6 ms·

1940s Irish sci-fi novel features early mecha and gravity assists

108 points by donohoe 8mo ago

Tsiklon 8mo ago
Beautiful, it's typeset in classic cló Gaelach.
- pavel_lishin 8mo ago
  Oh man, you weren't kidding. Part of me wants to print out some of these pages to use in my D&D game, somehow. (Although, part of me is also uneasy with that idea - using someone's culture & heritage as set dressing, without paying it any of the actual respect it deserves. It would be just as easy to copy a few paragraphs from Wikipedia, & use a Star Trek font to make something look fantastical, which is something I've done in the past.)
  - foxglacier 8mo ago
    Stop worrying. It truly doesn't matter. No culture deserves respect. You might respect one culture or another for some reason but if you don't, as in this case, then there's nothing to worry about.
    - pavel_lishin 8mo ago
      > No culture deserves respect. I don't know if I agree with that, but I will say that people in general deserve respect. If I were playing with an Irish player, I definitely wouldn't want to offend them by treating their language like set-dressing, and I wouldn't particularly want someone using my culture for that, either.
      - Y_Y 8mo ago
        Luckily it's part of Irish culture not to worry about things like that. Sure some people might be offended, especially if you're an asshole about it. But generally Irish people are glad to share their culture, and delighted to see genuine interest from foreigners. Sad though our history is, we don't have the kind of issues that make some other groups more reluctant to share the symbols of their identity†. † Notable exceptions apply, especially regarding English upper classes.
      - talideon 8mo ago
        Irish mythology gets bowlderised plenty, so we've a pretty thick skin about it these days. If you _do_ treat it well, any Irish players who have even the remotest interest in this kind of thing (which anyone playing TTRPG probably would be), would really appreciate it. So, thanks for trying to be cool about this stuff!
        pavel_lishin 8mo ago
        Oh, I'm... absolutely going to steal things from Irish mythology in my game, and adapt it to suit my setting & plot so far. In fact, my players are about to leave "fantasy iceland" to go to "fantasy ireland", probably next session, so I need to read up on a few things to see what I can steal & borrow!
      - foxglacier 8mo ago
        While it's perfectly noble and fine to behave that way yourself, this idea very often extends to abusing people who don't follow it. That's when it becomes toxic and wrong. It's a personal choice and there's nothing wrong with anybody who uses some country's culture for whatever they like. I've been a victim of this kind of abuse myself and it does hurt. People need to treat humans well, not abstract concepts like culture.
    - cindyllm 8mo ago
      [dead]
  - leoc 8mo ago
    No-one's going to mind in the slightest if you lift Gaelic type or script for a D&D setting. (If you start larding in corny or inaccurate Irish stereotypes as well then people might start to be offended and/or amused.) If it matters, the writing style is basically just a long-surviving regional variation of what was once a mainstream form of Latin script, anyway: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carolingian_minuscule#/media/File:Minuscule_caroline.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carolingian_minuscule#/media/F... . So its story is quite similar to the story of how blackletter hung on as the primary script family for German until roughly the same time in the 20th century.
  - piltdownman 8mo ago
    I wouldn't worry in the slightest - any cultural appropriation offense has long since been hammered out at the altar of American Television. The Punch Magazine-esque depiction of bucolic ignorance in ST:TNG {1} is probably the worst representation I can think of, but you still have recent romcoms {2} which the Irish Times film review section best describe as "...stunningly regressive stuff." That said, even the most cutting satire is fully appreciated when done well. Steve Coogan's fantastic double-billing as his own look-a-like from Ireland was very well received here, negative connotations nonwithstanding. {1} https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Bringloidi https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Bringloidi {2} https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_Mountain_Thyme_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_Mountain_Thyme_(film) {3} https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEjEGbAFzJU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEjEGbAFzJU
rekabis 8mo ago
I think the biggest stumbling blocks is that not many of us can read Irish (Gaelige). While I am on mobile and (therefore) have not accessed the files, the ToC and description of the OCR process leads me to understand that the original print is in Irish, not English.
