7 Sci-Fi Books from 7 Different Countries
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- čas přidán 21. 07. 2024
- Here are some quick reviews for 7 science fiction novels from around the world, including some of my favorite translated works.
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00:00 - Introduction
00:30 - The Carpet Makers (Germany)
02:53 - Roadside Picnic (Russia)
04:42 - Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (Japan)
08:01 - Solaris (Poland)
09:15 - Around the World in 80 Days (France)
10:18 - The Three-Body Problem (China)
12:20 - The Quantum Thief (Finland)
#ScienceFiction #Books
I am not gonna lie, you are making me want to start The 3 Body Problem sooner than I was planning. Between your like of the series and the new show coming out!
Haha it’s a bit polarizing but I think it’s worth a shot because I found the first book to be good and the sequels to be great. Will be interesting to see how the show turns out!
Awesome list. I loved that two of these became two of my favorite films (Solaris and Stalker) both done by the same director. And yeah, The Dark Forest was the best of the trilogy. I think the dark forest concept blew my mind. Thanks so much for the great video.
Thanks for the kind words Paul, I’m glad you enjoyed it! And I’m looking forward to watching those films!
Around the World in 80 Days is on my TBR. I read 20k Leagues last year and absolutely loved it! I just found Journey to the Center of the Earth at my local library book store so that will probably be my next Jules Verne but I am planning on reading AtW in 80d asap as well!
That’s cool! I’m glad you enjoyed 20,000 Leagues!
Thanks for the recommendations! Added Roadside Picnic to my want to read list.
Awesome! Hope you enjoy!
Finished that one very recently. It was great.
I LOVED the three body problem series, my favorite!! But about solaris, i loved the wordbuilding, but the ending was kinda underwhelming for my taste. Love your reccomendations!! Now I'm starting my Jules Verne checklist, starting with 20000 leagues, and in the TBR are the jorney to the center of the earth and the 80 days too!!
I’m glad you enjoyed The Three-Body Problem! I thought the ending of Solaris was fitting thematically, but it didn’t have the most dramatic ending narratively so I can see why it have felt a little anticlimactic. I hope you enjoy your Verne reading!
Never heard of The Carpet Makers but I am intrigued.
The QuantumThief sounds interesting as well.
I already have a lot of Murakami on my far future tbr😅.
Great video!
The Carpet Makers are The Quantum Thief are 2 of my favourites and they’re a good combo as one is soft sci-fi and the other is hard sci-fi. Hope you enjoy!
Great video Jonathan. Death's End was also my favorite of the trilogy. Solaris regrettably didn't do anything for me. This is a great list. Thanks Jonathan
Cheers Dale! Solaris isn’t that story-driven so it might not work for everyone. Hope you enjoy some of the others!
Some great recommendations Jonathan! I’ve thought I should probably try Around the World in 80 days. I also need to finish the Liu Cixin books.
It would be interesting to re-read! And I hope you enjoy the sequels!
Once again, as always, knocking every video out of the park, my friend. I'm so jealous D':
We upped the graphics budget on this one haha. Appreciate the kind words friend!
Reading Solaris currently. Diggin it!!
Nice, I’m glad you’re enjoying it! I thought the atmosphere was great.
Thanks for the trip aboard your ship. It was fun! 😂
Haha perhaps I have potential in a future career as rocket ship captain
@@WordsinTime yes, perhaps you do!
How about from Germany, Schätzing's The Swarm? Although it's as big as the ocean. It has a tv adaption too on The CW.
I was really interested in that book because of a booktuber's review.. then I looked up the synopsis .. seems to have some particular propaganda in it so I had to pass on it. 😣
I’ve heard of it but haven’t read it. I’ll look it up!
Great video, Jonathan! I’m planning to read Solaris and Roadside Picnic this year. I thought I saw that there were two English translations of both books, but I could be wrong. I’m always interested in getting the best translation!
Thanks Johanna! I think you might enjoy those two as they are quite philosophical. I read the SF Masterworks version of Roadside Picnic, and the Kilmartin & Cox translation of Solaris. I can’t say whether it’s the best translation, but I loved the book!
@@WordsinTime Lem himself (being fluent in French and English) was not happy with the Polish->French->English translation. The new direct-to-English translation by Bill Johnston had been published after his death, so we do not know what he would think about it, but in general people say it‘s better.
I have read Carpet markers by the way you! I'm sure it is a masterpiece of our time! I will recommend this book for sci-fi fans in my country!
Awesome, I’m glad you enjoyed it too!
I love the graphics! 🚀🗺
Futuristic animation haha
The craziest thing about Around the World in Eighty Days is that the Hot Air Balloon is highly associated with the novel, YET it doesn’t show in the actual novel. It was the most surprising part of the novel
Haha I was thinking about this when I was trying to recall the details of the book. I’ll have to re-read it!
Thank you for your videos Jonathan. From France you should take a look to Pierre Bordage and Serge Brussolo. I don’t know how much of their work has been translated to English but if you can find some then give it a try. Pierre Bordage has more SF books like The Warriors of silence saga but Serge Brussolo has such amazing stories, I’ll bet you won’t regret it. Cheers from France.
