0. Editor’s Note

The Great Stratagem of Lady Ikedanbu — Judith Huang

I can’t love artificially I’m too busy falling for my electric kettle
— Cai Png

Cactus Girl, Lobster Boy
— Alastair Wee

The Girlfriend
— Andrew Cheah

Keep Nothing on Your Person
— Levin Tan

Singapore goes cyborg but what
does this mean for families?
— Darcel Al Anthony

Science City #26
— Joseph Tan

Tensile Strength
— S.L. Johnson

The Winter of Our Science-Fiction Discontent, Part 1
— Vivekanandan Sharan

Cutting the Sapphire: An Interview with Joan Hon, Singapore’s First Sci-Fi Novelist
— Ng Yi-Sheng

A Review: Club Contango by Elaine Boey (Dark Matter INK)
— Wayne Low

Cutting the Sapphire: An Interview with Joan Hon, Singapore’s First Sci-Fi Novelist

Ng Yi-Sheng

Ng Yi-Sheng (he/him) is a Singaporean writer, researcher and activist with a keen interest in Southeast Asian history and myth. He has been published in Clarkesworld and Strange Horizons—check out his Pushcart-nominated essay “A Spicepunk Manifesto” and his BSFA-longlisted “A Not-So-Swiftly Tilting Planet”— and is author of the speculative fiction collection Lion City (winner of the Singapore Literature Prize). Additionally, he served as editor of A Mosque in the Jungle: Classic Ghost Stories by Othman Wok and EXHALE: an Anthology of Queer Singapore Voices. His website is ngyisheng.com, and he tweets and Instagrams at @yishkabob.

Cover of Han May’s Star Sapphire, published in 1985

In 1985, Han May’s Star Sapphire burst onto Singaporean bookshelves. This was the nation’s first science fiction novel, published in a time when local literature in English was still an anomaly.

The story’s set in the 23rd century, when space travel and extraterrestrial contact are commonplace. Our protagonist, Yva Yolan, is a young biophysicist of mixed Chinese, North Indian and Ganymedean descent, raised on the artificial moon of New Temasek and newly enlisted as a crew member on an interstellar cruise liner, the Star Sapphire. Though forbidden from romantic relations during her four-year journey, she finds herself drawn to two handsome blond crew members: the warm and friendly part-Hawaiian Chief Personnel Officer Tim Huha and the cold but magnetic part-Capellan Registrar Adam Zear.

Her amorous conundrum is resolved when (SPOILERS ALERT!) she and Adam are stranded on a paradise-like planet they call Eden, where they marry, raise precocious twins, and build plasma engine that employs the Second Law of Thermodynamics to have them return to the ship mere days after their departure. (SPOILERS END.)

It’s not a perfect work. As critic Koh Tai Ann noted, “Yva and the other characters are conventional and flat, the love story sentimental and very idealised.”¹ Nevertheless, it gained early recognition for its imaginativeness and ambition. The Straits Times promoted its publication with a two-page excerpt², and in 1986 it was honoured with as a Highly Commended Work as part of the NBDCS Awards, a precursor of the Singapore Literature Prize.

Even today, in the 21st century, long after it’s fallen out of print, the novel has its admirers. An online fan club was started in 2012 ³; I paid tribute to it in my short story “Garden” in my 2018 collection Lion City; and Jamie Gabrielle Uy referenced it in her 2023 MA thesis, “Ecomodernist tropes in Singapore science fiction.” ⁴

In short, it’s a cult classic, very arguably the least obscure of all the works in the niche world of early Singaporean sci-fi. And I’d say it still holds up, with its prefiguration of tropes now routine in contemporary SFF: POC characters, women in STEM, love triangles (Adam and Tim recall not only Darcy and Wickham of Pride and Prejudice, but also Edward and Jacob of Twilight, plus Peeta and Gale of The Hunger Games), and of course, the plot device that forces two destined love interests together, known commonly as “there was only one bed.”

However, there’s an untold story surrounding the novel. What few readers realise is that Star Sapphire is only a fragment of the multi-volume cycle its writer envisioned. The full saga of its development reveals how difficult it is to be a pioneer sci-fi author, the first in one’s field, isolated from a community that might understand and support its creators.

¹Koh Tai Ann. “Sing to the Dawn: Novels in English by Singaporean Women.” Emergent Voices: Southeast Asian Women Novelists, by Thelma B. Kintanar et al. University of the Philippines Press, 1994. P. 75-76.

