Comments on: Club Du Livre D’Anticipation

By: ProfWombat

ProfWombat — Tue, 23 Nov 2004 19:29:49 +0000

Thanks for bringing me back to middle school, 1961, when 35c. was 35c. Derring-do, pictures of pretty women and a half-assed introduction to philosophy. What more could you want?

By: Martin Wisse

Martin Wisse — Tue, 23 Nov 2004 08:38:13 +0000

French SF: I liked the Fleuve Noir (iirc) translations we got in the late seventies/early eighties here in the Netherlands, some very inventive if somewhat pulpy stories there.

By: yabonn

yabonn — Tue, 23 Nov 2004 01:27:45 +0000

Lucky english speakers. You have the boingboingesque feeling of the sf in french, and we have the crappy translations. It could be bearable if it was only incompetence, but no, they feel they have to “make it better”, as in “more adapted to these freaks, the genre loving audience”. See “snowcrash”? French title “le samourai virtuel”. Flashy colors on the cover, too. Kids like samurai stories and, as it’s sf, we’re selling to kids, right? One thousand gipsy curses on you, editor. Btw, if you’re interested in sf in french, try “la mort vivante” from stefan wul. Maybe a bit unpolished, but i bet some scenes will stick.

By: philippe

philippe — Mon, 22 Nov 2004 23:00:00 +0000

Somehow I don't think this book or this book or this book would find a place in the homes of either John Ashcroft or Michael Powell. Ah! to be a teenager in France... When I was in 9th (troisieme) grade in a French high school I had a highly unorthodox English teacher. He made us read The Dreaming Jewels by Theodore Sturgeon. It was a powerfully strange and hypnotic novel. He also had us read Peter Ibbetson by George du Maurier - not SF and forgotten now but also strange and enticing. Both had a lasting effect on me.

By: vernaculo

vernaculo — Mon, 22 Nov 2004 21:48:33 +0000

Everything is a test of one kind or another.

By: dave heasman

dave heasman — Mon, 22 Nov 2004 21:45:18 +0000

..and they have the covers of “Fiction”, the French edition of F & SF, which seems to have lasted from ‘53 to ‘61.

By: dave heasman

dave heasman — Mon, 22 Nov 2004 21:42:15 +0000

I’d like to see the cover for Neuf Cent Grandmeres…

By: bob mcmanus

bob mcmanus — Mon, 22 Nov 2004 21:19:59 +0000

Powers My favorite cover artist when I was 10-15, the only PB’s I would buy for the cover alone was Richard Powers. Probably some kind of snobbishness, Powers just looked like ART. Or xenophilia, Powers was creating landscapes that felt actually alien. I don’t know if today I like Tanguy because he reminds me of Powers.

By: bob mcmanus

bob mcmanus — Mon, 22 Nov 2004 20:53:45 +0000

“what would Phil Dick and Sam Beckett have written if they’d collaborated …” Phil Dick + Sam Beckett = George Alec Effinger? Didn’t get whether those were French language editions or not;the covers were in English. I have a couple hundred fifties editions of SF stuff bought in the late 70s as the only available reading copies during a reprint drought. Not any sort of collector though. Worth, oh golly, $5 to $10 apiece now.

By: Jason Kuznicki

Jason Kuznicki — Mon, 22 Nov 2004 18:54:29 +0000

Cordwainer Smith in French? Sounds like just my kind of thing. (And,as all good Cordwainer Smith fans know, we would never have had Frank Herbert without him…)

By: Henry

Henry — Mon, 22 Nov 2004 17:03:24 +0000

En Attendant l’Année Dernière. (That’s Now Wait For Last Year, but the other way sounds more Proustian than paranoid, no?) Surely even more Beckettian than Proustian (en attendant Godot after all). Which makes for some wonderful images – what would Phil Dick and Sam Beckett have written if they’d collaborated …