Czech SF (LONG!)
Mgr. Jan Vanek
I decided to post the complete result and preserve it for
posterity in Dejanews - who knows who might find it useful
once (perhaps even mighty Ahasuerus himself; if, as he said,
his knowledge doesn't exceed what's in Fantasy Encyclopedia,
I'd like to think that I go deeper, although not in as wide
range). What follows is - well, I thought of it as an
(attempt of) overview of the current Czech SF, but I'm
afraid it is too dignified name for a bunch of author profiles.
Let me emphasize that this is intended as a snapshot of
the state of the genre at the end of the century without
aspirations to trace development in time; I largely ignore
even the early 90es and many important authors of quite
recent history. If you want to know more, Nesvadba, whom
a reader of the beta version found lacking, let alone Capek,
is sufficiently covered in SF Encyclopedia; so is the
overall history, although sketchily. There were some
historical articles published in academical journals,
although somebody else will have to provide the
bibliographical pointers; "year-in-review" articles were
published in Locus at least till 1998.
---
There was to be a general introduction here trying,
probably in vain, to explain the overall situation and level
of development of SF in Czech Republic and warn you that the
following text will not only be skewed by extent of my
reading and by my personal tastes, but quite certainly
incomplete, lacking context, misleading in many respects and
so, in the overall effect upon a foreign reader, more
confusing than comprehensible. (Writing or rather not
writing it for 18 months, ending in a hurry to have it done
before I go offline didn't help either.) This had to be left
out due to lack of time, but the warning holds even more for that.
Still, at least a few words are in place. How is Czech
SF? Not so bad for a 10 million nation, at least in
quantitative terms; much better than Portuguese,
I understand, possibly even on par with Dutch. The
bibliographies note 30-40 original Czech books each year
(subtract a third which consists of literary works that
brush the edges of fantasy, obcure mysticism books without
real distribution etc.; the rest is real, genre SF/fantasy).
The main problem of a small market is not so much that
nobody can write full-time and so every author remains in
a way an amateur, sometimes in more than one sense, but that
minority interests are minor indeed when it comes to
numbers: When and if a truly interesting author is found, he
has trouble finding readers. The tastes of the readership of
our only SF magazine and pretty much the only short fiction
market for an average emerging writer, both in terms of
paying and reader exposure, the monthly Ikarie (publishing
about 30 Czech stories a year, or, to be more exact, about
140 kB of them in each issue; the last time they admitted
their circulation publicly several years ago, it was 30000,
but all print runs have fallen since that), are obviously
half Analog, half Marion Zimmer Bradley's Fantasy Magazine.
This is only strengthened by the crisis of sales, which
despite being chronical keeps getting even worse, if that's
possible: lately, a Czech debut can be glad to sell 1500
copies (it's more for the authors listed below), actually
under the break-even point according to any standard
business rules.
So the overall atmosphere is one of happy stagnation...
but then if you ask anybody, they'll tell you that I am
a pessimist and snob who is not satisfied with anything
except for foreign books nobody else has ever heard of.
---
As I refer to them in the following, earlier written
text, I'll also have to mention two awards which - well, at
least periodize our SF literary life:
Cena Karla Capka (Karel Capek Award), actually
a contest with tradition since 1982, originally for short
stories by unpublished authors, now without limitation of
form or entrants. While it was crucial for the development
of Czech SF in the 80es, each new author of the era going
through it, in the following decade both quality and
quantity of submissions, and in effect the prestige of the
contest, fell and especially after 1995 the winners are
incomparable with earlier ones (and now there are separate
and equal winner lists for three length categories).
The "professionals" among judges have long ago faded, so now
the points are awarded by about 30 people recruited from SF
clubs. Ironically, it is also only these last few years that
there's a professionally published and sold anthology of
best stories (before, they were printed only in the
materials of Czech national con and the selection of stories
didn't always agree with the final results).
In 1996, Akademie science fiction, fantasy a hororu
(SF&F&H Academy) was founded to give annual awards, a kind
of equivalent to Nebulas, with the express purpose of
gaining media attention and becoming a decisive authority in
recognizing quality SF. The first hope certainly wasn'
fulfilled; as for the other, I feel that besides doubtless
professionals too many middle-name-fans were included (and
the former's voting discipline is poor), so the results are
dangerously close to copying bestseller list - but that's me
again, distorting your views with my peeves. Enough of this.
