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Author: Violette Malan

What Did That Say? Or, When is a Subtitle not a Subtitle?

What Did That Say? Or, When is a Subtitle not a Subtitle?

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InigoLately I’ve had some experiences with subtitles that worry me a little. Here’s my problem: just what is it that’s being subtitled, and is there any way for us to know whether we’re missing something?

Usually when I’m watching a movie with subtitles, it’s in a language I have some grip on, like French or Italian. The subtitles are there to help me when the dialogue is too fast, or perhaps too colloquial, for me to follow it directly (though that in itself might be one of the problems, as we’ll see in a minute).  There’s only one thing I watch where I don’t have any real clue on the language, and that’s Japanese anime.

The thing is, I’ve always been a big fan of subtitles over dubbing. I prefer to hear the actors’ own voices – I know how important voice can be, and I figure actors are cast for that as much as for any other quality. Tone is also something it’s virtually impossible to translate. But now, having seen some of the stuff I’ve seen, I’m not so sure I wouldn’t be better off watching a dubbed version.

The only dubbed films or TV shows I regularly watch are dubbed in Spanish, and I do that so my ear doesn’t lose its facility with the language through long periods of disuse. I never use the English subtitles, first, because the whole point is for me to concentrate and follow the Spanish; and second, because, as a reader, my eye is always drawn first to the written word, and I’d be wasting my practice time reading the subtitles instead of listening. Though, I might cheat a bit by watching a movie or an episode first in English, so I can concentrate on the vocabulary rather than on the plot.

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A Phoenix, A Carpet and A Sand Fairy

A Phoenix, A Carpet and A Sand Fairy

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nesbit itLast week I was talking about Lord Dunsany and his role both as an early 20th-century fantasist and the founder/inventor of the club or bar story. Talking about Dunsany reminded me of another early 20th-century fantasist, E. Nesbit. Edith Nesbit’s work actually pre-dates Dunsany’s, but there are a couple of reasons she’s not as well known, or as well respected outside of our field, as he is.

The first one is fairly obvious: female writers don’t get as much recognition and respect as male writers*, but even more obvious is that she’s considered a children’s writer – not YA – and they get even less respect, regardless of gender. About 40 of Nesbit’s approximately 60 novels were written for children.

Not all of these were gems, of course, but there are several which earn Nesbit a place on anyone’s book shelves. The first notable fantasies are her stories of the Bastable children,  The Treasure Seekers (1899), The Wouldbegoods (1901), and The New Treasure Seekers (1904). These were widely (and wildly) popular both at the time they were written and subsequently, but I have to say that even as a child myself, I thought Oswald Bastable needed taking down a peg, and my personal favourites were what’s called the Psammead Series, featuring the siblings Robert, Anthea, Jane, and Cyril, along with their baby brother known as the Lamb.

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Lord Dunsany and the Billiards Club

Lord Dunsany and the Billiards Club

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Jorkins1I’ve always thought that “Lord Dunsany” has to be one of the more perfect names for a fantasy author. You might argue that this isn’t his name, merely his title, and that Edward Plunkett might not sound quite so perfect, fantasy-wise. But on the other hand, it’s really Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, and growing up I always believed that the “Drax” must somehow derive from “draco.” While I’ve never been able to confirm that, I still feel that it should be so, and that in a perfect world, someone in his lordship’s family was named for a dragon – which really would make it the perfect name for a fantasy author.

All of which would work out quite well, not just for his lordship, but for us, since Dunsany is one of the leading figures in 20th-century fantasy, whose work predates that of Lewis and Tolkien. The quality that I’ve always associated with Dunsany’s writing is an air of sublimity. There’s always the feeling in his work of great immensity, of something just outside of our reach, that we’re only being shown a part of a much greater whole. A couple of posts ago, I was talking about types of magic, and in those terms, Dunsany’s falls into the category of the mysterious, rather than the quantifiable.

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Not A Visit From The Suck Fairy

Not A Visit From The Suck Fairy

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My Real Children Jo Walton-smallA while ago, I was reminded of Jo Walton’s post on the “Suck Fairy.”

You should look at the whole post yourself, here, but let me give you a quick recap: when you reread something you once loved, that had a significant impact on you, you sometimes find that it has deteriorated considerably from what you recall.

Don’t worry, says Walton, it’s not you, it’s just that the book has been visited by the Suck Fairy, who has endowed it with… well, you get the idea.

This is an experience we’ve all had, I’m sure, but being reminded of it started me thinking about why we reread books in the first place, and, if we do, what books do we re-read?