²Han May. “Adventures on a space cruise-ship.” The Straits Times, 24 August 1985.
https://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/newspapers/digitised/article/straitstimes19850824-1.2.74.8.1

³Josephine Lau. Star Sapphire Fan Club. https://starsapphirefanclub.wordpress.com/

⁴Jamie Uy. “Ecomodernist tropes in Singapore science fiction.” Master's thesis, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, 2023. https://hdl.handle.net/10356/171567

The Three Faces of Joan

Joan Hon, pictured in 2025.

Joan is a woman of many names. She adopted the nom de plume “Han May” in 1982, when she started work on Star Sapphire. It’s half a Mandarin transliteration of her maiden surname “Hon”, and half derived from the name of the Virgin Mary, reflecting her deep Catholic faith. She also used the pseudonym during her on-and-off career as a Straits Times book reviewer from 1983 to 1991.

Generations of students, including my boyfriend, know her under her married name, “Joan Fong”, which she used when she served as a physics teacher at Raffles Junior College (later Raffles Institution). This is also how she’s credited with on her physics textbooks, which she began writing in the early eighties.

Her birth name, however, is “Joan Hon”. This is how she signed off when she published her family memoir, Relatively Speaking, documenting her life as the eldest daughter of the former Minister of Finance Hon Sui Sen. It’s also attached to her other nonfiction books, such as the documentary work Hotel New World Collapse and the religious travelogue A Trip to Medjugorje: Pilgrims Tell of Their Visits to our Lady Queen of Peace. After some deliberation, it’s the title I’ve chosen to use by default for this article.

We’ve been acquainted for years, ever since I was a student, attending her fiction workshop for the Creative Arts Programme 1994. Later, we became online correspondents, when I began researching the history of Singaporean SFF in the late 2010s. This interview, however, conducted in her home on 8 September 2024, may mark the first time we’ve had an intimate conversation.

Now 81 years old, she’s mostly retired, and complains of her failing eyesight, though she remains active in the Holy Cross Church, and hasn’t stopped writing textbooks. She served me watermelon-honeydew juice and longan with bean curd, and gifted me a scapular medal and skin cream when I mentioned my father’s cancer. She also casually shared how she’d considered joining the Carmelites—during the vetting process, several nuns became fans of her novel—and let me flip through her treasured collection of vintage Star Trek Fotobooks from 1978.

One key topic of discussion was the question of what happened to the second volume of Star Sapphire, which remains unpublished. Would I be able to read it? Tricky, she told me. One manuscript was shelved under the National University of Singapore Library’s Rare Books Collection, which requires membership to access, and the latest digital version was lost somewhere in her hard drive.

Still, there was a chance I could track down a printout she’d passed to Edmund Wee of Epigram Books—and somehow, on 6 December, that’s precisely what I did. Not a huge accomplishment: I just nagged him and his staff until they identified the red binder in his Toa Payoh office. But what a thrill: it felt like I’d discovered a lost lyric of Sappho.

I won’t summarise the sequel’s contents. To do so, without regard for spoilers, would be to operate on the self-fulfilling prophecy that the work will never be in print. Suffice to say that it contains considerably more action (both fistfights and laser gun fights) than its predecessor, as well as explorations of racial and extraterrestrial culture, Catholicism and spacetime paradoxes.

Nor will I include Joan’s revelations about the third book that she’s envisioned for a Star Sapphire trilogy: a prequel, revealing how Yva’s parents met during the tumult of the Intergalactic War. The story’s still unwritten, but the details have been brewing in her mind for years, supplemented by suggestions from relatives and friends.

Instead, it’s my duty and pleasure to inform readers that you can easily obtain copies of Star Sapphire’s first volume by emailing Joan herself at <ffjoan@gmail.com>. And for those of you who’re curious about the story of its troubled creation and journey, simply read below.

How did you end up writing Star Sapphire?
It was maybe in 1981. I had a stomachache, and I took some kind of medication and went to sleep in the afternoon. And I had a dream, and in the dream… I can’t remember. I presume I was Yva, and there was Adam there, and the story was so weird; the twist was so weird. I woke up and said, “I’ve got to write a short story. I can’t dismiss it like that, although I’ve never written a proper long short story before.” (I’d started, but I’d dismissed them as trivial.)