Thanks for the recommendations, I’ll check them out!
I've read a few of them and will check out the carpet makers and I love that you love bob dylan too⚛😀
Bob Dylan is the best! Hope you enjoy The Carpet Makers!
Some great books there! I'm actually reading Around the World in 80 Days at the minute. Definitely an enjoyable read, but I would argue it's not so much a sci-fi novel, at least not in comparison to some of Verne's other adventures (20,000 Leagues is my favourite). I loved 3 Body and Hard-Boiled Wonderland! Roadside Picnic's in my TBR.
That’s good timing haha. I’m glad you’re enjoying it! I hope you like Roadside Picnic!
I LOVE 20k Leagues! I wish I could read French so I could read it in the original language.. I bet I would love it even more.
As if I don't already have a bazillion English written books on my list, now you have to add translated ones!
* shakes fist *
Haha I’m here to help (kind of)!
I don't have to imagine living in a Bob Dylan song. The world I inhabit is "All Along the Watchtower."
He’s a genius!
🏆 Read of the year candidate at the beginning of January! 😱 Goodness me 😮
There are some interesting picks in here 🧐
I didn’t expect The Carpet Makers to land so hard for me but it was phenomenal!
I also recommend books by japanese sci-fi writer Cabo Abe and Monkey's planet by french sci-fi writer Pierre Bule.
Thanks for the recommendations!
@@WordsinTime "Monkey Planet" is better known as "Planet of the Apes" 😅
I LOVED the book Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, and I picked it up originally as a fan of the anime Haibane Renmei, which was influenced by the book. My perspective was perhaps different because of that. The ending for me REALLY stuck with me.
That’s cool, I’m glad you connected with it Nathan!
@@WordsinTime Thanks!
Will definitely check out Roadside Picnic this year.
A good list - I know you already had a French representative in Jules Verne, but let me suggest an international hit from the early 90s, translated into 30 languages, & was even made into a video game -: "The Empire of the Ants", by Bernard Werber - which consists of 2 alternating storylines (human, & ant) & it works as a homage to SF as well - but, surprisingly, the ant sequences become an exercise in world building, with a feeling of evocative vastness you get from the very best SF novels. I didn't expect that in this book. I can see why it was so well received when it first came out.
Thanks for the recommendation! It sounds pretty interesting and reminds me a little of Children of Time. I’ll look it up!
Agree, Carpet Makers is a masterpiece, and the ending one of my top favorites in fiction.
I’m glad you also connected with The Carpet Makers, it’s truly special!
Hi Jonathan. I'm looking forward to the 3 Body Problem novels. I hope they more closely resemble something like Childhoods End, and not like the novels of Kim Stanley Robinson, which I found to be very flatly written and I could not finish.
Hi Curt, I feel like Cixin Liu was influenced by Arthur C. Clarke, although it reminded me more of Rendezvous with Rama than Childhood’s End as it’s driven a little more by science. I hope you enjoy!
My main feeling after Roadside Picnic was boredom ;) I do want to give the more modern translation a read though.
Haha I liked parts 1 and 4 more than 2 and 3.
I loved The Quantum Thief trilogy and got into the trippy story within pages of starting. I was so impressed with Vol.1, even with his deliberately obfuscating terminology, that I went straight to 2 and 3, completing each in two days. I came across an interview with Rajaneimi, for whom English is his second language, where he said that he's a much more outgoing personality when speaking English than he is when speaking Finnish. Had he written the book in Finnish and it been translated it would have been a different feel altogether.
I am currently approaching the end of The Citadel of the Autarch, book 4 of The Book of the New Sun. And once again, a full on runaway bonkers story that hooked me from the start. And once again, the weird words that pepper the book that make me want to have an author's glossary on hand. The dictionary of my eReader has no idea what most of Wolfe's archaic words mean, and considering that Wolfe's setup is that he's translating a found manuscript, there's an added layer of irony of translating a book to make it deliberately difficult to follow.
I’m glad it hooked you in too! I usually spread series out but I had to read the whole trilogy right away haha
Good list; read some, meant to read others too, but the stickler in me really needs to know what's so sci-fi about Verne's 80 days around the world book. From what I recall there's nothing even remotely steampunk or at least speculative (like his Nautilus sub or the Journey into Earth's core) in it. But, hey - labels and genre literature. Cheers!
I’d have to re-read it but I think you’re right that it’s less sci-fi than some of his other books.
You have to take into consideration the time it was written. It's an adventure novel that sparked the imagination that anyone could sit down, drawn a schedule, buy tickets and travel around the world from three technological breakthroughs that occurred in Verne's time.
- The completion of the first transcontinental railroad in America (1869)
- The opening of the Suez Canal (1869)
- The linking of the Indian railways across the sub-continent (1870).
More from Strugatsky brothers Definetly Maybe
From Czechia -- Karel Czapek. He who coined the word robot.
I need to read those!
You might want to check out Chohei Kambayashi's Yukikaze series for another good Japanese sci fi series.
Thanks for the recommendation, I’ll look it up!