---
If the current Czech SF has a dean, it certainly isn't
Josef Nesvadba, old (born 1926), ill, living in seclusion
and purportedly working on (i. e. promising them Real Soon
Now for several years already) his memoirs and an alternate
world novel about Eduard Benes.
No: the title must go to Ondrej Neff (1945), the man
who has been present at most events in our latter-days SF
and fandom since their emergence in the late 70es and indeed
shaped them in large part. He wrote _the_ definitive (well,
the only) history of Czech SF from Comenius to mid-1970es,
delivered innumerable lectures both at cons and in libraries
and similar venues on wide range of topics, mainly modern
Western SF (it was through his retelling that cyberpunk came
to Czechoslovakia in 1987), later he translated Neuromancer,
wrote many afterwords and prefaces, in the 80es he also was
one of the people who half-illegally dubbed films imported
on videotapes (e. g. Star Wars) etc. - all in addition to
writing a fair amount of very popular short stories and
novels. It is an interesting coincidence that his initials
form the pronoun "he" in Czech; indeed, he might be validly
compared to Ellison, though only in his prodigious output
and wide scope of activities, not in topic matter or style
(which, while recognizable due to certain quirks, isn't much
specific; basically a generic SF style with an action slant
- in the official reviews in the 80es, he was if not
criticised, at least noted for his "Americanness", i. e.
amount of action and sex unusual for the time - and,
especially in humorous stories, sarcastic, with a bit of
deliberately archaic wording): he also tried his hand in
writing the first Czech commercial TV sitcom (which flopped,
but of reasons beyond him); having worked as a photographer
for a time, he wrote several books about amateur photography
and recenty started a website about digital cameras; in the
90es (besides founding and, for a time, being the
editor-in-chief of the Czech SF monthly Ikarie) he worked in
newspapers and finally found his vocation in 1996, when he
started an Internet daily called Neviditelny pes (The
Invisible Dog; http://pes.eunet.cz), which evolved from an
Ellison-like (though certainly not as scathing and rather
conservative) column on everything from the personal to the
political into one of the most popular addresses on the
Czech web, with about 10 000 daily readership and many
supplements, some even regular and paid, by outside authors.
All this has made him something (a litle) of a media
celebrity (recently, he decisively won "the personality of
Czech Internet" poll); for example, he was one of organizers
of the protest rally and boycott that made Czech Telecom
come up with special Iternet access charges a little more
affordable than "re-balanced" local tariffs it announced in autumn '98.
Now (finally) something about his 90es work: in 1995 he
finished his trilogy Milenium (Millenium), which he began
writing back in the 80es and which soon turned from an
intriguing look at hi-tech conflicts in the near-future
world into an underground opera (don't ask) about the war of
2 alien races with mankind caught and half-transmuted inbetween.
Since 1995 he's been publishing yearly volumes called
Klon (Clone), collecting his SF-related output in each year:
short stories, essays, lectures, interviews given etc.
A more comprehensive collection of his short fiction from
the later 90es, published in magazines as varied as Ikarie,
Czech wannabe-Mondo2000 magazine Zivel and Playboy, is Buh
s. r. o. (God, Ltd., 1997).
Neff's 1997 novel Reparator is set - somewhat forcibly
- on the colonized Moon of his earlier works and purports to
re-use, also somewhat forcibly, ideas of his ongoing
"Forbidden technologies" series of columns/vignettes for
Ikarie (the beginnings were marginally interesting, but
nowadays it reads as bad attempts at Analog's "Probability
Zero". The readers apparently like it, though). Here, the
idea is that in the interest of healthy economy, all
consumer goods are designed to break up after a given time
and have to be replaced with new ones; the hero earns his
living as a blackmarket repairman. However, we don't see him
work much; soon he's involved in a maguffin chase that takes
him through most levels of the Lunar society, into space and
finally - in not a double-twist ending, but at least
qaudruple one - opens the way to stars. Even Neff
enthusiasts admit this is rather minor work.