So I started typing. By the time I got to 200 pages, I showed it to my daughter. She was around that time in Sec 3, Sec 4, and she was top in English in her class—she prides herself on being born on England. And she said, “Oh mum, you want to write a story?” You’ve got no vocabulary to speak of. You mix your tenses.”

So she went to school and I was left feeling rather flattened. I felt, “Oh, so that’s it, my writing is horrible. What on earth is she reading that’s so good?” So I went to her room and read three books from her shelf: Gone with the Wind, Joseph Conrad’s short stories (dull as ditchwater: I was bored to bits and wondered why he’s supposed to be literary figure), and Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse (where everything’s happening in her mind, which is why a lot of mental activity is happening in Yva’s mind. I keep being amused, how much of those three books found their way into Star Sapphire).

I sat down at the typewriter at the start, one of those things you bang-bang-bang on carbon paper, and decided I would redo it, all over again. The plot changed, I think. And at the end of it I was thinking, how did I write this book? I think it was the Holy Spirit, because the twists and turns are beyond me. I think I wrote the whole book on a religious high.

How long did it take?
Eight months to finish the first draft. But as time went on, I made changes: I deleted, I inserted, I put in a lot of things. I was at computer class once when it dawned on me that I had to change something, and this young girl yelled at me, “Mrs Fong, you’re not paying attention!”

And how did it get published?
When I finished the book, I went and asked Catherine Lim, “What do I do now that I have this novel written?” She said I could try bringing it to her publisher, Heinemann, and there the guy in charge was Charles Cher. He kept my file, and after a long time, nothing happened. I asked, “Have you read it?” and he said, “I think nobody would be interested in this.” So I took my file and went home with my tail between my legs. And the most irritating thing was, I showed my father the manuscript and he laughed as if he was embarrassed.

And then my cousin Christine read Star Sapphire and said it was very, very good. Every time I heard that phrase I disbelieved it, because of my first experience, but here was my cousin saying she liked it, and, “Would you like me to bring it to Times International Publishing?”

Then one day, a few months after my father passed away, the phone rang, and a voice asked, “Please may I ask for Han May?” I jumped, because nobody calls me Han May. Her name was Fiona Hu and she was one of the editors at Times. She asked if I could come down so they could have a look at me—and maybe because it’d be so much easier for me to bring my file home than for them to bring a courier. And Fiona was raving about it, saying it’s so good, she absolutely loved the story, and the other editor was reading it also. I went, “You really like it?” and she looked at me and said, rather sternly, “Joan, I know a good book when I see one. If it’s bad, I’ll tell you.”

I was rather stunned. And I opened my mouth, saying, “After my father died, life has been so bleak. This is my first moment of joy. I’ve actually always wanted to write a family biography so I can put all the quirks of my family members in it. I’m going to call it Relatively Speaking.”

Within seconds, Fiona and Shirley Hew, the manager—she’s passed away already—said, “That’s it: we want that book, can you write that book?” Since my father’s death was so recent, it would make interesting reading. They wanted this first, and Star Sapphire would come out the year after.

The next thing I knew, I had two sheets of paper pushed at me. The first contract was for Relatively Speaking—they wanted this many pages, and there was a deadline for it—and the second was for Star Sapphire Part One. I said, “What? You’re going to leave out Part Two? You’re going to ask me to tell half my story?” And Shirley said, “We’ve never given three contracts to a first-time author before.” I said, “I’m willing to make history,” but she was quite adamant. It was business sense. Publishers do not want to make you a famous figure; they just want to make money.

And what was the reaction to your books like?
When Relatively Speaking came out, my friends were all enthusiastic; the thing sold very well. At the Book Fair, the Times counter, they gave me a desk, and they put my name there: “Joan Hon.”

The next year, I had the same pile of Relatively Speaking and another pile of Star Sapphire. And in front of Relatively Speaking was the name “Joan Hon”, while in front of Star Sapphire was the name “Han May.” I felt like a split personality, sitting in between. And during the day, the pile of Relatively Speaking dwindled and Star Sapphire sold only five or six copies. And that was enough to make me have heartache.

That’s the difference between writing fiction and nonfiction. In nonfiction, you’re hunting for facts, checking for facts. Fiction is pure you, it’s 100% you, and if they don’t like it, they don’t like you.

