Tá, muito azar, sei...

Oi, pessoal

É um assunto meio nada a ver, mas não tive como deixar de postar isso aqui. Afinal, o seguro morreu de velho.

“Olá,
Meu nome é Bruna e tenho dezesseis anos. Gosto de trocar mensagens, conhecer pessoas pela Internet e adorei seu blog. Por isso, escolhi você para ser meu novo amigo. Eu acredito que vamos nos dar muito bem.
E para isso acontecer, poste esse email no seu blog. Torça para ter sete comentários, ou então você terá MUITO azar.
Se não postar? Vai ser muito pior. Mas você não faria isso.
Você não recusaria o pedido de uma morta, né?”

Vocês devem estar achando que eu sou muito bobo ou que estou pregando uma peça em vocês. Depois de ver o vídeo abaixo, vão entender porque eu tive que fazer isso.
E por favor, COMENTEM!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-nqzPihkMI

IV Semana de Quadrinhos UFRJ

O evento Semana de Quadrinhos é uma realização da Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, através da Escola de Belas Artes (EBA) e da Escola de Comunicação (ECO), em parceria com o SESC-Rio, pela filial de Madureira. O evento possui dois objetivos: o primeiro é mostrar as Histórias em Quadrinhos (HQs) que, além de entretenimento, pode ser usado como uma ferramenta de comunicação, educação e linguagem artística. O segundo motivo é homenagear Angelo Agostini, quando rememoramos 100 anos do seu falecimento. Agostini foi um importante artista italiano que veio para o Brasil na adolescência e se tornou um dos percussores dos quadrinhos mundiais.

O evento contará com palestras de profissionais da área, oficinas ministradas por artistas renomados e contará com stands de revistas em quadrinhos independentes e fanzines. Em paralelo às oficinas, haverá uma mesa redonda de bate-papo, para trocar idéias sobre tudo relacionado a HQ.

No último dia do evento, cujo debate é justamente sobre Agostini, haverá uma homenagem a Athos Eichler Cardoso, maior especialista no assunto.

Vale lembrar que o evento tem entrada franca, inclusive para as oficinas, palestras e bate-papos.

Sigam o twitter, o blog ou a comunidade para se manterem atualizados, pois além das informações já liberadas, novidades podem surgir.

A programação completa, endereços e informações sobre como chegar podem ser encontrados aqui.

O evento conta ainda com facebook e flickr.

Vale a pena conferir o blog e a programação. Este ano também haverá transmissão ao vivo pela internet com a X4 ids, para que o povo de fora do estado possa acompanhar o evento. Em breve estarão sendo disponibilizados os links.

O evento acontecerá em 3 pontos diferentes: Fundão (Reitoria/EBA), Madureira (SESC) e Botafogo (Campus Praia Vermelha).

O público carioca de quadrinhos merece um evento como esse!

Magic aliens: Interview with Kerry Orchard

Kerry Orchard is a Canadian writer whose speciality is a new genre called “Science Fantasy”: novels which blends a competent mix of magic, science and lots of action. With growing recognition – mostly because of the samples of her texts in her official site kerryorchard.com – she is one of a new breed of authors that are gaining a place in the editorial industry thanks to the Internet.

***

Octavio Aragão – Hi, Kerry, good to have you here! Would you like to introduce yourself to our Intempol readers? How many books have you written till now?

Kerry Orchard – I am a fantasy author (well, more “Science Fantasy"). I live in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. My works are The Thoughtmaster's Conduit and The Augur's Voice. I am currently working on The Timekeeper's Breath.


OA – So you like to call yourself a "Science Fantasy" writer. Why is it so? Why not just a "Fantasy" or "Science Fiction" writer? And which are your favorite authors inside the genre?

KO – I say “science fantasy” because I like to use a bit of science in my books, about aliens or timetravel. I also like my magic to be planned and explained. The book I am currently working on is a paranormal science fantasy where the world has gone from magic to mostly science.

