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This blog is rapidly nearing its 10,000th hit. According to my calculations it should happen this weekend.
Scroll down to the bottom of the page and look at the hit counter on the right-hand side bar. If it says 10,000 send me an email. There's huge amounts of kudos and self-satisfaction to be won!
The first issue of Catalan science fiction magazine Catarsi is almost ready. The editors asked for my bio this week and the table of contents is up on their blog. You can read the English Google translation here, where you’ll see that Roadmaker becomes Road Openers in Catalan, or maybe only when translated back into English again.
I’m sharing the billing with Santiago Examino, formerly the editor of Efimeras, who has translated six of my flash fiction stories into Spanish.
Roadmaker is also due to appear in Hebrew in Bli Panika this year. Dog’s Best Friend, set in the Roadmaker world, is due to appear in Jupiter and has been translated into Bengali. I have yet to find a market for that though.
My copy of EF-Zin #14 arrived from Greece, and it’s a great little magazine. Glossy colour cover with internal black & white illustrations. The sketches to go with Fool Britannia are fantastic.
I’m left wondering how they translated ‘chameloderm helminthiihumanoids’.
This week I present the 2nd of my stories to have been translated into Manx: Delayed Reaction. For other Manx stories and for Delayed Reaction in other languages, see the left hand side bar.
Yn Aavuilley Moal
’Sy stayd saveenagh eck, s’foddey yn traa v’ayn roish da’n woirrynagh vuillvollee vio-chlaghagh aavuilley. Fy yerrey hoal, lurg keeadyn dy vleeantyn erskyn earroo, raink ny buillaghyn nearag e h-inçhyn jeant clagh as hug ad jee yn çhaghteraght atçhimagh: dy row e stroin er ve giarrit j’ee dy bollagh.
As ish moostrey doaltattym, lheim ee gys e kiare maaigyn lesh gull angaaishagh va ry-chlashtyn veih’n Vooir Veanagh gys yn Vooir Yiarg, hug aggle ayns ny creeaghyn jeusyn ooilley ren clashtyn eh. Ren geinnagh roie myr eas veih ny lhiatteeyn eck, as ish çhyndaa as lheimmey lesh grayse aalin kaytoil harrish yn phyramid by niessey jee as hie ee ass shilley ’sy chraa-skell jeh Faasagh yn Sahara.
Yn Jerrey
As well as the 7 languages that The Gondolier had already been translated into, there’s been more progress in the past couple of weeks. I now have Swedish and Russian translations that I’ve submitted to the relevant magazines, it’s being translated into Greek for the next issue of EF-ZIN and translations into Welsh and Polish are under way.
I’m still looking for more. :o)
Slowly but surely, one word at a time, Roadmaker has passed the 70,000 word mark. I know it seems a long time since I passed 65,000 words, but I'm getting there!
A little investigation and I’ve discovered that Fool Britannia has been printed in a small Greek fanzine called EF-ZIN. The name is literally SF Zine, but is also a homophone of the Greek phrase meaning ‘well being’.
A contributor copy is on its way over to me.
One of my earliest stories was Fool Britannia, a conspiracy tale that includes lots of odd happenings from recent British history. It was published in Aphelion in August 2005. I haven’t submitted it to any foreign language markets as I thought the concept wouldn’t translate well.
So I was quite surprised to note today on the Greek SFF forum that a translation has just appeared in a Greek SF magazine. I can’t work out what the magazine is called yet, and Google's translation doesn't make it clear whether the comments about it are favourable or not. I’m attempting to get some details.
Obviously I’m pleased to have my work translated and published, but it would be nice to know something about it!
After carrying out a number of interviews with genre magazine editors last year, I put together an article based on some of the common themes and comments that I got from them. It was lost in the email wilderness for some time until the arrival of Focus magazine last week reminded me to chase it up. It’s now been accepted by Focus, the BSFA magazine for writers and will appear in the next regular issue in the summer.
The latest BSFA magazines arrived on Thursday, including Focus, the magazine for writers. In his editorial, Martin McGrath bemoans the fact that he didn’t write much last year and resolves to write 500 words per day this year.
That’s just what I need to do, I thought, to avoid writing nothing for weeks on end. I set a more modest goal of 200 words though. The results?
Thursday : 1600 words
Friday : 350 words
Saturday : 250 words
Sunday: Windows won’t load. I need to re-install it, which will apparently wipe the hard drive.
Now to find a friendly PC shop that can back up the hard drive first and re-install the software.
:o(
My tour of Celtic langauges continues this week with the Irish translation of The Gondolier.
Fear an Ghondola
Le Gareth D Jones
Shlis gob ciar mo ghondola trí uisce ciúin na gcanálacha go séimh. Is maith mar a d'fhóin an bád slim dom le blianta anuas, maith mar a d'iompair sí paisinéirí ar uiscebhealaí na cathrach faoi stiúir lámha mo sheacht sinsir.
Bhí an ghrian ag dul faoi in éadan na seanchathrach, an t-uisce á fhágáil ina ribín dubh leagtha idir fhoirgintí galánta gaineamhchloiche. Tharraing mé lán scamhóige de leoithne fhionnuar an tráthnóna.
An raibh áit ar bith ab áille ab iontaí ná cathair seo na gcanálacha? Shleamhnaigh an bád isteach ina poll feistithe agus bhreathnaigh mé uaim go sásta, suas ar spéir chrónta Mharsa.
An Deireadh
Translated by Abigail Mitchell
When I received the slipstream anthology Subtle Edens, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I’ve read the occasional slipstream story without coming to a definite conclusion about what it means. As I’ve been reading through I’ve realised that’s because there isn’t really a definition. For me it's anything that doesn’t fit into the other speculative fiction genres.
I’ve also realised that this means I’ve actually written some slipstream myself. Several of my flash fiction stories aren’t really science fiction and until now I didn’t know what they were.
Have a look at these ones, and see what you’d call them:
Another Year
Never Talk to Strangers
The new issue of Concept SciFi has an interview with Michael Cobley, which I was interested to read having recently finished his new novel Seeds of Earth. My review of that will be in next month’s SF Crowsnest.
I’ve not read the rest of the magazine yet as Murky Depths #7 arrived first. I know I say this every time, but the cover art is fantastic. The cover of issue #4 has deservedly been shortlisted for the BSFA award this year.
I’m simultaneously reading Subtle Edens, the final anthology from Elastic Press and I’ll be reviewing that too.
Meanwhile the Powerful Tales anthology that includes The Ironic Man has been put back a month and will now be appearing in March.
The Gondolier has been translated into 2 more languages over the past few days: Irish and Breton, bringing the total to eight languages.
There may be markets for these two, but if not I’ll post them on this site in the near future.
P.S. Shockingly, this is my 500th post on this blog!
Issue # 220 of 'Interzone' comes complete with a particularly stylish cover by Adam Tredowski that's probably the most memorable for some time. Maybe it's the odd angle of the landscape, but I had to keep flicking back to look at it again. There is as usual a decent selection of reviews, interviews and columns to read between the fiction, of which the lengths of both the stories and their titles are unusually varied.
Read the rest of my review at SF Crowsnest.
In a desperate bid to populate the Galaxy ahead of the dreaded Pfrlanx, a battalion of Augmented Combat Personnel spend their lives travelling from world to world to conquer the locals and subjugate them to the Empire of Mankind. At first the précis sounds a bit clichéd and the soldiers initially come across as stereotyped, but in this novel Struben has developed a complex and long history rich with personal tragedy and large-scale atrocity that amounts to a very powerful piece of work.
Read the rest of my review at SF Crowsnest.
