Travelling Towards Epsilon

by Maxim Jakubowski (Editor)

Travelling Towards Epsilon is an absorbing collection of the best science fiction of recent years from France and is the first such compilation even published in hardcover in this country. Many leading science fiction writers are introduced the
English reading public for the first time the the remarkable, unobtrusive translations of Maxim Jakubowski and Beth Blish.

Genres: Science Fiction, Anthologies, Short Stories

288 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 1977

About the author

Maxim Jakubowski is a crime, erotic, and science fiction writer and critic.

Jakubowski was born in England by Russian-British and Polish parents, but raised in France. Jakubowski has also lived in Italy and has travelled extensively. Jakubowski edited the science fiction anthology Twenty Houses of the Zodiac in 1979 for the 37th World Science Fiction Convention (Seacon '79) in Brighton. He also contributed a short story to that anthology. He has now published almost 100 books in a variety of areas.

He has worked in book publishing for many years, which he left to open the Murder One bookshop[1], the UK's first specialist crime and mystery bookstore. He contributes to a variety of newspapers and magazines, and was for eight years the crime columnist for Time Out and, presently, since 2000, the crime reviewer for The Guardian. He is also the literary director of London's Crime Scene Festival and a consultant for the International Mystery Film Festival, Noir in Fest, held annually in Courmayeur, Italy. He is one the leading editors in the crime and mystery and erotica field, in which he has published many major anthologies.

His novels include "It's You That I Want To Kiss", "Because She Thought She Loved Me", "The State Of Montana", "On Tenderness Express", "Kiss me Sadly" and "Confessions of a Romantic Pornographer". His short story collections are "Life in the World of Women", "Fools for Lust" and the collaborative "American Casanova". He is a regular broadcaster on British TV and radio and was recently voted the 4th Sexiest Writer of 2,007 on a poll on the crimespace website.

Reviews

[Rhys · Rating 3 out of 5]

An anthology of modern French science fiction ('modern' when the anthology was published in 1977) edited by the always excellent Maxim Jakubowski.

Nearly all the stories have some merit. Three are excellent. These are:

'Delta' by Christine Renard and Claude F. Cheinisse
A poignant love story between a human woman and aliens. The style reminded me of Françoise Sagan and the theme is very Philip Jose Farmer but the power of this tale is wholly original.

'Wings in the Night' by Nathalie Henneberg
An exceptionally well-written and atmospheric 'between dimensions' yarn about a family curse, stolen artworks and two investigators sent to audit them. The language is exquisite and the sense of menace is palpable.

'How's Business?' by Jacques Sternberg
My favourite story in the collection. It's a Kafkaesque nightmare but even more cynical and ironic in tone. The style is deadpan, precise. Exactly the sort of fiction I like best. If nothing else, this anthology has introduced me to the work of Sternberg.

Other stories worth noting include 'The Bubbles' by Julia Verlanger and 'It's Only Pinball!' by Philippe Curval.

[ʕっ•ᴥ•ʔっ · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a rough one. The editor plainly needed to masturbate before assembling this anthology, and before writing his story. Overall, the translations are average to poor. Three or four stories are worth reading; the rest should be destroyed.

The Gunboat Dread 3/5 - decent, atmospheric, but the story is made worse by its sexual juvenility
Where the Astronauts Meet 2/5
How's Business 3/5 - cute, creative
Jonah 4/5 - the best story in the anthology, genuinely moving, some cool language
Until Proof to the Contrary 1/5 - awful
Towards the High Tower 1/5 - tasteless
It's Only Pinball! 2/5 - cool concept, poorly written and executed
Summer in the Death Zone 0/5 - by the editor; one of the worst things I've ever read
Thomas 1/5 - boring, cheesy
Delta 3/5 - pretty interesting, one of the only mature stories here, early "anthropological SF"
The Bubbles 1/5 - boring, DNF
Stars, Here I Come! 1/5
The Leap 2/5 - weird purple mood piece, DNF
Wings in the Night 4/5 - a little long and deserves a much better translation, but erudite and more

Even giving the stories a little mercy for their age and being in translation, they're all clunky, hokey at times, and dated.

[Sean882 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Travelling Towards Epsilon: Anthology Of French Science Fiction,288 pages. This is the paperback version I was reading. Some good stories,some seemed to make no sense at all. The first,The Gunboat Dread, may be the best one of the lot. It would have made a great novel if it had ever been expanded into one.

[Nicholas Whyte]

http://nhw.livejournal.com/496417.html[return][return]A collection of sf stories by French (and one Belgian) writer, collected in the mid-1970s; very much feeling like New Wave, plus an added appreciation of sex which somehow feels different from the way an American or British writer of the time would have tackled the subject. The collection wisely starts and finishes with strong pieces - Daniel Walther's "The Gunboat Dread", a sort of sfnal riff on "Heart of Darkness", and Nathalie Henneberg's "Wings in the Night", of supernatural goings on in an isolated Polish castle. Some of the others were a bit same-ish; the other standout story for me was Julia Verlanger's "The Bubbles", the oldest story of the collection (from 1956), which started off like an after-the-holocaust story but had an almost Philip Dick-like twist at the end.[return][return]While the editor's choices of story seem to have been good, I was not madly impressed either by his commentary or by his translations. It seemed to me that three of the four stories (including the Walther one) translated by Beth Blish (daughter of James) ran more smoothly in English (the fourth, I suspect, was unsalvageable in any language).

[Stuart Ridgway · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very diverse set of stories from French authors. Highly recommend for something different.