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the complete review - science fiction / reference

Out of This World

by
Rachel S. Cordasco

general information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author

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Our Assessment:

(--) : a very good and useful overview, well-presented

See our review for fuller assessment.

  From the Reviews:

• "To appreciate this unique book, you need to be aware of its scope, content, and approach. For this is no mere annotated bibliography. Rather, each chapter is a guided tour through speculative fiction in translation (.....) This essential and apprehensible guide -- written primarily for readers, not scholars or critics -- belongs in every library: large or small, public or university. And, although quite pricey (one hopes for a less expensive paperback edition soon!), it will prove a worthwhile purchase for any reader of SF who wants to explore the rich body of SFT." - Michael A. Morrison, World Literature Today

Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.

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The complete review's Review:

[Note: in considering this review, readers may want to take into account that Cordasco lists me and mentions several reviews from the complete review under her sources.]

       As the subtitle has it, Out of This World looks at Speculative Fiction in Translation from the Cold War to the New Millennium -- works of (adult, prose) speculative fiction published in English since the 1960s (though these include many works written earlier, or previously translated but also newly translated after 1960), which Cordasco identifies as the: "decade that brought Anglophone readers the first major wave of SFT from multiple source languages".
       The 'speculative fiction' Cordasco considers encompasses a wide range of fiction, including science fiction, fantasy, horror, and some forms of magical realism and surrealism. Limiting herself to speculative fiction available in English translation -- i.e. readily accessible to readers of a volume such as this one, while not originally written in English --, Cordasco further cuts down the pool of titles by confining her survey to the fourteen languages which she finds at least ten works in translation from (well, thirteen and Korean, from which she finds nine): Arabic, Chinese, Czech, Finnish, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Russian, Spanish, and Swedish. The fact that there are still just so few languages from which even such a modest number of speculative fiction titles have been translated into English is, in itself, quite remarkable (and rather disappointing); nevertheless, these languages do cover the vast majority (if not the entirety) of the significant speculative fiction that has been translated into English over the past six decades and do offer a more than adequate overview.
       Cordasco arranges her book by language, alphabetically, with separate chapters for each. A nice touch is having a brief introduction -- a thousand words or so -- to each chapter written by someone with greater familiarity with the speculative fiction written in that language (the exception being Russian, where the introduction is by Cordasco herself). Each chapter then looks at what (and how much) has been translated into English, with brief descriptions of the works; depending on how much has been translated, chapters are also variously divided and subdivided by, for example, genre or, in the case of languages covering multiple countries, nationality. At the end of each chapter there is a useful chronological (by date of original publication, not that of the translation) bibliography of the 'Primary Sources' (the discussed texts) -- a handy reference-list.
       The introductions to each chapter offer helpful overviews of each language's speculative fiction. The writers take different approaches and, along with their different voices, this makes for a nice change of pace from chapter to chapter. Here readers also learn about the speculative fiction tradition in these languages and countries extending beyond what is available in translation (which can often give a skewed(-to-a-few-authors-and-examples) impression. From Wojciech Orliński noting that while speculative fiction is unlikely to figure on anyone's list of ten greatest American novels, a Polish list: "would be full of fantastyka" (the Polish (and Slavic) umbrella term for speculative fiction) to the shocking/disappointing realization, per Emad El-Din Aysha, that: "none of the classics of Egyptian SF have been translated into English" , there's a great deal of helpful insight and information here. The introductions offer good potted historic overviews, but also bring up language-specific issues, as in Keren Omry's discussion of the Hebrew-language issues in writing speculative fiction in Hebrew, and translating it to and from Hebrew, such as the fact that in Hebrew verbs always indicate gender -- much as, as Julie Nováková points out, in Czech, too: "the gender is always there".
       (Curiously, the material -- specifically, the author-names -- mentioned in the introductions is not indexed, with the occasional exception of names that are then also mentioned in the chapter-proper by Cordasco. This can be somewhat frustrating.)
       In each chapter Cordasco then tackles the titles that have been translated into English, providing quick, brief summaries, while pointing out commonalities (of theme and interests, for example), trends, and the like. Cordasco almost entirely avoids being judgmental, noting when books were particularly well-received or have proven very influential, but avoiding, at nearly all cost, making any claims whether they are 'good' or 'bad'. (An amusing exception comes in her mention of Aramaki Yoshio's The Sacred Era, about which she's willing to go so far as to say: "Aramaki's The Sacred Era has been described as a masterpiece of new-wave science fiction" -- noting only via a reference-footnote that she was the one so describing it, in a 2017 review). This neutrality is certainly defensible, though some readers might also prefer slightly more guidance, especially as the quality (and other elements, from verbosity to complexity) of speculative fiction can vary greatly.
       Major authors are covered in proper depth -- Stanisław Lem gets five full pages -- and a variety of trends pointed out and followed, from the sudden (if not unexpected) interest in Arabic speculative fiction in the past decade (and the prevalence of dystopias among the works translated into English), to the sudden shift, in 1989, from science fiction dominating translations from the Russian to fantasy becoming ascendant.
       With the number of works that have been translated into English relatively limited, Cordasco can, and does, really introduce practically everything out there (at least from the fourteen languages covered here). By subdividing her chapters where and as necessary, even the overview of translations from a language which there have been a larger number from, such as Japanese, does not feel overwhelming. Certainly, there are some titles, mainly from the periphery of the definition(s) of 'speculative fiction' that one could argue merit inclusion, but within her parameters Out of This World is impressively comprehensive. (Among missing titles, the one I'd most like to have seen is the curiosity that is Casanova's (written-in-French) Icosameron -- though given that the 1986 English translation is abridged (i.e. inadequate), it isn't a huge oversight.)
       Cordasco is also good in presenting, incidentally, publishing history and trends, and giving due credit -- and also pointing readers -- to the publishers most active in this field, noting, for example, that:

Five publishers in particular -- Alfred A. Knopf, Kodansha, Haikasoru, Kurodahan, and Vertical -- are responsible for the majority of the Japanese SFT that we have today, with the University of Minnesota Press also starting to publish classic Japanese SFT.

- M.A.Orthofer, 21 July 2022

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Links:

• University of Illinois Press publicity page
• Q & A at Clarkesworld
• Q & A at Cora Buhlert
• Q & A at Maria's Reading
• Speculative Fiction in Translation site

• Science Fiction Studies
• World Literature Today

• See Index of Science Fiction and Fantasy books
• See Index of Literary Essays

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About the Author:

       Rachel S. Cordasco is the founder of SFinTranslation.com.

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© 2022-2023 the complete review

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