Of course, the Suck Fairy can only affect beloved books which haven’t been revisited in some time, though they may have been read and reread often in the past. For example, I read LOTR at least fourteen times between the ages of eleven and twenty-one, but I haven’t reread it in its entirety since. I’m not afraid of the Suck Fairy – I’ve written papers on LOTR, and if that doesn’t bring on the Suck Fairy, nothing will – I’ve just been a bit busy.

No, I’m talking about books you might reread or re-visit maybe only once, maybe twice, as well as those you might regularly reread. I reread the novels of Jane Austen every year or so, for example, and the Sherlock Holmes Canon every two or three years.

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Welcome To The Commonwealth: John Myers Myers’ Silverlock

Welcome To The Commonwealth: John Myers Myers’ Silverlock

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Silverlock Ace paperbackLast week, I was talking about L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt’s Compleat Enchanter and it occurred to me that one of the great pleasures of that work is encountering familiar myths, persons, and fictional events in a new guise and from a new perspective. It’s also a bit intimidating, from the point of view of a writer, to realize just how thoroughly de Camp and Pratt had to know their source materials.

It doesn’t take very long to go from these thoughts to the great masterwork of this type, John Myers Myers’s Silverlock. On the surface, the book tells the story of  A. Clarence Shandon – re-christened Silverlock due to a white streak in his hair —  on his journey of self-discovery after being shipwrecked on the shores of the Commonwealth.

It doesn’t take long, in fact he’s still in the water,  for the well-read person to begin to find a certain quality of familiarity in the narrative, to figure out that Shandon has made landfall in the Commonwealth of Letters. From the very first, every  person he meets, every place he goes, everything that happens to him, alludes to some piece of literature. Every single person, place, or thing. What adds to the pleasure is that Shandon himself has no idea of what’s happened to him. His degree is in business administration.

Now this might strike you as a bit overwhelming, or even a bit tedious, but it isn’t. Shandon himself, without being aware of it,  provides the key to enjoying the book:

At times the mind works on two levels at once, and it was so with mine on this occasion. Half of it was giving itself gleefully to the moment, while the other half was revolving a new idea. What had impressed me was that this friar was well-informed and had a lot of fun out of that fact alone…  I glimpsed the concept that to know a thing for itself could be a source of joy. Take the song we were bellowing. It was easy to appreciate, but I would have had more chuckles out of if I had known, as the others did, about the personages involved.

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The Magic Gets Measured

The Magic Gets Measured

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Wolfe KnightIn a recent Facebook posting, horror writer Jason S. Ridler had this to say about the kind of magic he prefers in fantasy novels:

If it’s not attached to emotions and mythical forces, I don’t care. Complex magic systems that are just science by another name, with lots of rules, and comparable to other magic systems with more rules, and don’t have elements of mystery , or the bizarre or the sublime… don’t interest me… I like my magic attached to the  unknown and the mysterious, not the quantifiable.

For me, this reopened the discussion we often see here in Black Gate on magic as it’s used in Fantasy.

I haven’t had a chance to have this discussion with Ridler himself – since he’s in California now, and I’m still in Ontario, we no longer meet regularly for afternoons in the pub – so I don’t know which works in particular make which of his lists, but I’d have to say that the type of magic system he dislikes is the more prevalent one. Which probably explains why he’s not a mad-keen fantasy reader.

Not that there aren’t plenty of examples of the kind he does like. LOTR immediately comes to mind; as does Roger Zelazny’s early Amber novels, though I think his Dilvish the Damned stories might come closer. Slightly more up-to-date examples might include Joe Abercrombie’s The First Law series or Gene Wolfe’s Wizard/Knight.

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The Editor As Author: Donald A. Wollheim’s The Secret of the Ninth Planet

The Editor As Author: Donald A. Wollheim’s The Secret of the Ninth Planet

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Wollheim2As a publisher and editor, Donald A. Wollheim (1914-1990) is arguably the most important single figure in the 20th-century SF and Fantasy community. SF in paperback? SF anthologies? He started them – including The Pocket Book of Science Fiction, the first book with the words “science fiction” in the title.

Aside: for those who don’t already know, what we now call a “paperback,” used to be called a “pocket book.”

As the editor at Avon (1947-1951), he was responsible for introducing the likes of Lovecraft and Lewis to the mass market. At Ace Books (1952-1971), he created the now legendary Ace Doubles, reintroduced then out-of-print writers such as Edgar Rice Burroughs, and bought the paperback rights to Dune.

