European science fiction
Martin Wisse
French and the creator of modern science fiction, Hugo Gernsback, was
originally from Luxembourg, science fiction as a whole seems a
remarkably Anglosaxon field.
Unlike in mainstream fiction, translated European writers are far and
few between. Yet surely there must be some interesting sf being written
in Germany, France, Croatia, Spain or Italy?
Or is the situation in those countries like here in the Netherlands,
where writing sf is a nice hobby and perhaps a way to get a little extra
pocket money and egoboo at conventions, but not something you can make a
living off?
So, what do you think of the science fiction in your country,
M. European sf fan?
Martin Wisse
--
WWFD?
Play Mornington Crescent.
-Erik V. Olson & Loren MacGregor, in rasseff.
Kristiina Prauda
> While one of the two grandfathers of science fiction, Jules Verne, was
> French and the creator of modern science fiction, Hugo Gernsback, was
> originally from Luxembourg, science fiction as a whole seems a
> remarkably Anglosaxon field.
(I'm sorry, but I must comment on this. Since when did UK stop
being part of Europe, so that you can contrast "Anglosaxon" (sic)
and "European"? Not to be contrary for the sake of contrariness,
but I just want to know your reasoning. I noticed the same sort of
assumption in your other post on European milieus in sci-fi. Why is
UK "too easy"?)
> ---
> So, what do you think of the science fiction in your country,
> M. European sf fan?
Science fiction and fantasy is doing rather nicely in Finland at
the moment, thank you, at least from a reader's perspective.
There's Johanna Sinisalo, Pasi Jaaskelainen, Maarit Verronen and
Leena Krohn, who have all won major national awards and whose
books are highly publicized and, I understand, don't sell too
badly either. There are quite a few other writers of SF and
horror (Boris Hurtta, M.G. Soikkeli, Risto Isomaki) and some very,
very good YA and children's fantasy (Aila Meriluoto, Asko Martinheimo,
Marja-Leena Mikkola, and MANY others I cannot bring to mind right
now - Tove Jansson being the Grand Old Lady of children's fantasy
of course), as well as some newer imitations of the Extruded
Fantasy Products, which I have not touched and cannot therefore
comment on. There is also Kaari Utrio, who has been writing enormous
historical romance bestsellers for more than twenty years now.
I don't know of any other translations of these writers into English
- which is a great pity, but Leena Krohn has a homepage, and it
includes one of her most wonderful books, "Tainaron - Mail From
Another City", in English, complete. Krohn is a highly respected
fantasist, magical realist, essayist and scientist, who won the
coveted Finlandia Prize for Literature in 1992 with a collection of
essays and stories on mathematics and metaphysics. A short
introduction in English can be found at:
http://www.kaapeli.fi/krohn/cv.html
and the novel "Tainaron" in English is at:
http://www.kaapeli.fi/tainaron/
Do go and read it. It really is quite special.
As to how well one can make a living out of writing science fiction
in Finland, I suspect not too well. Krohn may be one of the few
who does, but she also does a lot of lecturing and other writing
than fiction. It might be interesting to pose this question now to
Johanna Sinisalo, whose novel "Ennen paivanlaskua ei voi" about an
alternate Finland where trolls are a real, existing species, won
the Finlandia Prize in 2000. (And no, I won't attempt to translate
the name, sorry. It's a quote from a well-known 40's song.)
Kristiina
--
Kristiina * "Love, do you remember/ my name? I was lost
pra...@cc.helsinki.fi * In summer turned winter/ made bitter by frost
* And when June comes December
* The heart pays the cost" (GGKay)
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
> Unlike in mainstream fiction, translated European writers are far and
> few between. Yet surely there must be some interesting sf being written
> in Germany, France, Croatia, Spain or Italy?
Overall, I think I'd best refrain from giving my opinion on this matter.
> Or is the situation in those countries like here in the Netherlands,
> where writing sf is a nice hobby and perhaps a way to get a little extra
> pocket money and egoboo at conventions, but not something you can make a
> living off?
I understand this is the case in the Anglosaxon world as well.
> So, what do you think of the science fiction in your country,
> M. European sf fan?
We keep trying.
--
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
substitute tin to nit to mail me
http://www.fantascienza.net/sfpeople/elethiomel
Eryk Remiezowicz
Martin Wisse
> Or is the situation in those countries like here in the Netherlands,
> where writing sf is a nice hobby and perhaps a way to get a little extra
> pocket money and egoboo at conventions, but not something you can make a
> living off?
Speaking for Poland - it is. There's only one fantasy writer who manages to
live from his books, but he's _really_ great. Unfortunately, the charm of
his works relies heavy on the wonderful language he uses, so he won't become
so popular in non-slavic countries (translations from Polish into other
slavic language seem to work very well).
> So, what do you think of the science fiction in your country,
> M. European sf fan?
>
> Martin Wisse
There are some good sf writers in Poland, but I'm afraid, their names won't
ring any bells :-) The important thing are the differences. Polish writers
are still interested in God and religion in the future, and, what's
important can write great and somehow "fresh" stories based on these
questions. The other main subject of Polish sf, a subject which is dying
now, but produced some great works in the past, and still appears here and
there, is sociology. More precisely, the books are concerned with the
interaction between an individual and society, mostly a totalitarian one.
The theme appeared naturally during the years of communism, but even after
1989 such books can be interesting.
I'd say we have some ten - fifteen good and established sf writers. I
suppose, it they wrote in English, they would be highly recognised here, but
the language is quite a hurdle, I'm afraid.
--
Eryk Remiezowicz
PS: I have to name one writer: Jacek Dukaj. The guy packs into one short
story more ideas, than many other authors in one novel. And if you happen to
nderstand polish, then look for "Ruch general(/)a". It's somewhere in the
Web, and it's the most unique fantasy story I've ever read. Totally
uncomparable to any other fantasy. With dwarvs, railway, magic mirrors and
spaceships at the same time - and it all makes sense.
William Hyde
Kristiina Prauda <pra...@sirppi.helsinki.fi> writes:
> mwi...@ad-astra.demon.nl (Martin Wisse) writes:
>
>> While one of the two grandfathers of science fiction, Jules Verne, was
>> French and the creator of modern science fiction, Hugo Gernsback, was
>> originally from Luxembourg, science fiction as a whole seems a
>> remarkably Anglosaxon field.
Sorry to be a bit pedantic, but:
English-speaking, yes, but not anglo-saxon or even
anglo-saxon-celtic. Heinlein, Pohl, Asimov, Kornbluth,
Van Vogt, just to name a few golden age figures,
are not anglo-saxons, whatever than means today.
> (I'm sorry, but I must comment on this. Since when did UK stop
> being part of Europe,
According to some, it's a question of when it began.
Older people still sometimes distinguish between
the UK and Europe. I recall an aunt of mine telling
me, just before a trip to Germany, that this would
be her first visit to Europe. She'd been to England
and Scotland many times, but I knew what she meant.
Then there's the (apocryphal?) UK newspaper headline
from earlier this century:
"Channel shrouded in Fog, Continent still cut off.
William Hyde
Department of Oceanography
Texas A&M University
hy...@rossby.tamu.edu
felix
"Anna Feruglio Dal Dan" <ada...@nit.it.invalid> wrote in message
news:1evm3fh.1ibjb3r1y5secnN%ada...@nit.it.invalid...
> Martin Wisse <mwi...@ad-astra.demon.nl> wrote:
>
> > Unlike in mainstream fiction, translated European writers are far and
> > few between. Yet surely there must be some interesting sf being written
> > in Germany, France, Croatia, Spain or Italy?
>
> Overall, I think I'd best refrain from giving my opinion on this matter.
>
here knows if
Anne McCaffrey's Dragonsong and Dragonsinger books have been translated in
Italian and
if so, where they might be available from?
felix
Martin Wisse
<pra...@sirppi.helsinki.fi> wrote:
>mwi...@ad-astra.demon.nl (Martin Wisse) writes:
>
>> While one of the two grandfathers of science fiction, Jules Verne, was
>> French and the creator of modern science fiction, Hugo Gernsback, was
>> originally from Luxembourg, science fiction as a whole seems a
>> remarkably Anglosaxon field.
>
>(I'm sorry, but I must comment on this. Since when did UK stop
>being part of Europe, so that you can contrast "Anglosaxon" (sic)
>and "European"? Not to be contrary for the sake of contrariness,
>but I just want to know your reasoning. I noticed the same sort of
>assumption in your other post on European milieus in sci-fi. Why is
>UK "too easy"?)
Because the UK branch of sf is part of the mainstream of sf anyway and
gets enough attention here already. I want to know about sf in other
European traditions, not just a series of posts stating how H. G. Wells
was really neat.
Martin Wisse
--
British SF is full of rain and cooked cabbage, is gloomy, introspective and
obsessed with the underclass. Pratchett, who is half of the industry
all by himself, writes this sort of stuff all the time, not at all like that
cheerful and shiny left-pondian cyberpunk stuff. --Julian Flood, rasseff
Martin Wisse
Dal Dan) wrote:
>Martin Wisse <mwi...@ad-astra.demon.nl> wrote:
>
>> Unlike in mainstream fiction, translated European writers are far and
>> few between. Yet surely there must be some interesting sf being written
>> in Germany, France, Croatia, Spain or Italy?
>
>Overall, I think I'd best refrain from giving my opinion on this matter.
But Anna, I was hoping you would add your two dimes....
>> Or is the situation in those countries like here in the Netherlands,
>> where writing sf is a nice hobby and perhaps a way to get a little extra
>> pocket money and egoboo at conventions, but not something you can make a
>> living off?
>
>I understand this is the case in the Anglosaxon world as well.
There at least are full time sf writers in the UK and US, more then you
can say about the Netherlands...
>> So, what do you think of the science fiction in your country,
>> M. European sf fan?
>
>We keep trying.
That's the spirit...
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
> Anne McCaffrey's Dragonsong and Dragonsinger books have been translated in
> Italian and
> if so, where they might be available from?
>
> felix
Check
http://www.fantascienza.com/catalogo/
Yes they've been translated by Fanucci. Fanucci has a web site I think,
but I doubt they're still in print.
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
> On Tue, 26 Jun 2001 13:37:25 GMT, ada...@nit.it.invalid (Anna Feruglio
> Dal Dan) wrote:
>
> >Martin Wisse <mwi...@ad-astra.demon.nl> wrote:
> >
> >> Unlike in mainstream fiction, translated European writers are far and
> >> few between. Yet surely there must be some interesting sf being written
> >> in Germany, France, Croatia, Spain or Italy?
> >
> >Overall, I think I'd best refrain from giving my opinion on this matter.
>
> But Anna, I was hoping you would add your two dimes....
There _might_ be people lurking, you know? And I _do_ have a manuscript
under consideration... :-))
> >> Or is the situation in those countries like here in the Netherlands,
> >> where writing sf is a nice hobby and perhaps a way to get a little extra
> >> pocket money and egoboo at conventions, but not something you can make a
> >> living off?
> >
> >I understand this is the case in the Anglosaxon world as well.
>
> There at least are full time sf writers in the UK and US, more then you
> can say about the Netherlands...
Oh, we do have full time writers of SF here. Well. We have one. :-)
(If anybody's interested, his name is Valerio Evangelisti).
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
> According to some, it's a question of when it began.
>
> Older people still sometimes distinguish between
> the UK and Europe. I recall an aunt of mine telling
> me, just before a trip to Germany, that this would
> be her first visit to Europe. She'd been to England
> and Scotland many times, but I knew what she meant.
Well, geographically, much as it pains UK inhabitants, Great Britain is
in Europe. And it's not as it's moved there in the last couple of
centuries.
> Then there's the (apocryphal?) UK newspaper headline
> from earlier this century:
>
> "Channel shrouded in Fog, Continent still cut off.
I think it's true. It's likely, anyway.
Vlatko Juric-Kokic
Wisse) wrote:
>Or is the situation in those countries like here in the Netherlands,
>where writing sf is a nice hobby and perhaps a way to get a little extra
>pocket money and egoboo at conventions, but not something you can make a
>living off?
>
>So, what do you think of the science fiction in your country,
>M. European sf fan?
Well, there's not a single writer who makes a living by writing SF.
Actually, I'm lying. Darko Macan lives by writing SF, but he writes
for SF comics in the American market. And does it extremely well, IMO.
(Maybe you know about him, Martin. _Grendel Tales_, _Star Wars_ ...)
Other people are ... weekend writers, if it's not too harsh a term.
Given the state of Croatian SF publishing, it's not even the pocket
money. Those people write because they *want* to write. The quality
varies all over the place.
A very sad picture, I know.
vlatko
--
_Neither Fish Nor Fowl_
http://www.webart.hr/nrnm/eng/index.htm
vlatko.ju...@zg.hinet.hr
GSV Three Minds in a Can
wonderful person Anna Feruglio Dal Dan <ada...@nit.it.invalid> said
>William Hyde <hy...@rossby.tamu.edu> wrote:
>
>> According to some, it's a question of when it began.
>>
>> Older people still sometimes distinguish between
>> the UK and Europe. I recall an aunt of mine telling
>> me, just before a trip to Germany, that this would
>> be her first visit to Europe. She'd been to England
>> and Scotland many times, but I knew what she meant.
>
>Well, geographically, much as it pains UK inhabitants, Great Britain is
>in Europe. And it's not as it's moved there in the last couple of
>centuries.
But .. 'Europe' is frequently used as a short form for 'Continental
Europe', just as 'America' is used/abused for many purposes (and
depending on your definition, Hawaii can be in/out). Supporting evidence
- almost all mutual funds traded in London and called 'xyz European'
will =not= include UK companies.
--
GSV Three Minds in a Can
David Dyer-Bennet
> On Tue, 26 Jun 2001 10:22:01 GMT, mwi...@ad-astra.demon.nl (Martin
> Wisse) wrote:
>
> >Or is the situation in those countries like here in the Netherlands,
> >where writing sf is a nice hobby and perhaps a way to get a little extra
> >pocket money and egoboo at conventions, but not something you can make a
> >living off?
> >
> >So, what do you think of the science fiction in your country,
> >M. European sf fan?
>
> Well, there's not a single writer who makes a living by writing SF.
>
> Actually, I'm lying. Darko Macan lives by writing SF, but he writes
> for SF comics in the American market. And does it extremely well, IMO.
> (Maybe you know about him, Martin. _Grendel Tales_, _Star Wars_ ...)
>
> Other people are ... weekend writers, if it's not too harsh a term.
Vernor Vinge wrote all the SF he's published so far in his spare time,
putting him in the same "weekend writer" category, if you like (don't
know when in the week he actually wrote of course). So I *hope*
nobody will denigrate themselves because they are part time or give
themselves airs because they are full time!
(I understand Vinge recently has, or is about to, switch to writing
full time.)
> Given the state of Croatian SF publishing, it's not even the pocket
> money. Those people write because they *want* to write. The quality
> varies all over the place.
>
> A very sad picture, I know.
I don't think so. Doing something because you love it is the *best*
reason. It is, admittedly, *nice* to make a living doing something
you love. Then again, *having* to do something you love can
complicate the love, too.
