Joel Gn

Bewildering Stories biography

to Bewildering Stories bibliography

Joel Gn was born in 1982, in the small city-state of Singapore. He started learning the names of dinosaurs before he started walking, and developed a fetish for the huge lizards in the form of skeleton models. Unlike most of his peers, he always enjoyed writing and composing songs, which garnered several awards during his time in high school. He has just completed his national service with the Navy, spending most of it peacekeeping in the Gulf,and travelling to every major continent in the globe except America, which he wants to see the most. He is now an undergraduate in Monash University, majoring in Communication Studies.

I saw the ad for the Bewildering Stories website when I borrowed a copy of Asimov’s Science Fiction magazine from my cousin, who subscribes to the periodical because our government simply wants to breed more creative writers.

Sci-fi is not a popular genre in my country. Most of its impressions originate from cartoons and documentaries featured on cable television. Almost everyone sees it as humans vs. aliens in a war of galactic proportions, like Star Wars or Robotech, but I’ve always been drawn to the morals behind them, the relationship between man and machine. Works by Asimov, Stephen Baxter or even Philip K. Dick are like 21st-century parables. Read it once, and you keep thinking about it forever.

So yeah, perhaps this is what draws me to it. Although I’ve long assumed that the art of writing science fiction is highly esoteric, I’ve decided to risk literary embarrassment by sending this to your publication. It’s a simple plot of friendship, passion and science, and it may even play like a well-used movie script. Well, I should just leave those conclusions to you. If it evokes opinion of any kind, please do not hesitate to reply to me. Objective comments will be much appreciated

Editor’s note: Joel explains that his last name is pronounced somewhat like “yin” or “yen.”