Nove i pročitane knjige (u 2017.)

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Tor je od danas ponudio besplatno The Outstretched Shadow by Mercedes Lackey and James Mallory, prvu knjigu trilogiji. REc je o opustenoj epskoj fantastici, sasvim nepretencioznoj, koja nema drugog motiva do da zabavi citaoca. Napisana u maniru DnD avantura i romana - samo rukom daleko bolji pisaca od prosecnog DnD romansijera - The Outstretched Shadow je dobar naslov za nedeljno popodne i gubljenje vremena. Tor je ponudio i dva volpejpera: Donato Giancola's cover detail for City by Clifford D. Simak, and John Jude Palencar's cover for Someplace To Be Flying by Charles de Lint.


Inace, trudicu se da bar jednom nedeljno na ovoj temi i na Nightflier's BEST OV DE BEST propratim nove naslove strane produkcije i skrenem paznju na ono sto bi moglo biti zanimljivo - pa koga zanima, neka cita.

[Nightflier]

Kao sto Mizantrop rece na jednoj drugoj temi, Tor je danas svojim citaocima omogucio da skinu roman Farthing. Rec je o romanu koji zapravo prevazilazli zanrovske odrednice, buduci da spaja alternativnu istoriju sa klasicnim britanskim krimicem, u maniru Agate Kristi. Naravno, vec smo imali prilike da citamo slicne naslove. Setimo se samo Harisove Otadzbine, koja je i kod nas objavljena. Valtonova je dobitnik Kembelove nagrade, kao i Svetske nagrade za fantastiku, a Farthing je nominovan za Nebulu.

[Nightflier]

Pre ovog roman, Valtonova je za Tor oobjavila fentezi trilogiju, u kojoj se poigrava mitom o kralju Arturu. Rec je o romanima The King's Peace (2000), The King's Name (2001), i The Prize in the Game (2002). Inace, zanimljivo je da je Valtonova pre nego sto joj je Tor objavio The King's Peace bila jako aktivna na internetu, sto je kasnije doprinelo njenom uspehu kod citalaca.

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Sledeće nedelje na tor.com :Crystal Rain by Tobias Buckell

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Bakel je pisac kojeg poznajem samo po kratkim pricama, a nekim cudom nisam nabavio njegove romane, tako da je ovo naslov koji zeljno iscekujem. Tor je napravio dosta dobar odabir iz svoje ponude, tako da citaoci mogu da uzivaju u hard SFu, klasicnom fenteziju, ali i alternativnoj istoriji. Po meni - sjajan uredjivacki potez.

[Nightflier]

Izdavacka kuca Planet Stories pokrenula je ediciju posvecenu klasicima zanra, vrativsi se korenima i zanemarivsi marketinsku podelu na podzanrove, tako da je u njihovoj ediciji sve "fantastika". Neki od naslova su The Anubis Murders pokojnog Garija Gigaksa, City of the Beast Majkla Murkoka, The Ginger Star Li Breket... Ovo je edicija posvecena ljubiteljima zanrovske knjizevnosti - obogacena novim grafickim resenjima, a svaka knjiga propracena je uvodom iz pera nekog od i dalje aktuelnih pisaca, kao sto su Ben Bova, Dzo Lendsdejl itd. Iako vecinu naslova vec imam u izdanju drugih kuca, u iskusenju sam da ih sve ponovo kupim. Oni koji vec nemaju ove knjige, a ljubitelji su stare skole, ne bi trebalo da oklevaju...

[Nightflier]

Jedna novosadska izdavacka kuca vec duze vreme priprema srpsko izdanje R. A. Salvatoreove sage o Driztu. Predvidjeno je istovremeno objavljivanje prve dve trilogije, odnosno Mracni vilovnjak i Dolina ledenog vetra.

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Kao sto Mizantrop rece na jednoj drugoj temi, Tor je danas svojim citaocima omogucio da skinu roman Farthing. Rec je o romanu koji zapravo prevazilazli zanrovske odrednice, buduci da spaja alternativnu istoriju sa klasicnim britanskim krimicem, u maniru Agate Kristi. Naravno, vec smo imali prilike da citamo slicne naslove. Setimo se samo Harisove Otadzbine, koja je i kod nas objavljena. Valtonova je dobitnik Kembelove nagrade, kao i Svetske nagrade za fantastiku, a Farthing je nominovan za Nebulu.

Počeo sam da čitam Farthing. E sad, sama činjenica da čitam sa ekrana znači da napredujem jako sporo i da sam za nedelju dana pročitao svega 6 poglavlja. Priča je za sada interesantna, drži pažnju ali je i suviše rano da se donosi neki konačan sud.
Do tada evo jednod intervjua sa autorkom Farthing-a:
It's a great misfortune that author Jo Walton is perhaps best known as the instigator of the International Pixel-Stained Peasant's Day, which was a response to a post by Dr. Howard V. Hendrix, then vice-president of the Science Fiction Writers' of America. However, as an author, Walton is even far more interesting and subversive than her internet persona.

A Welsh native currently living in Quebec, Walton is the Campbell Award winner for Best New Writer for 2002 and has won the World Fantasy award for her novel Tooth and Claw (Tor 2004). In her latest series which begins with Farthing (Tor 2006), she subtly takes on issues of living in world where personal freedoms are being eroded in the name of security, while telling a compelling, personal story that's at once a manor house mystery and alternate history novel. In many ways, Farthing could be said to be making a parallel between Hitler's rise to power in Germany and George W. Bush's post 9/11 America.

It is, in my opinion, Walton's soft touch and sense of humor that make Farthing a success. She's also known for a "youthful indiscretion" involving a Coke and David Brin at a Boskone and an often un-credited, humorous Usenet poem, "The Lurkers Support Me in E-Mail."

