This article seeks to situate certain works of Singaporean science fiction within their historical circumstances, demonstrating that Singaporean science fiction has historically served as social criticism, challenging both state narratives and foreign readings of the city state along the axis of East and West and “new” and “old”. The argument centres upon four texts: the anonymously-authored series “The Travels of Chang Ching Chong” (1989), Jahan Loh’s Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth (2013), and two texts by Sonny Liew, namely Malinky Robot (2011) and The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye (2015). These texts, I believe, share certain thematic connections: each is interested in the relationship between new and old and foreign and familiar, and each seeks, in different ways, to counter dominant narratives of the time. Accordingly, this article is divided into two imbricated sections. The first examines science fiction responses to popular and state narratives of the West as a source of technological capital both under British rule and after independence. “The Travels of Chang Ching Chong” and the “Ah Huat’s Giant Robot” sections of The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye, I demonstrate, trouble this narrative, offering stories in which Asia provides a source of technological advancement. In the second section I explore popular depictions of hypermodernity in Singapore and the enduring myth of the destruction of “traditional” Asian cultures in the wake of the post-independence industrial turn. Both Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth and Malinky Robot, I argue, complicate this narrative, presenting both hypermodernity and “old Singapore” as fantasy. © The Author(s) 2019.

Wenhai Ma shares with Renee Lee about his practice in set design for which he has an excellent reputation. His selected works in both Chinese and Western scene designs are presented in this essay, written from Ma's account, along with brief comments on the objective of the designs.

Since Michel de Certeau, it has become feasible, fashionable even, to think of cities enunciatively; that is, to postulate an analogous relationship between the spatial and the discursive. In investigating the idea of urban texts, de Certeau constructs a pedestrian subject who, by way of traversing streets, embodies a practice that is vernacular and agentive, in resistance to the hegemony of systemic and normativised discourses. Conceived as a speech act, the physical act of walking takes on a rhetorical stance. Now what if we spin de Certeau's scheme around to posit a spatial economy of textual phenomena? The present article pursues this line by examining writing practices through de Certeau's distinction between Place/Strategy and Space/Tactic. Using Walking as an analytic frame for Writing and drawing on examples from Singapore, I propose two modalities of writing: Choreographed and Emergent. I will further look at how dynamic writing practices can usefully complicate this picture to obtain a nuanced understanding of top-down and bottom-up approaches to writing as a mode of cultural consumption and production.

Zubir Said (b. 22 July 1907, Bukittinggi, Minangkabau, Sumatra, Indonesia–d. 16 November 1987, Singapore), also affectionately known as Pak Zubir (pak means “father” in Malay) or Mr Mari Kita (the first two words of the Singapore national anthem), was the composer of the Singapore national anthem, “Majulah Singapura”. Upon his arrival in Singapore in 1928, Zubir joined a bangsawan (traditional Malay opera) troupe as a violinist, and was subsequently recruited by a recording company as a recording supervisor in 1936. He became a music composer for film production company Shaw Brothers in 1949, and worked with Cathay Keris thereafter for 14 years until his retirement in 1964. Despite his lack of formal music education, the prolific songwriter wrote at least 1,500 songs comprising film songs, popular songs and national songs. He was conferred a series of awards during his lifetime and posthumously, in recognition of his work as the composer of the national anthem, as well as his contributions to the music scene and Malay culture in Singapore.