My favorite fantasy works are Tolkien’s Lord of The Rings, Stephen R. Donaldson's Unbeliever series, Weis and Hickman’s Death Gate Cycle series, The Time Machine, by Wells. Some of these are personal favorites for sentimental reasons but none the less are my favorites... I like a broad spectrum of works. I try not read much fantasy now because I am writing and you can get ideas from others.


OA – You're from Canada and, before you, the only woman I know who lived in Canada (but wasn't actually born there) and wrote something like Science Fiction, gaining international recognition, was Ayn Rand, back in the 30's. How is to write Science Fantasy in a field dominated by men and living outside the USA? Any institutional prizes or recognition from the "powers that be"?

KO – Hmmm... being with a smallish publisher, I don't expect to gain international recognition. The only award I have entered for was the Eppie, and Thoughtmaster was a finalist for best fantasy. I've thought a lot about this as I have been invited and encouraged by major publishers with all the works I have submitted, but they are rarely taking on new authors and mainly push those they feel would sell for them. IT is difficult to get ahead and get acceptance in the literary world, and crossing and mixing genres makes it even more difficult.

I write what I write what I write and I am proud and pleased of my accomplishments. I don't expect to be rich. I don't expect to be the next J. K. Rowlings and am not sure I want to be. I hope that my books will be more readily available in physical bookstores in the future but am not sure of the future of such places, with the advance of the Internet. For now, I am content. I feel pleased and blessed to have made it this far and to have overcome some of the difficulties in my life to continue.


OA – How is the Internet working for your books? Are you gaining any profit from the sales made by the sites or it is just a "window" to show your books?

KO – Any book from any new author with any publisher from Penguin down, does not make much money... or very rarely. There is a site that actually lists what the average payout to authors is and you would be surprised at how small it is and how small the advances are becoming from major publishers. I am doing ok. I think the Internet is a great resource for people. A great way to buy books and shop and to really see what's out there. Most bookstores only carry a small percentage of the books for sale worldwide. They are bound by distributors and distributors choices as are Internet sellers, but it's a little easier for them to get and show new works from new authors.

Places such as Fictionwise e-books are doing very, very well. E-books are nice in the sense that they are cheap and can be sent right to your computer. If you like the book a lot and it comes out in print, such as mine, you can always order the hard copy later. If you hate the book you are not out a lot. It's not a career you can choose if making a lot of money is your goal. Most writer's remain mid list at best...you do it for the love.


OA – And what about the future? Any other books or related projects in the horizon?

KO – Yes, a few novellas for my publisher and The Timekeeper's Breath. It is still in early stages but is a time travel paranormal type story. I don't like to talk too much about a plot early on in my writing but will try:

The Timekeeper is a guardian. The guardians are mostly killed by the ruler of the humans who turns out to be joined in body and soul with the Lord of the Elements, who wants many things from his new human form, including the Timekeeper's lover. The Timekeeper can see and communicate with ghosts who are trapped and used as slaves by LOE.

LOE is one of the few left possessing magic now that the guardians are gone and all must turn to science or a mix of science and magic. In order to end the destruction the timekeeper must go back in time and retrieve the Timekeeper eternal (he is the physical)... ah it's a little hard to explain. Time is an ongoing study at the center for magic and science, and they have created a new device that combines the two, though no one has tried it.

I won't go into the breath part and why it is so important... have to have some secrets.



OA – Thank you, Kerry. If you want to add something more, please feel free to do it!

KO – I hope that people will continue to try new authors and new ways of reading. You'd be amazed at the talent out there.


Kerry Orchard
Fantasy Author of The Augur's Voice & The Thoughtmaster's Conduit
New Concepts Publishing.. ebook&print

Remember The Future: Interview with Marcus Rowland

To structure a series of alternate futures for humanity is not an easy task. But our new guest not just built several possibilities but also thought a way to invite you to live this adventures.

With his project Forgotten Futures, every single person in the world can foresse and even pass some time in worlds based in the literary works by Rudyard Kipling or Arthur Connan Doyle.