Morehouse: Farthing, the first book in your alternate history series, has gotten a lot of attention. It was nominated for a Nebula, a Quill, a Campbell, and a Sidewise Award, and is, in my opinion, an excellent book that deals with, among other things, personal responses to fascism. What inspired you to write it (and its sequels, Ha'Penny and Half a Crown)?

Walton: I was reading Josephine Tey's Brat Farrar, a mystery published in 1952 which requires for plot reasons various things to have happened ten years before, including British people going on holiday to France. I'd read it before, but for some reason this time I stopped and thought, hang on, 1942, I think not—but when is it supposed to be set? Thinking about when it was supposed to be set, I worked out the whole background for the Farthing universe. I also thought of the whole Farthing thing, the Auden quote I use at the beginning, the idea of the country house with that name, the murder. I made a note of this and got on with whatever I was supposed to be working on.

Then in May of 2004 I got Lucy's voice in my head very clearly, the beginning of the book, and I just started to write it. Stories are always about characters for me, not worlds or ideas, though sometimes I have the worlds and ideas first and they have to wait until some characters wander along before I have anything to write. After I'd written the first Lucy chapter, I realised I'd have to contrast that voice with a third person detective voice. I wrote the first paragraph of the first Carmichael chapter, and immediately I realised that this is a very slashy situation. I'd fairly recently read Micole Sudberg's review of Peter Dickinson's Some Deaths Before Dying which talked about how these days the revelation of homosexuality isn't actually a dark unguessable secret, and I thought what fun it would be to make Carmichael gay, and have it a secret from the world but not from the text.

The whole time I was writing Farthing I was re-reading Orwell's essays, letters and journalism, which really helped more than I can say. I wrote the whole first draft in three weeks.

But also, it was May of 2004. Your country and mine had just invaded Iraq, while I was sitting in Canada surrounded by people whose countries hadn't done that. I was brought up by my grandparents, and the formative event of their lives was WWII. They married in 1938, they had that one year, and then the separation, the war, and life after the war. I'd grown up with WWII in the background, and I'd read quite a lot about it later as well.

In many ways it's the defining twentieth century event. In any case, watching the US and the UK defy the UN and invade Iraq on a trumped up excuse was just too much like Hitler's invasion of Czechoslovakia and Poland for me. I'd been furious, and there hadn't been anything I could directly do about it. Then there had been all the other things, the civil liberties things, in Britain especially. I started writing Farthing just after the Abu Ghraib revelations. I didn't set out to write something to draw explicit parallels. But it would be disingenuous to say I wasn't thoroughly aware of the implicit ones. At the same time, it was its own story, the characters were what was important. I couldn't have written it any other way.

Years ago, a friend of mine said about Marge Piercy's Gone to Soldiers that he was disappointed because in talking about WWII it didn't try to deal with the nature of evil. As I was writing Farthing I was afraid the characters were too black and white. Then I saw how to end it and deal with that problem. You say it's about personal responses to fascism. I say it's about how good people do bad things.

Farthing ends where I wanted it to end. I didn't intend to write a trilogy. Then some time later, when I was doing what I was thinking of as "post-research" for it, I had the idea for Ha'Penny and Half a Crown at the same time, that I could do one focused on the theatre and another ten years later focused on the debutante season and "Coming Out" and with Carmichael's trajectory through the three books. Those two books were much harder to write.

Morehouse: It's funny you should mention that one of the inspirations for the Farthing universe was the US/UK invasion of Iraq. I was going to ask you about that next. As I read the first book, I had a very chilling sense of a post 9/11 world wherein freedom is sacrificed in the name of security. I agree with you that this book is very much a character-driven story, but the backdrop is particularly fascinating for me because of its resonance with today's political climate.

Walton: Resonance is a good word. Resonance is fine, making people feel they've been hit over the head with a political point is terrible.

Morehouse: Personally, I think that this kind of, dare I call it, subversive writing works particularly well in science fiction, where readers can "distance" themselves from the now by going to another world, or in the case of Farthing and its sequels, an alternate past. This new series is categorized as science fiction. Previously, you wrote World Fantasy Award winning fantasy. Did you find the shift in sub-genres difficult in any way? What do you find is different about writing SF, if anything?

Walton: The way I write, there isn't any difference. All my novels start from history. These ones then go in an alternate history direction, and my others go in a fantastic direction. But history is the bedrock I'm building on in all of them. I think writing real SF, set in the future, is very much more difficult, because you don't have that foundation, everything is extrapolation. I don't do it very much, even though SF is what I like best to read, because it slows me down so much. Say you have a character want to send a message. In a novel in a setting based on history you know if that means a messenger on horseback, or a postal service, or a telephone, or email. In a future world you have to work out what they have, and then you have to integrate that and the effects of it into everything else. Then that goes for absolutely everything. It takes me forever. But that didn't apply to this.

Morehouse: Earlier, you mentioned Carmichael's sexuality and I have a lot of questions regarding that specifically and the gay characters in the novel in general. First of all, however, I absolutely adore Lucy's terminology regarding various gay male relationships: Macedonian (for basically straight men who have the odd gay/queer relationship) and Athenian (men who are gay). I also loved Lucy's other terms for things like adultery, etc. For me, those linguistic touches made Lucy seem very much a product of her time and social-economic class. In fact, they rang so true for me I wondered if you'd invented those terms or come across them in your research?

Walton: I made up those specific terms. But in Margaret Forster's biography of Daphne Du Maurier she talks about Du Maurier's personal sexual terms, which included "Venice" for lesbian sex and therefore Venetian for lesbian, and "Cairo" for male-female penetrative sex, and some third term which I've forgotten for non-penetrative sex, which was her preference. And I was as impressed as anything with how this allowed Du Maurier to be as sexually explicit as anything in her letters and journal without saying a word that could be censored, or even understood by the wartime censors, in the twenties and thirties and during the war. I also adored the way they were simultaneously totally explicit and weirdly coy. Du Maurier was, of course, from broadly the same kind of class as Lucy. When I started writing Lucy's running-on point of view, using something like that just seemed like a good idea.