--
David Dyer-Bennet / Welcome to the future! / dd...@dd-b.net
SF: http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/ Minicon: http://www.mnstf.org/minicon/
Photos: http://dd-b.lighthunters.net/
Vlatko Juric-Kokic
wrote:
>Vlatko Juric-Kokic <vlatko.ju...@zg.hinet.hr> writes:
>
>> On Tue, 26 Jun 2001 10:22:01 GMT, mwi...@ad-astra.demon.nl (Martin
>> Wisse) wrote:
>>
>> >Or is the situation in those countries like here in the Netherlands,
>> >where writing sf is a nice hobby and perhaps a way to get a little extra
>> >pocket money and egoboo at conventions, but not something you can make a
>> >living off?
>> >
>> >So, what do you think of the science fiction in your country,
>> >M. European sf fan?
>>
>> Well, there's not a single writer who makes a living by writing SF.
>>
>> Actually, I'm lying. Darko Macan lives by writing SF, but he writes
>> for SF comics in the American market. And does it extremely well, IMO.
>> (Maybe you know about him, Martin. _Grendel Tales_, _Star Wars_ ...)
>>
>> Other people are ... weekend writers, if it's not too harsh a term.
>
>Vernor Vinge wrote all the SF he's published so far in his spare time,
>putting him in the same "weekend writer" category, if you like (don't
>know when in the week he actually wrote of course). So I *hope*
>nobody will denigrate themselves because they are part time or give
>themselves airs because they are full time!
Oh, I'm sorry if I gave such impression. I mean, yes, there are people
who give themselves airs, but it's just *them*. :-)
>(I understand Vinge recently has, or is about to, switch to writing
>full time.)
>
>> Given the state of Croatian SF publishing, it's not even the pocket
>> money. Those people write because they *want* to write. The quality
>> varies all over the place.
>>
>> A very sad picture, I know.
>
>I don't think so. Doing something because you love it is the *best*
>reason. It is, admittedly, *nice* to make a living doing something
>you love. Then again, *having* to do something you love can
>complicate the love, too.
It's a sad picture because the Vinge scenario is *impossible* here at
the moment. Even more so because the publishers generally don't think
much of the locally created SF and the payment is awful, even if you
count the ego-boost in.
Martin Wisse
<vlatko.ju...@zg.hinet.hr> wrote:
>On Tue, 26 Jun 2001 10:22:01 GMT, mwi...@ad-astra.demon.nl (Martin
>Wisse) wrote:
>
>>Or is the situation in those countries like here in the Netherlands,
>>where writing sf is a nice hobby and perhaps a way to get a little extra
>>pocket money and egoboo at conventions, but not something you can make a
>>living off?
>>
>>So, what do you think of the science fiction in your country,
>>M. European sf fan?
>
>Well, there's not a single writer who makes a living by writing SF.
>
>Actually, I'm lying. Darko Macan lives by writing SF, but he writes
>for SF comics in the American market. And does it extremely well, IMO.
>(Maybe you know about him, Martin. _Grendel Tales_, _Star Wars_ ...)
Sure do. He's on the 'net as well and was/is a regular on Comix-L.
Martin Wisse
--
I took the points most people spend on common sense and spent it on
body and luck.
-James Nicoll
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
> > Given the state of Croatian SF publishing, it's not even the pocket
> > money. Those people write because they *want* to write. The quality
> > varies all over the place.
> >
> > A very sad picture, I know.
>
> I don't think so. Doing something because you love it is the *best*
> reason. It is, admittedly, *nice* to make a living doing something
> you love. Then again, *having* to do something you love can
> complicate the love, too.
The problme is, if there is no reward other than fame and glory to
writing, people will not take it seriously. And I don't mean the writers
either. There is no incentive, and especially no incentive to doing it
_well_. People who do it for their own satisfaction tend not to listen
to criticism, and don't give a damn if they haven't got any readers.
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
> >Well, geographically, much as it pains UK inhabitants, Great Britain is
> >in Europe. And it's not as it's moved there in the last couple of
> >centuries.
>
> But .. 'Europe' is frequently used as a short form for 'Continental
> Europe',
Only by the British.
And people in Palermo will tell you, about crossing the Messina Channel:
"I've gone to Italy", but that doesn't make Sicily not part of Italy.
thomas...@bluetail.com
mwi...@ad-astra.demon.nl (Martin Wisse) writes:
> I want to know about sf in other European traditions, not just a
> series of posts stating how H. G. Wells was really neat.
Well, there's Stanislaw Lem, the Sturgatsky brothers. Zamyatin, Capek,
and ... who else?
Thomas
--
Thomas Lindgren thoma...@alteon.com
Alteon WebSystems
Alex McLintock
wrote:
>mwi...@ad-astra.demon.nl (Martin Wisse) writes:
>
>> While one of the two grandfathers of science fiction, Jules Verne, was
>> French and the creator of modern science fiction, Hugo Gernsback, was
>> originally from Luxembourg, science fiction as a whole seems a
>> remarkably Anglosaxon field.
>
>(I'm sorry, but I must comment on this. Since when did UK stop
>being part of Europe, so that you can contrast "Anglosaxon" (sic)
>and "European"? Not to be contrary for the sake of contrariness,
>but I just want to know your reasoning. I noticed the same sort of
>assumption in your other post on European milieus in sci-fi. Why is
>UK "too easy"?)
I've only met Martin once - but I am pretty certain he meant "europe" as
"continental europe" and it wasn't meant to exclude anyone - just provoke an
interesting thread.
I just finished Stanislaw Lem's "His Masters Voice". Lem's output is very
erratic. I think it is something to do with his translators. This 1960's novel
was translated from polish to english some years later and isn't really that
gripping or funny. (I assume it was meant to be funny).
Other Lem stuff is just brilliant.
Or did Martin mean current authors?
Alex
Alex McLintock
http://www.OWAL.co.uk/ Internet *Software* Consultancy
http://www.DiverseBooks.com/ SF/COMPUTING BOOK REVIEWS
Competition to win Dr Who Goodies
Eryk Remiezowicz
Alex McLintock napisał(a):
> I just finished Stanislaw Lem's "His Masters Voice". Lem's output is very
> erratic. I think it is something to do with his translators. This 1960's novel
> was translated from polish to english some years later and isn't really that
> gripping or funny. (I assume it was meant to be funny).
> Alex
No, it wasn't. Even the polish version ("Glos Pana") is rather depressing.
--
Eryk Remiezowicz
Priv.-Doz. Dr. Dirk van den Boom
in Germany there is an increasing variety of SF-authors and and
increasing variety of books published, but
1. Only a very few authors sell enough to live from it - 90 % of all
writers have a "real" job.
2. Science Fiction is still widely regarded as a kind of "ghetto
literature" in Germany and has not been very successfull in entering the
mainstream of literature. This is evident in the way SF is dealt with in
schools and universities - only in the context of "pulp" and "cheap
entertainment".
3. The big publishers in Germany normally - there are rare exceptions -
don't publish German authors because they generally don't sell. It is
the small and medium size publishing houses who have increased the
number of German authors published in recent years. But they have a
marketing- and distribution-problem.
To add to that, only very few other European SF is translated to German.
There have been a few books from France published, but in Germany
generally it's either Anglo-American SF OR German SF, mostly nothing in
between.
Yours
Dirk
James Nicoll
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan <ada...@nit.it.invalid> wrote:
>GSV Three Minds in a Can <G...@quik.freeuk.com> wrote:
>
>> >Well, geographically, much as it pains UK inhabitants, Great Britain is
>> >in Europe. And it's not as it's moved there in the last couple of
>> >centuries.
>>
>> But .. 'Europe' is frequently used as a short form for 'Continental
>> Europe',
>
>Only by the British.
>
shows that history only occurs when the British are involved. That's some
serious observer effect they have going there.
ObSF: the comment in _Midnight's Children_ about the starting point
of Indian history.
James Nicoll
--
The Canadians were a hospitable and tolerant desert people,
living on the edge of a wilderness of snow and permafrost. Winnipeg,
Regina and Saskatoon were cities of the northern desert, Samarkands
of ice. J.G. Ballard
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
> 3. The big publishers in Germany normally - there are rare exceptions -
> don't publish German authors because they generally don't sell. It is
> the small and medium size publishing houses who have increased the
> number of German authors published in recent years. But they have a
> marketing- and distribution-problem.
But they tell me Andreas Eschbach sells well. I have seen an impressive
doorstopper by him, 800 pages in hardcover, that supposedly topped the
bestseller charts. My friend who had it on his desk was very reluctant
to admit that it had Sfictional elements, though.
Eschabach's ""Haarteppiche-something" was translated into Italian to
great critical and popular accalaim. I wasn't as excited as the rest,
but mostly I suspect because of the translation.
Andreas Morlok
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan wrote:
>
> Priv.-Doz. Dr. Dirk van den Boom <d.b...@mx.uni-saarland.de> wrote:
>
> > 3. The big publishers in Germany normally - there are rare exceptions -
>
> But they tell me Andreas Eschbach sells well. I have seen an impressive
> doorstopper by him, 800 pages in hardcover, that supposedly topped the
> bestseller charts. My friend who had it on his desk was very reluctant
> to admit that it had Sfictional elements, though.
Eschenbach is one of the (very) few exceptions.
-----*
Andreas Morlok
Institut fuer Planetologie, Muenster
ifp.uni-muenster.de
"Unversucht bleibt unerfahren"
(Aus dem Dreissigjaehrigen Krieg)
Jan Vanek jr.
> On Tue, 26 Jun 2001 10:22:01 GMT, mwi...@ad-astra.demon.nl (Martin
> Wisse) wrote:
>
> >Or is the situation in those countries like here in the Netherlands,
> >where writing sf is a nice hobby and perhaps a way to get a little extra
> >pocket money and egoboo at conventions, but not something you can make a
> >living off?
> >
> >So, what do you think of the science fiction in your country,
> >M. European sf fan?
>
> Well, there's not a single writer who makes a living by writing SF.
>
> Other people are ... weekend writers, if it's not too harsh a term.
>
> Given the state of Croatian SF publishing, it's not even the pocket
> money. Those people write because they *want* to write. The quality
> varies all over the place.
>
> A very sad picture, I know.
AOL. (Or should I say EOL? :-)
I think there is one Czech writer *at all* who makes a living just by
writing fiction (he's supposed to be very popular in Croatia as well,
at least by his press releases :-)
ada...@nit.it.invalid (Anna Feruglio Dal Dan) wrote in message news:<1evnonf.tfpdkd5utrqvN%ada...@nit.it.invalid>...
>
> The problme is, if there is no reward other than fame and glory to
> writing, people will not take it seriously. And I don't mean the writers
> either. There is no incentive, and especially no incentive to doing it
> _well_. People who do it for their own satisfaction tend not to listen
> to criticism, and don't give a damn if they haven't got any readers.
Absolute agreement, I couldn't put it better if I tried all day. To
have a healthy (SF) literature, the authors have to have at least a
chance, prospect and example of "going pro", or they remain amateurs,
often in more than one sense, little better than graphomaniacs.
I know of a couple authors with the potential to be really great, if
only they were pressured, if they had some effective stimulus to
exceed themselves. But since they have none (certainly not the most
effective; the saying how free things are worth what you pay, or here
get paid, for them, applies perfectly to this) and get enough egoboo
and fan admiration (but how are those poor creatures to know real
quality?) as it is, they settle for mediocrity.
OtherWisse, kind reader, you are referred to my post "Czech SF
(LONG!)" from March 2000 (
http://groups.google.com/groups?safe=off&rnum=1&ic=1&selm=s8e25a19.044%40gw.czso.cz
), now in a bad need of an update, but I don't think you'll get one
sooner than at the Czech Eurocon 2002 a year and week from now; plus
some general comments I am in the process of making at rasseff.
Just Google Me (TM).
--
Jan Vanek [jr.] Jan.Va...@seznam.cz
"Ever done LSD?"
"Well, we were in the Army. That's almost like LSD."
Neal Stephenson, The Big U
Priv.-Doz. Dr. Dirk van den Boom
> But they tell me Andreas Eschbach sells well.
As Andreas said, Eschbach is one of the exceptions. As is Wolfgang Hohlbein
(but primarily Fantasy) and, to a limited extent, Marcus Hammerschmidt. And
that's it. The great number of German sf-writers never makes it to the big
publishers - and in fact, there are only two remaining in Germany who have a
noteworthy SF-output anyway.
Yours
Dirk
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
A better record than ours: we only have one, Evangelisti. And he lives
off the Nostradamus things, not really the SF. Is Evangelisti translated
over there? He seems to have a lot of success in France.
M-cube
> A better record than ours: we only have one, Evangelisti. And he lives
> off the Nostradamus things, not really the SF. Is Evangelisti translated
> over there? He seems to have a lot of success in France.
He is translated in German (I sent the cover of one of his german
books on icf, where there is actually Elric instead of Eymerich).
He is also translated in spanish (at least according to the covers on his
site www.eymerich.com)
M.
--
Maurizio M. Munafo' / mmmu...@netscape.net
"Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you" (T.S.Eliot)
Vlatko Juric-Kokic
wrote:
>I think there is one Czech writer *at all* who makes a living just by
>writing fiction (he's supposed to be very popular in Croatia as well,
>at least by his press releases :-)
Wiwegh? :-)
Yes, he is popular. People here hail him as the best thing since the
*invention* of bread.
But I've read just _The Education of Girls in Czechia_ and didn't like
it.
Priv.-Doz. Dr. Dirk van den Boom
> The problme is, if there is no reward other than fame and glory to
> writing, people will not take it seriously. And I don't mean the writers
> either. There is no incentive, and especially no incentive to doing it
> _well_. People who do it for their own satisfaction tend not to listen
> to criticism, and don't give a damn if they haven't got any readers.
I don't think so. I myself started writing and publishing in small press
here in Germany and I don't get much - and sometimes not any - money out
of it. Still, negative criticism and not-selling of my novels is making
me feel as bad as I would of there were great royalties in it. If you
consider yourself a writer, you will normally strive for the best
anyway. I know some other authors here as well who can surely not live
from their writing, still, they try their very best to make the most out
of there ability. That, of course, doesn't mean that there are no
writers who just think they can write but, evidently, don't have any
talent at all. Nevertheless, those will not have the possibility to be
published anyway if they don't resort to book-on-demand or such ways.
yours
Dirk
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
I think in Germany the threshold has been reached. Three or four writers
that live off their writing may seem little to you, but it isn't when
you take into consideration that Egan still has to work to keep himself.
We only have one, and as I said, he makes money on semi-historical
novels, not his SF.
Besides, here you can be published even if you are really dreadful.
There are several mechanism that make this possible:
a) for a long time one of the leading, respected publisher was a vanity
press. I didn't know that and had some difficulty swallowing it, but it
was so. It did explain a lot of things about them.
b) Urania, by far the best-selling line (a newsagent line), has a
contest each year for unpublished authors. The winner gets published.