However, his latest novel Tma (Darkness, 1998) was
a great success. The original edition (incidentally,
hardbound) quickly sold out and was reprinted in paperback
(which is exceptional even for the most popular foreign SF),
it collected all genre awards for the year and was even
favorably reviewed in the "normal" press. It was developed
from a short story published in an early Klon: one day, all
electricity ceases to work and mankind finds itself back in
- literally - dark ages. I haven't read it, but
extrapolating from second-hand reports, it seems to be torn
between two intentions: to illustrate Neff's (quite low)
opinion about the essential human nature unconstrained by
the fragile shell of civilisation, and to tell a good
adventure/postcatastrophic yarn. In the end it turns out
that the "electric death" was a temporary intervention of
aliens who needed to install some kind of zero-space
transportation system (another recycled idea from earlier
work), Earth is accepted into the galactic commonwealth and
all is well again.
---
Judging by the number of awards and popularity
especially among younger readers, number 2 (if not 1) would
be Jiri Kulhanek (1967), whose works might be described as
splatterpunk without the punk part. After some early short
fiction, collected in small press editions, he achieved fame
with his first novel Vladci strachu (Masters of Fear,
1995). It is narrated by a vampire hunted all over
near-future Central Europe by minions of (and in the end
defeating in the depths of decaying Russia) an evil
alchemist who urgently needs a certain number of vampire
teeth (for a potion which would make him, I think, lord of
the universe or something). I do admit Kulhanek is competent
at writing chase scenes, fire- and fistfights, his
wisecracks ring and the background is colourfully sketched,
but still it was not exactly a deep read; as the (somewhat
rushed) ending neared, I found myself tiring quickly and
enjoying rather the very rare moments where the pace slowed.
Even the most avid fans of Kulhanek had to agree that
his following novel Cesta krve (The Way of Blood), published
1996-7 in two volumes subtitled Dobrak (A Good Guy) and
Cynik (A Cynic), didn't bring much development: mysterious
aliens abducted most of Earth's population overnight and
turned the rest into blood-lusting zombies, giving our hero
(originally a pacifist journalist, suffering under an
environmentalist tyranny again in near-future Central
Europe) something to blast away at from weapons gradually
upgraded from a pump shotgun to a Gatling machine gun to
a 300-ton supertank with an invisibility camouflage feature.
To have other things to do besides shooting, eating spiders
and amputating his wounded and gangrened leg(s?)
singlehandedly, he's also equipped with a wisecracking
imaginary twin and a little foundling boy (made, for
a change, conveniently mute by shock). He finally meets
other survivors, but no review mentions the outcome.
Kulhanek's new opus called Divoci a zli (Wild and Bad)
divided into four volumes began coming out in 1999; so far
tree parts have been published. According to the publicity
leaflets it is about a 31st century supersoldier defending
Earth from aliens so effectively that his own commanders try
to get rid of him and sabotage his spaceship, but merely
cause it to wander through time. He appears in (what do you
guess?) near-future Central Europe to pick up a sidekick and
goes on to have adventures in various eras.
---
Continuing without any particular order now:
Although Jaroslav Mostecky (1963) seems to feel best in
various forms of fantasy, he is a very versatile writer,
which also makes him hard to characterise - well, some time
ago I noticed a stereotype "a sympathetic, but at closer
look not actually nice, tough guy in a vaguely
postcatastrophic setting gets into trouble and overcomes it
only at the price of sacrificing one of his few remaining
principles and/or chance companions" evolving in his copious
short fiction (for which he won Akademie awards in 1996 and
97). Mostecky's book-length debut was the start of an
almost-not-fantasy trilogy taking place among Vikings called
Prines mi hlavu krale (Bring Me a King's Head, 1995). The
publisher specialized in printing Czech fantasy (mostly
rather poor, written hastily on demand) under English
pseudonymes, so the author was given as "Jeremy Shackleton".
The book was acclaimed for the harsh realism of depicting
its heroes and the medieval world, and Mostecky grew popular
meanwhile, and anyway the original publisher went out of
business and Mostecky became a leading author of another
one, so the sequel Lars - stavnata lebka (Lars the Juicy
Skull, 1996) was published under his own name. The final
volume is still expected.