When I start writing a book I often put things in because they seem like fun things to be playing with, and by the time I get to the end they seem like laws of the universe graven in stone, and with the weight of stone. Lucy's voice, which includes these terms, and Carmichael's sexuality would both fall into this category.

Morehouse: As a lesbian, I have to admit that when you early on revealed Carmichael was gay, my first thought was that, given his job and the situation, it would be used to compromise him. You suggested earlier that you thought it would be fun to make him gay, and so it seems to me he was not intended as a "plot coupon" from the start. And obviously, his story continues in the follow-up books. You also included a large number of gay/queer relationships in Farthing, to the point that I started to feel like everyone was gay but poor Lucy. What was your rationale behind those choices?

Walton: As far as Carmichael's concerned, as I said, at first I thought it would be neat, and then it became part of who he was in my mind, and then as the story developed and I saw what was going to happen it became a lever that could be used against him because it was part of who he was—like Alan Turing, and a lot of other people as well.

I think there are very few exclusively homosexual people in Farthing, only three—or four if you count Jack who doesn't appear, though he does in the later books.

That is, there are three "Athenians". There are a lot of "Macedonians", bi people. I'm straight myself, but I've been aware since reading Delany's Triton at an early age that I'm actually way off at the end of a bell curve in which most people fall somewhere in the middle in bisexuality.

This question, the "Why are there so many gay people?" completely threw me when people started asking it. My first response was "If you think there are a lot of queer people in Farthing you should see my livejournal friendslist." Then someone said my friendslist wasn't randomly selected. Well, no, they're the friends that a middle-aged straight woman happens to have. The people in Farthing aren't randomly selected either. They know each other, they come from the same social class. We don't see any gay or bi working class people, except for Jack again.

I've always written characters with the sexuality that seemed appropriate for who they were, and nobody has ever cared before. (For instance, one of my point of view characters in The Prize in the Game is gay, and the man he loves is cheerfully and promiscuously bi, which causes him much angst. Nobody has ever said a word about it.)

In Farthing, because of the time and place and background and class, you have a lot of characters who have been to public school, where homosexual acts are, face it, happening frequently and are expected and normal. If you read the journals and letters of this kind of people from this period, being exclusively straight starts to feel like an actual perversion.

Also, when they got a little older, straight sex was available only in marriage or in fairly grotty prostitution. Gay sex was very available. Christopher Isherwood, who is famously homosexual, talks (in Christopher and His Kind) about having sex with a woman and enjoying it but being repelled by the conventions and expectations. Evelyn Waugh was in his late twenties before he started thinking that maybe he wasn't queer. (He wasn't. Read his letters!) Heterosexual experimentation was taboo, but homosexual experimentation in youth was totally normal, and then of course, you got the people who really were gay and kept on with it.

And of course you have these passionate same sex friendships, some of which were, or had been, sexual at some point.

So when I was writing against this background, and from my knowledge of it, of course this affected the kind of characters I was writing.

At first I thought that the "too many gay people" thing was weird homophobia. Then people started saying it who I knew weren't homophobic and I wondered if there really were too many gay people. I don't think there are for the time and place, but then I wouldn't.

I'm tempted to go through and make a list of everyone in the book and their sexuality—and I'm positive it would be a strong majority of "Romans". But heterosexuality is so much the assumed default in fiction that when you have quite a few non-straight people they stand out. There have been studies done that show that lots of men percieve a room with 30% women in as majority female, and I wonder if it's that kind of thing that makes it noticeable.

To come back to Carmichael, I wouldn't want you to think that I think homosexuality is his tragic flaw. I think in the later books I make it clear that his relationship with Jack is the thing that makes his life worth living. What I wanted to do with it being used against him was to suggest that everyone is vulnerable. There's always something, some normal human thing, they can find on anyone, to use against you if they want to, and the more things are tolerated quietly but used to make an example when necessary, the more there's hypocrisy about this kind of thing, the more people stay in line and do what's wanted. We have these laws that are made out of fear, and which can be used to make people more afraid, and that's wrong. At the end of Farthing Carmichael quite explicitly gives up essential liberty for a little temporary safety. But it's because he's been doing that all along by staying closeted that he's able to be forced into it.

In so far as Farthing is about responses to fascism, as you said before, it raises the question of whether you're going to be brave or not. Being brave might not work, but the alternative is going along with it.

Morehouse: Yeah, though I think this last bit touches on my problem with the situation with Carmichael. At least as recently as a decade ago, being gay still excluded someone from a job in the U.S. intelligence service because we're seen as easily compromised. I know this from personal experience. I myself didn't lose a job, but a friend of mine asked me not to mention, or shall I say "not volunteer any information on," his orientation if someone from the CIA should call me for a reference. This frustrates me because, as you say, we all have secrets. Granted both Carmichael and James could die for this particular secret in the universe of Farthing, so it wasn't just Carmichael's own willingness he had to consider but his lover's as well. This kind of cowardliness is very human, realistic, and in many ways deeply sympathetic, but, honestly, I guess I just wished they'd had something else on him, you know? I struggled with my feelings about this because at first I thought you set him up as gay only to make him fall, but there are moments in the narrative when Carmichael needs to be gay to figure out pieces of the puzzle. So, what I'm saying is that you handled it well, but in the end I still left feeling strangely cheated. I was able to love Lucy and David, despite the fact that I knew they were doomed to certain compromises, but somehow theirs felt cleaner. Perhaps because you show Lucy and David so very much in love and the reader experiences their love on a visceral level, but Carmichael's lover is someone to go home to, whom we never see and only hear about very distantly. So when Carmichael has to choose love over honor, the sacrifice feels more selfish, more dare I say it sexual, rather than emotional. Because gay people are often seen as more concerned with sex than love, this difference in the way you portrayed Carmichael really stood out for me. Care to comment?

