Reading local non-English SFF?

[Oleksandr]

Plamen wrote: "@Ed, I don't doubt the book is crap, the 50s were not the time to be creative in the Eastern Bloc. "

I think you are too harsh in this particular case. Definitely censorship before Stalin's death in 1953 (the book was published in 1950) was awful. But Lem, being Lem managed an average (worse than later, but not total dross) novel

[Ed]

Yes, I've liked some of Lem's work. Particularly Imaginary Magnitude. But I read it at just the right time in my life. Right now I'd likely consider it boring. I've never liked his "lighter" stories because I just don't find them funny. (Maybe due to translation?) I also liked Solaris, and haven't read Eden.

[Plamen]

Ed wrote: "Yes, I've liked some of Lem's work. Particularly Imaginary Magnitude. But I read it at just the right time in my life. Right now I'd likely consider it boring. I've never liked his "l..."

I think Imaginary Magnitude was mildly boring for me even the first and only time I read it. The same thing with Pirx.

About his satire: perhaps you are right, Lem tends to use a lot of neologisms, and the Slavic languages are naturally more conductive to expressing subtle changes in meaning with a mere prefix/suffix change than English.

Or - more likely - there are definite differences in the sense of humour of Americans and Europeans, however misleading "Europeans" may be.

[Plamen]

Oleksandr wrote: "Plamen wrote: "@Ed, I don't doubt the book is crap, the 50s were not the time to be creative in the Eastern Bloc. "

I think you are too harsh in this particular case. Definitely censorship before ..."

I can't deliver an informed opinion on Astronauts, as I haven't read it. But based on my experience, Bulgarian/Soviet literature from the late 40s and early 50s suffers from too many flaws to be worth reading.

I one, more famous case (contemporary fiction), one author was forced to rework his entire novel, add 100 or so more pages + new plotlines and characters, and the only thing that saved him from labour camp was that the dictator at the time was a fan of his work.

[Navigator]

For old Russian sci-fi I'd recommend Ivan Efremov. Час быка, Лезвие бритвы, Туманность Андромеды (I think they should be Hour of Bull, Blade of the razor and Andromeda nebula). Quite creative for its time.
Also they are interesting in sense that author actually believed in the future he described so while it's about future communism, it's not propaganda.

[Ed]

I hadn't read anything in French recently so decided to check out the recent award-winners. I saw that Helstrid by Christian Léourier won the Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire and the Prix européen Utopiales, and it was short, so I decided to read it. While I was reading it, it also won the Prix Rosny-Aîné.

I don't know whether it really deserved to sweep the awards, but it was definitely good. It is about a guy who leaves Earth after a romance gone wrong. On the frozen planet Helstrid, he has to pilot a transport from the main base to an outpost through harsh dangerous terrain. "Pilot" isn't really the right word. The A.I. makes all the decisions and he isn't allowed to override it. Since the two other vehicles have no human aboard, their A.I.'s can take more risks. The one with our human in it has to take a longer, theoretically less risky route, with unplanned consequences.

There are no other characters in the book. Due to a failure of communications systems, it is just the man and the A.I. It reminded me a bit of the film "Wages of Fear".

Even though this is less "weird" than I usually like, four stars from me!

[Oleksandr]

Plamen wrote: "based on my experience, Bulgarian/Soviet literature from the late 40s and early 50s suffers from too many flaws to be worth reading."

True in most cases. but if one is interested in both [1] text and [2] a supposed context (like knowing that there were censors and the author can attempt to "smuggle" some subjects or what seemed "obvious") and [3] as the history of the genre developed - this book supplies all 3. So, I definitely won't recommend is for joy of reading only

[Oleksandr]

Navigator wrote: "For old Russian sci-fi I'd recommend Ivan Efremov. Час быка, Лезвие бритвы, Туманность Андромеды"

Yes compared to contemporaries, he was quite good. His Час Быка was banned soon after the publication even if now one will be surprised why

[Plamen]

Ed wrote: "I hadn't read anything in French recently so decided to check out the recent award-winners. I saw that Helstrid by Christian Léourier won the Grand Prix de l'Imagin..."

