International SF/Fantasy, Translation Award Info, Shine!
(Why Shine? Well, it just came in the door and Jetse de Vries made a concerted effort to encourage submissions from around the world. It’s a good-looking antho.)
I’d just like to point people to the Locus Online compilation of international SF/Fantasy recommendations I’ve coordinated, which was completed and slotted well before the Spinrad controversy this week. These are largely not books yet translated into English–in fact, 90% of them aren’t–and so in addition to being a tantalizing look at what we’re missing out on, it’s of potential use to US and UK publishers.
Please spread the link–it would be nice to get enough interest in this feature to be able to keep repeating it yearly. It’s a labor of love and of necessity incomplete this year due to time constraints, among other factors. The plan would be to keep expanding it until most countries were covered to some extent. Major thanks to Locus Online’s Mark Kelly, who spent a lot of time finding most of the images and hand-coding foreign-language symbols.
In the meantime, anyone should feel free to add recommendations from 2009 from countries not covered (or covered), preferably with descriptions, either to the Locus Online article or here.
Secondly, a relatively new translation award has announced the winners.
Thirdly, John Klima is trying to start a magazine to showcase under-represented cultures. Go help him.
Finally, I should have Nisi Shawl’s post “Writing and Racial Identity vs. the Spinrave” up on Booklifenow by the late afternoon, EST.
12 comments on “International SF/Fantasy, Translation Award Info, Shine!”
Hey, how come you get a copy of Shine? I want one! Gimme!
On the subject of international SF. the more I’m finding out about it the more I’m feeling the language barrier. I suppose the only thing to do is learn a few foreign languages and start translating. Anyone recommend any good night schools? Particularly Portuguese, Czech and Mandarin?
Jeff,
Nice list but the main problem with it is that your choice depends on the choice of those people who recommended you books/ So if I could recommend you books from Russia (I`m from there) list of Russian books was different. Thus your compiled list is very changeable. All lists are subjective ones but this is double subjective.
Yes, of course. This is a given. And you’re free to make your own suggestions here or at Locus Online. It’s clearly stated this isn’t authoritative, but a list is better than no list at all, and a good working start.
I’m not sure I would call it a “nice list” but more of a “starting point”.
Jeff
That said, each respondent is someone with a knowledge base of the field in their country.
All right.
I don`t think Karaev`s choice of Russian books is bad (all four writers are really good), so I would add
Oleg Divov (his latest collection Strelba po tarelkam – Shooting At Plates is quite funny though his novels are much stronger), Sviatoslav Loginov (quite nice stylist in both long and short formes) and I like Evgeniy Proshkin`s works so much though his latest novel was published in 2005. His Philip Dick-ish prose is worth reading.
It turns out Floris Kleijne provided the Dutch info to Jetse, so my apologies for that snafu. Locus Online will fix it soon. Very sorry Floris. It’s my fault.
Also, Nisi’s article may go up over the weekend instead.
Jeff
Good work on the list of international SFF.
What struck me was that the three German selections were all books I hadn’t heard of before (though I’ll seek out one of them). Now I’m not overly immersed in the German SFF scene – if you’re working towards a PhD in English literature you don’t have much time for German books – but I usually know the names of the authors and have a vague idea of what they write and those books were new to me.
No problem Jeff, just buy me a beer next time you’re in Amsterdam :-)
Floris–that’s a given! And thanks for your patience. It’s corrected on Locus now, too.
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