Walton: You're probably right. I was going to write a scene where Carmichael went home to Jack, but I didn't because it felt intrusive. I had difficulty writing the bits with Jack in Ha'Penny and Half a Crown for the same reason, and I'm not sure he ever gets a fair deal. Probably I should have written it, because the way Carmichael's enemies frame the relationship is so sexual, and because of all the stuff you're talking about.

My intention was to show Carmichael as a very private person, but just as much married to Jack as Lucy is to David. I was very surprised when Farthing won the Romantic Times Reviewer's Choice Award for Best SF novel, because one of the things I'd thought was how nice it was to have a novel without a romance, where all the main characters are married at the beginning and still married at the end. (Though a friend suggested that that is in itself romantic, so there you go.)

In the later books, they like it that Carmichael is gay, because it gives them a simple easy hold over him.

On this bit, while he is chosing love, he's also chosing his job. He likes his job, he likes being an inspector, but also, he's got no economic independence, nothing to fall back on, he's living like a middle class person with a servant but if he quits he's got no cushion and he has no experience of anything else—straight from school to the army and then the police, and if he's notorious, nobody's going to hire him for anything at all. So it's an economic choice too. That's a bind a lot of people are in—whistle blowing can lose you your career, and with it your house, everything, if you did the right thing you'd be on the streets.

Lucy and David are rich, and used to being rich so that even if they lost all their money and couldn't sell their jewellry or get money from David's family they'd still have the expectations of rich people. Carmichael's used to having barely enough money to keep up appearances. I think that's significant too.

Morehouse: Absolutely. Class is a huge issue for this book.

But, I think, too, Americans in particular (even people with a history degree like myself) still tend to think of gayness as a modern phenomenon, so Lucy's relaxed sensibility about it seems anachronistic, even though quite clearly it isn't, you know? Your publisher is American, so do you ever find yourself having to defend real historical fact over the "perception of history" to your publisher or your audiences? Are there things you've uncovered in your research that are stranger than fiction and that modern audience would find too difficult to believe?

Walton: The first bit, no, my publisher and editor have never had the slightest hesitation over anything, never asked me to change anything like that. Patrick Nielsen Hayden, my editor, has been behind these books all the way.

On the other hand, I can't get them published in Britain whatever I do.

As far as my readers go, and things you find in research, yes, all the time, and I call that the Tiffany Problem.

Tiffany is a real attested medieval name, it's a variant of Theophania, it appears in twelfth century documents from Britain and France, and you cannot give it as a name to a character in a historical or fantasy setting because it looks too horribly modern.

One review of Farthing said that as part of the changes in the alternate world, homosexuality was made illegal, and you can't respond to a review saying "1969! Homosexuality between adults wasn't legalized until in Britain until 1969!"

In Half a Crown, a number of my test readers had problems with things in the British constitution that are, I'm sorry, in the British constitution to this very day. I've tried to explain them more.

I'm very aware of this problem.

Morehouse: Speaking of historical research, I understand Ha'Penny features a group of wildly divergent sisters—one of whom is a fascist, another who's a Communist, etc.—are these characters loosely based on the Mitford sisters whose letters have recently been collected in a book by Mary S. Lovell?

Walton: Finally, an easy question! Yes, the Larkin family in Ha'Penny is inspired by the concept of the Mitford family. There aren't meant to be exact one to one correspondences between people, but yes. It's odd, since I finished Ha'Penny there have been a whole pile of new Mitford stuff published, Jessica Mitford's letters last year, and now those collected letters. Obviously I'm not the only person who finds them fascinating.

And speaking of improbable, I had to tone them down a lot for fiction.

Morehouse: Yeah, actually you've inspired me to do a little non-fiction reading about them while I wait for Half a Crown to come out. One last hard one: you're one of those writers whose name I heard long before I read anything by you. First, there was an incident involving a Coke and David Brin at a Worldcon that received a lot of attention in the SF community, and then, of course, there was International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant's Day. How do you think this notoriety affected your career, if at all?

Walton: I don't think any of it has made any difference. It's very odd to think of myself as notorious, too.

The Brin thing—it was a Boskone actually, not that it makes any difference. I'd like to say it was a youthful indiscretion. It was stupid and childish of me to give way to an impulse like that, and I've apologized. I was quite amazed at the kind of attention it got. There might be some people who wouldn't buy a book by someone who does idiotic things like that, I don't know.

International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day I did deliberately, though actually I wasn't expecting the overwhelming chord that struck in the community. My immediate and instinctive response to Dr Hendrix's rant was a desire to put something online for free —and it suddenly occurred to me that, as a Nebula nominee but not a SFWA member, I had standing to do that and make Dr Hendrix be aware of it. So I decided that not only would I do it, I'd encourage other people to do it as well. I was expecting maybe a dozen of my friends to join in, not thousands of people. I mean Mercedes Lackey posted something! The response was absolutely overwhelming. It's amazing sometimes what's going to make a difference.

Clearly, I was not the only person who felt that way.

But I don't think it's done anything for my career one way or the other. The only thing that does that is writing the books, isn't it?

I think, generally, there are people who go around doing things to advance their career, and they're always positioning themselves for it, and thinking about this kind of thing, and I'm not one of them. I am slightly better than I used to be about doing things first and considering whether they're a good idea later, at least I hope I am.

Morehouse: Even though I'm a throw-back, hidebound Neanderthal and can kind of see Dr. Hendrix's point (despite his objectionable and poor word choice—"webscabs"? Oy vey), I ended up posting something with you, too. Free content is a weird issue for me, however, and one I'm of two minds about. The Hendrix half of my brain agrees that as a professional writer I should have every expectation that what I do (i.e. provide content) is worth something to someone or I wouldn't be in business, right? But, the business model has changed quite drastically in the past several years as you, John Scalzi, and Cory Doctorow have clearly shown.