Winning the Urania Award is a big thing and gives great visibility, but
the problem is that they _have_ to give it to someone, and if one year
only dreadful stuff arrives, the less dreadful but still pretty horrible
one gets published. To great celebration. Apart from the Urania Award,
they publish very few authors.
c) Another of the leading publishers is in dire financial straits, and
publishing titles written by Italians gives them very real financial
advantages: they pay far less in royalty, and don't have to pay for the
translation. They have strarted to put out things that, to hear the
embarrassed noises produced by those who have actually read them, are of
quite low quality.
I think what we lack is a large enough market, that could actually
sustain local writers. It doesn't have to make you rich: just to be a
little remunerative. Right now, I translate and I write, and I suspect
that even if everything I wrote were published, I'd lose money on it.
The other problem, of course, is that this being a small fandom where
everybody knows everybody else, it's mightily hard to prise a negative
criticism from somebody.
Priv.-Doz. Dr. Dirk van den Boom
> I think in Germany the threshold has been reached. Three or four writers
> that live off their writing may seem little to you, but it isn't when
> you take into consideration that Egan still has to work to keep himself.
> We only have one, and as I said, he makes money on semi-historical
> novels, not his SF.
Well, I have to add: There are surely more than those three or four - I
have not counted in those SF-authors who live 100 % on pulp, that is
those who are writing the "Perry Rhodan"-novels or equivalent series in
pulp-format. These authors live from their writing as well (not
necessarily extremely good, but they do). If you add them - and in
regard to the importance of "Perry Rhodan" one should - you have around
7-8 authors more who live from sf-writing.
> b) Urania, by far the best-selling line (a newsagent line), has a
> contest each year for unpublished authors. The winner gets published.
> Winning the Urania Award is a big thing and gives great visibility, but
> the problem is that they _have_ to give it to someone, and if one year
> only dreadful stuff arrives, the less dreadful but still pretty horrible
> one gets published. To great celebration. Apart from the Urania Award,
> they publish very few authors.
There are awards here in Germany as well, three of them: One chosen by a
selected group of readers (German SF Award), one by vote by
professionals connected to SF (the "Kurd-Lasswitz-Award") and one by
vote by readers (German Phantastic Award). But they are only dealing
with works that have already been published. There are competitions
sometimes, but generally they are rare and not well publicized.
> c) Another of the leading publishers is in dire financial straits, and
> publishing titles written by Italians gives them very real financial
> advantages: they pay far less in royalty, and don't have to pay for the
> translation. They have strarted to put out things that, to hear the
> embarrassed noises produced by those who have actually read them, are of
> quite low quality.
Hm, but they sell? You know, the same mechanism doesn't work in Germany:
The fees for translations are going downward for some time now and in
the end it seems to be more economical to buy US-American publishing
rights en bloc (20-30 books at a time), translate and sell it than
paying for German authors. There is still some bias here...
> The other problem, of course, is that this being a small fandom where
> everybody knows everybody else, it's mightily hard to prise a negative
> criticism from somebody.
True. German fandom is relatively vibrant, unfortunately the most active
parts are concentrated on media-SF and the written one is not getting
enough attention, but maybe that's just my personal impression. It's
difficult to discuss German SF with a convinced Trekkie who just wants
to talk about 7o9's breast size with you...
Yours
Dirk
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
> > c) Another of the leading publishers is in dire financial straits, and
> > publishing titles written by Italians gives them very real financial
> > advantages: they pay far less in royalty, and don't have to pay for the
> > translation. They have strarted to put out things that, to hear the
> > embarrassed noises produced by those who have actually read them, are of
> > quite low quality.
>
> Hm, but they sell?
They sell enough. Less than Bujold would, but he can't affort Bujold any
longer anyway. I still think he's on a downward spiral, but only time
will tell. This is not a publisher who published SF because it was dear
to his heart: he's a businessman.
Right now he seems to have found a nice little niche in Sf that panders
to nostalgic of fascism.
You know, the same mechanism doesn't work in Germany:
> The fees for translations are going downward for some time now and in
> the end it seems to be more economical to buy US-American publishing
> rights en bloc (20-30 books at a time), translate and sell it than
> paying for German authors. There is still some bias here...
How much are translator paid there? Here it's about 2000$ per average
book, from one publisher, and half that from another.
> > The other problem, of course, is that this being a small fandom where
> > everybody knows everybody else, it's mightily hard to prise a negative
> > criticism from somebody.
>
> True. German fandom is relatively vibrant, unfortunately the most active
> parts are concentrated on media-SF and the written one is not getting
> enough attention, but maybe that's just my personal impression. It's
> difficult to discuss German SF with a convinced Trekkie who just wants
> to talk about 7o9's breast size with you...
Same here. But I enjoy that, and then _some_ of them do read. :-)
Serg
> M. European sf fan?
>
far from dying. The school of Strugatskie brother are prosper, there
are a lot of new name also... For SF - Diachenko, Lukianenco,
Braider&Chadovich, Lazarchuck and more. There is a huge fun base in
russia, and Russian SF/Fantasy succesfuly competes (and winning
competition mostly) with english translations. You can check
http://www.rusf.ru/english/ (not sure how much of site translated to
english though)
Jan Vanek jr.
> As Andreas said, Eschbach is one of the exceptions. As is Wolfgang Hohlbein
> (but primarily Fantasy) and, to a limited extent, Marcus Hammerschmidt. And
> that's it.
Hmm, how often is Hohlbein mentioned in the same context with the
others? He is extensively translated into Czech (published by the
local branch of Bastei-Lubbe) - "Charity, the best woman of the Space
Force", and I mean the both series, the one where she laboriously
defeats the alien invaders, and the one where they return anyway; The
Wizard of Salem series, Kevin from Locksley, Wyrm, Wolfsherz, now
Captain Nemo's Children series - and he looks like another house name
for the Perry Rhodan factory, hardly better than Jason Dark (yes, it's
here too)...
Oh, well, so it goes: there have been, I think, three books of serious
German SF translated within the last decade (Amery's Koenigsprojekt,
Jeschke's MIDAS and his earliest short story collection), but we have
the original Rhodan, alternating Rhodan series started from #1600 so
the readers don't have to wait till they get old, and the Rhodan
novels; and before Rhodan started, there was Ren Dhark.
Similarly for the French SF: only Weber's Ants were published and not
even noticed. But the SF sufficiently described by the original
publication in Fleuve Noir (another newsagents line), oh, how it sold!
About thirty volumes of "The Ice Company" series by G.-J. Arnaud
(there's a new ice age. Mankind lives in giant
twenty-or-more-parallel-tracks trains. Railway companies wage war. But
there are mysterious hairy ice people and some sex, mainly with them,
but not only that; tame, but disgusting nonetheless). When the first
Czech publisher of the French Rhodan or perhaps, to be just, merely
Buck Rogers clone called Mark Stone by J.-P. Garen went out of
business, another picked it up - well, they already had Rhodan, so it
went nicely together; when they run out of Mark Stone proper, they
published some leftovers under the same headings with Captain Stone's
cousin or just from the same niverse, but readers complained and even
the stock of these was soon exhausted. So they are going to try
another series, Bob Morane by Henri Vernes which, even though the
publicity tries to downplay it, comes from the 50es...
All right, if people want the worst pulp, they deserve to have it; I
just wonder what woodwork readers of this sort of stuff come out from.
I've never seen a living one, let alone 10 for every fan I know, which
seems to be the sales ratio...
--
Jan Vanek jr.
Vlatko Juric-Kokic
Feruglio Dal Dan) wrote:
>Winning the Urania Award is a big thing and gives great visibility, but
>the problem is that they _have_ to give it to someone, and if one year
>only dreadful stuff arrives, the less dreadful but still pretty horrible
>one gets published.
Why's that? Our local award, the Sfera, has the cheerful "jury decided
that the award won't be given" announcement for any of the categories.
Usually happens with the novel category, though.
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
> On Thu, 28 Jun 2001 08:29:05 GMT, ada...@nit.it.invalid (Anna
> Feruglio Dal Dan) wrote:
>
> >Winning the Urania Award is a big thing and gives great visibility, but
> >the problem is that they _have_ to give it to someone, and if one year
> >only dreadful stuff arrives, the less dreadful but still pretty horrible
> >one gets published.
>
> Why's that? Our local award, the Sfera, has the cheerful "jury decided
> that the award won't be given" announcement for any of the categories.
> Usually happens with the novel category, though.
No, the Urania is always given. I don't know if it's part of the rules
or just a question of opportunity. Urania was long accused of not being
open to Italian authors, and it was quite a breakthrough when the award
was established. But you must remember, this is not a "prestige" award,
it's actually a contest. Whoever wins gets published, that's the prize.
Jerry Friedman
> In article <oibzoav...@sirppi.helsinki.fi>,
> Kristiina Prauda <pra...@sirppi.helsinki.fi> writes:
> > mwi...@ad-astra.demon.nl (Martin Wisse) writes:
> >
> >> While one of the two grandfathers of science fiction, Jules Verne, was
> >> French and the creator of modern science fiction, Hugo Gernsback, was
> >> originally from Luxembourg, science fiction as a whole seems a
> >> remarkably Anglosaxon field.
>
>
> English-speaking, yes, but not anglo-saxon or even
> anglo-saxon-celtic. Heinlein, Pohl, Asimov, Kornbluth,
> Van Vogt, just to name a few golden age figures,
> are not anglo-saxons, whatever than means today.
Right. "Anglo-Saxon" was formerly used in English to mean something like
"English-speaking", and that usage spread into some other languages, but
nowadays the only English meaning of "Anglo-Saxon" is "Old English" (or a
person of the ethnic group that spoke it).
--
Jerry Friedman
Jan Vanek jr.
> >I think there is one Czech writer *at all* who makes a living just by
> >writing fiction (he's supposed to be very popular in Croatia as well,
> >at least by his press releases :-)
>
> Wiwegh? :-)
Michal Viewegh, yes.
> Yes, he is popular. People here hail him as the best thing since the
> *invention* of bread.
>
> But I've read just _The Education of Girls in Czechia_ and didn't like it.
Then you've just went through the same experience as the Czech
literature critics (are you sure you aren't one? He knows very well,
and isn't afraid to tell, how devious those low creatures can be!)
His first book, published in 1990, was a promising debut, lost in the
excitement of the time. But the following one was universally hailed
as The Great Post-Communist Novel We've All Waited For Which Expresses
The Feelings Of A Whole Generation and it obviously rose to his head.
What followed (after a small collection of parodies, generally taken
as a time out) was this, and most reviewers disliked the direction he
went in and some said so rather harshly, and he took it personally
(quoted from the following book: "and this is the novel that cost me
my marriage!" no wonder, concerning the theme :-) but he has adjusted
to it now, and several times already :-)) and interpreted it as a
declaration of war.
Which escalated. He simply wrote the critics (and his complaints about
them), some even with the full name and their journals, into the
following books (oh, joys of the postmodern form!), of course in nasty
ways; at least there's this inorganic figure called "a/the literary
critic", who pops up, tells the writing character how he should do it,
is shown as an ignorant idiot and killed off with glee. Reviews
weren't favourable, either. He really seemed very bitter about it; in
a non-fiction piece, which was supposed to be a jocular dictionary for
a beginning writer, he said pretty much outright "I'm *the*
bestselling Czech author who's sold 200 000 copies of books
*worldwide* and earned (as it happens, the same number in dollars)",
with implied 'how can they do this to me?'
(ObSF: ... well, I'll rather not mention it, this has been a good
thread, why lose it to a flamewar? :-)
The culmination came last fall. He even wrote a self-righteous article
about this (explaining he did so unwillingly and only in self-defense,
because the other protagonist mentioned it before, in passing in a
column without naming him): there is a critic who's always demolished
his books thoroughly, perhaps with a special personal enjoyment, but
cleverly and well. I thought his review of Viewegh's collection of
newspaper columns (he could print his laundry bills today, and the
publisher knows it - the books are very bloated and overpriced, but
there's so little actual substance lately that it's almost strange)
showed convincingly that Viewegh is neither as sparkling nor deep as
he would like to think himself and even convicted him of elementary
stylistic flaws. Viewegh declares it was unfair and quoted from too
small a part of the book and anyway that critic had been after him all
the time, but now overstepped any boundaries of civilized conduct and
got into personal slanders, obviously losing the last connection to
the human race in Viewegh's opinion. And when honour is at stake,
well, man's gotta do what he's gotta do. So he came to the awarding of
a literary prize on whose jury the Evil critic was, waited outside
(out of consideration, he explains, so the innocent winners had their
moment of glory unspoiled) and when the critic was leaving, Viewegh
grabbed him and... it was supposed to be a symbolic slap, but as he
squirmed, the worm, he caught a punch by a fist, but he actually
deserved it and can blame only himself, should have borne the
punishment like a man. Viewegh calls the critic a petty malicious
lying coward and some worse things, dares him to cross his way again
and ends by telling him "Get a backpack" (in the critic's version, he
would have out-wrestled him easily, only he was surprised and held an
attache case). Incredible stuff.
And how's literary life in Croatia? :-) I bet this didn't get to your
cultural magazines nor tabloids.
It seems the affair helped Viewegh to get it off his mind: his fresh
book contains only a short scene with an intellectual who affects
refined tastes in art, spouts smooth phrases and pushes around the
circle of his inferior-feeling admirers, but the common-sense heroine
tells him loudly what a poseur he is, and triumphs. Unfortunately for
him, the critics always can have the last word: one notes that this
character's declaration of Thomas Bernhard (quite popular here in
certain circles and probably the epitome of unreadable snobs' author
for Viewegh) as the very best, or perhaps it was the only worthy,
living Austrian (or perhaps even European) writer, when actually he's
been dead for quite a time, clearly isn't intended to show to the
average reader the _hero_'s ignorance...
Well, back to the book you mention: I actually liked it somewhat
better then the above might suggest, especially the simple,
descriptive, mutedly-ironic bits in the first half. Of course the
satire of all the fads Beata goes through in the second part is
awfully heavy-handed (especially his usual anti-intellectualism). I
think the postmodernism wasn't really good for him: all the showing
off "it's just a story, stupid, so I can do whatever I want with it,
and to prove it I will, right now!" doesn't help anything, all the
more when he complains in the same breath how hard it is to write,
especially autobiographic things (and all those damn critics have no
understanding for what he must go through and yadda yadda...)
BTW: The official English translation, available a. o. at Amazon if
anybody out there is interested, is called _Bringing Up Girls in
Bohemia_ (the original title indeed has "v Cechach" and not "v Cesku",
although more probably just from dislike for the term than to
emphasize it doesn't take place in Moravia :-)
In fact, many European participants of this thread have the chance to
read him in their language: At least two of his books have been
translated to German, some to Dutch, I am not sure about Italian, but
there are supposed to be 12 foreign languages altogether. I'm not sure
about the exact titles, but this one is among the most translated, as
it's not too long and published early in his career.
ObSF: If we could make him write one. That would certainly help the
translations problem :-) But he seems content with just a little
postmodernism and meta-narration here and there.
Priv.-Doz. Dr. Dirk van den Boom
> Hmm, how often is Hohlbein mentioned in the same context with the
> others? He is extensively translated into Czech (published by the
> local branch of Bastei-Lubbe) - "Charity, the best woman of the Space
> Force", and I mean the both series, the one where she laboriously
> defeats the alien invaders, and the one where they return anyway; The
> Wizard of Salem series, Kevin from Locksley, Wyrm, Wolfsherz, now
> Captain Nemo's Children series - and he looks like another house name
> for the Perry Rhodan factory, hardly better than Jason Dark (yes, it's
> here too)...