His SF/fantasy novel Pistec (Piper, 1997) about
colonists on a jungle planet went without much attention,
but the collection Cara hruzy (The Line of Terror, 1998) of
fantasy/horror stories was received pretty enthusiastically,
even with most of them being reprints. Mostecky's latest
book is Conan a vrah kralu (Conan and the Kingslayer,
1999); connoiseurs seem to agree it isn't as good as his
previous (oh yes, we have quite a history of home-brewed
Conans, towards which Mostecky is almost the least contributor;
however, the other producers do not merit mention here).
---
If there is one Czech SF writer who would deserve to be
known abroad, if there is one Czech SF writer who doesn't
view his work as a way of giving readers some entertainment
they demand or, at best, abstracted intellectual
speculations, but as a serious examination of moral
questions and also conscious continuation of epic tradition
going back as far as to Homer, it is Frantisek Novotny
(1944). In the book "Who's Who in Czech SF", he lists in
"Favourites" section of his entry Stanislaw Lem and the
Bible, which is indeed a good way of describing influences
most obviously shaping his work (though, being an outspoken
materalist, he views the latter as a collection of extremely
potent memes, the source of archetypes "the Atlantic
civilisation", as he is fond of saying, is built upon). Most
of his earlier fiction keeps returning to the question: is
man's intellectual development matched by his ethical
system, or are we akin to precocious, but irresponsible
children? While mankind is going (rather sooner than later)
to achieve godlike creative powers, is it going to wield
them wisely? This is especially exemplified in relationships
of humans and robots (in fewer cases also uplifted species
or primitive alien cultures).
His early short fiction is collected in Bradburyho stin
(Bradbury's Shadow, 1991), composed partly of stories it was
impossible to publish in his first, 1988 collection
Nestastne pristani (Unfortunate Landing). In 1992 he
published Ramax, an omnibus of two novellas set in his loose
future history. The title one, winner of Karel Capek Award
for 1991, takes place at the isolated shipyard of the
galactic Navy, which is the main unifying element of the
interstellar Federation. The commander must find ways to
treat what is in effect a new race of the first fully
sentient robots, when a murder occurs among them - and then
again, when the killer is one of his human subordinates.
Andros (I rather prefer the original title Hvezdne hry, Star
Games) is a kind of treason-and-revenge drama set upon
a planet of cloned men, who were deprived of means to build
computers necessary for piloting starships after defeat in
a war against the Federation and are trying to use to this
task specially trained children, who lose their abilities
and thus also usefulness in adolescence.
Strangely enough, Novotny published his first
full-blown novel as late as 1994 (although he had been
working on it since the beginning of the decade), but then
it was the thick first volume of a projected trilogy. Dlouhy
den Valhaly (The Long Day of Valhalla) begins as the story
of a WWI fighter pilot, abducted by a Valkyre into the
afterworld of Nordic myths, to become one of many helpers in
the upcoming Ragnarok (if I understand right, some of Eddic
writings see it as a cyclic event, not one-off end of the
world). The dogfights of biplanes against dragons are
beautifully and breathtakingly described, but soon the novel
gets so multi-layered and complex that I cannot do it
justice here. Basically it is revealed that the German
secret society Thule, for whom Hitler was only a puppet,
made a pact with the forces of evil and after amassing
enough dead at the end of WWII, these descend upon Earth and
retroactively (there's a table of four existing worlds and
ways of travelling among them which allows/involves time
loops) win the war for the Nazis. While Dlouhy den Valhaly
focuses on the initial phase of fighting in the afterworld
and introducing persons, objects and events that are
predestined to play a crucial part in further development,
what I've seen of manuscripts of the following two books is
a world-class alternate history/dark fantasy.
However, Novotny can't seem to find the time to finish
them, mainly because the 90es allowed him to indulge in his
longtime hobby, naval yachting, unlimited by exit visa and
even to make a part-time job of it. Also, he wrote critical
essays for the Czech edition of F&SF before it folded in
December 98, reminiscences of his childhood and of his job
as an operator of Soviet-made mainframe computers in the
70es, with a director friend developed his future history
tales into a TV series (but despite his enthusiasm, I'm
afraid it's never going to escape the
all-new-projects-put-on-hold-until-dust-settles-above-high-management-
reorganisations-and-factions-fights-and-it's-clear-who-can-make-decisions
limbo it got stuck in) and last year he started his own
(non-genre) column in Neviditelny pes; as for fiction,
though, he's published only two short stories since 1995.