I'm a former member of NWU (the National Writer's Union), which won a seminal Supreme Court case against the New York Times over what is, in many ways, this same issue, i.e., that writers should get paid for what goes on the web (and in the case of the NYTimes, even if that content is a reprint of work already paid for.) I understand Hendrix's rant was off on a somewhat different tact, but, if you don't mind repeating what I'm sure feels to you like old news, what was the thrust of your argument with what he said?

Walton: I'm not Cory Doctorow, and I'm not an "information wants to be free" fanatic or anything like that. I just strongly resented being told I was a scab because I post poetry on my livejournal. Previous to IPSTD, I hadn't put up any work for free longer than the first couple of chapters of a novel. But I post poetry online all the time and this works for me.

On the one hand, if I can sell it I get maybe $10, and instant gratification of seeing people's reactions is worth more than $10. And on the other, I've found out since I started doing it that if I can sell it, I can sell it even after it has been on my journal. I have sold poetry that's been on my journal to Asimov's, Goblin Fruit, Mythic, Lone Star Stories— and it gives me a great sense of getting money for old rope too. This is a win/win situation for me, and I can't see how it's hurting anyone else.

I argued with Eric Flint when he was first suggesting what became the Baen model. But the Baen model has demonstrably worked. They're giving away free books and it is increasing sales. Cory Doctorow has said the problem for a writer isn't piracy, it's obscurity. If putting your first novel online for free means people will find you, and will buy your third, which might otherwise be your last chance the way publishing is today, how does it benefit anyone to stop you? How is that being a scab? A scab!

My position on copyright is that the writer should control it. Not anyone else, not the publisher, not pirates, certainly not SFWA, the writer.

Morehouse: Thank you so much for your thoughtful responses to my questions, Jo. This has been a great deal of fun. So, tell us: what can fans of Jo Walton look for from you in the next year or so? I know Half a Crown will be out soon. What's the next series/stand-alone percolating in your mind?

Walton: Half a Crown will be out in September 2008 from Tor.

I'm just starting a new thing called "Our Sea" which is a nice cheerful fantasy with no fascists at all. The idea is that there was a hole blowing about the ancient Mediterranean from about the fall of Troy to the fall of Rome, and ships from our world went through it into this other sea, and couldn't find their way back. They founded cities and civilizations there.

The original inhabitants there were bronze age hermaphroditic lizardmen. "Our Sea" is set in a Greek city-state that's holding the balance of power between the Romans and the Phoenicians. So far, I'm having a lot of fun with it. That'll probably come out sometime in 2009.

After that, I don't know. I always have a lot of ideas, and it's difficult to tell which of them are going to come alive and have enough to them to become actual novels. At this time of year I always start thinking about the fantasy world where they have one sun made of fire and one made of ice, and what happens if the ice sun doesn't retreat after midwinter. Then there's the Tooth and Claw sequel, there's the Douglas MacArthur in Elfland story, there's the version of Mansfield Park set on Mars â€" I would like to write something that's proper SF. But what'll happen is that I'll get some character talking in my head and I'll have to deduce her entire universe from the evidence of who she is and how she could have got to be like that, and there you go. That's how it usually works for me.

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Od danas na tor.com možete skinuti: Crystal Rain by Tobias Buckell.

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Crystal Rain
Author - Tobias Buckell


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When I first heard of Buckell's novels, Crystal Rain and Ragamuffin, I wasn't sure quite what to think. They were short (always an oddity in the field of Science Fiction and Fantasy), they had a strong Caribbean flair and, well... I thought the name Ragamuffin was kinda silly.

Still, the more I read about him and his novels, the more interested I became to see just exactly what they were about. So, I got my hands on copies of his two novels and quickly set to work forming an opinion of my own. And its a positive opinion, more or less.

Let me start off by saying this about Crystal Rain: Buckell manages to fit more into this lean novel than most authors do into novels twice as long. I don't know how he does it, but other authors (and editors) need to take note; this is how you tell a lean, fast paced and frenetic story without any wasted words. Each and every one of Crystal Rain's 384 pages burst at the seams with creativity: a vivid world inhabited by real people all wrapped up in a plot that races towards the finish line at full steam ahead.

Buckell tells the story through the eyes of several characters throughout the story (another accomplishment for a lean novel) and each of them give the reader a different sense of the world and the violent events taking place during the course of the story. The main protagonist, John DeBrun, is mildly interesting (moreso towards the end of the novel when the reader has some light shed on his past), but it is the other characters that surround John that really make the novel shine.

Foremost amongst these is a character named Pepper. A trench-coat wearing, dreadlocked and pissed off killing machine that has some sort of connection to John's forgotten past. I found myself eagerly anticipating any scene involving Pepper, whether it was told from his point of view or not.

It's clear from the get-go that Buckell's Caribbean heritage plays a huge part in the novel. From the setting (a world inhabited by, more or less, Caribbean refugees from Earth), to the conflicts (Buckell mentioned Haiti's violent history as one inspiration for his writing in one interview) to the dialect of the characters.

And this is where we find what could be considered one of the novel's biggest problems: the dialect. Buckell, in an attempt at authenticity, chose to write dialogue of the Nanagadan's (the "good-guys" of the novel) just as it would be found in a current day setting among the Caribbean Islands. This means a lot of broken English and hard to read dialogue for the reader to wade through. I will admit that I had a really hard time with it at first and found that it got in the way of me connecting with the characters in the novel. As I moved further on in the novel, however, I found myself getting acquainted with the speech patterns of the characters and by the end decided I wouldn't have it any other way. Buckell made a risky move, one that is sure to turn off many readers, but in the end it payes off by helping to create a world, and a group of characters, that feels distinct and realistic.

