SF Signal have posted their latest Mind Meld feature, this time asking:
Q: Who are your favorite international SF/F authors?
Participating are Marianne de Pierres, Nick Mamatas, Lavie Tidhar, Maurizio Manzieri, Glenda Larke, Sylvia Kelso, Panagiotis Koustas, Jukka Halme, Sissy Pantelis, and Luis Rodrigues. Check it out!
Maurizio Manzieri: Living in Italy, I’ve always been used to read non-English authors in their Italian translation. Luckily in this country of excellent translators and enlightened publishers many masterpieces have found easily their way on our shelves. My favorite international author, still to be overreached, can be definitely considered the Polish Stanislaw Lem. He’s gone now… Despite his controversial relationship with SFWA, I think his words will talk a long time to the generations to come. In 1961, on the year I was born, he wrote the novel Solaris, a book I’ve been reading eight times since its discovery, one the most successful interpretations of our close and incomprehensible encounter with an alien entity. I enjoyed very much the first movie rendition by Tarkovsky in 1972 – a tad less the last one by Soderbergh in 2002 – and I found the topic quite terrific for the hugeness of concepts and feelings involved. One day I’m sure there will be a new remake paying a due homage to his vision.
Jukka Halme: The world of international science fiction and fantasy has in recent years turned into a small, but interesting smörgåsbord. This is truly a great thing and something I, as someone hailing the rest of the world from a non-English speaking country, am both grateful and hopeful about. It reminds me of them Olden Days, when the relatively small translated SF/F-book market in Finland was fairly broad in scope, including not only well-known Anglo-American masters as Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke and Aldiss, but also Lem, Strugatski’s, Klein and Nielsen.
I will start by mentioning French SF writers. I have worked as a co-editor in French SF magazine GALAXIES for a few years. Also, having spent many years in a French speaking country, I can understand French and write and read it almost as if it were my native language (which is Greek). So there is no wonder that I am more familiar with French speaking writers.
Sissy Pantelis: French SF is quite different from its Anglophone counterpart. It is more literary, fantasy elements are often incorporated in it in a very natural and attractive way. It is often associated with other genres like horror, humor or surrealism. And French writers pay a huge attention to the literary aspect of the story – whatever its genre- so, not surprisingly, French SF is rich in diversity of writing styles and it is often poetic. – read the full article!
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