Weird Fiction discussion

Black Coat Press specialise in new translations (and sometimes updates/adaptations) of French pulp fiction from the golden age.

http://blackcoatpress.com/

That sounds as niche as niche can be, and it probably is, but there's a lot to keep weird fiction fans happy: some wonderfully strange scifi, fantasy, horror, comics, etc. etc.

The couple who run the site, Jean-Marc and Randy Lofficier, also wrote Shadow Men, an excellent "field guide" to French superheroes and supervillains that's a fun read in its own right.

Belphégor, Dr Cornelius, Dr Omega, Fantômas, Judex, Harry Dickson... you can get them all from Black Coat.

They're still publishing, bless their hearts.

Merl wrote: "Black Coat Press specialise in new translations (and sometimes updates/adaptations) of French pulp fiction from the golden age..."

I have read some of their books before, and I admire them for bringing old French works into English. Most of the translations/adaptations are done by Brian Stableford, and there are so many that I can't believe he ever finds time to sleep!

There are some wonderfully weird French authors working today that I wish would be translated. (Andrevon, Barberi, Calvo, Damasio, ....) But we may have to wait a long time for that. Maybe you should all just learn French!

Ha ha, yeah, my French is actually pretty good, although my choice of reading matter means that my vocabulary has become a bit skewed. I can discuss dinosaurs, werewolves and time travel but sometimes struggle to decipher a menu.

The material being produced there looks absolutely amazing. I read my first Michael Stableford (Days of Glory) last year and loved it, though it was a very unusual writing style. So many books to choose from here (and so expensive). It's hard to guess where to begin! I'd think a Stableford anthology a safe choice though.

Have you actually ordered and read any of these?

Yes, I’ve read quite a few. I’m halfway through Sâr Dubotal at the moment and loving it. Doctor Omega, Doctor Cornelius, Arsène Lupin, Rouletabille, Harry Dickson and Fantômas are all brilliant (although some of those I’ve read in the French so I can’t always vouch for the Black Coat translations/adaptations specifically).

Dan wrote: "Have you actually ordered and read any of these? ..."

Yes, two:
Spiridon - which is from 1907, and
The Night Orchid: Conan Doyle in Toulouse - which is recent stories by Jean-Claude Dunyach.

I've read other things by Dunyach in French. He writes only short stories, and in a wide variety of SF/F and related styles. The main story in "Conan Doyle in Toulouse" is a steampunk thing that I didn't find interesting, but the rest of that collection is good.

Other things from Black Coat are intriguing, but as you say a bit expensive and not in many libraries. And my interests run more towards more recent French SF, and they focus on old stuff. (Much easier to get rights to publish a translation.)

There is a strong thread of surrealism and other weirdness that runs through French SF, and that is what attracts me. I can recommend some, but they won't be available in English.

Merl wrote: "Ha ha, yeah, my French is actually pretty good, although my choice of reading matter means that my vocabulary has become a bit skewed...."

Reading SF requires a sort of person who is willing to go into a story and be confused for a while before you catch on to how the world works. (Unless there is a boring info-dump at first.) Reading SF in a second language requires being willing to be even more confused because you don't always know which words are just made-up by the author. I can enjoy that confusion! (But I'm still afraid of Canadian French!)

I like the smaller presses like "La Volte" where the editors don't force the author to use old-fashioned French grammatical constructions like the "passé simple". Surely people in the future will have stopped using that!

Anyhow, you might enjoy browsing my shelf sf-francaise.

My favorite author on the list is Calvo, who is very weird. Example, in Wonderful, the world is ending because the moon is committing suicide because Jupiter doesn't love her. It is, among other things, an homage to Neil Gaiman, so it takes place in London and has rat people and faux Victorians and ...... so much weirdness.

My foreign languages are Spanish and Arabic and in neither of those am I so fluent that I've ever attempted anything longer than magazine or newspaper articles. I'd have to read the translation for works written in French. It sounds like doing so would be worthwhile.

It's a shame that adding a translator to the equation in order to make a work available so greatly increases production costs that it becomes prohibitively expensive for anything less than blockbusters to be translated, but that's what we're dealing with for the time being.

Thanks for letting me know what you have enjoyed and giving me some ideas of what to steer for. Calvo sounds like a riot.

I have noticed that both of the Black Coat books by Dunyach are available on kindle at much lower price. Same is true for Spiridon. The kindle editions are not listed on the Black Coat website, but can be found on Amazon. I think I will order The Thieves of Silence.

Dan wrote: "It's a shame that adding a translator to the equation in order to make a work available so greatly increases production costs that it becomes prohibitively expensive for anything less than blockbusters to be translated, but that's what we're dealing with for the time being...."

Yeah. You could put out cheap translations, but you get what you pay for in terms of quality. And once a book has been translated, it is even harder to get a new translation published, no matter how much improved it is.

I wish I could also read novels in Spanish, but I can at most read kid's comic books at this point.

Thanks for the tips Ed, I will definitely be raiding your bookshelves!

(My other language is Swedish, but I won’t start recommending books in that language unless someone specifically asks, since few folks outside Sweden speak it.)

Merl wrote: "My other language is Swedish..."

I'm jealous. You can read Aniara: An Epic Science Fiction Poem in the original. Currently not even available in English, though there is a film (with subtitles) coming.

Funny you should mention that, I was just given a copy a couple of weeks ago.

I found that Black Coat does have a special page for their e-books. Those are all around $6 right now, which is a reasonable price.

In addition to weird fiction, there is also some old pulp fiction that would be interesting to some. Like old stories with female detectives: The Adventures of Ethel King, the Female Nick Carter, The Adventures of Miss Boston, the First Female Detective.

Ed wrote: "My favorite author on the list is Calvo, who is very weird...."

And by coincidence, just now Calvo posted on the face book that she is finally going to publish book 3 of the trilogy started with Délius, Une Chanson D'été ! First off, the 2 existing books will be republished, this time with her new name Sabrina Calvo, and then she is writing the 3rd which was announced very long ago but never published.

One way to describe book 1 is a Sherlock Holmes type story in the style of Boris Vian, where the part of Watson is played by a potted plant. Book 2 is even weirder.

I just wanted to mention, I have several stories with Black Coat Press, and they've been an absolute delight to work with. As of this typing right now, I'm working on a story for them, featuring Judex.

In the past, I've written a story featuring Judex (a collaboration with Matthew Baugh) and one with Doctor Omega for their anthologies.