My decade in Canada allowed me to discover a lot of misconceptions, omissions and twisted truths held by North American readers about European speculative fiction. Starting from the idea that science fiction is an American genre that has spread to other corners of the world and going all the way to the idea that Eastern European authors write only satire because they used science fiction just to subtly undermine and criticize Communism. There are North Americans who maintain the idea that even after the Communists fell, this way of thinking and writing has remained, hence the Eastern Europeans are not worth being translated into English.
Let me tell you a story about me and the world I grew up in.
The year was 1977, in Bucuresti, Romania. I was eight years old when my best friend Alin Chiscop coerced me to read my first science fiction novel. He didn’t use physical force, but like always, social pressure. Already three kids in my circle of four had read it and behaved like they were at least twelve years old and not merely eight. I had to do it and be as grown up as them. If only I knew…
The book was “Les Seigneurs de la Guerre” (1971) by Gerard Klein, translated into English by John Brunner in 1973 as “The Overlords of War” and into Romanian by Vladimir Colin (an important writer in Romania just as John Brunner was in England) in 1975 as “Seniorii razboiului”.
After reading the book in 1977, I read it again in the ‘80s, in the ‘90s and one more time in 2014. Each time the book evoked a different experience than what I’d remembered from the past.
It’s a time travel story, but not your usual one. A soldier assigned to drop onto an enemy planet a monster able to jump in time, becomes stranded on the same planet with humanity’s enemies and the monster meant to destroy them. I won’t say more about the story, because maybe you’ll pick it up and read it. That is, if you like a taste of classic French science fiction. It’s quite different from classic American SF and definitely worth reading. Actually, if you’re really into science fiction and fantasy, you must have a taste of some European flavors. And French is one of the major ones.
Anyway, discussing the book with my friends we realized that we had been already reading science fiction before Gerard Klein. All of us had been through at least half of Jules Verne’s books.
There was this beautiful Jules Verne collection at the time. Tall and thick like an Encyclopedia, with color lithography printed directly on white specially treated hard cover, no dust jackets. They had the original drawings inside, all through the story. It really was a treat.
But, “The Overlords of War” have been my first conscious act of reading science fiction. From that book on I knew what I like the most and I began digging. Science fiction had quite a rich history in Romania and I was just about to discover it.
(to be continued)