Hohlbein wrote extensively in the Pulp-area before he changed to the "big books". He is surely the most productive German
SF/F-writer, which does not necessarily improve the quality of all his books. Anyway, rumours that he has a number of
ghost-writers are numerous and not to be killed.
> Oh, well, so it goes: there have been, I think, three books of serious
> German SF translated within the last decade (Amery's Koenigsprojekt,
> Jeschke's MIDAS and his earliest short story collection), but we have
> the original Rhodan, alternating Rhodan series started from #1600 so
> the readers don't have to wait till they get old, and the Rhodan
> novels; and before Rhodan started, there was Ren Dhark.
Uh, you have Ren Dhark still? You know it is republished and continued in Hardcover for some years now here in Germany!
> Similarly for the French SF: only Weber's Ants were published and not
> even noticed. But the SF sufficiently described by the original
> publication in Fleuve Noir (another newsagents line), oh, how it sold!
> About thirty volumes of "The Ice Company" series by G.-J. Arnaud
> (there's a new ice age. Mankind lives in giant
> twenty-or-more-parallel-tracks trains. Railway companies wage war. But
> there are mysterious hairy ice people and some sex, mainly with them,
> but not only that; tame, but disgusting nonetheless).
Never heard about that. Wasn't translated here, I think.
> All right, if people want the worst pulp, they deserve to have it; I
> just wonder what woodwork readers of this sort of stuff come out from.
> I've never seen a living one, let alone 10 for every fan I know, which
> seems to be the sales ratio...
Well, "worst pulp" does not fit with the current Rhodan. That's quite original and interesting Space Opera. No heavy stuff, sure,
but not the "worst pulp" either.
Yours
Dirk
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
> In fact, many European participants of this thread have the chance to
> read him in their language: At least two of his books have been
> translated to German, some to Dutch, I am not sure about Italian,
Two titles, "The Education of Girls", and something called "This
wonderful dogs life", which was reviewed very favourably on one of the
best Italian weeklies, Diario, though not in a way that sent me out to
get it.
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
> Right. "Anglo-Saxon" was formerly used in English to mean something like
> "English-speaking", and that usage spread into some other languages, but
> nowadays the only English meaning of "Anglo-Saxon" is "Old English" (or a
> person of the ethnic group that spoke it).
English-speaking is the meaning it has in Italian now. What do you use
for "whatever pertains to the cultural milieu of USA, UK, Canada,
Australia and New Zealand?"
Vlatko Juric-Kokic
wrote:
>(the original title indeed has "v Cechach" and not "v Cesku",
>although more probably just from dislike for the term than to
>emphasize it doesn't take place in Moravia :-)
Ah, then the title is badly translated, because Croatian has a
correspondent phrase that carries the same meaning, "u Hrvata".
Thanks for the post.
But we better get back on topic. :-)
I remember hearing only about Ellison demolishing his critics.
Verbally, of course.
Are there any cases of a SF writer assaulting a critic?
Jan Vanek jr.
> > the original Rhodan, alternating Rhodan series started from #1600 so
> > the readers don't have to wait till they get old, and the Rhodan
> > novels; and before Rhodan started, there was Ren Dhark.
>
> Uh, you have Ren Dhark still? You know it is republished and continued in Hardcover for some years now here in Germany!
No, it was published, I guess in its entirety, about 1992 and only
then, after some pause, the same publisher, our biggest provider of
newsstands-sold reading stuff (romances, westerns etc., you know it;
much of it translated from German), got to Rhodan, which seems to have
rather bigger success; that is, Dhark sold enough, but Rhodan created
its fandom, they have some websites, internet discussion list etc.,
but even more distant from the "mainstream" fandom than, say, the
trekkies. Umm, Robert Feldhoff? was as a GoH at a con here a couple
years ago, though rather it just so happened that he was passing
through by that time or the publisher invited him; there wasn't much
interest from the con participants or organizers. I heard he was at a
common discussion with all the writers present, where even the most
'commercial' of ours asked him whether he wasn't ashamed to sell off
his talent to write such a trash etc... :-)
Anyway, these days you find Dhark only in bins at second-hand
bookshops reserved for mountains of this kind of stuff. But I saw some
mad collector offering almost anything for a particular early issue.
Actally, some unsold remainders were stripped of covers and "rebound"
by threes with a new cover (3 Exciting Adventures for a Super Price!);
and now meseems this happened to Rhodan too, and it sometimes even got
a HARD cover... But I may be wrong here.
> > About thirty volumes of "The Ice Company" series by G.-J. Arnaud
> > (there's a new ice age. Mankind lives in giant
> > twenty-or-more-parallel-tracks trains. Railway companies wage war. But
> > there are mysterious hairy ice people and some sex, mainly with them,
> > but not only that; tame, but disgusting nonetheless).
>
> Never heard about that. Wasn't translated here, I think.
There's no reason why it should, you have enough of your own; and I
don't know how close German-French cultural relations are, in
pop/pulp-culture especially, even afer the Adenauer-De Gaulle detente,
EU etc.
--
Jan Vanek jr.
Jerry Friedman
> Jerry Friedman <jerry_f...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > Right. "Anglo-Saxon" was formerly used in English to mean something like
> > "English-speaking", and that usage spread into some other languages, but
> > nowadays the only English meaning of "Anglo-Saxon" is "Old English" (or a
> > person of the ethnic group that spoke it).
>
>
> English-speaking is the meaning it has in Italian now. What do you use
> for "whatever pertains to the cultural milieu of USA, UK, Canada,
> Australia and New Zealand?"
I might refer to the English-speaking countries, English-language
writers, and so forth. These might not be exact translations of the
Italian term anglosassone (which I just looked up), since they don't
include French Canadians, but do include a long list of countries or
parts of countries not on your list (Guyana, Nigeria, the
Phillippines...).
--
Jerry Friedman
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
> I might refer to the English-speaking countries, English-language
> writers, and so forth. These might not be exact translations of the
> Italian term anglosassone (which I just looked up), since they don't
> include French Canadians, but do include a long list of countries or
> parts of countries not on your list (Guyana, Nigeria, the
> Phillippines...).
Yes: that's the reason "English speaking" doesn't satisfy me. There is a
cultural milieu that takes in USA, UK, Canada, Australia and NZ, but
leaves conspicously out Nigeria and the Philippines. It's there that SF
has its largest market. And presumably spawning ground. Personally, I
think there is a perceptible difference between, say, the USA and UK
variety... but it vanishes into insignificance compared with French or
Italian SF.
Jan Vanek jr.
[re Viewegh, in Italian]
> Two titles, "The Education of Girls", and something called "This
> wonderful dogs life", which was reviewed very favourably on one of the
> best Italian weeklies, Diario, though not in a way that sent me out to
> get it.
Yes, this is that second novel of his that everybody liked.
(BTW, isn't diario supposed to mean "daily" ? :-)
Vlatko Juric-Kokic <vlatko.ju...@zg.hinet.hr> wrote in message news:<jj2njtke761nr3jnk...@news.hinet.hr>...
> Jan Vanek jr. wrote:
> >["in Bohemia" vs "Czechia"]
> >(the original title indeed has "v Cechach" and not "v Cesku",
> >although more probably just from dislike for the term than to
> >emphasize it doesn't take place in Moravia :-)
>
> Ah, then the title is badly translated, because Croatian has a
> correspondent phrase that carries the same meaning, "u Hrvata".
I'm afraid I don't understand you: I'd suppose "u Hrvata" will pertain
to Croatia somehow (perhaps to distinguish similarly between The
Croatian Republic and some sub-region of it, Croatia proper as opposed
to, say, Slavonia and Dalmatia?), and not concern the dichotomy Cechy
< Cesko we seemed to be talking about. Though there's so much
duplicity in names in these regions I can't really exclude it (our
Moravia has a river Morava just as Serbia does and a region of
Wallachia just as Romania).
Anyway I wouldn't say the title is badly translated if it has
"Czechia".
For general enlightenment of the newsgroup: When Czechoslovakia
("C~eskoslovensko") broke up, that is, as every Czech will tell you,
when that damn ungrateful Slovakia ("Slovensko") tore away, we
(actually most of the world as well) found ourselves not knowing how
to call our new state, an ironic expression of how Czechs always
identified with the comon state rather more, being in the "older
brother" position. The problem is that the natural place-name going
with "c~esky'" (Czech as adjective) and "C~ech" (a Czech as a person),
that is "C~echy", means just Bohemia (which has all those unpleasant
and confusing bohemian connotations in foreign languages, but let's
not go into the history of this one) - the western half of the state.
The other is Moravia ("Morava") - well, there's a bit of Silesia
("Slezsko") too, but let's not get too complicated, right? :-) The
England/Scotland analogy is as good as any that can be found, only we
have no distinctive term to serve in the unifying role of Britain (in
the 19th century, if it was necessary to say that the whole in the
historical kingdom's borders is meant, it was usually "lands of the
Czech crown" or "the Czech lands").
Something can, and used to, be solved by saying "C~echy a Morava"; but
after Czechoslovakia's end the need for one-word description came,
"C~eska' republika" and its counterpart in English, The Czech
Republic, is absurdly unwieldy for everyday use. (Frex when I
participated at the International Physics olympiad in 1994, ours was
the only of the two delegations which didn't have one-word name in the
official materials, besides the mysterious "Five individuals", who
turned out to be from [the remnant] Yugoslavia, thus circumventing the
UN embargo...) Moravians, and not only them, certainly didn't want
"C~echy" to be confusingly redefined; the dangling "C~esko-" we were
left with was the only viable option. It is analogous to other country
names in Czech a la "Rusko, Polsko, Holandsko, Finsko, Japonsko" etc.
and linguists could come up with examles of the use in this sense
going since the 17th or 18th century... but people weren't used to it
and didn't like it. What wars were waged in the opinions and letters
pages of newspapers! Quite recently I saw Vaclav Havel's statement
reiterated somewhere that he won't use it, even if he acknowledges all
the arguments for it, because it just makes him feel as if slugs
crawled down his spine.
(And it wasn't much better in German and English: ISTR an article
about some British newspaper doing a reader's poll for a suitable
term. Quite recently our foreign ministry issued some kind of official
recommendation to use "Czechia" in English, as the need for
unification was felt and there was a new, though somewhat smaller as
it concerned a foreign language, polemic: obviously our national
ice-hockey team, some exporters and even a ministry official felt "the
Czech" is a very nice noun for this use.)
The truth is that even I, who don't mind "C~esko", find it lends more
easily to negative or derisive statement. Hardly anybody would use it
in a book title now, let alone 7 years ago. However, where foreign
languages have not this problem, using their equivalent of Czechia is
probably better: it simply means "the Czech education of Czech girls"
and there's no sense bothering readers with the stuff I've just
bothered you with... :-)
> Thanks for the post.
Always glad to help - and then I have one anecdote about Viewegh's
love for Croatia still in store... :-)
> But we better get back on topic. :-)
Why, is there some rule we should, or what? :-))
> I remember hearing only about Ellison demolishing his critics.
>
> Verbally, of course.
>
> Are there any cases of a SF writer assaulting a critic?
I tried hard to steer away from the RAH/666/HiD/AP can of worms, but
you just HAD to go and open this one, right? :-)
And you frequent this newsgroup and yet you've never heard any version
of the infamous HE / Charles Platt story? Although I admit Platt
doesn't count here as "critic" in the usual sense of somebody speaking
badly about a work of fiction the author has published...
--
Jan Vanek [jr.] Jan.Va...@seznam.cz
"Ever done LSD?"
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
> Anna Feruglio Dal Dan wrote:
>
> [re Viewegh, in Italian]
>
> > Two titles, "The Education of Girls", and something called "This
> > wonderful dogs life", which was reviewed very favourably on one of the
> > best Italian weeklies, Diario, though not in a way that sent me out to
> > get it.
>
> Yes, this is that second novel of his that everybody liked.
>
> (BTW, isn't diario supposed to mean "daily" ? :-)
No, it means "diary". Originally it was "A diary of the week".
Supplement of a news daily. _Very_ good magazine if a little depressing.
Vlatko Juric-Kokic
wrote:
>> >["in Bohemia" vs "Czechia"]
>> >(the original title indeed has "v Cechach" and not "v Cesku",
>> >although more probably just from dislike for the term than to
>> >emphasize it doesn't take place in Moravia :-)
>>
>> Ah, then the title is badly translated, because Croatian has a
>> correspondent phrase that carries the same meaning, "u Hrvata".
>
>I'm afraid I don't understand you: I'd suppose "u Hrvata" will pertain
>to Croatia somehow (perhaps to distinguish similarly between The
>Croatian Republic and some sub-region of it, Croatia proper as opposed
>to, say, Slavonia and Dalmatia?), and not concern the dichotomy Cechy
>< Cesko we seemed to be talking about.
The title was translated as "Odgoj djevojaka u Cˇesˇkoj" (The
Education of Girls in Bohemia), but it should be properly translated
_The Education of Girls among the Czechs_. Or am I wrong?
The phrase "u Hrvata" means "among the Croats". It has jocular
overtones, but it's just politics. :-)
I didn't know about the dichotomy, although in English Czecho- *is*
awkward. There's no such problems in Croatian - Cˇesˇka is a perfectly
normal name, created just like many other country names - Slovacka
(Slovakia), Rumunjska (Romania), Poljska (Poland) and ... well,
Hrvatska. :-) It's a possessive form.
>> Thanks for the post.
>
>Always glad to help - and then I have one anecdote about Viewegh's
>love for Croatia still in store... :-)
Ah? :-)
>> But we better get back on topic. :-)
>
>Why, is there some rule we should, or what? :-))
Well, yes.
>> I remember hearing only about Ellison demolishing his critics.
>>
>> Verbally, of course.
>>
>> Are there any cases of a SF writer assaulting a critic?
>
>I tried hard to steer away from the RAH/666/HiD/AP can of worms, but
>you just HAD to go and open this one, right? :-)
>
>And you frequent this newsgroup and yet you've never heard any version
>of the infamous HE / Charles Platt story?
Never. Do tell.
Jorge Candeias
>
> writing, people will not take it seriously. And I don't mean the writers
> either. There is no incentive, and especially no incentive to doing it
> _well_. People who do it for their own satisfaction tend not to listen
> to criticism, and don't give a damn if they haven't got any readers.
Sorry to intrude, but that's not so, at least not entirely so. At least
some people who write for their own satisfaction do care about the
quality of what they produce. You see, if one produces with quality, one
gets more satisfied than if what one does stinks hard.
True, there's less tolerance to criticism, but that has more to do with
some immaturity of the writers for not having been exposed to real
critics (that are often extremely hard in what they say) than with
anything intrinsic to the amateurism of writing.
OTOH there's something called talent. People with talent will get at
least some recognition sooner or later. And there's also something
called oportunism. There are a lot talentless writers that get into the
SF scene simply because they want to publish *something* and it's easier
to publish crappy SF than crappy anything else because of the old
prejudice about SF being "idea-driven" and therefore not needing
linguistic skills...
