Interview on the SFE Substack
James Machell, of the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction Substack, interviewed me about SFT, the new magazine, and much more. Check it out here!
SFT & the Locus Awards
The Locus Awards now includes a “Translated Novel” category, and the inaugural winner is the fabulous Solvej Balle with On the Calculation of Volume III, translated from the Danish by Sophia Hersi Smith & Jennifer Russell, out from New Directions and Faber & Faber! Congratulations and well deserved!!
Out This Month: June
“Three Cases from the Cosmic Psychiatric Clinic” by Pan Haitian, translated from the Chinese by Blake Stone-Banks (Clarkesworld, June 1) The Heart of the Nhaga by Lee Young-do, translated from the Korean by Anton Hur (Harper Voyager, June 2) Welcome to Lee Young-do’s epic classic series, The Bird That Drinks Tears. The master of Korean
Review: The Mulai by Munir Hachemi
translated by Julia Sanches original publication (in Spanish): 2023 this edition: Coach House Books, 2026 grab a copy here or through your local independent bookstore or library The Mulai is an intriguing polyphonic novel about language, translation, human culture and adaptation, religion, history, and the search for meaning. Unlike most of the other Spanish-language SFT
News: The Bird That Drinks Tears saga
Author and translator Anton Hur has announced that “over the course of the next four years, Harper Voyager will publish the four giant volumes of The Bird That Drinks Tears saga, also known as the LOTR of Korea, beginning with The Heart of the Nhaga next month [June].” You can read an excerpt from the
Essay: A Short History of International SF Magazines
The 20th century is littered with the corpses of International SF magazines. This might seem like a strange thing to say, but look at the SF landscape and you’ll see what I mean. Let’s start with the first attempt (that I know of): Frederik Pohl’s International Science Fiction (two issues, 1967-1968). Pohl, as I’ve been
Issue #1: Small Planet: The SFT Magazine
Welcome to the inaugural issue of Small Planet: The SF in Translation Magazine ! Each issue will be available for free on this site. This publication will bring readers reports on the SF scene in other countries, reviews of older and newer SFT, interviews with translators, editors, and authors, stats, news, and more. The website
Essay: The SFT Website: Ten Years!
The SF in Translation Website After Ten Years I’ve written many times (see here and here, for instance) about why I started the SF in Translation (SFT) website in May 2016. I saw a gap in a field and decided to fill it with a website that would give readers useful information about the growing
Review: Everything Good Dies Here by Djuna
translated from the Korean by Adrian Thieret Kaya Press, 2024 grab a copy here or through your local independent bookstore or library This collection of science fiction stories and a novel (itself made up of linked stories) has my brain reeling. Djuna is a master of complicated storytelling, where multiple characters and events and motivations
Essay: What Does SFT Criticism Look Like?
In my quest to find the origins of interest in SF in translation in the Anglophone world, I started reading SF criticism from the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. Eventually, I found myself reading James Blish’s More Issues at Hand: Critical Studies in Contemporary Science Fiction (1970), which then directed me to Damon Knight (translator, by
