was on TV.

Kat Kourbeti: We had Candy Candy in Greece, too, actually.

Kyle Tam: Oh, there we go. Yeah. I'd never heard of it, but they're like, yeah, that was it. You had Candy Candy and Vultus 5 and all the robot shows. Even my mom who doesn't really get into the nerd stuff, she's like, yeah, I watch Candy Candy every Sunday.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, my best friend and her mom bonded over watching Candy Candy in like the 90s and early 2000s.

It's so fascinating to me, the connection that we find with foreign media. For me, most speculative media was foreign. Finding Greek speculative stuff was quite strange. It was always stuff in translation from elsewhere. And so my initiation to lot of the genre was also finding out about cultures that weren't mine. And that ended up making a big impact on me. I moved to the UK, I live here now and I can trace it all back to like, reading books that I loved and wanting to find out more, wanting to speak the language well enough so I can read it without the translation.

I have a lot of friends for whom that happened the same way, but for anime and Japanese things, and they've ended up learning Japanese, moving to Japan, some of them got married and stayed there... it's just fascinating, the impact that media has on people, no matter where they're from.

Kyle Tam: Absolutely. The universal language is just admiration and just this shared happiness that is fandom.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. I think I definitely come from the same world as you, as I wrote a lot of fanfic as a teenager, continued to write long after I was a teenager. Also that freedom to engage with that through early internet fandom, I think was really great. In the years since it's decentralized, and it's become harder in my experience to find that community again. I was around for Livejournal and for golden era Tumblr before... the stuff.

Kyle Tam: Oh.

Kat Kourbeti: I miss all that. I miss being able to find that community more easily, but now...

Kyle Tam: Oh, why are there so many Discords? I can't handle this.

Kat Kourbeti: I don't even know how many Discords I'm in, frankly.

Kyle Tam: I know. I'm at 100, because I don't have Nitro. And every time I need to join a new one, they're like, you've hit the max server limit. So I know I'm at 100.

Kat Kourbeti: You have to leave one to enter one. Wow. That's a lot. I haven't hit a hundred, I don't think, just cause I get overwhelmed with having to check what's happening. So sometimes I'm just like, have I been here in a year? No? I think Imma dip. But that's just me.

So I want to talk a little bit about your fiction now, because I'm looking at your bibliography, and it's quite extensive. I know we touched a little bit upon the Cold Open stories and that kind of beginning, but walk me through some of your more recent ones.

Do you have any particular favorites from say, the last year?

Kyle Tam: I actually I don't know if it's on the bibliography yet, but I published a piece recently with Cosmorama called Painting a Path Across the Stars. It's basically a former goddess who's doing what it says in the title. I think what I've found difficult in writing fiction is not writing moments, because I understand that's not really, necessarily what a lot of the magazines are looking for.

They want like a concrete beginning, middle and end. It should progress forward. And I find myself writing vignettes and moments, which is great, but not necessarily what people want to read. But I think that's also what ended up becoming my strength in tabletop is, I carve out the moment and then the players end up pushing the moment forward for there to be a resolution. It's the same as scenario writing.

I think one of the ones I did is literary fiction. It's Polyptych of an Invisible Boy, which is basically like the different dimensions of the situation surrounding a troubled young man who brings a weapon to school. So it was a weird little thought exercise. It subverts that slightly, but I don't know.

I'd like to write a lot of different things, but they do just end up moments, because that's what I like to capture, which is just like a window in time. But I think that's also part of the fiction process, is learning how to write more than just one moment. You have to learn how to string several moments together and then suddenly that's a story.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, exactly. I think this kind of brings me to something within your Strange Horizons nonfiction, which I think was part of your Princess Murders the Hero review, which was your other review that you wrote for us—

Kyle Tam: Yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: —in 2022, where you talk about the significance of the Hero's Journey in Western storytelling.

Kyle Tam: Yes.

Kat Kourbeti: And how storytelling from elsewhere can break that format. How important that is. So could you tell me a little bit about, first of all, that piece, but also a little bit about that, about writing from a non Western perspective?

Kyle Tam: That was actually a piece that was requested by your lovely team because you were putting together a Southeast Asia issue. And I was a Southeast Asian author you've worked with before, and they asked, was there a speculative fiction that you wanted to talk about? And I brought up Princess Murders the Hero, because it was a serial novel that I was reading at the time, and which I thought was interesting because the concept of the Hero's Journey is very unfortunately ubiquitous with storytelling, which is you have the hero and he goes through these trials and he must overcome them and the hero is pushed onto a path because they are the right person for that.

But I found, not exclusively in the Japanese stories I've read, but also if you look at Journey to the West, which I think is the Ur-Example of an Eastern style of writing where it's an ensemble story. You're not just contending with one hero who rises above the rest, but it's really the journey of many people who are equal contributors pushing the narrative forward. And these are people who stumble and they meander, and they don't necessarily go through the Hero's classic trials, because sometimes their trials are each other. That was just important for me to discuss and it's also interesting in terms of not just non Western writing, but I think a lot of short fiction, because I find a lot of good short fiction I like very much, does not ascribe to the Hero's Journey. I can't actually think of short fiction that follows the Hero's Journey, like you can absolutely have a very solid story that doesn't follow that rise and plateau, that rise and fall. So it's not necessary, and I don't understand why it's become so ubiquitous with writing structure. You don't need it. You can just toss it. It's fun.