- donohoe 8mo ago
  Yes, which imho makes it more remarkable. I do not doubt an English translation is coming once they can convert it into modern Irish.
  - jonas21 8mo ago
    Here's Claude's translation of the PDF in the repo: https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/0c40c3f8-16de-4947-93c1-343f7032d92b https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/0c40c3f8-16de-4947-93c1-3... I couldn't verify it, and a human translation would be preferable -- but it's probably good enough to get an idea of the story if you want to read some right now.
    - dmurray 8mo ago
      I can verify it looks fine. Not absolutely rigorous, e.g. > "You have far more knowledge of the stars and the planets than any other living man" Why "far more knowledge"? I don't see any emphasis like that in the original. I'd have a few nits but they're of similarly small magnitude.
    - antonvs 8mo ago
      > “I became certain the planet was in the sky, in the very place where the ancient Egyptian scientist had marked it” Ah yes, planets famously remain static in the sky…
  - dmurray 8mo ago
    It looks extremely accessible. I can puzzle through the pages I looked at with school-level Irish. The script can be mechanically translated to the modern characters, no ambiguity there. The spelling and grammar isn't the perfectly standardized Irish introduced in the 1940s and 50s - which isn't representative of how anyone ever spoke the language - but its differences are those a good to mediocre student might make anyway while trying to write the official standard. It helps that this is clearly written for a YA audience. Literary Irish has lots of complicated constructions and idioms which are difficult to translate, but this does not.
colmmacc 8mo ago
Native Irish Speaker and Sci-Fi fan here. What an unexpected delight. For those who might not pick it up , the author name "Máiréad Ní Ghráda" is that of an unmarried (that's the "Ní") woman ("Máiréad" which is like a variation of Mary). Here's my Translations of the Chapter titles. I'm pretty sure many of these have old-Irish style séimhiú (a dot above a consonant denotes what would now be a h after the consonant) in the originals that have not been translated by the OCR, so there are several missing h letters. If I weren't on a plane over Afghanistan, I'd download the PDF to check. Will update the repo when I can! Pláinéid na feaca Súil Duine riamh = A planet no person's eyes have ever seen An Radarc, tríd an gCiandracán = the view throughout the [Ciandracan] (this is a compound proper noun, "Cian" is "head" or "brain" and "racán" could be visor or rocket) An Turas go Manannán = the Trip to Manannán Manannán = Manannán (it's a noun, which is very similar to the Irish term for the Manx and the Isle of Mann). Muintear Manannáin = the people of Manannán na 'Cráidmí' = the Craidmi (I think it's just a plural noun) An tÁrd-Máigistir = the high Magistrate, or possibly the supreme magistry An Priorún = the Priory Oidce sa Coill = The class/lesson/teaching in the woods/forest An tinneall = the fire Oidce tar Oidceanta = Lesson upon lesson Lug Lám-fada = the long-armed lug An Tróid leis na 'Cráidmí' = The war with the Craidmi Diogaltas = Revenge An téalod = not sure about this one
- messe 8mo ago
  > Oidce sa Coill = The class/lesson/teaching in the woods/forest > Oidce tar Oidceanta = Lesson upon lesson I suspect these are actually mistranscribed by the project. That looks more like it should be "Oiḋċe sa Coill" or "Oidhche sa Choill" without the ponc séimhithe, and in modern spelling "Oíche sa Choill" - "A Night in the Forest". Comparing the transcription of the first chapter with the source in the PDF they're missing a fada (an acute accent for non-Irish speakers) in "ná". Similarly, I'd probably render the second one as "Night upon Nights".
  - colmmacc 8mo ago
    That does make more sense.
serf 8mo ago
> It may contain the furst use of a Mecha outside of Japan. there are earlier north american examples; steam man of the prairies (1860s) being one. (i'm big into mecha, sorry for the nitpick.)
antonyh 8mo ago
This is fantastic. As an absolute beginner in the language I've added to my list of learning resources for Gaeilge. I've tried to find a better scan of the book online, but it's not anywhere - there's some Máiréad Ní Ghráda on archive.org but this one is missing. It also looks like the PDF in the repo is just the first 20 pages, it would be worthwhile scanning the whole thing cleanly and uploading to preserve this important work.
ZeroGravitas 8mo ago
Tangentially related via the Irish Language but on YouTube, "Channel 5" who previously focused on street protest gonzo journalism have branched out into explorations of endangered languages and started with an episode on Irish: https://youtu.be/oJRMfInSjRo https://youtu.be/oJRMfInSjRo

