A Field Guide to the Roads of Manila and Other Stories

“You never know what to expect when you start a story by Dean Francis Alfar, except that it will be good and that it will take you to places you’ve never before been: A ghost inhabits a pair of goggles, two supernatural beings write letters to a young woman they each claim is their goddaughter, the tale of Pinnochio is given a beautiful and melancholic twist, the roads of Manila take on lives of their own, a young man is told different origin stories by feuding parents … Alfar’s work always bristles with energy and inventiveness, revealing unfamiliar worlds that seem, nonetheless, in his confident hands, to have always existed.” –ROBIN HEMLEY, author of Reply All “I’ve long admired the short stories of Dean Francis Alfar, and his collection, A Field Guide to the Roads of Manila, is no exception. The book is a treasure box of imagination, invention, and style; an eclectic mix of the weird and marvelous from the dean of Philippine fantastic fiction.” –JEFFREY FORD, author of The Shadow Year “Dean Francis Alfar’s A Field Guide to the Roads of Manila and Other Stories is fantastic, complex, and wisely rooted in human circumstance and human exploration. These are well-crafted narratives of Manila denizens, so ensnared in the city’s gridlock that they know so intimately the roads, each with their own character and temperament, sentient and imbued with free will. Among this city’s teeming masses are tiny bits of wonder, which, if squarely immersed in our errands and other mundanities, we miss entirely. Amid unexplainable phenomena, converging upon and engaging the vast unknown, Alfar’s characters find themselves prioritizing their humanity rather than spectacle. What an intriguing and very smartly written collection this is.” –BARBARA JANE REYES, author of Poeta en San Francisco and Diwata “Dean Francis Alfar offers a plethora of lush landscapes, strange adventures, and sweeping emotional journeys. From the Philippines to distant planets to fairy tale worlds, this collection travels as far spatially as it reaches internally. Alfar invites us with vibrant storytelling to explore the richness of human experience, love, loss, complex family relationships, and social dynamics.” –JULIA RIOS, fiction editor at Strange Horizons and co-editor of Kaleidoscope “Dean Francis Alfar has done it again. After two remarkable collections and one of the best novels I’ve ever read, he returns with a new batch of stories that are whimsical, tragic, mythic, unsettling and heartbreaking, sometimes all at once. Alfar is one of the few writers who continually leaves me in awe and surprise, and a new book of his is always an especial gift. Open it and savor.” –JASON ERIK LUNDBERG, author of Strange Mammals “The thing about Dean Francis Alfar is that he does not merely rest on being the ‘dean of speculative fiction’ in the Philippines. True, his stories continually break ground in the name of fantasy writing, especially in how it is currently being developed in the country—but I also get the sense that with each new tale he makes, he seems to want to torpedo the old boundaries on how these stories get told. Alfar is best when he fractures a narrative to reveal the universal aching heart of a story, and we are left in the end, not just by the scintillating turns of plot, but also an equally scintillating turns in craft. Often, these exercises in form spill over to form their own epiphanies. There is a story at the end of this book, for example, that makes us consider the very worth of stories—which are often, for better or for worse, the comfortable lies we tell ourselves to comprehend and perhaps survive a difficult world. In this sense, Alfar transcends being a fabulist to becoming a kind of philosopher. I was eager for the invention of his latest collection, but found more in ‘A Field Guide to the Streets of Manila.’ I do not exactly know how to make of it—part urban exploration rendered in gritty fable, part fairy tale, part high fantasy, part steampunk, part autobiography—which is a good thing. Much of the book reminds me of a veritable rabbit hole into strange worlds, and Dean is our Alice—intrepid explorer and curious cat.” –IAN ROSALES CASOCOT, author of Heartbreak & Magic