Now Marcus Rowland talks about this project, the transformations of today’s Science Fiction and even about the health of the game industry.

***

Carlos Orsi Martinho – As fascinating as the Forgotten Futures sourcebooks are, the fiction collections that go with them – all those airships, Carnacki, weird science vintage tales. How did you first met them?


Marcus Rowland – My first contact was via my father - he was an omnivorous reader and his library included a set of Kipling, some Wells, and some other scientific romances, plus novels and short story collections by later authors including Gerald Kersh. I read them in my teens, then almost forgot about them for about twenty years.

Many years later I was involved in an SF discussion group, run as an evening class, which met once a week for several years. This had several instructors, including the critic and author John Clute, SF historian Brian Stableford, and author Colin Greenland. By then I was involved in gaming and was writing for Space 1889 and Call of Cthulhu, both of which borrowed ideas from this genre. I decided to get back to the original source material and re-read it, and Colin Greenland and Brian Stableford, in particular, were very helpful in pointing me at useful material.

Eventually I decided that I wanted to write my own game, and scientific romances seemed the best source of ideas. I'm not sure I really expected to keep doing it for so many years, but I'm enjoying it and over the years I've raised quite a bit of money for charity. I also began to collect Victorian and Edwardian magazines - I think I own about 80-100 volumes now - and I find the whole period fascinating. The game will never make me rich, and I'm not sure it's even paying for the time and money I invest in it, but it's fun, and leads me to read a lot of interesting material that I might otherwise never have seen.


COM – Your sourcebooks do an excelent job at dismantling the Victorian/Edwardian trappings of the tales they are based on: every convention, cliché and device is exposed and converted into some kind of rule or piece of advice for the gamer. Did you never think of putting it all togheter yourself a posteriori, perhaps composing your own post-modern scientific romance?

MR – I've often thought about it, and may one day try to do something along these lines. But plenty of other people have been there already, and if I start writing fiction again I'd want to be sure that what I was writing was worth reading.


COM – How do you see the changing of science fiction through history? Did the dealing with the scientific romance devices give you any particular insight or opinion about the historical trends and the present state os sf?

MR – This is a difficult question to answer. I'm sometimes worried that a lot of recent material seems to be rehashing old ideas, especially military SF etc.; there seems to be very little worthwhile experimental work being published. Part of this may be that a lot of material is being published on line, but a lot of it is down to the contraction of the publishing industry; I think that they're running scared and afraid to try anything really new. Small presses and self-publication may help a little, but they run into problems with distribution and publicity which means that worthwhile books may be going unnoticed. Apart from that I'm really no expert.


Octavio Aragão – Do you foresee any possible new direction to SF in the future? Would the games industry give any kind of help to save the low sales or it will just transform the SF industry in something more, different?

MR – I think that the pro RPG industry is slowly dying. The average age of players is getting higher, and more and more products are chasing fewer buyers. In the long run I think it's going to be entirely a marginal "industry" with most material only going out on line as PDFs etc. There will probably be exceptions, people still prefer to read printed books, but whether enough people want to read any one game book to make printing it profitable has become a VERY big gamble.


OA – Hollywood finnally discovered Steampunk and Dieselpunk, producing movies more or less successfull like Skycaptain or the new Sherlock Holmes’ franchise. How would a movie based in Forgotten Futures would look like? What’s your favorite scenario and who would you like to be involved in this project?

MR – There was a small chance of this happening, a few years ago. There was some discussion of a Carnacki The Ghost Finder TV series. There are only a few Carnacki stories, and they would need several more to make a series. While they were discussing it one of the people involved, who is a role-player, suggested basing one of the scripts on my adventure Sussex Belle (in FF II), and possibly one of the other adventures, though which one was never decided. In the end the series wasn't made, but for a while it looked possible. Apart from that, the adventures which I think would work well cinematically are:

The Ganymedan Menace (FF II)
The Fist of God (FF III)
Escape from Shangri-La (FF III)
Sussex Belle (FF IV)
The Wages of Sin (FF VI)

For a younger audience maybe
Free Nessie (FF III)
Too Many Dragons (FF VIII)
The Clockwork Heart (FF VIII)


OA and COM – Thank you very much, Mr Rowland.