You should check out another classic scifi author from Japan, Yasutaka Tsutsui. 😊
Thanks for the recommendation, I’ll look them up!
I would suggest "Vita Nostra" by Marina and Sergey Dyachenko - you would read an excellet book and add Ukraine to your literary map.
Thanks for the recommendation, I’ll check it out!
I have to admit that I gave up on The Quantum Thief twice - I just couldn't relate to the character. I did enjoy reading Roadside Picnic many years ago, though. For French sci-fi, you could also have gone for Planet of the Apes, by Pierre Boulle. I've read and enjoyed a couple of Cixin Liu's books, but I haven't got round to the trilogy yet.
I’m glad you enjoyed Roadside Picnic. I’ll have to check out Pierre Boulle!
I recently read The Carpet Makers. Really good. The ending is so unexpected. Perhaps take a look at the Swedish SF novel Amatka by Karin Tidbeck. An unsettling dystopian novel. Disturbing in its strangeness. Audacious in its ambiguity. Absurd and accessible. Powerful in its imagery. Straight-forward prose belies its complexity. An enigma within a riddle, gradually and elegantly revealed. Published in Swedish. Translated into English by the author. If you choose to read this book, go in ignorant. Read it slowly. Savour it. You will be well rewarded.
I’m glad you enjoyed The Carpet Makers too, I thought it came together brilliantly!
Thanks for the recommendation, I’ll have to add it to my TBR!
I wrote a bigger comment but it did not publish, for some reason: I was writing that some Borges, Cortazar, Bioy Casares could be considered SciFi. Tlon Uqbar Orbis Tertius. Ensayo sobre la ceguera. Ensayo sobre la lucidez, Los inmortales, Historias de Cronopios y Famas, etc. I read Borges, Cortazar, Saramago, a long time ago. They might have a lot of kafkian feel.
Borges and Cortazar and Bioy Casares (La invención de Morel) are argentinian, Saramago is portuguese (I think he is alive still).
Thanks for the recommendations! I’ve heard of Borges, I’ll have to check out the others!
I had written, as an example, about how Borges found a young version of himself when walking in a park, and found it impossible to convince his younger self that it is him, but older. There are infinite libraries, infinte books where you can always find another page between any two, a blindness that is contagious and how society devolves, and many others.
@@ciroguerra-lara6747 That sounds pretty cool!
@@WordsinTime Hope you have the time. They tend to have a kafkian but particulary Iberic flavor. I could be give more detail if it wasn´t the case that I read most of that several decades ago! 🙂
Great list! I'd like to recommend a Sci-Fi Short-Story Anthology from my country (Türkiye):
"Son Tiryaki" by Müfit Özdeş.
The book was published in April 1996 and normally I was not really interested in the Sci-Fi genre (the genre of these stories are very hard-core Sci-Fi btw, and some of the stories are just unrelated to Sci-Fi) but upon learning that the author was the grandson of Lütfi Müfit Özdeş (who was one of the best friends of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, founder of the Republic of Türkiye) I knew I had to read it.
Beside the plot of the stories, some of the names of them are so interesting such as "Son Tiryaki" (The Last Cigarette Chain-Smoker), "Krrçiysk" (which are random letters, the name of an alien), "Hava Anamızın Pipisi" (The Penis of Our Mother Mary), "Kimin Ağrır O Bağırır" (which is written in a horrible grammar, I as a native Turkish speaker am not sure what exactly this means. I know all of the words but something is just grammatically wrong that I can't really get what it means overall), "Vesvese Gazı" (The Gas of the Negative Whisper*), "Love.Exe Destanı" (The Epic of Love.Exe) etc...
*Vesvese is a word that the english equivalent of it does not really seem to exist. The best I can translate it would be "Negative Whisper". It can also mean "Bad Ideas" (that are coming from others) or "Anxiety Whisper".
My second favourite story is the last story in the book called "Firar" (The Escape) which is about a mother from a very advanced alien species telling alternative history to her child and the relationship between the two. And my favourite is "Telek Dün Gece Öldü" (The Quill Feather Died Last Night) which is basically covering the first body of consciousness' that came to be and vanished right after the big-bang. They are called the "Bilinçli Enerji Oluşumları Kümeleşmesi" (Clustering of Conscious Energy Formations) and it was kinda hard to read about them, in a good way.
It seems most readers' favourite story from the book is "Yeraltı İnsanları" (Underground People/Humans) and I can confirm it has a mind-blowing plot twist and its philosophy is so unique and hard to think about.
Also I must say many stories have a humorous tone even though they are very hard-core. I liked most of them but this humorous tone kind of resulted most stories having no serious stakes.
But still if you can read Turkish you should check them out!
Thanks so much for the recommendation, I’ll have to look it up!
Johnathan, Lem translations are not on par with the playful wit of the original works. I think you should learn Polish!
I don’t think I’m asking too much here.
😂
Give me a week! 🤜 🤛
@@WordsinTime 😂 that’s the spirit!
Shotgun!
“I need to be able to see the road!”
🤖🦾🦿🦫!
Haha the bionic reader! 🫡