On Wed, 21 May 1997, Petra Mayerhofer wrote:
> >From a German viewpoint science-fiction is a more or less anglo-saxon
> domain, with few exceptions (e.g. Strugatzki, Lem?). Of course, there are
> German science fiction writers, but it always feels strange, when the
> scene is not in Northern America or the main actors are not of
> US-American descendancy or all these English expressions for the
> futuristic stuff are missing (my apologies to the British, but
> when it is in English I tend to assume it is US-American). There are
> only few successful German science fiction writers (male), but I have
> to own I have not read them and at the moment I cannot remember the
> names.
>
>
> Petra
Petra, I can't help but put a note in here about not lumping things
Canadian in with things American, including sf. While there are many
cultural, social and economic similarities and ties between Canada and the
US, there are many differences as well (and us Canadians can get quite
insistent on it). There's a great deal of Canadian sf around, both in
english and in french, predominantly from Quebec. English sf comes
from many places, I'm aware of having read writing by english sf writers
from the US, Canada, Britain, and Australia.
You do have an interesting point about the bulk of sf being written in the
'western world.' I know I've read some sf translated from Russian but
other than that I at least am ignorant about whether much sf, in any
guise, is being written in other languages. An earlier thread discussed
Magical Realism, a latin american genre whose 'fatastical' qualities
relate in some ways with sf & f. Are other people aware of sf written in
other languages or other genres or traditions that bear some relation to
sf from non-english cultures?
Robin Gordon
now living in Toronto, but a proud Saskatchewan prairie girl at heart
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