Last year, I found myself having a debate with some friends on the question if there is greatness in Filipinos. My friends view the whole situation with a pessimistic eye and state that there is nothing to be proud of in being Filipinos.

Obviously, I stated otherwise: I declared that whether we– Filipinos as a race– become great or not, it’s a on-going process for us. That we are still finding ourselves as a state, a nation or a race amidst the daily grind of surviving. But that doesn’t mean we should close the book and make a final judgment on Filipinos in general.

Admittedly, it’s ironic that we Filipinos have lasted this long. We have had the Mindanao massacre, the recent national elections, graft and corruption, a history of Martial Law, colonization by the Spanish, the Americans and the Japanese, etc.

But we’ve also had some good spots: we have Filipino artists and athletes who’ve gained international recognition, the men and women doing their share as part of the United Nations peacekeeping group, OFWs who go out into the world to do a good job in order to feed their families, national heroes who managed to stand up for our country’s pride against overwhelming odds and powerful nations, and basically people who do what’s right instead of what’s pragmatic.

So it may be that we’ll last into the future, when we all have jetpacks and rocketships. But what will the future be with Filipinos around? And how do we envision our future then?

This anthology will look into the future (near or far). Will we still be exporting human workers to Mars or to Alpha Centauri? Will we be ruling an Empire of Humanity? Or will we be running a guerrilla war against robots that we’ve invented as the rest of homo sapiens flee into space in derelict battleships?

What do you think? Is there hope for us Filipinos in the future?

Unlike the previous collections, these stories will be focusing on Filipinos as characters or as a race in these stories. As the title implies, we may have the future but it’s our future at least.

Moreover, with these stories, we hope to welcome you to a future where Filipinos will still– whether we attain greatness or not– play a role on the stage of humanity.

Added 02/01/2012

I wish I could say that the future is late, hence the almost Ellisonian-delay of the release of this anthology. However, I can’t blame anyone else but myself. For this, I would like to thank the patience of the contributing writers and the readers for waiting.

And since we’re on the topic of thanking people, I would like to thank the following people: Dominique Cimafranca for handling the websites; Oscar Alvarez, whose artwork adorns all three anthologies of Estranghero Press; Poi Beltran for her last-minute help in developing the Diaspora Ad Astra website; and Professor Emil M. Flores for helping co-edit this anthology.

This will probably be the last release of Estranghero Press for the time being. However, I will still be promoting all three releases in whatever media I can find. I’m proud of these books and I’m grateful to all the people who were involved for their help.

With the start of 2012, let’s all look forward to the new year and the (hopefully) new future that we’ll craft together.

- Joseph F. Nacino

Series Editor