You eventually reprinted Star Sapphire in 1988 with your own company, Hope Publishing, under the imprint Nova Books. Why did you leave Times?
My books sold at a low rate, so they returned me the remainders for just two dollars. Hope Publishers was going to print serious books—I also reprinted Relatively Speaking—and Nova Books was going to be a subsidiary.

Then I realized I wasn’t publishing many things, and there wasn’t a point in having nova books. My partner happened to be an accountant, and there came a time I realized he was paying my bills. Immediately I cut him out: no no no! He was there to help me run the thing, not pay bills.

But why did you never print Star Sapphire Part Two?
Because… Let’s put it this way. I’m a critic of books also, and I can see that the first one is quite complete on its own. That was a good place to have stopped.

Part Two had a lot of criticisms—the only person who said it was better was my cousin Cecilia, the ballet dancer. So I thought, “Should I change it?” That’s why I sat on it for so long. How can I make it acceptable as a first book?

The worst thing is, Adam loses his temper with his grandfather, and Yva sees a part of him that doesn’t appear in Part One. And those who love the first book don’t want Adam to change. But it’s about what life is like. Everyone has their flaws. And Yva will accept him the way he is, however he is.

And it’s true in life, like I tell my students. This is all because I went through Marriage Encounter with my husband—this is a program that the Catholic church has got. Marriage is a decision. I came across that. There are lots of people in my life besides my husband I had feelings for, but ours is a commitment that I do not change. That’s what Yva is doing.

Let’s talk about your early life. What drew you to science when you were a child?
I don’t understand why, but I took to science like a duck to water. I think it was when I was probably 13 or 14 that I had science lessons, and I just somehow slurped them up. It might be a genetic thing: my father had a diploma in physics and his brother was a lecturer in physics, then I married my husband, who was also a physics grad. If you count, there are eight physics graduates in my family.

What about fiction?
For some reason I cannot fathom, I’ve always been a storyteller. I’d invent stories and tell stories to my cousins, and they’d sit around me and ask, “And then, and then?” I don’t know where the stories came from, because I didn’t read much—I read Babar the Elephant and Enid Blyton, of course.

We lived at Fort Canning, opposite YWCA, and within walkable distance to the Raffles Library. We were at first members of the Junior Library, which was on the other side of the building which we now call the National Museum. When I was twelve years old I qualified to be in the Senior Library, and therefore I would walk to the Raffles Library and borrow books with my library card and my father’s library card, which he never used. And there was a time when I read one book a day—the man at the counter once said, “You come every day! We’ll have to fine you if you come every day.”

At that time there were a lot of cowboy books, by authors like Zane Grey and Max Brand, a pseudonym of Frederick Faust. So I learned about pseudonyms. Later on, when I wrote about Han May, the whole idea was to hide behind another name and another persona—if the whole thing was a flop, I could kill off Han May and start off with another pseudonym and write another book.

Would it also be safe to say Star Trek was an influence on your writing?

Hon’s collection of Star Trek novels

My husband and I were Trekkies! Why were we crazy about Star Trek, who’s to know? We were in England when the thing first hit us. He was doing his PhD, and I was a housewife with a baby. And I feel very shy about how we acted. We would be at dinner and say, “I’m sorry, we’ve got to go here to go back to the flat to start packing.” My foot! We went back to watch Star Trek. There were no replays in those days, and there was nothing to record: if you miss it, you miss it.

But here’s something I’ve never mentioned in any interview. The thing that influenced me most is actually Walter M. Miller Jr.’s A Canticle for Liebowitz. I wrote to the author, saying, “Dear Walt, I don’t know why I’m writing to you, because I’ve written these two books and I don’t know if they’ll get printed at all.” And he said he knew that feeling only too well, and wished me the best. He had more respect for me than most people, when I was just a newbie. I’ve got a file of letters between him and me, and I know it’s valuable to those who study him, and don’t know where to put it. And I was thinking, “If he’s that blatantly Catholic, I can also show off my faith.”

And how do you feel about the fact that there are still fans of your book today?
Forty years have gone by, and now some of my readers are buying another copy for their daughters. But I think I’m forever surprised that people took to Star Sapphire, and equally surprised when people do not take to it. If so-and-so likes it, how come you don’t like it?

I’ve more or less worked out that of all the books of the world, there are subsets. There are people who read science fiction, and within the pool of people who read science fiction, there’s a subset of people who like Star Sapphire. I’m a subset within a subset within a subset. And I tell myself I must be content with it. It’s just not within my ability to achieve or comprehend.