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Destination: SEA 2050 A.D.
Destination: SEA 2050 A.D., the first Southeast Asian fiction anthology that imagines—based on scientific projections—the world of the year 2050, the same year when 90 percent of the planet’s coral reefs are expected to decline, when plastic is found inside 99 percent of all the world’s seabirds, when there is severe water shortage in Asia, when growth in the world’s populations stops, and when the elderly outnumber children in most places on Earth.
Short stories and graphic narratives from a veritable literary supergroup from all over Southeast Asia and with each story painstakingly annotated, will paint a vivid, often disquieting but at times hopeful, vision of an environmental futurist spread. Destination: SEA 2050 A.D. is a travel through time and into the heartland of the global conversation on the final stages of the sixth extinction.
Short stories and graphic narratives from a veritable literary supergroup from all over Southeast Asia and with each story painstakingly annotated, will paint a vivid, often disquieting but at times hopeful, vision of an environmental futurist spread. Destination: SEA 2050 A.D. is a travel through time and into the heartland of the global conversation on the final stages of the sixth extinction.
- GenresScience Fiction
220 pages, Paperback
First published November 29, 2022
2 people are currently reading
42 people want to read
About the author
Tilde Acuña
16 books7 followersTilde Acuña, author of Oroboro at Iba Pang Abiso (University of the Philippines Press, 2020), teaches at the Department of Filipino and Philippine Literature in the University of the Philippines Diliman. The illustrator of Marlon Hacla’s Melismas (Oomph Press, 2020), Acuña is a co-editor of Ulirát: Best Contemporary Stories in Translation from the Philippines (Gaudy Boy, 2021) and several other upcoming anthologies, including Signos: Anthology of 21st Century Filipino Fiction on Dark Lore and the Supernatural and Destination: SEA 2050 A.D.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
October 11, 2025
https://chopsueyngarod.wordpress.com/...
Paano kung walang hangin—at walang nagawang tunog? Paano kung humangin nang malakas pero nagkataong walang tao sa Remedios para marinig ito? Kung gumawa ng tunog ang Cheers na garbage bag pero walang nakarinig, tumunog ba talaga ito?
[A VARIATION C/O “THE FINAL SECRET OF DR WOW,” THE FINAL STORY FROM DESTINATION SEA: 2050 A.D.:
Ajahn Bounma, about to die, whose death is to be witnessed by Leuk Ai, his former protegee, who’s now with him, made one final request: for Leuk to let his former teacher show him “six extraordinarily dangerous objects that surely should never get into anyone else’s hands…”
One of those objects is a “small, clear capsule.” Ajahn narrates: ‘In the beginning of the twenty-first century, the idea of nanosculptures became truly practical , but imperceptible to the naked eye. You needed a special microscope to see them, and one brilliant artist had such talent to make these nudes whose lovely motions suggested that everywhere is the centre of the universe for at least one moment in time. Such a scandalous idea, especially the one representing Laos. But as you and I both know, an audacious heist was conducted, and many were stolen, never to be found again. But like Pandora’s box, there are the last sculptures that were saved.’
‘I detect nothing,’ Leuk Ai said incredulosuly.
‘The encrypted scanner was unfortunately destroyed during the Glassing, even as I understand it wasn’t working all of that well before then. But I kept this with the question: Does such an artwork truly exist if we have no way to experience it?” (Bryan Thao Worra, p. 202).
How else to experience an artwork save through the ears, the skin, the retelling and narrating of a friend, a stranger, a beloved, more strangers?
(2)
https://chopsueyngarod.wordpress.com/...
Maaaring narinig mo na ito sa inuman, o nabasa sa dyaryo o sa papel de liha: mas madali pang matanaw ang paggunaw ng mundo kaysa paggunaw ng kapitalismo. Kasingdilim na pangitain at variation: it’s better to imagine ourselves perishing at the end of the world, than dying in the hands of capitalism.
Ayokong mamatay sa gitna ng digmaan, sa putukan, o sa gutom. Magpapakalunod na lang ako sa baha, o magpapakagat sa leptospirosis.