Kat Kourbeti: I think some really interesting ideas about storytelling from a non Western perspective and from a non Hero's Journey kind of mold, come from, in fact, your corner of the world, where authors who are working right now are actively challenging this notion. Vida Cruz Borja has, I think a whole workshop (editor's note: it's actually an essay! but there is also a presentation from Flights of Foundry in 2021) about writing a passive protagonist, which we're always told, oh, you can't have a passive protagonist.

And Vida was like, actually, there's a whole rich tradition of storytelling in the Philippines and in my corner of the world where we don't have to have agency as part of what would be considered "a good character". Just limiting that view can limit the kinds of stories we can tell, and I love that there's people who are actively fighting against that notion and just saying, actually, let me teach you a thing or two that you could learn from me.

Kyle Tam: For sure. If you think about Western ghost stories, versus an Eastern ghost story, you would never have a Western style ghost story in the Philippines because people know too much shit about ghosts. Where people are like, going into the weird basement or like actively looking and no, we know too much crap! Stuff has to happen to the Filipino protagonist, because we will not touch it. We will be like, okay, let us go to the priest. We will go to our local, like fortune teller.

There's a famous movie in the Philippines called Feng Shui, which came out in like 2012 (editor's note: it was actually 2004!). This woman basically, it happens to her. She finds this this old Chinese mirror, bagua mirror, and then she hangs it up, and then bad stuff starts to happen to her and her family, and she's like, oh, that's bad. So she goes to her local fortune teller and goes, "oh, my God, what's happening? Bad things are happening in my house". And the local fortune teller is like, "take the mirror away, take it down". And she's like, "yes, I will take it down". And someone else puts it back up, and bad things start happening again.

It's that kind of thing where, you don't have this willful stupidity that, unfortunately, some of the Western ghost story protagonists seem to have, where they kind of have blinders, and they're like, "I simply do not see the misfortune happening in my house". And you're like, why? You don't have to keep going in this direction. It's fine.

Kat Kourbeti: It's refreshing to see those tropes and those genres that we think we know from the perspective of someone completely elsewhere in the world where that is not how they handle those things. It's important, I think, for Western audiences to become familiar with that, to push aside those notions where all stories are the same, and all the tropes and the genre conventions that we expect and often with speculative stuff in particular can be very... specific? Perhaps a little too specific. So taking that left step and saying, actually, here's a different way you can look at that, I think that's only enriching.

So yeah, is there anything else you wanted to plug while you're here? I know you've got a few other things going on.

Kyle Tam: I am part of an anthology called Devil's Due, which is on Backerkit. I think that starts November 12th, which should be within the time that this is published. It's Mothership content on a pirate planet. I'm one of 12 writers and a bunch of different artists. I know Mothership is the hot thing for science fiction tabletop gamer fans, so please look at that.

And I also have a piece that'll come out with Strange Horizons at some point next year. I don't know if I'm allowed to say what it's about. Please be excited because it will be there.

Kat Kourbeti: Oh, that's awesome. I'm very excited to hear that. Is it fiction?

Kyle Tam: No, it is nonfiction. It's not a review. It's a nonfiction article. It's a piece about Perry Rhodan. Perry Rhodan is great because it's one of those lowbrow things, but the Perry Rhodan series is actually the best selling book series in the world. And I don't know how many English speaking fans know who Perry Rhodan is. But basically the series started as a classic pulp fiction science fiction serial in the 60s about Perry Rhodan, astronaut extraordinaire with his buddies as they bring peace to Earth and the galaxy at large. So it's about the original Perry Rhodan and about the re released Perry Rhodan Neo, which rectifies a lot of what the original intended to do, but was bogged down by sexism, racism, and a lot of the isms of the sixties. So it's just talking about that and how I think it elevates the message it tried to portray, which is of an even humanity and spreading peace across the stars, which ended up feeling like it's an even humanity for white men only. You're like, yikes.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, I haven't heard of Perry Rhodan. So I'm interested in reading this. I think that will be a great little piece. So we will look out for that.

Thank you so much for taking the time to chat to us today. This has been really fun and really varied. We'll look out for all of your stuff coming up in the future, and all of your games and things. All the links will be in the show notes for folks to check out and, where can we find you on social media?

Kyle Tam: You can find me on BlueSky as KyleTam at PercyPropa. I also have a website which I think can be linked below, but if you need me, I'm mostly posting on BlueSky.

Kat Kourbeti: Great. So we'll follow you there. Thank you so much for joining us, Kyle.

Kyle Tam: No, thank you so much, and happy 25th!

Kat Kourbeti: Thank you!