The conflict between the aforementioned Nanagadan's (the Caribbean-based culture) and the Azteca (the Aztec-based culture) is a bloody and despondent affair that affords the perfect opportunity for Buckell to craft a fast, breakneck story that is always feeding the reader just enough new information to keep them from getting overwhelmed, but still feeling satisfied that things are moving along at a good pace.

My biggest criticism of the novel is that, ironically, the ending seems a little drawn out. With the rest of the novel being so fast paced, I would have liked to have seen a bit more visceral asskicking coming between the two opposing armies. Buckell seems to gloss over the most violent and gory portions of the story, and though I assume this is intentional, I would have liked to have seen some of the characters in action. Pepper is very clearly a proficient fighter, but many times we find Buckell ending a scene with a fight about to start and beginning the next scene with the fight having just ended.

All in all though, Buckell has crafted a great first novel that's crammed full of action, has a terrific setting and manages to cram a whole lot of story into a manageable amount of pages. If Crystal Rain is any indication, Buckell's next two novels (Ragamuffin and Sly Mongooe) are sure to be just as entertaining. He's definitely an author to keep an eye on in the upcoming years as he carves a niche for himself in amongst the heavy-hitters of the Science Fiction genre.

[Nightflier]

Tangled Webs: A Black Jewels Novel, Anne Bishop (Roc)

Danas sam zavrsio sa citanjem. Iako je poslednji nastavak sage o mracnim draguljima pobrao sve same hvalospeve citalstva, ja sam duboko razocaran. Pre svega, Bisopova je izneverila obecanje da ce se malo udaljiti od protagonista svojih ranijih radova, te da ce jedna od sporednih likova iz prvobitne trilogije, Sureal SaDijablo, u ovom romanu biti u prvom planu. To se nije desilo. Sureal svakako ima vise prostora nego ranije, ali opet imamo prilike da vidimo svu lepezu likova iz ranije objavljenih nastavaka, sto Tangled Webs svodi na neku vrstu uzgredne epizode, bez nekog velikog znacaja. Nako citanja zbirke od cetiri price Dreams Made Flesh, moram reci da sam od romana o Sureal imao jako velika ocekivanja, koja se nisu ispunila. Ko zna, mozda cemo jednog dana i dobiti taj roman.

[Nightflier]

Sumrak, spisateljice Stefani Mejer, izasao je iz stampe.

[Nightflier]

The Innocent Mage, Karen Miller (Orbit)

Roman koji je proglasen najboljim fentezi debitantskim romanom u Velikoj Britaniji za 2007. godinu, pokazao se zamornim i dosadnim. Ocigledno zamisljen kao odraz Martinove Pesme leda i vatre, bar kada je rec o makijavelijevskoj dvorskoj politici,  The Innocent Mage nikako ne uspeva da docara drustvenu podeljenost o kojoj govori, niti su njegovi protagonisti zivotni koliko Martinovi. Tragicno je sto autorka moze da se pozove na dela svog sunarodnika, Valtera Skota, i da u njima potrazi inspiraciju za opis drustvene segregacije - ali to ne cini. Bilo kako bilo, The Innocent Mage je daleko i od Pesme leda i vatre, i od Ajvanhoa. Jos jedan u nizu izdavackih pokusaja i promasaja u potrazi za narednim velikim fentezi autorom.

[mizantrop]

Scott Sigler- Infected
Knjiga izlazi 1.4.2008, a do 31.3. je možete besplatno skinuti ovde:http://www.scottsigler.com/node/1196

[Nightflier]

Tor je ponudio novu besplatnu knjigu - Lord of the Isles, Dejvida Drejka. REc je o epskoj fantastici, koja podseca na Dzorana, Gudkajnda i ostale pisce karakteristicne za devedesete godine proslog veka. Medjutim, Drejkov ciklus nije ni izbliza toliko dobro prihvacen od strane publike. Dejvid Drejk je, inace, najpoznatiji po tzv. military SF-u, kao i po kolaboracijama sa Erikom Flintom i S. M. Stirlingom. Zanimljivo je da je upravo saradnja sa Drejkom ovim piscima omogucila da se vinu iz anonimnosti i postanu daleko vece zvezde od njega.

[Nightflier]

Naredna knjiga koju ce Tor ponuditi citaocima je Through the Wolf's Eyes, koju je napisala Dzejn Lindskold. Opet je rec o epskoj fantastici, koja je po stilu i temi jako bliska delima Robin Hob. Preporucujem.

[Nightflier]

Bela Ruza, americkog pisca Glena Kuka, u Magnetovom izdanju, a u prevodu moje malenkosti, upravo je u stampariji.

[vrana]

Bela Ruza, americkog pisca Glena Kuka, u Magnetovom izdanju, a u prevodu moje malenkosti, upravo je u stampariji.

e vidis nisam znao da si ti to prevodio    

Mnooogo dobra knjiga....barem meni. To koliko se secam ima dosta delova??

Kada se bacas na prevod sledeceg dela....ako nije tajna  

[vrana]

Bela Ruza, americkog pisca Glena Kuka, u Magnetovom izdanju, a u prevodu moje malenkosti, upravo je u stampariji.

e vidis nisam znao da si ti to prevodio    

Mnooogo dobra knjiga....barem meni. To koliko se secam ima dosta delova??

Kada se bacas na prevod sledeceg dela....ako nije tajna  

[Nightflier]

Ne znam kada ce nastavak - i da li ce se ici na neposredni nastavak, koji nema puno veze sa Crnom cetom. Inace, Algoritam objavljuje Ubik, kultni roman Filipa Dika. Trenutno se radi priprema. Ponovice se stari prevod.

