Since Rob has gone on the record & said it will come out next year, can anyone give some intel on which nations will be covered in the book?

Great to see another part of the world getting some attention........

To my knowledge the list is not definite yet. But you can be certain that Japan will be covered.

and probably China, Korea and Tibet. The question will be how much detail on Indochina and will it include India and Afghanistan.

Shadows of Asia seems pretty straightforward as a title.
Expect Asia to be covered (look at the geographical definition of Asia to know what I mean).
Now, there have been a lot of small info given on Asia since the beginning of Shadowrun, especially about troubles and wars, so I guess lots of new states and the disappearance of some current ones is to be expected too.

yeah, there are a ton of 'stans to cover, not to mention all of the various ex-Chinese states. SoA is gonna be one big book, if each country gets as much space as they did in SoE and SoNA.

When I mean Japanese proposals, I mean proposals from Japanese Shadowrun gamers. There was a big thing about a month ago (or at least I made it a big thing) that, unlike SoE with it's British, French, and German contributors, SoA didn't have any Asian writers (or better yet, writers living in Asia). I notified the Japanese SRML and I believe a couple of them went to work writing proposals. I'm just wondering if they got them in, were any of them accepted, etc....

That said SoA is supposedly going to cover Japan, the Chinese states, HK, Australia, (probably) an update on the Philippines, and go into the Middle East.

Australia got a ton of coverage in Target: Awakened Lands.

To lay some inquisitive minds at rest, locals are involved.

Ahhh, finally, a chance to bitch about how badly where I live gets screwed (and how badly the local writers fragged up)!

It's a local-foreigner joint effort. We'll frag it up together.

*Kicks Zenmaxer in the shins*

I'd say that I'd probably actually prefer a book about the Middle East more than Asia, the only thing that brings Asia back into the running is possible information about Hong Kong and the Chinese warlord states.

:: laughs and hobbles around :: Okay okay, point made. Take it either way, but don't do both in one book.

I agree that the Middle East should be done in its own book, along with Afghanistan and whatever else is still around. Leave SoA to China, Japan, SEA (Burma, Thailand, etc..), Mongolia, Yakut/Awakened Siberia, the Phillipinnes, and other countries that are in the geographic area. The Middle East is too big and interesting to be crammed into some other book. Who knows maybe sometime next year there could be a book called `Sot Me'