---
I was hesitant whether to include Pavel Houser in this
list. He isn't characteristic for the Czech SF any more
than, say, Jeff Vandermeer is for the American - if his work
can be called SF at all. It certainly isn't a bestseller
material, but still belongs to the more interesting part of
what's being written here, he's a friend and, last but not
least, agreed to save me the ordeal of describing him by
writing it himself. So, In His Own Words:
"Pavel Houser, born Nov 10 1972, Prague, graduate of
Prague Institute of Chemical Technologies (majored in
Nutrition), a computer mage. Works: Se sankami po Tibetu
(With a Sledge around Tibet, 1994), Z dob Rise (From the
Times of the Empire - RPG-based short stories, 1996), Sovy
vesele (Merry Owls - poetry, 1998), Dvanact sosek Almiru
(The Twelve Statuettes of Almir - RPG scenario, 1998),
Lunarys (a pun which can also be read as Lunelynx, as shown
at the cover art, 1998). Short stories in magazines and
various anthologies, twice nominated for Akademie award for
his Karel Capek award-winning novella Kniha o vydre (The
Book of Otter, 1996) and the collection Lunarys. He's been
published abroad in the Polish SF magazine Fantastyka and
British fanzine Cyberspace, publicistics also in USA (Network World)
and Slovakia (Trendy). A former tolkienist, a. o. co-translator
of The Lays of Beleriand and other of Tolkien's poems.
Essays concerning definition of a new genre (beerpunk),
mythology and depth psychology (analyses of R. Holdstock's work).
His work focuses on impersonal landscapes, wherein
cyberpunk mixes with fantasy and mythological motives,
archetypes dwelling in libraries, pubs and depths of oceans.
From the point of view of these entities, the "normal" world
of human society is something insubstantial, boring and
quite banal; the heroes emphasize this distancing and
actively seek it. The author presents reality as a place of
constant mystification, which - unlike, say, with P. K. Dick
- isn't caused by some dark forces' manipulation, but
results rather from the character of being as such. His
heroes are usually solitaires set as if in vacuum,
introspectively concentrated on unconscious contents of
their own psychics, which constitute a kind of
undistinguished ocean laying under the level of the visible
world. The role of unfocusing phenomenon is played also by
consumption of alcohol connected with interest in artificial,
unnatural and bizarre estetics of huysmanesque kind."
---
I've mentioned how Ondrej Neff brought cyberpunk into
Czech environment, and it was Jiri "Walker" Prochazka
(1959) who took up its flag, equipped with one overview
lecture and a few fanzine excerpts of Gibson - in fact, some
of his best stories were written even before that, in an
independent manifestation that the Zeitgeist knows no
borders. JWP developed a characteristic style; his cyberpunk
are colourful romps through surreal cyberscape, peppered
with puns. His short fiction is collected in Tvurci casu
(The Time Makers, 1991), which includes cyberpunk, more
classical early stories and the novella Krysy (Rats) which
The Dictionary of Czech Literary Fantastic and Science
Fiction describes aptly as "existentially grim,
kafkaesque-beatnik". JWP is also the author of probably the
first modern Czech fantasy novel Ken Wood a mec krale
D'Sala (KW and King D'Sal's Sword, 1991) - and again, it's
not an imitation of imitators of Tolkien, but a science
fantasy which doesn't hesitate to appropriate any element
which can contribute to the non-stop adventure chase, told
at breakneck speed. A Hollywood stuntman is abducted to
a planet in the exact centre of the Universe, where the
Balance of Good and Evil is decided. First he's controlled
and his abilities abused by the dark side, but after a time
the Good wins him over and he leads the armies to the final
battle. The sequel, Ken Wood a perly kralovny Maub (KW and
Queen Maub's Pearls, 1992) suffers by resurrecting the slain
archvillainness from the first part and general diluting of
its atmosphere, although some descriptions of background are
inventive. A third book was planned to appear, sometime.