[gargamel]

Ubik je jedan od mojih omiljenih romana, mozda najbolji Dikov. Bar po meni

[Nightflier]

IPS najavljuje za jesen pravu ofanzivu kada je rec o fantastici. Sem najavljenog Neuromansera i Spook Copuntry, u planu je i nekoliko fentezi serijala. Za sada je izvesno da cu prevoditi bar jedan od njih, a mozda i vise - sve u zavisnosti od ostalih izdavaca prema kojima imam obaveze. IPS me je, inace, angazovao da prevedem roman Tisina, japanskog pisca Shusaku Endo-a, cetiri puta nominovanog za Nobelovu nagradu (u poslednje vreme mi padaju sve neki nesudjeni nobelovci), pa posle toga prelazim na fentezi. Nadam se da cu za jedno mesec dana moci da kazem o kojim je serijalima rec, ali za sada je to poslovna tajna.

[Perin]

Mozes li barem reci jesu li dosta popularni, i da li se radi o americkim, kanadskim, ili australijskim piscima?  

[Nightflier]

Jesu, jako su popularni. A rec je o Amerikancima.

[zakk]

Bre, kad ti postižeš sve ovo? Kontam da si se jako uverzirao. Jel se može živeti od toga?

[Nightflier]

Samo kada bi isplate bile redovne, moglo bi se ziveti jako dobro. Uostalom, poslednjih... sest godina, recimo, samo od toga i zivim. Naravno, sada dobijam vece honorare nego na pocetku karijere. Veca mi je cena rada, radim za vise izdavaca... Hocu da kazem da sam sasvim posvecen prevodjenju, pa mogu da prevedem veci broj stranica dnevno od nekoga ko se time bavi kad se vrati sa redovnog posla. Taj veci broj stranica znaci i vise para. Najveci je problem sto isplate umeju da kasne i po nekoliko meseci (da se razumemo, ne kod svih izdavaca), pa to poprilicno otezava stvari, ali godisnje svejedno zaradim oko pet i po hiljada evra. Nadam se da cu ove godine zaraditi i vise. Medjutim, sve ima svoju cenu. Otkako se bavim prevodilackim zanatom, ugojio sam se 20 kg. Doduse, da se pohvalim, smrsao sam pet za proteklih mesec dana.

[Perin]

A kolika je cena za nekog pocetnika prevodioca? Ja kontam da nije vise od 1 evra po stranici...ako nije i manje....?

[angel011]

2 evra po stranici, ili je bar bilo toliko.

[Nightflier]

Nije dva evra. Evro i dvadeset do evro i po. I iskusni prevodioci retko kad dobijaju preko tri evra. Vreme je oskudno...

[Nightflier]

Od danas na Torovom sajtu besplatno se moze skinuti Through Wolf's Eyes by Jane Lindskold. Naredne sedmice na redu je The Disunited States of America, velikog majstora alternativne istorije - Harija Tartldava.

[winter]

Verovatno ima i onih koji rade za manje od 2 evra po šlajfni, ali to samo uništava ionako loš kvalitet prevoda kod nas.

Ja sam za prvu kompletnu knjigu koju sam radio (pre godinu i po) tražio 2 evra i, uz malo natezanja i dobio. Na kraju su svi bili zadovoljni. Već sada više nemam nameru da radim za te pare.

Asistenti i profesori sa filološkog, kao i neki stariji prevodioci sa imenom, naplaćuju i po 5 evra, pogotovu kada je u pitanju specifično delo(stručna literatura i sl.). Naravno, što je manji jezik sa koga se prevodi (što ima manje kvalitetnih prevodilaca), cena je veća. Sa, npr. finskog, sumnjam da će neko prevoditi za manje od 4 evra...

[Alexdelarge]

A koliko vam treba vremena, da prevedete jednu knjigu, od otprilike 300 strana?

[Nightflier]

Zavisi. Najbrze sam preveo Zmajeve kosti, Patrise Brigs. To je trajalo dve nedelje. Zapravo, trinaest dana. Prevod koji upravo zavrsavam, od 500 stranica, radim vec pet meseci.

@winter

A sta si prevodio i za koga?

[Nightflier]

Alnari je objavio peti nastavak Spajdervikovih zapisa (a ne Zapisa Spajdervika, kako su preveli), pod naslovom Mulgaratova srdzba. Ja sam preveo prve dve knjige ovog ciklusa, po kojem se snima film, ako vec nije snimljen, dok su me na trecu i cetvrtu potpisali bez mog znanja i uvida u tekst, tako da ne odgovaram za kvalitet prevoda. Romani su namenjeni deci, ali bilo je pravo uzivanje citati ih i prevoditi (prva dva!), tako da ih od srca preporucujem.

[Meho Krljic]

Alnari je objavio peti nastavak Spajdervikovih zapisa (a ne Zapisa Spajdervika, kako su preveli), pod naslovom Mulgaratova srdzba. Ja sam preveo prve dve knjige ovog ciklusa, po kojem se snima film, ako vec nije snimljen, dok su me na trecu i cetvrtu potpisali bez mog znanja i uvida u tekst, tako da ne odgovaram za kvalitet prevoda. Romani su namenjeni deci, ali bilo je pravo uzivanje citati ih i prevoditi (prva dva!), tako da ih od srca preporucujem.

Film je, držim već snimljen, pošto je igra izašla pre jedno mesec dana.

[Nightflier]

Istina. Po Dark Horizons-u, premijera je bila 14. februara. Sad proverih.

[winter]

@nightflier

Dva naslova za Tabernakl (Sremska Mitrovica): Egiptolog (Artur Filips, savremeni amer. roman) i Ktulu priče (Lavkraftova zbirka, postoji tema na hororu, tražio sam komentare, ali izgleda još niko nije nabavio )
Nesrećno sam započeo još jedan savremeni roman za izdavačku kuću koja je u međuvremenu odustala

@Alexderange

Mnogo zavisi od stila originala. Dnevna norme je 5-8 šlajfni, tj. 1800 znakova bez razmaknica. Knjiga od "300 strana" je prilično rastegljiv pojam... Recimo od 1 do 3 meseca.

Inače, to je jedna od onih stvari gde važi: kol'ko para tol'ko muzike - što duže radiš na prevodu biće bolji.