Jorge Candeias
Jorge Candeias
> I think there is one Czech writer *at all* who makes a living just by
> writing fiction (he's supposed to be very popular in Croatia as well,
> at least by his press releases :-)
Hi there, from Portugal.
Well, the same could be said about this small country of mine. We have
one Nobel laureate that lives in the Canaries and does nothing but write
and attend to conferences, making a quite comfortable living out of it.
That's, of course, Saramago. Then, we have a couple more mainstreamers
that could make a not-so-comfortable living out of their writing but
don't, because it isn't comfortable enough for them. And in the SF
field, we have next to nothing.
Including authors. There's 3 or 4 SF authors here that are good enough
to get translated and published abroad, but, together, they produce 5 or
6 books per decade. Yes, this isn't a typo. I did mean decade. And most
of the books are short story collections, not novels.
What I think european SF really needs is to get known in Europe. Today,
there's no such a thing as an european SF. There's an italian, a polish,
a spanish, a portuguese, a croatian, a
whatever-of-the-remaining-50-or-so-european-countries SF but no european
SF. What we all know are anglophonous authors, nothing else.
We needed an europe-wide initiative to make us known in Europe, to get
things started. Something like the publishing in all adherent countries
of an anthology with "the best of european SF" translated into the
various languages involved. Or an europe-wide SF magazine, network of
fanzines or even webzines. Something of this sort...
Jorge Candeias
Jerry Friedman
> Jerry Friedman <jerry_f...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > I might refer to the English-speaking countries, English-language
> > writers, and so forth. These might not be exact translations of the
> > Italian term anglosassone (which I just looked up), since they don't
> > include French Canadians, but do include a long list of countries or
> > parts of countries not on your list (Guyana, Nigeria, the
> > Phillippines...).
>
> Yes: that's the reason "English speaking" doesn't satisfy me. There is a
> cultural milieu that takes in USA, UK, Canada, Australia and NZ, but
> leaves conspicously out Nigeria and the Philippines. It's there that SF
> has its largest market. And presumably spawning ground. Personally, I
> think there is a perceptible difference between, say, the USA and UK
> variety... but it vanishes into insignificance compared with French or
> Italian SF.
Wow, you got the sub-thread back on topic and corrected my spelling,
both at once! Anyway, English may not have the word you need. But I
think Martin could have said that SF has a mostly English-speaking
flavo(u)r, and we would have understood that Belize, for instance, was
not the main flavor he had in mind.
--
Jerry Friedman
Jordan S. Bassior
>Right now he seems to have found a nice little niche in Sf that panders
>to nostalgic of fascism.
What, _literal_ "fascism?" (this being Italy, I _have_ to ask that question!)
How does this work, exactly -- interstellar equivalents of Il Duce and the
Ethiopian War?
--
Sincerely Yours,
Jordan
--
"To urge the preparation of defence is not to assert the imminence of war. On
the contrary, if war were imminent, preparations for defense would be too
late." (Churchill, 1934)
--
David T. Bilek
wrote:
>Anna Feruglio Dal Dan said:
>
>>Right now he seems to have found a nice little niche in Sf that panders
>>to nostalgic of fascism.
>
>What, _literal_ "fascism?" (this being Italy, I _have_ to ask that question!)
>
Anna will have to answer the question to be certain, but I suspect so,
yes. I'll bet you'll love this one... Tolkien fandom overlaps
significantly with neo-fascism in Italy. There are/were "hobbit
camps" for neo-fascists and things like that.
It's amazing what you learn on Usenet.
-David
Jordan S. Bassior
>Anna will have to answer the question to be certain, but I suspect so,
>yes. I'll bet you'll love this one... Tolkien fandom overlaps
>significantly with neo-fascism in Italy. There are/were "hobbit
>camps" for neo-fascists and things like that.
That is just so _weird_ ... I have this bizarre image now of short, stout,
hairy-footed people wearing black shirts and marching in step ...
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
> Sorry to intrude, but that's not so, at least not entirely so. At least
> some people who write for their own satisfaction do care about the
> quality of what they produce. You see, if one produces with quality, one
> gets more satisfied than if what one does stinks hard.
Oh yes. Some. My experience in the field of Italian SF is that the
threshold for being publishable is so low (due to a lot of people
lacking talent, or skill), that even people who have a great deal of
talent don't sweat it. There are, to be sure, also people who overdo it
and become posed and artificial because they try _too hard_. Neither the
first nor the second kind gets told what the problem is with their
writing. First of all because it would be embarassing; and secondly,
because they're so vastly superior to the average aspiring writers
anyway.
>
> True, there's less tolerance to criticism, but that has more to do with
> some immaturity of the writers for not having been exposed to real
> critics (that are often extremely hard in what they say) than with
> anything intrinsic to the amateurism of writing.
I totally agree with you. But the fact that the market is so small and
unrewarding plays some role in the absence of criticism. I don't refer
to outside criticism mainly - what we lack is _editors_. You may get
published without anybody having a look at your work and beating it into
a better shape.
>
> OTOH there's something called talent. People with talent will get at
> least some recognition sooner or later. And there's also something
> called oportunism. There are a lot talentless writers that get into the
> SF scene simply because they want to publish *something* and it's easier
> to publish crappy SF than crappy anything else because of the old
> prejudice about SF being "idea-driven" and therefore not needing
> linguistic skills...
In Italy we'be doing great progress if we came to the "idea-driven"
concept of SF. Right now, we're at the stage "he knows his grammar". I
know what I'm speaking of: I've been in the pre-jury of the Urania
Award. This means that a representative sample of the manuscripts
submitted to the major SF publisher in Italy (_not_ the slushpile,
actually: everybody, even "established writers", which means people who
have been publishing in the fanzines for a long time, sends their stuff
to the Urania Award. It's the only way to get published by Mondadori)
passed through my hands. Well, the ones that were passed on to the final
jury were, more or less, not the "good" novels (there weren't any that
year in the batch I read - well, there was one, IMHO, but did not make
it to the final jury), but those things written on papers that could be
called, sometimes with a little bit of charity, "novels". They were
written in correct Italian, had a plot, and sometimes even characters.
The one who won was an obviously talented guy who boasted, in an
interview, of being able to produce several dozen pages a day, in his
free time, and went on to say that he wasn't of the school that wented
real writers to sweat every word. The trouble is, it showed. And when
the editors for the line told him that they had to change the title of
his novel, he went on to rage about this (on the same interview) as if
it was a lese majeste crime.
Yes, talent is recognized. Sometimes. Sometimes that's exactely the
problem. :-) Very little talent, and very raw, can carry you a long way
here.
M-cube
Nothing to do with the right-wing fantasy problem.
The answer is that in the search for Italian authors they published this:
http://www.uchronia.net/bib.cgi/label.html?id=farnoccide
that has also been reviewed here
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,3-124654,00.html
I read it: an alternative history with a lot of mystic and esoteric stuff in
it.
M.
--
Maurizio M. Munafo' / mmmu...@netscape.net
"Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you" (T.S.Eliot)
Vlatko Juric-Kokic
<jorgec...@netc.pt> wrote:
>We needed an europe-wide initiative to make us known in Europe, to get
>things started. Something like the publishing in all adherent countries
>of an anthology with "the best of european SF" translated into the
>various languages involved. Or an europe-wide SF magazine, network of
>fanzines or even webzines. Something of this sort...
Fanzine ... well, there was Babel-On, if I remember the title of Fiona
Anderson's fanzine correctly, which dealt with European fandom issues.
The problem with a "European SF magazine" would be the perceived low
quality of the things written around Europe. At first, at least.
The second problem would be a lingua franca. I suppose everything
could be translated to English, though.
The third problem is definitely the familiarity with certain-language
SF. I don't speak Portuguese or German, for instance. The logistics of
finding somebody reliable and knowledgeable for every language
involved is quite daunting. Frex, what do you know about me and my
tastes and my level of experience and so on? I could recommend total
garbage. What would you do with such stories? And it wouldn't do to
publish bad stories.
But the idea *is* interesting.
Martin Wisse
wrote:
>ada...@nit.it.invalid (Anna Feruglio Dal Dan) wrote in message news:<1evs0vf.uwth75dbig5mN%ada...@nit.it.invalid>...
>> Yes: that's the reason "English speaking" doesn't satisfy me. There is a
>> cultural milieu that takes in USA, UK, Canada, Australia and NZ, but
>> leaves conspicously out Nigeria and the Philippines. It's there that SF
>> has its largest market. And presumably spawning ground. Personally, I
>> think there is a perceptible difference between, say, the USA and UK
>> variety... but it vanishes into insignificance compared with French or
>> Italian SF.
>
>Wow, you got the sub-thread back on topic and corrected my spelling,
>both at once! Anyway, English may not have the word you need. But I
>think Martin could have said that SF has a mostly English-speaking
>flavo(u)r, and we would have understood that Belize, for instance, was
>not the main flavor he had in mind.
Exactly. We constantly talk about UKian or USian science fiction here,
the occasional author from another English speaking country like
Australia, New Zealand or Canada who ends up being published in the UK
or US that it makes little sense to start a thread about European
fiction and include the UK.
We _know_ about the UK.
We do not know much about France, Germany, Italy, Croatia, Czechie (why
the hell did you have to split up, you guys?) or other European
countries. But these days we do have posters from those countries,
people who are aware about the sf traditions of their countries and can
hopefully tell us about it. Even if I'll never read the authors they
mention, it still interests me.
In some ways the sf world is an insular one, far less likely then
mainstream fiction to pay attention to non English speaking authors.
Martin Wisse
--
Gah. You know there's people apparently paying for pr0n feeds
for their cellphone.
Yeah, I know. I helped build the infrastructure.
Peter da Silva and Matt McLeod, SDM
Jan Vanek jr.
> What I think european SF really needs is to get known in Europe. Today,
> there's no such a thing as an european SF. There's an italian, a polish,
> a spanish, a portuguese, a croatian, a
> whatever-of-the-remaining-50-or-so-european-countries SF but no european
> SF. What we all know are anglophonous authors, nothing else.
>
> things started.
There's a EU regulation that TV must broadcast some percentage, I
think now it's 50% right now, of Europe-produced material. (Only...
the German and Austrian crime and, especially, action series seem even
more cliched and unbelievable than the American to me. And of course,
the director of THE Czech private TV station - very long, though
nicely bizarre story; I guess some basic info in English can be dug up
from the Central Europe Review, www.ce-review.org; basically our
miniature Berlusconi, only he hasn't bothered starting a party so far,
but then he doesn't need to - always threatens to fill the quota with
after-midnight Bavarian porn. _Love Greetings from the Leather Pants_
etc...)
Now if we could put together a lobby... :-) In fact, some SF Support
Act would be enough. Subsidise Books, Not Milk!
> Something like the publishing in all adherent countries
> of an anthology with "the best of european SF" translated into the
> various languages involved. Or an europe-wide SF magazine, network of
> fanzines or even webzines. Something of this sort...
A couple of years ago I heard about an attempt to do something like
that, a European anthology with even a chance to get some EU grant.
Nothing ever came out of it, although it may be only because the main
proponent got sidetracked and appointed as the Czech ambassador to
Zimbabwe and surrounding countries. He used to be VERY persuasive - I
mean, he's already managed to publish a thin anthology of Czech SF in
Ndebele language as a part of the local governments' "literature to
schools" programme :-)
Wouldn't any of the Dutch people here know anything? I seem to recall
Roeloff Goudriaan was involved somehow...
--
Jan Vanek jr.
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
> Nothing to do with the right-wing fantasy problem.
> The answer is that in the search for Italian authors they published this:
>
> http://www.uchronia.net/bib.cgi/label.html?id=farnoccide
>
> that has also been reviewed here
>
> http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,3-124654,00.html
Note that I didn't say that the book _was_ a fascist nostalgia thing,
something the author seems to go to some lengths to deny: I said it
_panders_ to people pining for those days. (Though people who have read
the thing have espressed suspicions. But I haven't, and I can't say,
though I should bring myself to read it.)
Nord also published a collection of stories called "Le aereonavi dei
Savoia" (Savoia being the ruling family in Italy until '48), which aims
at re-descovering the roots of SF in Italy during the '20s and '30. The
collection itself can't but be of high historical value (as for its
literary value, people appear to be lukewarm, but I am _not_ going to
read this, I'm not into antiquaria), but the curator, a perfectly nice
and likeable gentleman let me add, has always been a staunch supporter
of the heirs of the Fascist regime, and has a very ideological view of
SF, what is it and should be.
So, let's say that both books aim at a particular market niche.
Jorge Candeias
> My experience in the field of Italian SF is that the
> threshold for being publishable is so low (due to a lot of people
> lacking talent, or skill), that even people who have a great deal of
> talent don't sweat it.
Well, here it also happens, but those that have the talent don't sweat
it simply by not writing. This, of course, leaves the ground open for
those that do not have the talent (and, of course, reduces the
credibility of portuguese-written SF, and reduces sales, and reduces the
possibility of one day having *a* portuguese alive and well).
It has also some plus'es, such as allowing *me* to publish... ;-)
> There are, to be sure, also people who overdo it
> and become posed and artificial because they try _too hard_.
Hum... I don't think we have those, but I may be wrong - the strangest
thing in the genre in Portugal is that there is people publishing SF
books that nobody knows, nobody has ever met and that know nobody in the
portuguese fandom. It's really strange.
> Neither the
> first nor the second kind gets told what the problem is with their
> writing. First of all because it would be embarassing; and secondly,
> because they're so vastly superior to the average aspiring writers
> anyway.
What do yo say about Stefano Benni? It's the only italian SF writer
published in Portugal, at least in recent years (not counting Calvino,
of course), in a collection that gave us also some hints on french,
finnish, polish, russian, ucranian and czech SF...
> > True, there's less tolerance to criticism, but that has more to do with
> > some immaturity of the writers for not having been exposed to real
> > critics (that are often extremely hard in what they say) than with
> > anything intrinsic to the amateurism of writing.
>
> I totally agree with you. But the fact that the market is so small and
> unrewarding plays some role in the absence of criticism. I don't refer
> to outside criticism mainly - what we lack is _editors_. You may get
> published without anybody having a look at your work and beating it into
> a better shape.
Right on. And that also happens in the mainstream literary world. Things
tend to rely more on networks of friends than on intrinsic qualities.
Speaking of critics, I guess it would be useful to make clear that
critics from outside the SF world are too often biased relative to SF
(usually, but not always, against it) due to ignorance. They don't know
the paradigma, what is involved in writing SF, they don't know previous
works (and often treat some works that are blatantly old-fashoned as
filled with originality), they don't know what's being done today, etc.
And this strongly reduces their ability to evaluate SF beyond the sheer
linguistics of it.
A good SF critic has to be someone from within. But in small fandoms
such as the average european fandom, you're stuck with the sad fact that
someone from within is directly involved in some other way. You have to
work very hard to build a credibility despite all that.