Did you read that in French or English?

For some unclear to me reasons, English translations of French authors seem to be incredibly rare. It is far more likely that the book will be published in Bulgarian.

[CBRetriever]

Interesting article with links to other articles

https://boingboing.net/2020/08/24/chi...

mostly talks about movies but also books

[Ed]

Plamen wrote: "Did you read that in French or English? ..."

I read it in French. Although he has been writing for many years, none of Mr. Léourier's works has been translated into English, and I don't expect that to change anytime soon. (One was translated to Finnish, but that is all I can find.) Perhaps this one will break the trend since short novels are popular at the moment. This one does not have the happy ending that Americans seem to require, so I doubt it.

... English translations of French authors seem to be incredibly rare... .

Yeah, translations out of dominant languages (English, French, Spanish, Russian, ...) are more common than translations into them.

French "high litterature" does get translated into English fairly often. But SF and Fantasy hardly ever. One exception is Bernard Werber. He has somehow been accepted by the general French public and has also been translated into English. (He's not bad. Just more conventional than what I look for.)

For other French SF, you just have to hope that Brian Stableford takes an interest in it. He translates 100s of French SF books into English. But he is mostly interested in 100-year old pulp fiction. He did help translate one modern author Jean-Claude Dunyach. I do recommend those stories in, for example The Night Orchid: Conan Doyle in Toulouse.

The situation is changing a little for comics. Comixology, owned by Amazon, is translating many comics into English in digital format. I've read some translated from French and Polish. I suppose that is less expensive than translating and publishing physical books.

[CBRetriever]

AmazonCrossings does a lot of translations. I read where it's now the major publishing house for translated books. Here's a link to their SF&F offerings

https://www.amazon.com/s?bbn=11585009...

it includes Pierre Grimbert who is French

[Ed]

CBRetriever wrote: "AmazonCrossings does a lot of translations. ..."

Thanks for the link! That really isn't a large number of books, but there are some interesting ones there. I've already read those Pierre Grimbert books in French (and we discussed them above). I've already got United States of Banana on my to-read pile (though it is not a translation, originally in English). Now I guess I'll also add Lord of All Things by Andreas Eschbach. (We discussed another of his books above.)

[Ed]

AmazonCrossings allows you to suggest books for translation into English here:
https://translation.amazon.com/submis...

I think they prefer to get suggestions from the people who own the rights, but you can still suggest other things.

[CBRetriever]

Ed wrote: "CBRetriever wrote: "AmazonCrossings does a lot of translations. ..."

Thanks for the link! That really isn't a large number of books, but there are some interesting ones there. I've already read th..."

I've read a bunch of mysteries from Amazon Crossings by Oliver Pötzsch, Viveca Sten, Leena Lehtolainen, Frédérique Molay, and Nele Neuhaus that were all fairly good.

[Plamen]

@CBRetriever - thank you for the link! I will see what they have.

@Ed - I have both Lord of All Things and Jesus Video on my list. I was really impressed with The Carpet Makers

[Tomas]

By the way, how do you see authors from other countries that write in English instead of their native language? Or mix both?
George Mazurek (Jiří Mazurek) wrote a fantasy series (very short, though, 3 books at ~100 pages) in English but some SF in Czech.

[Eva]

I've finally read my first German book this year! It was a space opera, and it was great: Die Krone der Sterne by Kai Meyer - here's my review:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Plamen]

Tomas wrote: "By the way, how do you see authors from other countries that write in English instead of their native language? Or mix both?
George Mazurek (Jiří Mazurek) wrote a fantasy series (..."

Hannu Rajaniemi, Emmi Itäranta and Lavie Tidhar write in English. Rajaniemie and Tidhar live in English-speaking countries though, so it doesn't really count. I like Tidhar, Itaranta is also a good author.

