View from Another Shore : European Science Fiction Read online

  View from Another Shore

  Liverpool Science Fiction Texts and Studies

  General Editor DAVID SEED

  Series Advisers

  I. F. CLARKE EDWARD JAMES PATRICK PARRINDER

  AND BRIAN STABLEFORD

  1. ROBERT CROSSLEY, Olaf Stapledon: Speaking for the Future, ISBN 0-85323-388-8 (hardback)

  2. DAVID SEED (ed.), Anticipations: Essays on Early Science Fiction and its Pre-cursors, ISBN 0-85323-348-9 (hardback), ISBN 0-85323-418-3 (paperback)

  3. JANE L. DONAWERTH AND CAROL A. KOLMERTEN (ed.), Utopian and

  Science Fiction by Women: Worlds of Difference, ISBN 0-85323-269-5 (hardback), ISBN 0-85323-279-2 (paperback)

  4. BRIAN W. ALDISS, The Detached Retina: Aspects of SF and Fantasy, ISBN

  0-85323-289-X (hardback), 0-85323-299-7 (paperback)

  5. CAROL FARLEY KESSLER, Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Her Progress Toward

  Utopia, with Selected Writings, ISBN 0-85323-489-2 (hardback), ISBN

  0-85323-499-X (paperback)

  6. PATRICK PARRINDER, Shadows of the Future: H. G. Wells, Science Fiction and Prophecy, ISBN 0-85323-439-6 (hardback), ISBN 0-85323-449-3 (paperback)

  7. I. F. CLARKE (ed.), The Tale of the Next Great War, 1871–1914: Fictions of Future Warfare and of Battles Still-to-come, ISBN 0-85323-459-0 (hardback), ISBN

  0-85323-469-8 (paperback)

  8. JOSEPH CONRAD AND FORD MADOX FORD, Foreword by George Hay,

  Introduction by David Seed, The Inheritors, ISBN 0-85323-560-0 (hardback) 9. QINGYUN WU, Female Rule in Chinese and English Literary Utopias, ISBN

  0-85323-570-8 (hardback), 0-85323-580-5 (paperback)

  10. JOHN CLUTE, Look at the Evidence: Essays and Reviews, ISBN 0-85323-820-0

  (hardback), 0-85323-830-8 (paperback)

  11. ROGER LUCKHURST, ‘The Angle Between Two Walls’: The Fiction of J. G.

  Ballard, ISBN 0-85323-821-9 (hardback), 0-85323-831-6 (paperback)

  12. I. F. CLARKE (ed.) The Great War with Germany, 1890–1914: Fictions and Fantasies of the War-to-come, ISBN 0-85323-632-1 (hardback), 0-85323-642-9

  (paperback)

  13. FRANZ ROTTENSTEINER (ed.), View from Another Shore: European Science

  Fiction, ISBN 0-85323-932-0 (hardback), 0-85323-942-8 (paperback)

  14. VAL GOUGH and JILL RUDD (eds.), A Very Different Story: Studies on the Fiction of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, ISBN 0-85323-591-0 (hardback, 0-85323-601-1

  (paperback)

  15. GARY WESTFAHL, The Mechanics of Wonder: The Creation of the Idea of Science Fiction, ISBN 0-85323-563-5 (hardback), 0-85323-573-2 (paperback)

  16. GWYNETH JONES, Deconstructing the Starships: Science, Fiction and Reality, ISBN

  0-85323-783-2 (hardback), 085323-793-X (paperback)

  View from

  Another Shore

  edited by

  FRANZ ROTTENSTEINER

  LIVERPOOL UNIVERSITY PRESS

  This revised edition published 1999 by

  LIVERPOOL UNIVERSITY PRESS

  Liverpool, L69 3BX

  First edition published 1973 by

  The Seabury Press, New York

  Copyright # 1999 in this compilation by Franz

  Rottensteiner; copyright in the English translations,

  except for that of ‘The Land of Osiris’ by Wolfgang

  Jeschke, is also held by Franz Rottensteiner.