> > OTOH there's something called talent. People with talent will get at
> > least some recognition sooner or later. And there's also something
> > called oportunism. There are a lot talentless writers that get into the
> > SF scene simply because they want to publish *something* and it's easier
> > to publish crappy SF than crappy anything else because of the old
> > prejudice about SF being "idea-driven" and therefore not needing
> > linguistic skills...
>
> In Italy we'be doing great progress if we came to the "idea-driven"
> concept of SF. Right now, we're at the stage "he knows his grammar".
Yeah, same here. Although there is still some poorly-written stuff
getting published, that's becoming rarer and rarer.
I must say, though, that that isn't 100% good either. We have a writer,
Daniel Tércio, who published his first novel in the 80's after having
received a sort of a honorable mention in the Caminho contest (our
equivalent of Urania - that seems to be dead now... :-( ). It's a quite
poorly written story of alternate universes that I wouldn't publish if I
where an editor. However, today he's writing very, very well, at least
linguistically speaking. And he's just an example - there are more. Now,
what would have happened if his first book stayed in his pile of
unpublished stuff? He probably wouldn't have written his best stuff and
our SF (as in Speculative Fiction - he's more in the fantastic area
these days) would have become poorer...
> And when
> the editors for the line told him that they had to change the title of
> his novel, he went on to rage about this (on the same interview) as if
> it was a lese majeste crime.
:-)
I personally can understand the guy. I'm in the process of polishing a
short story to get it published in an anthology in Brazil (it'll be my
fist story to appear on book), and I have to understand the reasons
behind each suggestion from the editor. Sometimes I agree with them, and
I change (the title, for one, was one of the first things to be
changed), sometimes I don't, and what follows is a long process of
negotiations. ;-)
The point is: editors aren't always right, much the same way authors
aren't always right. And when an editor makes demands that are simply
idiotic, you *should* refuse them. This also happened to me last year
with another editor, this time portuguese, also for an anthology - and
my short story did not get published...
> Yes, talent is recognized. Sometimes. Sometimes that's exactely the
> problem. :-) Very little talent, and very raw, can carry you a long way
> here.
Here is more or less the same, although our editors seem to bet less in
our SF than your editors, and we have to compete with the great names
for the attention of the public, which is also a good reason to try your
best when writing...
Jorge
Jorge Candeias
> There's a EU regulation that TV must broadcast some percentage, I
> think now it's 50% right now, of Europe-produced material. (Only...
> the German and Austrian crime and, especially, action series seem even
> more cliched and unbelievable than the American to me.
Well, that's the problem with that kind of "affirmative-action"
regulations and subsidies: if you know you'll get it done with little
effort, why trying harder? :(
> Now if we could put together a lobby... :-) In fact, some SF Support
> Act would be enough. Subsidise Books, Not Milk!
OTOH, if you get it done with, you'll still be competing with the Major
Names for the audiences, so...
Down with the milk!!! ;-)
> > Something like the publishing in all adherent countries
> > of an anthology with "the best of european SF" translated into the
> > various languages involved. Or an europe-wide SF magazine, network of
> > fanzines or even webzines. Something of this sort...
>
> A couple of years ago I heard about an attempt to do something like
> that, a European anthology with even a chance to get some EU grant.
> Nothing ever came out of it, although it may be only because the main
> proponent got sidetracked and appointed as the Czech ambassador to
> Zimbabwe and surrounding countries. He used to be VERY persuasive - I
> mean, he's already managed to publish a thin anthology of Czech SF in
> Ndebele language as a part of the local governments' "literature to
> schools" programme :-)
Hum... that sounds just the man we'd need... ;-)
OTOH, I'm in that group of people who thinks that things get done better
if you start small and then expand than the other way around. In the
current state of affairs, a network of collaborating webzines across
Europe would be already a great start...
Jorge
Jon Ivars
> Jorge Candeias <jorgec...@netc.pt> wrote in message news:<3B3CF873...@netc.pt>...
> > What I think european SF really needs is to get known in Europe. Today,
> > there's no such a thing as an european SF. There's an italian, a polish,
> > a spanish, a portuguese, a croatian, a
> > whatever-of-the-remaining-50-or-so-european-countries SF but no european
> > SF. What we all know are anglophonous authors, nothing else.
Depends on what you classify as SF. There are a fair amount of well known
authors who have written something that could be classified as SF but
gets placed in some other section in the libraries and bookshops. Some
like Astrid Lindgren and Tove Jansson (who died this Wednesday *sigh*)
wrote children's books that could easily be classified as juvenile Fantasy
or SF but are often not classified as such. Though in Tove Jansson's case
some of the Moominbooks she wrote could hardly be called children's books
(contrary to popular perceptions).
In the category of clearly SF but of the weird kind we could include Harry
Martinsson's Aniara. An SF novel in the form of poetry. Famous in its time
but nowadays sliding into obscurity.
However, in Scandinavia it is rather rare for authors to manage to
publish works that are explicitly science fiction. And if it is SF, then
it's an even bet it's juvenile SF.
> There's a EU regulation that TV must broadcast some percentage, I
> think now it's 50% right now, of Europe-produced material. (Only...
> the German and Austrian crime and, especially, action series seem even
> more cliched and unbelievable than the American to me. And of course,
Hmm, German crime series involving private detectives do tend towards the
cliched but they have made some very fine police series. Der Alte (before
the cast change) and Derrick comes to mind. Unfortunately, recent German
crime series are very cliched, taking after Hollywood in the worst way.
Though the German ripoff of Law & Order was decent if it hadn't been such
a blatant, well, ripoff.
> the director of THE Czech private TV station - very long, though
> nicely bizarre story; I guess some basic info in English can be dug up
> from the Central Europe Review, www.ce-review.org; basically our
> miniature Berlusconi, only he hasn't bothered starting a party so far,
> but then he doesn't need to - always threatens to fill the quota with
> after-midnight Bavarian porn. _Love Greetings from the Leather Pants_
> etc...)
How is that a threat? Everyboy knows Bavarian porn is classy and
intellectually stimulating... or so I have heard.
--
Jon Ivars Visit my webpages at http://www.abo.fi/~jivars/
"When I am right, I get angry. Churchill gets angry when he
is wrong. So we were often angry at each other." De Gaulle
Mark Atwood
>
> OTOH, I'm in that group of people who thinks that things get done better
> if you start small and then expand than the other way around.
"Every large system that works started as a small system that worked."
-- The Third Law of Systems Design
--
Mark Atwood | I'm wearing black only until I find something darker.
m...@pobox.com | http://www.pobox.com/~mra
Martin Wisse
wrote:
>A couple of years ago I heard about an attempt to do something like
>that, a European anthology with even a chance to get some EU grant.
>Nothing ever came out of it, although it may be only because the main
>proponent got sidetracked and appointed as the Czech ambassador to
>Zimbabwe and surrounding countries. He used to be VERY persuasive - I
>mean, he's already managed to publish a thin anthology of Czech SF in
>Ndebele language as a part of the local governments' "literature to
>schools" programme :-)
>
>Wouldn't any of the Dutch people here know anything? I seem to recall
>Roeloff Goudriaan was involved somehow...
Sorry, I know nothign about that, being from a slightly later
generationf of sf fan as Roelof. He's living in Ireland atm, so it's a
bit difficult to speak to him either.
There have been comics projects getting subsidy from various goberments,
so it isn't totally impossible for sf projects to get funding, I think.
Martin Wisse
--
The Shrub never inhaled. He snorted.
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
> > Neither the
> > first nor the second kind gets told what the problem is with their
> > writing. First of all because it would be embarassing; and secondly,
> > because they're so vastly superior to the average aspiring writers
> > anyway.
>
> What do yo say about Stefano Benni? It's the only italian SF writer
> published in Portugal, at least in recent years (not counting Calvino,
> of course), in a collection that gave us also some hints on french,
> finnish, polish, russian, ucranian and czech SF...
Stefano Benni isn't an SF writer; he's great, but he's as much of an SF
writer as Pynchon is.
> > And when
> > the editors for the line told him that they had to change the title of
> > his novel, he went on to rage about this (on the same interview) as if
> > it was a lese majeste crime.
>
> :-)
>
> I personally can understand the guy.
Ah! Because you don't know him! :-)
William December Starr
mwi...@ad-astra.demon.nl (Martin Wisse) said:
>>> Unlike in mainstream fiction, translated European writers are far
>>> and few between. Yet surely there must be some interesting sf
>>> being written in Germany, France, Croatia, Spain or Italy?
>>> [Martin Wisse]
>>
>> Overall, I think I'd best refrain from giving my opinion on this
>> matter. [Anna Feruglio Dal Dan]
>
> But Anna, I was hoping you would add your two dimes....
Perhaps you should have asked for her 456.45 lira.
(Hmm. That was somewhat funnier in the contemplation than it turned
out to be in cold print.)
-- William December Starr <wds...@panix.com>
Priv.-Doz. Dr. Dirk van den Boom
William December Starr schrieb:
> Perhaps you should have asked for her 456.45 lira.
>
> (Hmm. That was somewhat funnier in the contemplation than it turned
> out to be in cold print.)
Well, one of the last occasions to make that joke.
Finally, from 1st of January next year, you'll ask for her two cent as
well...
Just reminding.
Yours
Dirk
Priv.-Doz. Dr. Dirk van den Boom
> Sorry, I know nothign about that, being from a slightly later
> generationf of sf fan as Roelof. He's living in Ireland atm, so it's a
> bit difficult to speak to him either.
One of the few Dutch fans I really heard of here in Germany. Hey, and
that's despite the fact that the Netherlands are more or less a federal
state of Germany.
Uh... Martin, what do you want to do with THAT B I G laserbeam??
> There have been comics projects getting subsidy from various goberments,
> so it isn't totally impossible for sf projects to get funding, I think.
Anyway, why is there always this drive to call for government subsidy
here and there? If you see, how much European presses are already
interconnected by ownership - think of the Bertelsmann Consortium, which
might be Germany-based, but possesses publishing houses everywhere in
the world - there should be no problem to start a European SF-series
just for and through the market. But, sure, you have to start with the
action-oriented "sure-sellers" - before you publish the "high
literature", there has to be a basis.
Yours
Dirk
Priv.-Doz. Dr. Dirk van den Boom
> How is that a threat? Everyboy knows Bavarian porn is classy and
> intellectually stimulating... or so I have heard.
*argh*
SCNR
yours
Dirk
Jan Vanek jr.
> >> >[Viewegh's title, "in Bohemia" vs "Czechia"]
> >> >(the original title indeed has "v Cechach" and not "v Cesku",
> >> >although more probably just from dislike for the term than to
> >> >emphasize it doesn't take place in Moravia :-)
> >>
> >> Ah, then the title is badly translated, because Croatian has a
> >> correspondent phrase that carries the same meaning, "u Hrvata".
> >
>
> The title was translated as "Odgoj djevojaka u Cˇesˇkoj" (The
> Education of Girls in Bohemia), but it should be properly translated
> _The Education of Girls among the Czechs_. Or am I wrong?
>
> The phrase "u Hrvata" means "among the Croats". It has jocular
> overtones, but it's just politics. :-)
>
> I didn't know about the dichotomy, although in English Czecho- *is*
> awkward. There's no such problems in Croatian - Cˇesˇka is a perfectly
> normal name, created just like many other country names - Slovacka
> (Slovakia), Rumunjska (Romania), Poljska (Poland) and ... well,
> Hrvatska. :-) It's a possessive form.
Oh, now (I think) I see. The problem (I actually began to mention it
last time and then deleted it for too much off-topicness, now this
will teach me :-) is that "C~echy" (Bohemia) is a plural form, with
the type of declination used for unliving things (Czechs the people
are "C~es~i", with similar small but crucial differences in most other
forms). I don't really know why this is so, the only other example of
a plural as a place-name that comes to my mind are "Flandry", but
perhaps there is some possessive derivation as well: in archaic use,
it was said "ve Francouzi'ch, ve Spaneli'ch, v Nemci'ch", i. e.
literally "in the Frenchmen, in the Spaniards, in the Germans" meaning
in the given country.
So "v C~echa'ch" really means just "in Bohemia", "v C~es~i'ch" would
be "in the Czechs", not make sense here. But you CAN say "u C~echu'"
(among the Czechs), although the first meaning that comes to mind,
especially in this context, would be "in the C~ech family", i. e. one
with the surname C~ech. It can be used for whole nations, but isn't
too frequently.
> >> I remember hearing only about Ellison demolishing his critics.
> >>
> >> Verbally, of course.
> >>
> >> Are there any cases of a SF writer assaulting a critic?
> >
> >[...] you frequent this newsgroup and yet you've never heard any version
> >of the infamous HE / Charles Platt story?
>
> Never. Do tell.
I certainly am not the right the person to do so, as my version is
probably pretty confused; but Ansible 77 contains Platt's short
account of it. Ansible used to have an index of all Ellison-related
affairs that penetrated to its pages (for example there was a similar
one with Christopher Priest, although I think that he was only
promised a punch and again, does The Book on the Edge of Forever count
as a literary criticism? :-) in the "Ansible Time Tours", which lately
seems to have disappeared from its web, although the file itself can
still be found by FTP; damn, I found this months ago and still haven't
got around to telling Dave Langford about it. And there might even be
the opposite side of it at one of Ellison's official sites, at least
they figured prominently among quite a lot of pages a websearch on
'"Harlan Ellison" AND Platt' provided...
--
Jan Vanek jr.
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
> Well, one of the last occasions to make that joke.
> Finally, from 1st of January next year, you'll ask for her two cent as
> well...
>
> Just reminding.
And you did well. I just realize I need a shareware euroconverter.
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
> > There have been comics projects getting subsidy from various goberments,
> > so it isn't totally impossible for sf projects to get funding, I think.
>
> Anyway, why is there always this drive to call for government subsidy
> here and there?
Because they work. See the current renaissance of good Italian cinema.
Then a virtuos circle can ensue. We hope. Certainly, _I Cento Passi_ is
_still_ being shown here and there, and is still making money. So's _Le
Fate Ignoranti_. Both subsidized, IIRC.
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
> Priv.-Doz. Dr. Dirk van den Boom <d.b...@mx.uni-saarland.de> wrote:
>
> > Well, one of the last occasions to make that joke.
> > Finally, from 1st of January next year, you'll ask for her two cent as
> > well...
> >
> > Just reminding.
>
> And you did well. I just realize I need a shareware euroconverter.
Hmmm. Two cents is 49 liras. Just _one_ very sought-after 50 liras coin
then. :-)
Prices in liras are impressive. How much did you pay for the concert
last night? 10.000 liras. Wow. :-)
Priv.-Doz. Dr. Dirk van den Boom
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan schrieb:
>
> Priv.-Doz. Dr. Dirk van den Boom <d.b...@mx.uni-saarland.de> wrote:
>
> > > There have been comics projects getting subsidy from various goberments,
> > > so it isn't totally impossible for sf projects to get funding, I think.
> >
> > Anyway, why is there always this drive to call for government subsidy
> > here and there?
>
> Because they work.
Yes, they CAN work. But they also can fail. In fact, if I recall the
money given out to subsidize German Cinema, I see that more than 70 % of
those movies supported either never entered the cinemas or were complete
and utter flops. They ended here in - government-subsidized - public
tv-channels with only few interested in them.