108 points by donohoe 8mo ago

Tsiklon 8mo ago

Beautiful, it's typeset in classic cló Gaelach.

pavel_lishin 8mo ago
Oh man, you weren't kidding. Part of me wants to print out some of these pages to use in my D&D game, somehow. (Although, part of me is also uneasy with that idea - using someone's culture & heritage as set dressing, without paying it any of the actual respect it deserves. It would be just as easy to copy a few paragraphs from Wikipedia, & use a Star Trek font to make something look fantastical, which is something I've done in the past.)
- foxglacier 8mo ago
  Stop worrying. It truly doesn't matter. No culture deserves respect. You might respect one culture or another for some reason but if you don't, as in this case, then there's nothing to worry about.
  - pavel_lishin 8mo ago
    > No culture deserves respect. I don't know if I agree with that, but I will say that people in general deserve respect. If I were playing with an Irish player, I definitely wouldn't want to offend them by treating their language like set-dressing, and I wouldn't particularly want someone using my culture for that, either.
    - Y_Y 8mo ago
      Luckily it's part of Irish culture not to worry about things like that. Sure some people might be offended, especially if you're an asshole about it. But generally Irish people are glad to share their culture, and delighted to see genuine interest from foreigners. Sad though our history is, we don't have the kind of issues that make some other groups more reluctant to share the symbols of their identity†. † Notable exceptions apply, especially regarding English upper classes.
    - talideon 8mo ago
      Irish mythology gets bowlderised plenty, so we've a pretty thick skin about it these days. If you _do_ treat it well, any Irish players who have even the remotest interest in this kind of thing (which anyone playing TTRPG probably would be), would really appreciate it. So, thanks for trying to be cool about this stuff!
      - pavel_lishin 8mo ago
        Oh, I'm... absolutely going to steal things from Irish mythology in my game, and adapt it to suit my setting & plot so far. In fact, my players are about to leave "fantasy iceland" to go to "fantasy ireland", probably next session, so I need to read up on a few things to see what I can steal & borrow!
    - foxglacier 8mo ago
      While it's perfectly noble and fine to behave that way yourself, this idea very often extends to abusing people who don't follow it. That's when it becomes toxic and wrong. It's a personal choice and there's nothing wrong with anybody who uses some country's culture for whatever they like. I've been a victim of this kind of abuse myself and it does hurt. People need to treat humans well, not abstract concepts like culture.
  - cindyllm 8mo ago
    [dead]
- leoc 8mo ago
  No-one's going to mind in the slightest if you lift Gaelic type or script for a D&D setting. (If you start larding in corny or inaccurate Irish stereotypes as well then people might start to be offended and/or amused.) If it matters, the writing style is basically just a long-surviving regional variation of what was once a mainstream form of Latin script, anyway: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carolingian_minuscule#/media/File:Minuscule_caroline.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carolingian_minuscule#/media/F... . So its story is quite similar to the story of how blackletter hung on as the primary script family for German until roughly the same time in the 20th century.
- piltdownman 8mo ago
  I wouldn't worry in the slightest - any cultural appropriation offense has long since been hammered out at the altar of American Television. The Punch Magazine-esque depiction of bucolic ignorance in ST:TNG {1} is probably the worst representation I can think of, but you still have recent romcoms {2} which the Irish Times film review section best describe as "...stunningly regressive stuff." That said, even the most cutting satire is fully appreciated when done well. Steve Coogan's fantastic double-billing as his own look-a-like from Ireland was very well received here, negative connotations nonwithstanding. {1} https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Bringloidi https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Bringloidi {2} https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_Mountain_Thyme_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_Mountain_Thyme_(film) {3} https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEjEGbAFzJU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEjEGbAFzJU

rekabis 8mo ago

I think the biggest stumbling blocks is that not many of us can read Irish (Gaelige). While I am on mobile and (therefore) have not accessed the files, the ToC and description of the OCR process leads me to understand that the original print is in Irish, not English.