  Copyright in the individual stories is held by their

  authors: see the Acknowledgements on p. vi of this

  book, which constitute an extension of this

  copyright notice.

  All rights reserved. No part of this volume may be

  reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or

  transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,

  mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise

  without the prior written permission of the publishers.

  British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

  A British Library CIP record is available

  ISBN 0-85323-932-0 cased

  0-85323-942-8 paper

  Set in Meridien by

  Wilmaset Limited, Birkenhead, Wirral

  Printed and bound in the European Union by

  Bell & Bain Limited, Glasgow

  Contents

  Acknowledgements

  vi

  Introduction FRANZ ROTTENSTEINER

  vii

  In Hot Pursuit of Happiness STANISL

  /

  AW LEM

  1

  The Valley of Echoes GE

  ŔARD KLEIN

  42

  Observation of Quadragnes J.-P. ANDREVON

  51

  The Good Ring SVEND A

  ˚ GE MADSEN

  69

  Slum HERBERT W. FRANKE

  82

  The Land of Osiris WOLFGANG JESCHKE

  87

  Captain Nemo’s Last Adventure JOSEF NESVADBA

  143

  The Altar of the Random Gods ADRIAN ROGOZ

  167

  Good Night, Sophie LINO ALDANI

  175

  The Proving Ground SEVER GANSOVSKY

  198

  Sisyphus, the Son of Aeolus VSEVOLOD IVANOV

  215

  A Modest Genius VADIM SHEFNER

  233

  Notes on the Authors

  248

  Acknowledgements

  Lino Aldani: ‘Good Night, Sophie’. Original title, ‘Buonanotte Sofia’. From the author’s collection, Quarta Dimensione (Milan: Baldini & Castoldi, 1964). First published in the sf magazine Futuro, No. 1 (March/April, 1963), under the pseudonym N. L. Janda. # 1964 by Lino Aldani. By permission of the author.

  J.-P. Andrevon: ‘Observation of Quadragnes’. Original title, ‘Observation des Quadragnes’. First published in J.-P. Andrevon’s Cela se produira bientoˆt (Paris: Editions Denoe¨l, 1971). # 1971 by Editions Denoe¨l. By permission of the publisher.

  Herbert W. Franke: ‘Slum’. Original title, ‘In den Slums’. First published in X

  magazine. # 1970 by Herbert W. Franke. By permission of the author.

  Sever Gansovsky: ‘The Proving Ground’. Original title, ‘Poligon’. From Sever Gansovsky’s Tri shaga k opasmosti (Moscow: Detskaia literatura, 1969). By permission of Mezhdunarodnaia kniga.

  Vsevolod Ivanov: ‘Sisyphus, the Son of Aeolus’. Original title, ‘Sisif, syn eola’.

  From Nefantasti v fantastike (Moscow: Molodaia gvardiia, 1970). By permission of Mezhdunarodnaia kniga.

  Wolfgang Jeschke: ‘The Land of Osiris’. Original title, ‘Osiris Land’. First published in Arcane (Munich: Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, 1982), edited by Helmut Wenske

  and Wolfgang Jeschke. First published in English translation, by Sally Schiller, in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, March 1985. # 1982 by Wolfgang Jeschke. By permission of the author.

  Geŕard Klein: ‘The Valley of Echoes’. Original title, ‘La Valleé des ećhos’. From Geŕard Klein’s Un Chant de Pierre (Paris: Eric Losfeld, 1966). # 1966 by Geŕard Klein. By permission of the author.

  Stanisl/aw Lem: ‘In Hot Pursuit of Happiness’. Original title, ‘Kobyszcze (’. From Stanisl/aw Lem’s Bezsennosć´ (Cracow: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1971). # 1971

  by Stanisl/aw Lem. By permission of the author and the author’s agent.

  Svend A

  ˚ ge Madsen: ‘The Good Ring’. Original title, ‘Den gode ring’. From S. A˚.

  Madsen’s Maskeballet (Copenhagen: Glydendal, 1970). # 1970 by Svend A

  ˚ ge

  Madsen. By permission
of the author.