There are always success-stories, no question. But can "some"
success-stories be the argument in favour of using tax-payer's money to
subsidize the failures as well? And, if not, why don't we just save the
money, reduce the tax and let there be private sponsors who make a
"private subsidy" for a movie or a book on their own risk because they
feel it is an important work - or just leave it to the market to decide?
I'm very much in favour of subsidies. I just prefer to subsidize
projects and books and small press publishers by patronizing them
extensively for them so survive and continue their work which would be
otherwise unprofitable - than that a government takes my money and wants
to decide on my behalf.
yours
Dirk
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
> There are always success-stories, no question. But can "some"
> success-stories be the argument in favour of using tax-payer's money to
> subsidize the failures as well? And, if not, why don't we just save the
> money, reduce the tax and let there be private sponsors who make a
> "private subsidy" for a movie or a book on their own risk because they
> feel it is an important work - or just leave it to the market to decide?
Because there's no guarantee the private sponsors or the market would
sponsorize things the community at large values. They might go for the
lowest common denominator - that's what happened to Italian cinema -
and, most importantly, to Italian TV. Anybody who has an idea of what
Italian TV became thanks to the good offices of free market can get my
drift, I think. Movies everybody went to see (well, almost everybody: I
never did) and everybody thought stupid and gross.
Subsidies can be given in a very stupid or in an intelligent manner.
Ours have been given to friends and relatives of key figures in the
bureaucracy of the Ministry for ages. Then a young, bright and serious
minister came to office - a little slip of blonde girl - and lo and
behold, subsidised film began to attract the masses and make money and
win awards. Doing it badly doesn't mean that it can't be done well: just
that the people who are doing it aren't doing their job and should be
kicked out of office.
I am _deliriously_ in favor of my tax money going to culture, as opposed
to paying though my nose for almost everything I buy to subsidize
advertisement on TV.
Priv.-Doz. Dr. Dirk van den Boom
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan schrieb:
>
> Priv.-Doz. Dr. Dirk van den Boom <d.b...@mx.uni-saarland.de> wrote:
> And, if not, why don't we just save the
> > money, reduce the tax and let there be private sponsors who make a
> > "private subsidy" for a movie or a book on their own risk because they
> > feel it is an important work - or just leave it to the market to decide?
>
> Because there's no guarantee the private sponsors or the market would
> sponsorize things the community at large values.
Of course not. You don't have this guarantee with public subsidies as
well - you gave a good example yourself. And: How do you find out what
the community at large values? You yourself confessed that most of the
things which have been sponsored didn't fit your own taste.
> They might go for the
> lowest common denominator - that's what happened to Italian cinema -
> and, most importantly, to Italian TV.
Might. Might not. As long as you have a culture of "the government will
take care of that", those who might think otherwise will keep their
money.
> Anybody who has an idea of what
> Italian TV became thanks to the good offices of free market can get my
> drift, I think. Movies everybody went to see (well, almost everybody: I
> never did) and everybody thought stupid and gross.
Sure. But there are also those who might sponsor the good one's. Never
know. As long as the government is approved to be the one to sponsor the
good one's and mostly fails to do so, no one will show up.
> Subsidies can be given in a very stupid or in an intelligent manner.
> Ours have been given to friends and relatives of key figures in the
> bureaucracy of the Ministry for ages.
And still, you like the general idea of government subsidies in culture?
Strange :o)
> Then a young, bright and serious
> minister came to office - a little slip of blonde girl - and lo and
> behold, subsidised film began to attract the masses and make money and
> win awards.
Good. What will your opinion be when the bright and serious minister
will leave the office and another stupid moron will be in charge of your
tax money?
> Doing it badly doesn't mean that it can't be done well: just
> that the people who are doing it aren't doing their job and should be
> kicked out of office.
Which is decided by whom? Taste cannot be decided as a question of
democratic majorities.
> I am _deliriously_ in favor of my tax money going to culture, as opposed
> to paying though my nose for almost everything I buy to subsidize
> advertisement on TV.
I would prefer that those who are deliriously in favour of subsidizing
cultural products which would be otherwise unprofitable or unmarketable
do this according to their taste and abilities autonomously - and not by
government intervention. I would take part in as many as subsidy-actions
like this myself. I could do even more if the government would stop
meddling in culture and give the money back in my pocket. Other's won't,
I presume. Well, that's bad luck then.
Yours
Dirk
Martin Wisse
<d.b...@mx.uni-saarland.de> wrote:
>Hi Martin,
>
>> Sorry, I know nothign about that, being from a slightly later
>> generationf of sf fan as Roelof. He's living in Ireland atm, so it's a
>> bit difficult to speak to him either.
>
>One of the few Dutch fans I really heard of here in Germany. Hey, and
>that's despite the fact that the Netherlands are more or less a federal
>state of Germany.
>
>Uh... Martin, what do you want to do with THAT B I G laserbeam??
Ich wohlte Meiner fahrad zuruck!
>> There have been comics projects getting subsidy from various goberments,
>> so it isn't totally impossible for sf projects to get funding, I think.
>
>Anyway, why is there always this drive to call for government subsidy
>here and there? If you see, how much European presses are already
>interconnected by ownership - think of the Bertelsmann Consortium, which
>might be Germany-based, but possesses publishing houses everywhere in
>the world - there should be no problem to start a European SF-series
>just for and through the market. But, sure, you have to start with the
>action-oriented "sure-sellers" - before you publish the "high
>literature", there has to be a basis.
Trouble is, the big commercial publishers are not all that interested in
science fiction, let alone European science fiction.
In the Netherlands sf publishing is a marginal business and the big
publishers only publish translations and usually only "guaranteed
bestsellers", like Terry Brooks, Tolkien, Vance (we _love_ Vance) and
the various "classic" sf authiors like Asimov or Clarke. Heck, David
Weber's Honor Harrington series was rejected by at least one publisher
as being "not commercial viable" and the author pushing it was a fan of
the series.
Now try and convince one of those publishers to publish books by an
unknown Chzech, Italian or Croatian author, which means higher
translation costs while it will be difficult to get the books to even
break even?
It's all but impossible to get them to publish _Dutch_ science fiction:
the only publisher who does that regulary and was set up to do so, is
more a fan undertaking then a "real" publisher, the Dutch equivalent of
NESFA Press, so to speak.
Martin Wisse
--
if brunette is AI... Windows is a Blonde
-Lady Kayla in #afp
Jan Vanek jr.
> >> Thanks for the post.
> >
> >Always glad to help - and then I have one anecdote about Viewegh's
> >love for Croatia still in store... :-)
>
> Ah? :-)
To put it shortly, he can appreciate when he's appreciated.
I don't know how this started, but when Viewegh's second novel taking
place in the 80es, The Wonderful Years of Dog's Life or however it
should be translated, was filmed, it was in a co-production with
Croatia, at least I think so (I am not sure, none of the Czech online
movie sources I could find consider this a detail worth noting),
consisting mainly of providing an actress for the role of a pretty
colleague the hero's father falls in love with when he is after a
period of the regime's disgrace finally allowed to go at least to a
business trip to Yugoslavia, inviting her back home to the great
displeasure of the family. Perhaps there were some sea-side scenes
added, I haven't seen it and go just by a vague memory of reviews.
About that time Viewegh also began to be translated and popular in
Croatia. Again I'm not sure, but wasn't some book of his even
dramatised there for theatre? He certainly was invited to a writers'
festival in Split or some other picturesque town and he liked it much,
he wrote about in in one of his newspaper columns. I think in another
he processes some observations from his holiday in Croatia. Anyway,
his following novel (its title has several different translations of
varying degrees of "officialness", but it can be summed up as _The
Tourists_) describes the holiday of a group of Czechs in an Italian
resort. As he said in an interview, it is also going to be made into a
film or even TV series. He's writing the screenplay and one of the
changes he has to make is to move the venue to Croatia, as it is again
co-produced by them. All right, that's quite a reasonable request to
make and doesn't matter to the story. But now watch this one:
Last spring, there was quite a sensation when some advertising boards
inside the cars of Prague underground began to show open letters...
love letters. Some M. imploring his A. to return to him, in a pretty
well-written manner: quoting poetry, noting what Dr. Z. whom he still
must visit told him, hinting she obviously can't be happy with the
idiot she left him for and ridiculing the requests to stop which she,
with the new friend, sent him... Six letters in the same number of
months; it was much talked about, the story made it into the TV news
curiosity slot (shots of giggling girls and earnest women saying how
nice this is and that _their_ boyfriends would not do this for them),
more serious commentaries were written how this phenomenon shows us
something about the era we live in etc...
This April it was revealed that it all was a hoax, written by Viewegh
whose new book (it's called "A Women's Novel") incorporates the
letters into the story. It seems (I missed some of the fuss about it
and he said it just implicitly in the rest) he was originally
approached by the advertising agency to do something in the way of
"work of art in the public space" movement, so he did and was
satisfied with the outcome - it indeed had more impact than clasical
poems in the underground or a painting here and there at tramway stops
- and only later thought of writing a book around it, so it was not a
cold-blooded publicity stunt. In one of the most stupid programmes of
our commercial TV (and there's quite a competition!), something like
"the homes and lives of the famous", he was shown with print-outs of
the letters with some hand-written correction, talking about how he
had to change some details: like, his heroes and minor characters are
called differently, I think some references to the time of the year
have been changed... and where the original "writer" reminisced about
the happy holiday with Her in Italy, in the letter in the book (and
some scenes) there's Croatia again.
Now why he did the change just in THIS step, I don't understand. But
perhaps he has a contract with the Croatia Tourist Bureau? :-)
To recompense the others who have read so far (if there are any :-)
before I end with Viewegh for good, there are at least two quite short
stories by him in English online so you can have a look to decide
whether to read any of his books available in your favourite bookstore
:-) The one at his "official" site
(http://www.viewegh.cz/vieweghen.html ) just illustrates how generally
botched that page is: it's a parody (among his weaker, IMHO) of
Kundera, but, as even the footnote has to explain, of an early work
never translated to English and depending on the Czech milieu.
http://pwf.globalone.cz/1999/AutoriEn/Viewegh.htm is him trying for
depth under the light veneer; rather forcedly in my opinion, but some
reviews and a friend whose taste I respect praised it as among the
best in the colection. Anyway, to fully appreciate it one must clearly
be if not divorced, at least married, which I am not.
Correction: there are two stories in English on Czech websites. A
little googling, just to be sure, showed (gotta love that engine) that
a seven-chapter chunk of "The Blissful Years of Lousy Living" is
available from http://www2.arts.gla.ac.uk/Slavonic/Czechlit1.html
along with some other works:
Ajvaz and Kratochvil are well-known litherary authors of, say,
fabulations; Berkova's Magorie is one as well. Alas, I haven't read
any (but in this I am not different from the overwhelming majority of
the Czech fandom), so I can't recommend them; but Skvorecky (although,
of course, not SF)I most certainly can and wholeheartedly do.
***
[re the infamous HE / Charles Platt story]
Damn, foiled again: as usually, my browser finished what must have
been burning through the ICE of Glasgow University's FTP daemon just
after I gave up the waiting and posted what I wrote only based on a
vague memory.
"Not so much a contents list, more a way of life: selected links to
Ansible items over the years" I was talking about is at
ftp://ftp.dcs.gla.ac.uk/pub/SF-Archives/Ansible/timetour.html or
remove "/pub" and replace "ftp" with "www" (the point is you can find
it only via FTP which lets you see directory listings) and I was,
mostly, wrong:
It has "Harlan Ellison and Charles Platt in knockabout fun ... and
again" under the heading "Weirdness and One-Offs" and links only to
Ansible 77 and 78. I'm sure there have been more occasions when some
Ellison-related controversies penetrated even to the pages of Ansible
(how else would I know that there were any? Ansible was for a long
time my main, if not the only, source of information about goings-on
in the "Anglosaxon" SF/fandom; for example, I think there should be
more on the Priest/TLDV affair later) but these will have to be looked
for only by a full-text search.
***
Sorry for not sticking closer on-subject, but I would just keep
repeating "Here too. Wow, but _exactly_!" (Well, I could also launch
into long digressive rants trying to explain how it's that exact
_principle_ at work but manifested a little differently in the Czech
conditions, for which I don't have the time right now...)
At least one isn't as depressed seeing that others have the same
problems... :-)
--
Jan Vanek [jr.] Jan.Va...@seznam.cz
"Ever done LSD?"
"Well, we were in the Army. That's almost like LSD."
Neal Stephenson, The Big U
Jorge Candeias
> But, sure, you have to start with the
> action-oriented "sure-sellers" - before you publish the "high
> literature", there has to be a basis.
The problem, as I see it, is that different peoples prefer different
kinds of stuff, so you can't simply set up a europe-wide plan of
prioritary editions. Just to give an example, I'm sure the Rodan series
would not have success here...
Jorge
Jorge Candeias
> Trouble is, the big commercial publishers are not all that interested in
> science fiction, let alone European science fiction.
[...]
> It's all but impossible to get them to publish _Dutch_ science fiction:
> the only publisher who does that regulary and was set up to do so, is
> more a fan undertaking then a "real" publisher, the Dutch equivalent of
> NESFA Press, so to speak.
That's why I believe that first we should divulge the existence of (the
best) people writing in the various countries through short fiction, be
it in magazines, in anthologies (subsidized or not, it doesn't matter)
or in webpages and then, when the market is created, we can think about
editing of european SF in larger numbers...
Of course, the major problem are the translations. In most cases, things
would have to be translated to english and then retranslated to the
local languages...
Jorge
Jorge Candeias
>
> mwi...@ad-astra.demon.nl (Martin Wisse) writes:
>
> > I want to know about sf in other European traditions, not just a
> > series of posts stating how H. G. Wells was really neat.
>
> Well, there's Stanislaw Lem, the Sturgatsky brothers. Zamyatin, Capek,
> and ... who else?
Well, in Portugal we have, for instance, João Barreiros and Luís Filipe
Silva. They have a short-story each in English at the Infinity Plus
website ( http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/ ), and Barreiros' is even
currently being "licky-dipped" together with stuff from Linda Nagata,
Jessica Palmer, David Mathew, Gwyneth Jones and Michael Swanwick.
And the translations ain't all that good, unfortunately... :-(
Jorge
PS - I seem to be receiving about half the posts to this ng. So, if you
are replying to something I posted, please do email it too, to make sure
I receive your reply. TIA
Priv.-Doz. Dr. Dirk van den Boom
> The problem, as I see it, is that different peoples prefer different
> kinds of stuff, so you can't simply set up a europe-wide plan of
> prioritary editions.
True - like your other idea: Short stories don't sell in Germany, sorry.
:o)
> Just to give an example, I'm sure the Rodan series
> would not have success here...
Why? It has run in Brazil very well and will again soon. It's running well
in France, Netherlands, Czech Republic, Russia, China, Japan... why not in
your place?!
yours
Dirk
Del Cotter
Jan Vanek jr. <jan.va...@seznam.cz> said:
>Sorry for not sticking closer on-subject, but I would just keep
>repeating "Here too. Wow, but _exactly_!" (Well, I could also launch
>into long digressive rants trying to explain how it's that exact
>_principle_ at work but manifested a little differently in the Czech
>conditions, for which I don't have the time right now...)