Journeyman: Interview with Alan Dean Foster

Alan Dean Foster is famous for his original Science Fiction novels, series and movie scripts, including Star Trek and Star Wars’s tie-ins and novelizations.

He was once in Brazil, back in 2000, when we had the luck to watch and hear him talking about his experiences as a pro writer and as an amateur explorer (Alan is a compulsive jorneyman and had travelled to the four corners of the planet).

Now he’s with us to a small interview, answering to five questions raised by our staff (thanks to Luiz Felipe Vasques, Eduardo Torres and Carlos Orsi Martinho), talking about the earlier days of his career, his gigs for Hollywood and how other cultures could inspire his writings.

************************************************************

Octavio Aragão – Hello, Alan. Please, talk a little about your career as professional writer, your literary influences (inside and outside the SF&F field) and the books that were a real pleasure to write.

Alan Dean Foster – I was born in New York City, 1946, but was raised in Los Angeles. After receiving a Bachelor's Degree in Political Science and a Master of Fine Arts in Cinema from UCLA (1968, l969), I spent two years as a copywriter for a small advertising and public relations firm, in California.

My writing career began when publisher August Derleth bought a long Lovecraftian letter I wrote in 1968 and published it as a short story in Derleth's bi-annual magazine, The Arkham Collector. Sales of short fiction to other magazines followed. My first attempt at a novel, The Tar-Aiym Krang, was published by Ballantine Books, in 1972. It incorporates a number of suggestions from John W. Campbell, the editor who published the first works of great writers like Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein.

Since then, my short fiction has appeared in all the major SF magazines, as well as in original anthologies and several "Best of the Year" compendiums. Six collections of my short form work have been published.

My work to date includes excursions into hard science-fiction, fantasy, horror, detective, western.. As to literary influences, the three primary ones were Herman Melville, Eric Frank Russell (British SF writer), and Carl Barks, the creator of the best Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge comic books. From Barks I got the ability to deal realistically with older characters, and also a portion of my desire to travel and see the world.

Carlos Orsi Martinho – You write lots of media fiction, and you keep a few ongoing series of your own. Besides the obvious question of how those experiences compare, and feel, to you, did do you ever considered a media project about one of your own series? A movie, comic book version or TV serial, perhaps? And, how would you feel if another writer would come to write a novelization of a movie based upon one of your universes? Would you try to talk to the guy? Give him advice? Or just keep away...?

ADF – Every writer prefers writing their own material to working with that originated by others. I'm no exception. As to a media project based on my own work, I did have one story (OUR LADY OF THE MACHINE) done on the SF Channel in the U.S., as the opening episode of a series called WELCOME TO PARADOX. Unfortunately, the series lasted only one season, and the adaptation was not what it could have been.

I have a number of books under option for development as motion pictures. All it takes is lots of money.

As to someone writing in my universes, I have no objection to fan writing. But professionally, unless a writer is desperate for money, I think it's best to keep control over your own work. The one exception I made is for a series of games (not video) that are based on the Commonwealth.

Eduardo Torres e Luiz Felipe Vasques – How do you feel in writing the book version of RIDDICK before the release of the film? How will you deal with possible changes of script during film-making? And what should we expect from the Humanx Space project?

ADF – I can't speak to the Humanx Space project, but as to RIDDICK, I always write the book version before the release of the film. That was true of STAR WARS, the ALIEN films, and every other novelization I have done. As to changes of script while I am writing the book, I do my best to incorporate any such changes while I am writing... when and where possible, and provided, of course, that the studio supplies me with the details of such changes.

Octavio Aragão e Eduardo Torres – Different from the vast majority of the SF writers, you travel a lot all over the world, including "wild places" like Brazil. How does it contribute to your novels and scripting gigs? There was any particular situation that you witnessed in those voyages that was later translated into books or movie scripts?