  Josef Nesvadba, ‘Captain Nemo’s Last Adventure’. Original title, ‘Posledni dobro-druzstvı´ kapitańa Nemo’. From Josef Nesvadba’s Vynalez proti sobe´ (Prague: Krasneĺiteratury, 1964). # 1964 by Josef Nesvadba. By permission of the

  author and the literary agency Dilia.

  Adrian Rogoz: ‘The Altar of the Random Gods’. Original title, ‘Altarul zeilor stohastici’. First published in Almanahul literar, 1970. # 1970 by Adrian Rogoz. By permission of the author.

  Vadim Shefner: ‘A Modest Genius’. Original title, ‘Skromnyi genii’. From Vadim Shefner’s Zapozdalyi strelok (Leningrad: Sovetskii pisatel, 1968). By permission of Mezhdunarodnaia kniga.

  Introduction

  FRANZ ROTTENSTEINER

  Science Fiction is a branch of literature that tries to push the borders

  of the unknown out a little further. It attempts to unveil the future; to imagine worlds lying beyond the next hill, river over ocean (including

  the ocean of space); to impress vividly upon the reader that the world

  need not necessarily be the way it happens to be, and that other states

  of existence are possible besides the one we know. Change is the

  proclaimed credo of science fiction—so much so that some writers

  have claimed this essential characteristic to be something that distin-

  guishes SF above all other kinds of fiction. How paradoxical, then,

  that science fiction should be primarily an English-language phenom-

  enon, at least in the minds of the majority of readers—and not only in

  the United States, but in Europe as well. A casual observer should

  expect science fiction to be more international than other kinds of

  popular fiction, precisely as a result of this stress on change: for isn’t it reasonable to assume that the hopes, fears and expectations of people

  will be different in different countries, their ways of looking at things unlike those in one’s own country? And yet the facts point to a

  different picture; while change is welcomed, obviously not all kinds of

  change are welcomed: not, for instance, the change that is necessary

  to adjust to the worlds presented in foreign science fiction which may

  be alien enough without any deliberate attempt at further estrange-

  ment. The late Donald A. Wollheim commented upon this phenom-

  enon in his introduction to Sam J. Lundwall’s Science Fiction: What It’s

  All About (New York: Ace Books, 1971):

  We science fiction readers whose native language happens to

  be English—that is to say we American, we Canadian, we

  British and we Australian science fiction readers—tend to a

  curious sort of provincialism in our thinking regarding the

  boundaries of science fiction. We tend to think that all that is

  worth reading and all that is worth noticing is naturally

  written in English. In our conventions and our awards and

  our discussions we slip into the habit of referring to our

  favourites as the world’s best this and the world’s best that.

  viii

  Franz Rottensteiner

  When View From Another Shore first appeared in the USA in 1973, I

  noted that at least eighty or ninety per cent of all science fiction

  published in Western Europe consisted of translations from the

  English; but that the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe had their

  own large and independent body of science fiction. But while the SF

  of the West is now even more dominated by American (and to some

  extent) British SF, the Communist paradigm has all but disappeared

  with the fall of communism. In Russia, the Czech Republic, Romania,

  Poland and elsewhere there are now lots of commercial publishers,

  and they are printing all the thrillers, romances, fantasies, horror

  novels and science fiction works that couldn’t appear during the

  Communist era—partly because of censorship, but much more

  because of economic restrictions: there simply was no money to

  pay for licences of popular fiction. Much the same happened in

  Russia during the brief flowering of the New Economic Policy during

  Lenin’s time, when Edgar Rice Burroughs was one of the most

  popular authors. Now most writers in these countries have difficulties

  getting published at all, and print-runs and authors’ earnings are

  greatly reduced. In the German Democratic Republic for instance,

  which had in its last decade a number of interesting SF writers, it was

  possible for a writer to make quite a comfortable living from just a

  couple of books, if these got reprinted every few years; now the

  royalties from one book cover living expenses for perhaps a month or

  two. It is no longer possible to make a living from just writing SF, as it never was possible in the German Federal Republic (unless you

  happened to be a Perry-Rhodan-author). Even well-established and

  famous writers like Lem or the Strugatskys have now only very

  modest print-runs in their own countries, while many lesser writers

  are not published at all.