O sa “All the Trash on the Eastern Side” ni Duanwad Pimwana (unang kwento sa Destination SEA: 2050 AD; sinalin mula Thai tungong Ingles ni Mui Poopoksakul), magkakalat na lang ako para mawala na sa mundong ito, para maglaho na bago pa ang guho.
Kwento ng nagsasalaysay: “I can’t pinpoint when this punishment came into existence, but I do know it wasn’t very long ago. My family had had the habit of dropping their trash carelessly on the ground for ages, but it was only within the last two years that they metamorphosed into trash. My father was the first of them. He’d chucked a cigarette butt, and instantly he’d vanished before our eyes. My mother had been quick enough to catch the moment he transformed into another cigarette stub. She told anybody and everybody what happened. Those who didn’t believe her all wanted to test the story for themselves. It proved true. Without exception, anyone who littered turned into a piece of garbage. Later on, dumping trash became an easy way out for people who had lost hope” (30-31).
Paano kung walang hangin—at walang nagawang tunog? Paano kung humangin nang malakas pero nagkataong walang tao sa Remedios para marinig ito? Kung gumawa ng tunog ang Cheers na garbage bag pero walang nakarinig, tumunog ba talaga ito?
[A VARIATION C/O “THE FINAL SECRET OF DR WOW,” THE FINAL STORY FROM DESTINATION SEA: 2050 A.D.:
Ajahn Bounma, about to die, whose death is to be witnessed by Leuk Ai, his former protegee, who’s now with him, made one final request: for Leuk to let his former teacher show him “six extraordinarily dangerous objects that surely should never get into anyone else’s hands…”
One of those objects is a “small, clear capsule.” Ajahn narrates: ‘In the beginning of the twenty-first century, the idea of nanosculptures became truly practical , but imperceptible to the naked eye. You needed a special microscope to see them, and one brilliant artist had such talent to make these nudes whose lovely motions suggested that everywhere is the centre of the universe for at least one moment in time. Such a scandalous idea, especially the one representing Laos. But as you and I both know, an audacious heist was conducted, and many were stolen, never to be found again. But like Pandora’s box, there are the last sculptures that were saved.’
‘I detect nothing,’ Leuk Ai said incredulosuly.
‘The encrypted scanner was unfortunately destroyed during the Glassing, even as I understand it wasn’t working all of that well before then. But I kept this with the question: Does such an artwork truly exist if we have no way to experience it?” (Bryan Thao Worra, p. 202).
How else to experience an artwork save through the ears, the skin, the retelling and narrating of a friend, a stranger, a beloved, more strangers?
(2)
https://chopsueyngarod.wordpress.com/...
Maaaring narinig mo na ito sa inuman, o nabasa sa dyaryo o sa papel de liha: mas madali pang matanaw ang paggunaw ng mundo kaysa paggunaw ng kapitalismo. Kasingdilim na pangitain at variation: it’s better to imagine ourselves perishing at the end of the world, than dying in the hands of capitalism.
Ayokong mamatay sa gitna ng digmaan, sa putukan, o sa gutom. Magpapakalunod na lang ako sa baha, o magpapakagat sa leptospirosis.
O sa “All the Trash on the Eastern Side” ni Duanwad Pimwana (unang kwento sa Destination SEA: 2050 AD; sinalin mula Thai tungong Ingles ni Mui Poopoksakul), magkakalat na lang ako para mawala na sa mundong ito, para maglaho na bago pa ang guho.
Kwento ng nagsasalaysay: “I can’t pinpoint when this punishment came into existence, but I do know it wasn’t very long ago. My family had had the habit of dropping their trash carelessly on the ground for ages, but it was only within the last two years that they metamorphosed into trash. My father was the first of them. He’d chucked a cigarette butt, and instantly he’d vanished before our eyes. My mother had been quick enough to catch the moment he transformed into another cigarette stub. She told anybody and everybody what happened. Those who didn’t believe her all wanted to test the story for themselves. It proved true. Without exception, anyone who littered turned into a piece of garbage. Later on, dumping trash became an easy way out for people who had lost hope” (30-31).
Displaying 1 of 1 review