Hvezdni honaci (The Star Cowboys, 1996) attempts to
meld space opera with fond childhood memories of movie
westerns. Without success, IMHO: the storyline is too
simplistic and the setting rather strained. On the other
hand, almost every other reader - including some whose
opinions I value - disagrees with me. On the first hand
again, I hear it didn't sell as well as the author's
reputation would imply.
---
Certainly the most literary among the authors who
remain standing within the field of "mainstream" SF genre is
Jan "Jam" Oscadal (1949). After writing for many years and
not much luck finding publishers, he broke through with the
novel Bratri (Brothers, 1995), winner of Karel Capek Award
for 1994. It is a bitterly sarcastic story of soldiers
building a base on a distant planet, which is then bombed
(some pretty strong imagery in the scenes from the night
after) and even the survivors, obviously forgotten,
gradually die off, the title being also a reference to
a nursery rhyme, employed here a la Christie's Ten Little
Indians. In a review back then I compared it to Forever War
and Life During Wartime, having read neither; now that I am
wiser I have to say that the Haldeman connection is
obviously off, but comparison to Shepard's particular brand
of magic realism is as good a way to describe Oscadal's work
as any (he also admits the influence Vonnegut had on him; to
tell the truth, I got somewhat annoyed by his habit of breaking
a wisecrack in half and tossing the parts a page or two apart).
Bitva demonu (Battle of Demons, 1996) is a collection
of three earlier written novelettes; one quite mainstream
about an aged beatnik, the title one focusing on the
feelings of a lowly grunt in one of clashing ancient
Egyptian armies, whose mages summon images of war machines
from the future. The longest one is somewhat absurdist tale
of a farmer terraforming an isolated planet under the
constant harassment of his numerous all-female descendants.
From Oscadal's short fiction I prefer elsewhere published
short story Krev meho lidu (Blood of My People, 1994),
deftly and poetically mixing two archetypes of exploitation
in its Balkans milieu.
To my shame, I haven't yet read the novel Emisar
(Emissary, 1997). The storyline turns around an artifact
left on Earth and sought by several competing
extraterrestrial powers for the most of the history; but,
again, (at least according to Novotny's perceptive review)
the point is in detailed psychologic depiction of various
characters, be it a sculptor in ancient Athens, a modern
terrorist or an aged drunk.
---
Any less negligent writer than me I would have included here
some relative newbies showing promise (Vladimir Slechta,
Leonard Medek, Frantiska Vrbenska) and Jaroslav Velinsky,
whose best work is somewhat older, but he still remains a writer
to watch, but I really have no more time. Sorry.
---
By now, kind reader, you are certainly asking: Where? Where
can I get that strange and wonderful stuff that is Czech SF?
(I know you are; nobody else would have read this far.)
Well, tough luck for you. Many short stories by Nesvadba are
available in English (or German), but we're talking about
the turn of 50es and 60es here. Pavel Kohout's White Book: Adam Juracek
(quite forgettable) even made it into the SF Encyclopedia;
The Hangwoman didn't, for it really has no straightforwad
fantastical elements, but beggars can't be choosers: it
might be called a kind of fabulation and is a mighty good
novel anyhow. I understand that there was a special SF issue
of an official publication of the foreign ministry sometimes
in the 80es (Panorama of Czech Literature, No 8, 1986, says
the inestimable Encyclopedia of SF); I haven't seen it, have
no idea what it contains nor how to find it. An anthology
called, IIRC, "VAMPIRE and Other Science Fiction Stories
from Czechlands" was published in 1994 in, um, New Delhi;
perhaps you might get it with enough perseverance and an
interlibrary loan - but even the Library of Congress seems
not to have it. This one I saw and my guess is that it
largely overlaps with Panorama, remaining firmly anchored in
the 80es - of all the authors I've dealt with above, it
contains only a short story by Neff. But it is quite good,
the best or second best of his early ones, while the one
published in 1990 in Orphia, a Bulgarian magazine which
tried to publish SF from Eastern Europe in English and
didn't last beyond the first issue, is rather weak. One more
early Neff story, Borgesesque (sp?) borderline fantasy
"Brownian Motion", is included in Description of a Struggle,
ed. Michael March, in print on both sides of Atlantic. At
least one story by Eva Hauserova, quite important feminist
writer from the turn of 80es-90es, later gafiated, has been
published in small press (the magazine BBR, I think). Vilma
Kadleckova, whose leaving out from this survey I try to
justify by the fact that she fell quiet after 1994, turning
from the first lady of Czech SF/fatasy (which she became as
soon as she grew up from being its child wonder - b. 1971)
into a mother of two, had two stories in January issues of
1995 Interzone and 1997 F&SF, neither characteristic for the
main body of her pre-hiatus work, an elaborate science fan
tasy future history. She's considering having her new
novella translated into English as well, so we'll see in
a couple of years.