  The situation of SF in the Anglophone countries has also greatly

  changed, and while it might be hoped in 1973, when the works of

  Stanisl/aw Lem and Arkady and Boris Strugatsky were just beginning

  to appear in English translation, that translated SF might play a

  greater role in the future, any such expectations turned out to be

  utterly wrong. In 1973, the Seabury Press had started a series of

  European SF, with works by Stanisl/aw Lem, Arkady and Boris

  Strugatsky, Jacques Sternberg, H. W. Franke and Stefan Wul, and

  my own anthology of European SF View from Another Shore. Later

  Donald A. Wollheim followed suit and published, more as a hobby

  than in expectation that it would pay, a number of European SF

  novels by writers like Geŕard Klein, Pierre Barbet, Daniel Walther,

  Introduction

  ix

  Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, Herbert W. Franke and others, usually

  in awful translations. Macmillan made a more careful effort to present

  the ‘Best of Soviet SF’, most notably, a number of Strugatsky books.

  None of these ventures was successful, most books went quickly out

  of print, and of the hardcovers almost none had reprints in mass

  market paperbacks. Avon Books failed to find a wider audience for

  their Lem reprints, since then no American mass market paperback

  publisher has been interested in Lem’s books, and the Harcourt Brace/

  Harvest trade paperbacks sell very poorly. While Lem has received

  some attention from mainstream criticism, notably The New York Times

  Book Review and The New Yorker, he received little attention from the

  SF field, and this can only be partly explained by his antagonism to

  American SF and his quarrel with The Science Fiction Writers of

  America that led to his ousting from that organization that had

  originally made him an honorary member. But Lem is the only SF

  writer whose works have at least been kept in print in the USA (not so

  in England, where he is even less known). The Strugatskys were at

  least favourably reviewed, and one of their best books, Roadside Picnic,

  even made second place in the John W. Campbell Award. But one

  story that Donald A. Wollheim once told me shows the resistance to

  foreign SF in some rural areas of the USA. Many sales-points refused

  to exhibi
t the Strugatsky books at all, and rather ripped off their

  covers to return them for refund, arguing that there was enough SF

  by good American boys and therefore no need to sell this foreign

  trash. This is perhaps an extreme example, but among readers

  translated SF has also found little attention and has mostly been

  restricted to special SF series and anthologies, and the changes in

  publishing of the past decades have also affected English-language

  writers. Australian writers complain all the time that it is very hard for them to find American publishers. SF has become big business, and

  while some works sell for enormous advances, the mid-list books and

  the rest suffer. The backlist has all but disappeared, many once well-

  known SF writers are no longer in-print, and many living authors

  complain that they can no longer place their works with commercial

  publishers; British ones perhaps more so, but even many American

  authors are affected (Barry Malzberg and R. A. Lafferty are prominent

  examples). Many classic SF authors have sunk into obscurity, and

  attempts to start ‘classic SF’ lines have failed. The SF books of a world-famous writer like J. G. Ballard are out-of-print in the USA most of

  the time, despite a Steven Spielberg box-office-success like Empire of

  the Sun. SF in general seems to be on the decline, fantasy has

  x

  Franz Rottensteiner

  infiltrated the field. Big books dominate, and what was once the rule

  has now even got its own name: ‘stand-alone novel’ for a novel that

  isn’t part of at least a trilogy or a series. TV and film tie-ins and gamerelated fictions abound. All of these developments make the success-

  ful publication of translated SF more unlikely, and indeed it is now as

  rare as ever, and in many cases authors have to pay for their own

  translations if they wish their books to appear in English. Let’s admit

  it, American SF has won the field, and the future most likely will

  bring a further Americanization of even the SF written by European

  authors who will have to adapt their writings to the American product

  to remain competitive. There is little chance that such stories will be

  translated, and really, what need is there to translate something into

  English that is abundantly written in that language, and usually with