donohoe 8mo ago
Yes, which imho makes it more remarkable. I do not doubt an English translation is coming once they can convert it into modern Irish.
- jonas21 8mo ago
  Here's Claude's translation of the PDF in the repo: https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/0c40c3f8-16de-4947-93c1-343f7032d92b https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/0c40c3f8-16de-4947-93c1-3... I couldn't verify it, and a human translation would be preferable -- but it's probably good enough to get an idea of the story if you want to read some right now.
  - dmurray 8mo ago
    I can verify it looks fine. Not absolutely rigorous, e.g. > "You have far more knowledge of the stars and the planets than any other living man" Why "far more knowledge"? I don't see any emphasis like that in the original. I'd have a few nits but they're of similarly small magnitude.
  - antonvs 8mo ago
    > “I became certain the planet was in the sky, in the very place where the ancient Egyptian scientist had marked it” Ah yes, planets famously remain static in the sky…
- dmurray 8mo ago
  It looks extremely accessible. I can puzzle through the pages I looked at with school-level Irish. The script can be mechanically translated to the modern characters, no ambiguity there. The spelling and grammar isn't the perfectly standardized Irish introduced in the 1940s and 50s - which isn't representative of how anyone ever spoke the language - but its differences are those a good to mediocre student might make anyway while trying to write the official standard. It helps that this is clearly written for a YA audience. Literary Irish has lots of complicated constructions and idioms which are difficult to translate, but this does not.

colmmacc 8mo ago

Native Irish Speaker and Sci-Fi fan here. What an unexpected delight. For those who might not pick it up , the author name "Máiréad Ní Ghráda" is that of an unmarried (that's the "Ní") woman ("Máiréad" which is like a variation of Mary). Here's my Translations of the Chapter titles. I'm pretty sure many of these have old-Irish style séimhiú (a dot above a consonant denotes what would now be a h after the consonant) in the originals that have not been translated by the OCR, so there are several missing h letters. If I weren't on a plane over Afghanistan, I'd download the PDF to check. Will update the repo when I can! Pláinéid na feaca Súil Duine riamh = A planet no person's eyes have ever seen An Radarc, tríd an gCiandracán = the view throughout the [Ciandracan] (this is a compound proper noun, "Cian" is "head" or "brain" and "racán" could be visor or rocket) An Turas go Manannán = the Trip to Manannán Manannán = Manannán (it's a noun, which is very similar to the Irish term for the Manx and the Isle of Mann). Muintear Manannáin = the people of Manannán na 'Cráidmí' = the Craidmi (I think it's just a plural noun) An tÁrd-Máigistir = the high Magistrate, or possibly the supreme magistry An Priorún = the Priory Oidce sa Coill = The class/lesson/teaching in the woods/forest An tinneall = the fire Oidce tar Oidceanta = Lesson upon lesson Lug Lám-fada = the long-armed lug An Tróid leis na 'Cráidmí' = The war with the Craidmi Diogaltas = Revenge An téalod = not sure about this one

messe 8mo ago
> Oidce sa Coill = The class/lesson/teaching in the woods/forest > Oidce tar Oidceanta = Lesson upon lesson I suspect these are actually mistranscribed by the project. That looks more like it should be "Oiḋċe sa Coill" or "Oidhche sa Choill" without the ponc séimhithe, and in modern spelling "Oíche sa Choill" - "A Night in the Forest". Comparing the transcription of the first chapter with the source in the PDF they're missing a fada (an acute accent for non-Irish speakers) in "ná". Similarly, I'd probably render the second one as "Night upon Nights".
- colmmacc 8mo ago
  That does make more sense.

serf 8mo ago

> It may contain the furst use of a Mecha outside of Japan. there are earlier north american examples; steam man of the prairies (1860s) being one. (i'm big into mecha, sorry for the nitpick.)

antonyh 8mo ago

This is fantastic. As an absolute beginner in the language I've added to my list of learning resources for Gaeilge. I've tried to find a better scan of the book online, but it's not anywhere - there's some Máiréad Ní Ghráda on archive.org but this one is missing. It also looks like the PDF in the repo is just the first 20 pages, it would be worthwhile scanning the whole thing cleanly and uploading to preserve this important work.

ZeroGravitas 8mo ago

Tangentially related via the Irish Language but on YouTube, "Channel 5" who previously focused on street protest gonzo journalism have branched out into explorations of endangered languages and started with an episode on Irish: https://youtu.be/oJRMfInSjRo https://youtu.be/oJRMfInSjRo