3 ms·

More notably to me they are all western. There's a lot more diversity missed out on due to not having say Lem and the Strugasky brothers than on old and male i

by jib 12y ago

More notably to me they are all western. There's a lot more diversity missed out on due to not having say Lem and the Strugasky brothers than on old and male imo. Eastern European sci-fi is well worth spending some time on.

goldfeld 12y ago
I was half expecting you'd suggest some Far East sci-fi, which I'd love to get acquainted with. On the GP's call for female authors, I'd add Joan Slonczewski, who's also a microbiology book author and professor, and draws on that knowledge for her classic A Door Into Ocean which is also feminist sci-fi.
- jib 12y ago
  I would love some far east too - I have no experience with that though, so if someone has some advice I'd love to hear it too.
merrua 12y ago
It looks like that a lot of russian sci-fi is hard to get english translations of. For example a search for "Kir Bulychov" on amazon.co.uk doesnt return anything of the childrens sci-fi he wrote, which you would expect to still sell well.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- cstross 12y ago
  The Anglophone trade fiction industry has serious structural issues when it comes to publishing translated works from other languages. Firstly, a lot of readers (and store book buyers) have a "not invented here" problem with foreign authors. Secondly, names that are unfamiliar: difficult. Names that are hard to pronounce: also difficult. (I know one Serbian author who uses a pseudonym specifically because her surname is hard for Americans and Brits to pronounce.) Thirdly: before an editor can decide to acquire and push a title out to marketing they have to read it; this entails at a minimum a bilingual editor in the language in question, or a budget to pay a translator for a three chapter extract and synopsis. Then, if they go with the book, they have the added overhead of commissioning a full translation and, hopefully, getting someone else who's fluent in the source language to sanity-check it. All in all, this costs thousands of dollars -- and there's so much adequate material already available in the vernacular that most editors don't bother. It takes someone with a real sense of mission to put the effort in -- or an author who's willing to pay a translator up-front on spec in hope of selling. Little-known fact: Finnish SF author Hannu Rajaniemi writes in English. Indeed, his novel "The Quantum Thief" was translated into Finnish by someone else (and made it to #2 in the "foreign translated fiction" bestseller charts in Helsinki).
  - merrua 12y ago
    That is really unfortunate. Especially considering english is second language of choice of so much of the world. It would be helpful for more great works to be translated.
  - demachina 12y ago
    The Quantum Thief is a really interesting book. I really enjoyed it. http://www.amazon.com/The-Quantum-Thief-Jean-Flambeur-ebook/dp/B004ULPVN6 http://www.amazon.com/The-Quantum-Thief-Jean-Flambeur-ebook/...
deleted 12y ago
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icebraining 12y ago
Agreed. I have a collection of five SF novels - translated to Portuguese - by authors from the Soviet Union (including by the Strugasky brothers, but also by Genrich Altshuller and his wife, and a few others) and as a whole they're easily better than many of the list. A great advantage of being able to read in a few different languages is that it greatly increases the probability that you can read any specific work.

by jib 12y ago

goldfeld 12y ago

I was half expecting you'd suggest some Far East sci-fi, which I'd love to get acquainted with. On the GP's call for female authors, I'd add Joan Slonczewski, who's also a microbiology book author and professor, and draws on that knowledge for her classic A Door Into Ocean which is also feminist sci-fi.

jib 12y ago
I would love some far east too - I have no experience with that though, so if someone has some advice I'd love to hear it too.

merrua 12y ago

It looks like that a lot of russian sci-fi is hard to get english translations of. For example a search for "Kir Bulychov" on amazon.co.uk doesnt return anything of the childrens sci-fi he wrote, which you would expect to still sell well.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
cstross 12y ago
The Anglophone trade fiction industry has serious structural issues when it comes to publishing translated works from other languages. Firstly, a lot of readers (and store book buyers) have a "not invented here" problem with foreign authors. Secondly, names that are unfamiliar: difficult. Names that are hard to pronounce: also difficult. (I know one Serbian author who uses a pseudonym specifically because her surname is hard for Americans and Brits to pronounce.) Thirdly: before an editor can decide to acquire and push a title out to marketing they have to read it; this entails at a minimum a bilingual editor in the language in question, or a budget to pay a translator for a three chapter extract and synopsis. Then, if they go with the book, they have the added overhead of commissioning a full translation and, hopefully, getting someone else who's fluent in the source language to sanity-check it. All in all, this costs thousands of dollars -- and there's so much adequate material already available in the vernacular that most editors don't bother. It takes someone with a real sense of mission to put the effort in -- or an author who's willing to pay a translator up-front on spec in hope of selling. Little-known fact: Finnish SF author Hannu Rajaniemi writes in English. Indeed, his novel "The Quantum Thief" was translated into Finnish by someone else (and made it to #2 in the "foreign translated fiction" bestseller charts in Helsinki).
- merrua 12y ago
  That is really unfortunate. Especially considering english is second language of choice of so much of the world. It would be helpful for more great works to be translated.
- demachina 12y ago
  The Quantum Thief is a really interesting book. I really enjoyed it. http://www.amazon.com/The-Quantum-Thief-Jean-Flambeur-ebook/dp/B004ULPVN6 http://www.amazon.com/The-Quantum-Thief-Jean-Flambeur-ebook/...

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

icebraining 12y ago

Agreed. I have a collection of five SF novels - translated to Portuguese - by authors from the Soviet Union (including by the Strugasky brothers, but also by Genrich Altshuller and his wife, and a few others) and as a whole they're easily better than many of the list. A great advantage of being able to read in a few different languages is that it greatly increases the probability that you can read any specific work.