[Alexdelarge]

Sta su slajfne?
A kako brojite te slovne znakove? (ozbiljno pitam, ne zajebavam se)

Meni je knjiga od 300 strana, knjiga od 300 strana, ne vidim sta je tu rastegljivo; nisam mislio da je cepas.

[winter]

Kao što rekoh: šlajfna je 1.800 znakova bez razmaknica (space-ova). Jedna stranica knjige može biti od pola do čak dve i po šlajfne! Zato i postoji standardizacija da bi novinari, pisci, prevodioci, lektori, korektori... mogli da naplate po količini urađenog posla.

[marlowe]

Slajfna, ili prevodilacka strana je 1800 slovnih mesta SA razmaknicama.
Ne dajte se smesti po tom pitanju.

[Perin]

Zeznuto. Evro i dvadeset po stranici za nekog pocetnika? Stvarno malo. To je nekih 350 evra za knjigu od 300 strana. Pretpostavljam da kada steknes ime u poslu da se vise placa, ali ovaj ''pripravnicki'' staz prevodioca bas se malo placa  

[Nightflier]

Jasta, slajfna se racuna kao 1800 znakova sa razmacima. Nekada je bilo 1650, ali to je davna istorija. Pre mog vremena.

@perin

Moj prvi prevod, Zenica sveta, placen mi je 1,5 maraka (sto je sada 1,5 evra). Imao je 800 slajfni, sto sam preveo za nesto vise od tri meseca. Trebalo mi je puno vremena i prevoda da poboljsam tu cenu rada. Doduse, posto mi u poslednje vreme padaju sve neki dzebeni nobelovci i slicne koske, nisam bas siguran koliko mi se isplatilo Bolje da sam se drzao samo fantastike.

[winter]

OK, zašto mi to niste rekli ranije!  

Ja sam zaista mislio da je bez razmaknica... Dobro, tako sam platio školu. Najgore je što me je u to ubedila iskusna lektorka koja je radila u Narodnoj knjizi pre privatizacije.

Ne znam šta si radio od nobelovaca, ali meni bi to više prijalo od raznih nepismenih idiota na koje ti je veća šansa da naletiš.
Moja večita dilema: ako naiđem na rečenicu koja je u originalu nepravilna ili nakaradna (ne namerno, nego zato što je pisac polupismen), da li treba nakaradno da je prevedem ili da je "sredim"?  

[Alexdelarge]

What about translations for example?

I'm hardly interested in my own fate, and certainly not in that of my books. Translations? What do you mean?

What happens to your books in other countries.

Doesn't interest me at all, because a translation is a different book. It has nothing to do with the original at all. It's a book by the person who translated it. I write in the German language. You get sent a copy of these books and either you like them or you don't. If they have awful covers then they're just annoying. And you flip through and that's it. It has nothing in common with your own work, apart from the weirdly different title. Right? Because translation is impossible. A piece of music is played the same the world over, using the written notes, but a book would always have to be played in German, in my case. With my orchestra!

Tomas Bernhard  

[Nightflier]

Prevodilac je uvek i stvaralac. Ako nije, onda ne radi svoj posao kako treba. A kada je rec o nepismenim iditoima... Pa, to su sasvim razliciti izazovi. Obracas se i drugoj citalackoj publici, sa drugim ocekivanjima. Na kraju, u slobodne strelce presao sam bas stoga da bih birao sta cu da prevodim - ali opet se zajebem povremeno. Nego, ko to ima nakaradne recenice? Filipsa sam svojevremeno odbio kao urednik u Alnariju, tako da pretpostavljam da na njega mislis.

[Nightflier]

Za koji mesec trebalo bi da izadje noveleta pod naslovom Backup, smestena u svet Harija Drezdena, sada vec ultrapopularnog pisca Dzima Bucera. Zanimljivost se krije u tome sto je specijalno izdanje ove novelete (u koznom povezu i sa zlatotiskom) ilustrovao Majk Minjola. Sav tiraz je rasprodat u pretplati, po ceni od 250 $ po primerku.

[Nightflier]

Kad smo vec kod Harija, pre jedno nedelju dana zavrsio sam citanje desetog romana o privatnom carobnjaku, pod naslovom Sitnice (Small Favours). Prava poslastica za ljubitelje urbane fantastike. Ispunjava sva ocekivanja koja citalac ima kada u pandze zgrabi deseti naslov omiljenog ciklusa. Da se razumemo, Bucer nije knjizevna velicina - ali ne pretvara se da jeste, sto je veoma osvezavajuce. Kvalitativni pomak primetan od njegovih prvih romana ovde se pretvorio u pravi skok. Jedino je kraj tipicno frenetican i, kao po obicaju, nedostaje mu pedesetak stranica razrade nekih motiva, koje pisac gdegde samo natukne. Lako i zabavno stivo, koje preporucujem mesto subotnjeg izlaska i davanja para bioskopskim krvopijama.

[Ghoul]

Moj prvi prevod, Zenica sveta, placen mi je 1,5 maraka (sto je sada 1,5 evra).

ne bih da cepidlačim, ali čini mi se da ovi prevodioci kubure s matematikom i faktima: pošto smo se dogovorili da 'šlajfna' ipak računa i razmake, treba još da ustvrdimo i da marka (ako se misli na nemačku) NIJE bila jednaka evru, tj. 1E= oko 2DM, što će reći da 1,5 ondašnjih DM= manje od 1E današnjeg.

[Meho Krljic]

Mislim da ideja nije da je to matematički ekvivalentno, jer nije, već ekonomski: sve cene koje su nekad bile u markama sada su to isto u evrima.

[Nightflier]

Veliki umovi slicno razmisljaju Da, mislio sam na realnu a ne knjigovodstvenu vrednost marke u odnosu na evro. Zato sam i stavio ono u zagradi.