Here’s something a little different – Lucas Moreno and and Marc Tiefenauer have created Utopod, a French language literature podcast exploring the best in science fiction being created in the French-speaking world. Once again I find myself wishing I’d kept up my French skills after school rather than letting them atrophy, then I could understand more of this – Cory Doctorow certainly endorses it enthusiastically, so I imagine it must be pretty good. We’ve discussed here how we often miss out on some fascinating comics in the English language world because they haven’t been translated (and, by extension, because a lot of us don’t have good foreign language skills to read them in their original language); the same is true of prose fiction as well.
(“Un vaisseau fabuleux” accompanying Joël Champetier’s Huit Harmoniques de Lumiere, on Utopod, (c) Benjamin)
I have a couple of old short story collections on my shelves which collected tales from French SF writers translated into English, but sadly this isn’t something we see very often. I once asked a friend in a senior position in a major publisher’s SF imprint why no-one ever did this kind of thing anymore. Cost and sales were the main reasons – a lot of the larger publishers aren’t always too keen on short SF story anthologies, although many smaller ones do regular collections which do well, offering readers a diverse array of writers, many of whom will be new to them and so the collections also serve as a potential way to introduce readers to new writers.
For foreign language collections the costs are much higher – more work hours are required to identify which writers they wish to include, it is harder to sort out deals with them and the work has to be translated, all of which is time consuming and expensive. Even if the book sells reasonably, would it justify the time and money? Possibly not, hence why we don’t see Best French SF too often on our bookshelves. Which is a shame because it means, as with many European comics, we’re missing out on some remarkable material which is not only interesting but offers us a different perspective – and expanding your horizons and opening the reader to new perspectives is an essential part of reading.
(“Dorian”, artwork accompanying La Faim du Monde on Utopod, (C) Eikasia)
Still, if we aren’t likely to see many translated anthologies we do have sites like Utopod, so if you have even a basic grasp of French and like seeking out new writing then you may want to check it out. Some of the work on offer now includes stories by Joël Champetier, editor of Solaris, the respected French SF magazine, Jean-Pierre Andrevon and Xavier Mauméjean. On Boing Boing Cory describes Mauméjean’s short story La Faim du Monde (The World’s Hunger), in which diplomacy maintains world peace through banquets with the finest chefs. Every four years comes the Communion, when the finest chef prepares a special meal – cooking a human being alive, with doctors keeping the person aware until the last moment, while world leaders watch and then consume the person, appeasing the world’s hunger, a modern haute cuisine twist on ancient tribal cannibalistic ceremonies. Somehow I am not surprised to learn that there is some fabulously imaginative SF being produced in the French language – after all the French produce some truly brilliant comics and superb films (and just as importantly value both as rich components of their artistic culture). And of course it is France which furnished us with one of the great godfathers of the genre, Jules Verne. There’s such a whole, wide, wonderful world of stories out there to explore; in one respect it is a little depressing to know that many of us will not get to read much of it, but on the other hand it is exciting to know there are even more words, images and ideas out there, waiting to be explored.
Mon, Aug 6, 2007
Books, Podcast