ADF – I don't understand how writers can write about other cultures and places without wanting to experience them for themselves. All I ever wanted to do was see as much of the universe (in this case, restricted to one planet) as I possibly could. I am still trying to do so. I just returned from Kiribati, and will be in Venezuela, Guyana, and Trinidad in January (Señor Chavez permitting).

Not only do my travels provide me with ideas and characters to incorporate into stories, I often am inspired to write an entire book by a visit to a particular country. INTO THE OUT OF comes from time I spent in Tanzania and Kenya. CACHALOT derives from the summer I lived in French Polynesia. CATALYST was inspired by my visit to Peru. And I owe the idea behind my most recently published novel, DROWNING WORLD, to the political situation I saw in Fiji and the ecology of Mamiraua...in that little, out-of-the-way, South America country they call Brazil.

Octavio Aragão – There’s an increasing interest in France for the SF&F produced in South America and in other languages, such as Portuguese and Spanish. This is producing a growing trade of information, data and publications among authors and scholars all around the world, with Portuguese and Brazilian writers publishing in European SF anthologies and vice-versa. How do you see the chances of the non-anglophone Science Fiction and Fantasy in a market that was, till now, mostly North-American?

ADF – It's a development that is long, long overdue. SF is a world literature not only in the sense that it is written and read everywhere, but that SF readers have a connection readers of other fiction do not. You do not need to explain what a star drive is to a reader in Russia, or Australia, or China. Or robotics, or cryogenics. All SF readers have the same basic reading foundation for the genre.

American publishers have a disagreeable bias against SF from elsewhere, although this may slowly (very slowly) be changing. A Japanese author recently sold the U.S. rights to three of his SF books. The Indian government published an anthology of SF by Indian writers that I am trying to get published in the U.S. The other problem is, of course, economics. Translation work costs money. It will be a very SF solution when translation software allows for faster and easier translation work of SF stories.

Now you must excuse me. My wife and I are going to a concert tonight. DIO and IRON MAIDEN. Very soothing.

Steampunk em Paris: Entrevista com Pedro Mota

Pedro Mota é um historiador português que atualmente reside na França.

Graças a seus projetos editoriais e admiração pela Ficção Científica – especialmente o subgênero chamado “História Alternativa” – vem promovendo um intercâmbio bastante salutar e inédito entre autores de língua portuguesa e de origem francesa.


Octavio Aragão – Olá, Pedro! Obrigado por aceitar ceder esta entrevista. Vamos, então, àquela apresentação básica:
Qual seu nome completo, idade, profissão e trabalhos mais importantes no gênero da FC até agora?


Pedro Mota – Olá, Octavio. Me chamo Pedro Jorge Ferreira Mota, nasci en Lisboa, em dezembro 1969, e fui para a França aos 4 anos de idade, uns dias antes do 25 de Abril, 1974. Desde então, moro em Estrasburgo, na Alsacia, uma bela região francesa, mas que fica demasiado longe do elemento essencial para os portugas: o Oceano!

Tenho 33 anos e sou fà de FC desde que comecei a ler. A principio, com os quadrinhos da Marvel (mas não os da DC !!) e, depois, com livros. Quando tinha uns 13/14 anos de idade, comecei a ler romances: minhas primeiras descobertas foram com Robert Silverberg, Poul Anderson, H. G. Wells, George Orwell, Júlio Verne, Tolkien, Arthur C. Clarke. Nessa altura também li muitos romances policiais entre os quais Agatha Christie.

Depois houve um periodo em que tive que pôr de lado as minhas leituras de lazer para dedicar-me aos estudos, mas sempre continuei com um olho sobre a FC durante esse período, que durou uns dez anos.

Foi nessa altura mais ou menos que me apaixonei por um gênero em particular: as Historias Alternativas. Depois de terminar o meu curso de historia, tive mais tempo para a FC e voltei aos meus primeiros amores. Foi a partir daí que devorei num frenesi o máximo de livros de FC.