[Ed]

Tomas wrote: "By the way, how do you see authors from other countries that write in English instead of their native language?..."

It is a completely understandable decision. Most people will not be able to write complex, stylish prose in a second language, but not every story needs that. And some people are gifted enough to do it. (Nabakov, for example.)

[DivaDiane]

Aliette de Bodard (French-Vietnamese) also writes in English. I find she does very, very well, but I’m sure her style, which is very unique, is influenced by her Frenchness.

[Eva]

Many also emigrate to the US or Britain to improve their language further and write in English then, e.g. Marco Kloos. But since we'd soon be including all immigrant writers in the US in this thread, I'd like to keep this focused on fiction not written in English (translations are fine). :-)

[Ed]

I just read a book of "classic" Irish SF, which included 3 stories written in Irish. (A Brilliant Void) Sadly none of those 3 was really very interesting to me, and there was nothing that felt particularly Irish about them. Though if Irish were my first language, I guess I'd be glad to have some stories to read. (I did enjoy a few of the English-language stories in the collection.)

A Vision [Aisling]. Art Ó Riain, 1927. A very brief story where a scientist creates a device that allows seeing into the future.

The Chronoton [An Cianadóir]. Tarlach Ó hUid, 1946. A time travel story raising the issue of the "grandfather paradox". That idea has been done better many times.

The Exile [An Deorai]. Cathal Ó Sándair, 1960. An Irish man emigrates to the moon for a better future. Is homesick. Not bad.

That last author, Cathal Ó Sándair, has a whole series of space stories about Captain Spéirling, but none are on this site, and I think none are available in English.

By the way.... I tried a few lessons in Irish language on Duolingo. In lesson 2 I was taught how to say "Tá an bhean sa chuisneoir." ("The woman is in the refrigerator.") That must be a very common and useful phrase if it is in lesson 2.

[Tomas]

Eva wrote: "Many also emigrate to the US or Britain to improve their language further and write in English then,..."

Well, to speak for myself... I am not native English speaker, and I don't live in English-speaking country, but I read almost exclusively in English, because there's way more variety (all the tens of thousands self-pub fantasy books that's on Amazon that won't ever be translated...) and thus my vocabulary for fantasy and SF is probably better in EN than in my native language.
For such people, it would make sense to write in English (if their English is good enough to write in) because the market is larger.

[Ed]

For German speakers, have any of you read Berge, Meere und Giganten by Alfred Döblin?

Looks really interesting. SF from the Weimar Republic. Alas, it is not available in either language I can read.

[Andy]

I tried to look for something Bulgarian to recommend, but Goodreads shows that there are editions in a number of languages, from Albanian to Mongolian, but not in English.

Those Dilov novels are coming out in English now. Look around for them

[Pixiegirl105]

I tend to like to read other cultures in general as it really speaks to how they view themselves and the world.

I don't now how much this qualifies as SFF (but the author has one based on the idea of the implications of one person falling into a parallel world that I am reading so that one counts Present Tense Machine) but I really liked Evil Flowers: Stories. The basic concept is short stories that are interacting with you the read while you are also reading them. I really got a kick out of it because it was funny seeing protests from characters in stories at the story they were just in and then protests from the alternative stories the protests generated from characters in the alternatives.

I'm in the U.S. btw. So sadly my "local" stories are the ones that the thread was generated to get away from.

Started reading The Witcher series (but i mean who didn't), did not realize that the "start" was really the middle. So will have to revisit it.

The one SFF series I love and always will suggest is the Jack West series by Matthew Reilly. Started with this Seven Deadly Wonders. Has Fifth Element vibes, historical mysteries, and adventure in an Indiana Jones manner of tons of crazy traps. Seriously love his books. However, if you don't want to commit to his full series? I would try Temple (a man is basically taken by the government to help with a dig in the Amazon where there may or may not be a scientific discovery) or Contest which has an Aliens Vs Predators vibes with people stuck in the middle of it. I call this books my adrenaline fix.

I'll have to look at the other books on here and see if my library has them.