The Employees by Olga Ravn, in a beautiful translation from the Danish by Martin Aitken, requires a suspension of expectations about science fiction but nevertheless delivers a devastating impact. As a collection of statements by the crew members of a spaceship, both human and humanoid, it has little narrative drive at first, though it does […]
New Voices in Chinese Science Fiction, Edited by Neil Clarke, Xia Jia, Regina Kanyu Wang
In her introduction to New Voices in Chinese Science Fiction, Xia Jia explains how she and the other editors selected and found translators for the work of eight writers who had never before had their stories presented to the English-speaking world. I found the eight stories the editors chose to be fascinating. Several are brilliant […]
9 Great Books of SFF in Translation
Anticipating reading resolutions for next year, one is definitely to review more SFF in translation. Over the past couple of years of blogging, I’m appalled to see that I’ve only reviewed nine translated works, though each of these is a masterpiece in its own way. If I were to include all the international SFF I’ve […]
Slipping by Mohamed Kheir – A Review for #SciFiMonth
Mohamed Kheir has written in Slipping a brilliant series of stories that drop their characters out of time and space for brief periods and interweave their narratives to challenge the limits of story-telling. The effect is like a folding of reality itself as the terms of their lives change directions in a stray encounter here, […]
5 Great Novels in My Lineup for #SciFiMonth
November is here and it’s time for SciFiMonth, that great blog-along managed by Lisa of Dear Geek Place and imyril of There’s Always Room for One More. If you want to sign up, they have set up a master schedule where you can enter whatever you plan to blog or tweet about. Check out Lisa’s […]
Primeval and Other Times by Olga Tokarczuk
Olga Tokarczuk’s Primeval and Other Times, finely translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones, is a uniquely fantastical search through the multiple worlds and forms of time found in the life of a fictional village in Poland during the 20th century. I’ve never read anything like it. On one level, it depicts the lives of a group of […]