He was also responsible for bringing Lord of the Rings to paperback, and thus launching, however controversially, the modern Fantasy publishing world. It’s not my intention to discuss the controversy right now, but you can get a good look at both sides of it here and here.

Considering all this, it’s not surprising that Wollheim isn’t well known as an author – and a fairly prolific one if you remember that he also wrote under seven pseudonyms. So today I’d like to introduce you to The Secret of the Ninth Planet.

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Welcome To The Club

Welcome To The Club

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BW TalesEvery now and then I get reminded that there’s a whole group of people out there who think of Isaac Asimov as a mystery writer. It’s not that they don’t know he’s a famous SF writer, it’s just that they’re familiar with his work through the pages of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.

Asimov wrote “main stream” mystery novels, of course, such as Murder at the ABA, or A Whiff of Death, and SF mysteries like Caves of Steel and The Naked Sun (known along with others as The Robot Novels). But it’s his Ellery Queen stories that fit the topic I’ve been talking about for the last few weeks, the bar story.

A quick review: bar stories are a series, using as a framing device the setting of a bar or a club. A group of people are “regulars” and tales are told. These are not usually the same thing as stories set in bars, but the lines can blur a bit.

Asimov’s tales are club stories, in that while drinking is definitely going on, the setting is, in the case of the Black Widowers, a dinner club’s private dining room, and in the case of the Union Club, the club library.

The Black Widower stories nod in the direction of Clarke’s Tales from the White Hart in that the characters belonging to the club are based on real people – in fact, they’re based on a real club of which Asimov was a member, called The Trap Door Spiders. The real-world club was started by Fletcher Pratt and if you’d like to have a complete list of the “real” members, as well as finding out which “fictional” member is which, have a look here.

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Come Into Callahan’s, Said the Spider

Come Into Callahan’s, Said the Spider

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CallahansI first met Jake (the narrator), Fast Eddie (the piano player), Doc Webster, Long Drink McGonnigle, and Mike Callahan himself in the pages of Analog. All of Spider Robinson’s stories were eventually collected in three anthologies: Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon, Time Travelers Strictly Cash, and Callahan’s Secret.

Callahan’s is a place where the day after Monday is Punday, Wednesday is Tall Tales Night, there’s a Fireside Fillmore night, and a Riddles Night. And in the grand tradition of the bar story, we get told these tall tales, we’re given the lyrics of the songs, and we can even participate in the guessing of the riddles.

But unlike the traditional bar story, these are just window-dressing, Robinson’s homage to the conventions. The real stories are what happens around, during and after all this traditional bar story action. And these are anything but traditional – they are, after all, science fiction stories, and the characters who come into Callahan’s for help are time-travelers, aliens, humans suffering from strange mutations . . . and a talking dog.

Though the prefaces, intros, and afterwords establish the pretense that Callahan’s actually exists, it’s clearly in either an alternate universe or an alternate timeline. The second story in CCS, for example, “The Time Traveler,” was written, or at least appeared, in 1973 or ’74. Not too long after that, in “The Law of Conservation of Pain,” a time traveler appears from the year 1995, using the first time machine.

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Meet You In The Bar

Meet You In The Bar

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talesLast week I introduced the topic of the bar story and I saw from the comments that I struck a popular chord.

As I mentioned, the bar story is an example of a framing device, a literary tool which enables a writer to link a series of stories, in this case by having them told by people who have gathered together in a bar. The question of whether the “club story” qualified as a “bar story” came up, and on thinking it over, I realized that it did. For purposes of tale-telling – to say nothing of drinking – one’s club is essentially the same as one’s local.

This week, I’d like to talk in a little more depth about the anthologies edited by George H. Scithers and Darrell Schweitzer, Tales From The Spaceport Bar (1987) and Another Round at the Spaceport Bar (1989).

As they tell us in the preface to Tales,  the editors were inspired to collect these stories by what they call “that magnificent old cliché with chairs” the spaceport bar – as depicted in the scene from Star Wars (Episode IV, for those of you who weren’t around at the time). The preface also gives us a more detailed history of the sub-genre of “bar story” than I gave you last week.

I think we can all agree, however, that the important contents here are the 22 stories, not the preface. Many, if not most, of the stories are examples of framework “bar stories”, like Larry Niven’s “The Green Marauder” from his Draco’s Tavern series, “Elephas Frumenti” from the Gavagan’s Bar series of L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt, “Strategy at the Billiards Club” from Lord Dunsany’s Joseph Jorkin series, or Spider Robinson’s “The Centipede’s Dilemna” from Callahan’s Bar.

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