I'm fascinated by the stuff I've been seeing from you, and hope you
stick around to write a lot more. I'm also pleased to see you're
starting to shorten your paragraphs. If you could keep them to a more
comfortable (for Usenet) twelve lines or so, that would be great.
--
Del Cotter d...@branta.demon.co.uk
Craig S. Richardson
Feruglio Dal Dan) wrote:
>Prices in liras are impressive. How much did you pay for the concert
>last night? 10.000 liras. Wow. :-)
Comedy Central's "Daily Show" used to have a weekly feature in which
they'd count down the top _n_ (I forget if it was 3, 5, or 10) films
in Italy (with capsule plot summaries in Italian). And they'd give
the weekly gross in lira, usually with a vapor trail of zeroes.
--Craig
--
David Collins from Burnley: 70K pounds
Luke Weaver from Spurs: 500K pounds
Matthew Etherington from Grasshoppers-Zurich: 1.2M pounds
Leyton Orient 1-0 St. Mirren in the 2003 UEFA Cup Final: Priceless
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
> > They might go for the
> > lowest common denominator - that's what happened to Italian cinema -
> > and, most importantly, to Italian TV.
>
> Might. Might not. As long as you have a culture of "the government will
> take care of that", those who might think otherwise will keep their
> money.
They must go for it, if they want to turn a profit, if they want to be
accountable for how the manage their money. Publishing industry can take
risks, but movies are too big for that. I work for a publisher that
carefully and deliberately eschews anything too adventurous, for sound
financial reasons. There are smaller publishers than can put out the
strange, original, new stuff, the one that gets unpredicatbly kissed by
bestsellerdom - but big firms don't do that. And as I said, they have
good sound reasons not to.
> > Anybody who has an idea of what
> > Italian TV became thanks to the good offices of free market can get my
> > drift, I think. Movies everybody went to see (well, almost everybody: I
> > never did) and everybody thought stupid and gross.
>
> Sure. But there are also those who might sponsor the good one's. Never
> know. As long as the government is approved to be the one to sponsor the
> good one's and mostly fails to do so, no one will show up.
Didn't work this way with our TV.
> > Then a young, bright and serious
> > minister came to office - a little slip of blonde girl - and lo and
> > behold, subsidised film began to attract the masses and make money and
> > win awards.
>
> Good. What will your opinion be when the bright and serious minister
> will leave the office and another stupid moron will be in charge of your
> tax money?
That our electors are morons, but the rest of Europe seems to
overwhelmingly share that opinion. It's not as if I'm advocating being
invaded by Switzerland to solve the problem.
> > Doing it badly doesn't mean that it can't be done well: just
> > that the people who are doing it aren't doing their job and should be
> > kicked out of office.
>
> Which is decided by whom? Taste cannot be decided as a question of
> democratic majorities.
Most things cannot be decided by democratic majorities. Unfortunately,
not better way of going about deciding on them has yet been found.
Peter Bruells
> The problem, as I see it, is that different peoples prefer different
> kinds of stuff, so you can't simply set up a europe-wide plan of
> prioritary editions.
Works for Hollywood.
> Just to give an example, I'm sure the Rodan series would not have
> success here...
Why that? It ran quite succesful in many, many countries, including
Brazil.
Jorge Candeias
>
> Jorge Candeias <jorgec...@netc.pt> writes:
>
> > The problem, as I see it, is that different peoples prefer different
> > kinds of stuff, so you can't simply set up a europe-wide plan of
> > prioritary editions.
>
> Works for Hollywood.
Well... erm... I don't really think Hollywood is a good example. It
simply, as a rule, stinks too hard... :-/
> > Just to give an example, I'm sure the Rodan series would not have
> > success here...
>
> Why that? It ran quite succesful in many, many countries, including
> Brazil.
I know it's relatively big in Brazil. But here it was never published.
And from the lack of acceptance I see in similar products and the
absence of traditions of pulpish SF in Portugal, I'm pretty sure it
wouldn't work.
Our not-so-sophisticated kids (the natural audience of Rodan books -
correct me if I'm wrong) simply don't read. They prefer playing computer
games, hunting babes, skipping classes and playing football, not
necessarily by this order...
Jorge
Peter Bruells
> Peter Bruells wrote:
>> Jorge Candeias <jorgec...@netc.pt> writes:
>>> The problem, as I see it, is that different peoples prefer different
>>> kinds of stuff, so you can't simply set up a europe-wide plan of
>>> prioritary editions.
>> Works for Hollywood.
> Well... erm... I don't really think Hollywood is a good example. It
> simply, as a rule, stinks too hard... :-/
Well, astrology paid many astronomer's living. And Fantagraphics
would probably go down, it it hadn't the Eros line. So if a common
denominator space opera would pay the bill for quality SF, I'd be all
for it.
>>> Just to give an example, I'm sure the Rodan series would not have
>>> success here...
>> Why that? It ran quite succesful in many, many countries, including
>> Brazil.
> I know it's relatively big in Brazil. But here it was never published.
> And from the lack of acceptance I see in similar products and the
> absence of traditions of pulpish SF in Portugal, I'm pretty sure it
> wouldn't work.
> Our not-so-sophisticated kids (the natural audience of Rodan books -
> correct me if I'm wrong) simply don't read. They prefer playing computer
> games, hunting babes, skipping classes and playing football, not
> necessarily by this order...
Considering how many of my colleagues read PR once, it's not only the
"not-so-sophisticated" kids. It's not art, but SF chewing gum, similar
to the Trek and Star Wars franchise.
Does Portgal have a pulp tradition or ongoing pulps?
Bernard Peek
<jorgec...@netc.pt> writes
>What I think european SF really needs is to get known in Europe. Today,
>there's no such a thing as an european SF. There's an italian, a polish,
>a spanish, a portuguese, a croatian, a
>whatever-of-the-remaining-50-or-so-european-countries SF but no european
>SF. What we all know are anglophonous authors, nothing else.
>
>We needed an europe-wide initiative to make us known in Europe, to get
>things started. Something like the publishing in all adherent countries
>of an anthology with "the best of european SF" translated into the
>various languages involved. Or an europe-wide SF magazine, network of
>fanzines or even webzines. Something of this sort...
I'm not sure that this is viable. Anthologies don't sell well enough to
serve as a publicity vehicle for European SF. Getting the anthology
published would be the easy part, there are grants available that would
probably fund one person for long enough to put it together.
There might be other ways of achieving the same ends. If the aim is to
get more exposure for European SF what about getting a regular spot in
one of the magazines, such as IASFM? That wouldn't get much public
exposure but would bring new authors to the attention of the US and UK
book editors.
Alternatively, what about an editorial collective putting material onto
a web-site? It would need an editor in each country who could collect
stories and arrange translation. Initially that would be into English,
and possibly French. If the aim was to get two new stories a month it
would only require each country to add around two stories a year.
--
Bernard Peek
b...@shrdlu.com
b...@shrdlu.co.uk
In search of cognoscenti
Vlatko Juric-Kokic
wrote:
>Alternatively, what about an editorial collective putting material onto
>a web-site? It would need an editor in each country who could collect
>stories and arrange translation. Initially that would be into English,
>and possibly French.
The problem there, as I have pointed out, is that you'd need a
*reliable* editor in every country. Who wants to do it and has time to
do it.
>If the aim was to get two new stories a month it
>would only require each country to add around two stories a year.
Two stories? You mean only twelve countries?
You forgot about us in the East or about the three new members that
got admitted to the EU a while ago.
vlatko
--
_Neither Fish Nor Fowl_
http://www.webart.hr/nrnm/eng/index.htm
vlatko.ju...@zg.hinet.hr
William December Starr
ada...@nit.it.invalid (Anna Feruglio Dal Dan) said:
> And you did well. I just realize I need a shareware euroconverter.
The currency converter at <http://finance.yahoo.com/m5> does Euros.
Martin Wisse
<vlatko.ju...@zg.hinet.hr> wrote:
>On Thu, 5 Jul 2001 12:32:56 +0100, Bernard Peek <b...@shrdlu.com>
>wrote:
>
>>Alternatively, what about an editorial collective putting material onto
>>a web-site? It would need an editor in each country who could collect
>>stories and arrange translation. Initially that would be into English,
>>and possibly French.
>
>The problem there, as I have pointed out, is that you'd need a
>*reliable* editor in every country. Who wants to do it and has time to
>do it.
And of course willing authors and not just wannabe writers. I know at
least one writer who's negative about bothh English and internet
publication...
Martin Wisse
--
I never understood people who don't have bookshelves.
- George Plimpton
Bernard Peek
Juric-Kokic <vlatko.ju...@zg.hinet.hr> writes
>On Thu, 5 Jul 2001 12:32:56 +0100, Bernard Peek <b...@shrdlu.com>
>wrote:
>
>>Alternatively, what about an editorial collective putting material onto
>>a web-site? It would need an editor in each country who could collect
>>stories and arrange translation. Initially that would be into English,
>>and possibly French.
>
>The problem there, as I have pointed out, is that you'd need a
>*reliable* editor in every country. Who wants to do it and has time to
>do it.
You need at least one reasonably reliable editor/translator in each
country. There's no reason why you shouldn't have more than one in a
country. The total workload in each contributing country would be quite
low, one or two stories per year.
There might be a lot of real editorial work if someone has to select
which material goes on to the site. That would require an
English-language editor, or perhaps an editorial committee.
How about this as a mechanism:
Translations are submitted to a mailing-list with around a dozen members
from different countries. Each of the members ranks the submissions in
order. The highest scoring entry gets put up on the web-site.
>
>>If the aim was to get two new stories a month it
>>would only require each country to add around two stories a year.
>
>Two stories? You mean only twelve countries?
>
>You forgot about us in the East or about the three new members that
>got admitted to the EU a while ago.
I'm not sure how many countries we have contacts with. EU membership
status would be important if the EU were funding the project. If it's
run and funded by volunteers then there's no reason why it should be
limited to EU members (or even to Europe).
Vlatko Juric-Kokic
wrote:
>How about this as a mechanism:
>
>Translations are submitted to a mailing-list with around a dozen members
>from different countries. Each of the members ranks the submissions in
>order. The highest scoring entry gets put up on the web-site.
Hm. Might generate a lot of lobbying and hurt feelings. I'd say a
rotating editorship might be better, but there's nothing in it to
prevent the same thing. Especially if only two stories (or one) get
published. And then if there's a lot of countries, some people would
edit the zine just once in every two or three years.
>>>If the aim was to get two new stories a month it
>>>would only require each country to add around two stories a year.
>>
>>Two stories? You mean only twelve countries?
>>
>>You forgot about us in the East or about the three new members that
>>got admitted to the EU a while ago.
>
>I'm not sure how many countries we have contacts with. EU membership
>status would be important if the EU were funding the project. If it's
>run and funded by volunteers then there's no reason why it should be
>limited to EU members (or even to Europe).
I *think* that there wouldn't be problems with EU about non-EU
members. Or with European commission. :-) If it's presented as it is,
as a way for various countries to cooperate, they might bite. Would
they want to finance SF is another matter completely. Ditto some other
organisations.
Contact ... well, that's another matter again. For instance, if we
take people who participate in this group, we miss Spain, France,
Switzerland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Yugoslavia,
Macedonia, Romania, Bulgaria, Russia, Moldova, Estonia, Latvia,
Lithuania, Turkey ...
Jorge Candeias
> There might be a lot of real editorial work if someone has to select
> which material goes on to the site. That would require an
> English-language editor, or perhaps an editorial committee.
>
> How about this as a mechanism:
>
> Translations are submitted to a mailing-list with around a dozen members
> from different countries. Each of the members ranks the submissions in
> order. The highest scoring entry gets put up on the web-site.
Hum... that's a *lot* of wasted work for those that don't get it to the
site.
My (not that great) experience with international stuff tells me that
this mechanism could work if to the list where posted not the
translations, but synopses of the stories each national editor(s) think
that would be adecuate to represent his country in the site. From these
synopses would be selected the stories to translate and *then*, only
after that would the stories be translated, already with a larger degree
of certitude that one's work won't go to waste. (also, probably, someone
would have to polish these translations - I don't think a good
translator from, say, basque to english is easy to find)
BTW, why a dozen? wouldn't it be more logical to put in the ml everybody
involved in the core of the project, regardless of the number?
> I'm not sure how many countries we have contacts with. EU membership
> status would be important if the EU were funding the project. If it's
> run and funded by volunteers then there's no reason why it should be
> limited to EU members (or even to Europe).
Even if the EU *is* funding the project, I see no reason to exclude
easterners. After all, they're all more or less into joining the EU, and
that's just a small gesture of good will from our Brussels Red Tape
people.
I must say I know nothing about the beaurocracies involved, though...
(And I don't receive most of the replies posted to the newsgroup, for
some weird reason... :-( )
Jorge Candeias
http://come.to/fc-e-f
Bernard Peek
Juric-Kokic <vlatko.ju...@zg.hinet.hr> writes
>On Fri, 6 Jul 2001 11:16:11 +0100, Bernard Peek <b...@shrdlu.com>
>wrote:
>
>>How about this as a mechanism:
>>
>>Translations are submitted to a mailing-list with around a dozen members
>>from different countries. Each of the members ranks the submissions in
>>order. The highest scoring entry gets put up on the web-site.
>
>Hm. Might generate a lot of lobbying and hurt feelings. I'd say a
>rotating editorship might be better, but there's nothing in it to
>prevent the same thing. Especially if only two stories (or one) get
>published. And then if there's a lot of countries, some people would
>edit the zine just once in every two or three years.
I don't think there's any problem with lobbying, and I don't see any way
of avoiding hurt feelings. An editorial committee may be seen as fairer
than a single omnipotent editor.
Bernard Peek
<jorgec...@netc.pt> writes
>Bernard Peek wrote:
>
>> There might be a lot of real editorial work if someone has to select
>> which material goes on to the site. That would require an
>> English-language editor, or perhaps an editorial committee.
>>
>> How about this as a mechanism:
>>
>> Translations are submitted to a mailing-list with around a dozen members
>> from different countries. Each of the members ranks the submissions in
>> order. The highest scoring entry gets put up on the web-site.
>
>Hum... that's a *lot* of wasted work for those that don't get it to the
>site.
>
>My (not that great) experience with international stuff tells me that
>this mechanism could work if to the list where posted not the
>translations, but synopses of the stories each national editor(s) think
>that would be adecuate to represent his country in the site.
Not just a synopsis. I think it would have to be a synopsis and part of
the translated story. It depends on whether the editors will be voting
on the original story or on the translation.
> From these
>synopses would be selected the stories to translate and *then*, only
>after that would the stories be translated, already with a larger degree
>of certitude that one's work won't go to waste. (also, probably, someone
>would have to polish these translations - I don't think a good
>translator from, say, basque to english is easy to find)
>
>BTW, why a dozen? wouldn't it be more logical to put in the ml everybody
>involved in the core of the project, regardless of the number?
It's a number plucked from the air. There are practical problems in
co-ordinating a much larger group.