And then there's one more possibility. There was another
author whom I didn't mention above, both because he has been
dead for some time (1926-95) and because he never really
wrote SF proper, even though he often borrowed from it,
a few of his books even have "science fiction" in the
subtitle and most of the others certainly can't be called
realistic either. His name (pseudonym, actually) was Jan
Kresadlo and the more open-minded of critics agree with
Josef Skvorecky, his "discoverer", that he was one of the
most interesting gures in modern Czech literature. Oh,
hell, I'm not afraid to say it: a real genius. A postmodernist
with classical education, a hypermnesiac polymath of many
incredible talents: his books feature not only his drawings
(all right, Vonnegut can do that too) but also his musical
compositions; there is some kind of mathematical structure
called after his civil name; his opus magnum Astronautilia,
a parody of ST:TNG at one of its many levels, is written in
ancient Greek in a perfectly mastered - and partly mocked,
especially in the parallel translation - form of Homeric
epos (and also illustrated by him, so it was published only
as an expensive bibliophilia). I couldn't think of better
(still much inadequate) description of his works than
Pynchon (only without mysterious conspiracies) meets Nabokov
(but his reflections aren't so lofty at all) meets Greene
(well... on LSD; he gives quite new meaning to the term
unorthodox Catholicism).
The point of my telling you all this is that his sons obviously
inherited something from his capabilities: besides one being
Jan Pinkava of Geri's Game fame, another has put up an impressive
website, which also contains very good translations of some of his
shorter works into English. So you can just browse to
www.mujweb.cz/Kultura/Vaclav_Pinkava/7sparks.htm
and judge for yourselves. In fact, Holidaymakers is a marginal dystopia,
Gimlets a horror of almost Koontzian proportions and there are
fantastic elements in several other stories I'd better not spoil here.
Perhaps a perfect capsule of Kresadlo's both style and subject
matter is Genezaretto Dog, but that is, alas, unfantastic - although...
certainly not conventional either.
--
Jan Vanek [jr.] jva...@gw.czso.cz
Ahasuerus
> All this had origin in my lurking a long time ago, so
> I decided to post the complete result and preserve it for
> posterity in Dejanews - who knows who might find it useful
I did. Thanks!
--
Ahasuerus
Mike Arnautov
>> I decided to post the complete result and preserve it for
>> posterity in Dejanews - who knows who might find it useful
>
>I did. Thanks!
As did some lesser mortals. :-) But I would have liked to know about the
80s too!
BTW, I am pleased to learn from a private exchange with Jan, that
Vejd~lek's _Na'vrat z ra'je_ (_Return from Paradise_) is still
remembered as a high point of Czech SF.
And BTW BTW, he's not around at the moment -- off to do his military
service.
--
Mike Arnautov | From the heart
http://www.mipmip.demon.co.uk/mipmip.html | of the sweet peony,
mailto:m...@mipmip.demon.co-antispam-uk | a drunken bee.
Replace -antispam- with a single dot. | Basho
chaff...@gmail.com
You could start here http://www.kresadlo.cz/translations.htm , and follow (not only) the "Short Stories" link.
I have taken the liberty of quoting from this over on fb
https://www.facebook.com/groups/53031442532/permalink/10151619447117533/
As for Astronautilia, Song XIII is translated as a series of comments on fb nearby
https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=515241658511769&id=504561959579739&comment_id=5350111&offset=0&total_comments=9