Em 1995/96 descobri o site Uchronia, the alternate history list, e foi nessa altura que me pus a procura de todos as ucronias disponíveis em francês.

Em 1998, decidi lançar o site La Porte des Mondes, que tenta reunir o máximo de ucronias disponíveis em francês, sejam originais ou traduzidas. A realização do site permitiu-me conhecer vários autores franceses e estrangeiros e, assim, fazer algumas entrevistas de autores como Silverberg, Orson Scott Card, Kim Stanley Robinson e autores franceses como Johan Heliot ou Xavier Mauméjean.

O A – Como está a situação da FC literária na França?

PM – Não sei se tenho os elementos suficientes para falar da FC francesa. E não vou fazer um histórico da FC francesa desde Verne até hoje. Mas posso dizer que, desde a altura em que voltei a ler FC, em meados dos anos 90, descobri e li com muito mais prazer autores franceses. Creio que hoje a maioria dos leitores da França partilham essa visão.

Na minha opinião, a FC francesa esta cada vez mais interessante. Estes últimos anos descobri autores como Pierre Bordage, Johan Héliot, Thomas Day, Ugo Bellagamba, Xavier Mauméjean, Fabrice Colin, Mathieu Gaborit. Redescobri autores com mais fama como R. C. Wagner, J. C. Dunyach, P. Pagel, Ayerdhal, Serge Lehman, J. P. Andrevon, C. Grenier. São muitos mais os autores que poderia ainda pôr nesta lista, e isso sem falar da riqueza e do potencialidade da FC do Quebec.

Creio que temos um número considerável de autores franceses que poderiam ser traduzidos e rivalizar sem dificuldades e sem vergonha com os autores anglófonos. O problema principal é a fraqueza do mercado francês internacional, e, possivelmente, a dificuldade para um brasileiro, português ou até mesmo um americano de encontrar um livro francês fora da França.

Participo da lista de discussão portuguesa "Ficcao-Cientifica · Ficção Científica e Fantástico" e raremente vejo leitores lusófonos falarem de autores franceses. A culpa também pode ser minha (riso) porque até agora não pensei em escrever um "review" dos livros franceses, mas creio que vou tentar fazê-lo o mais rápido possivel.

Na França, temos a sorte de ter varias editoras, grandes e pequenas, que propõem coleções de FC (sendo que as pequenas são mais empreendedoras que as grandes, aceitando enfrentar riscos), permitindo assim a descoberta de autores novos. Temos tambem várias revistas profissionais como Galaxies, Bifrost e Phénix.

No tocante à produção de livros, a FC francesa possui um grande potencial, mas é uma pena que as grandes editoras não dêem importância ao gênero. Porque, apesar de tudo, a FC em geral não tem muito boa fama na França fora do círculo dos leitores e dos fãs (apesar do fato de eu ter notado que os temas da FC são cada vez mais utilizados pela publicidade).

O A – Você é um entusiasta da FC em geral, mas tem se dedicado a difundir autores de língua lusófona e castelhana no mercado francês. Como foi seu primeiro contato com os autores portugueses e brasileiros?

P M – Sim gosto de FC. De toda FC.
Não posso dizer que difundi a FC castelhana na França. Foi a Sylvie Miller quem permitiu a difusão e traduziu muita da FC castelhana disponivel. Aliás, Bruno Della Chiesa, francês apesar do nome italiano, fez muito com o festival Utopiales em Nantes, sendo um dos primeiros a tentar abrir a FC francesa ao resto do mundo.

Aproveito o momento para agradecer à Sylvie Miller por duas razões: primeiro porque graças ao seu trabalho descobri autores espanhóis, e de outro lado porque, com sua ajuda, estou tentando fazer com a FC lusofona o que ela fez com a FC castelhana.

Eis a razão que me leva a ler os livros de Juan Miguel Aguilera, um autor espanhol. Gosto mesmo do que ele faz, também como gosto de Yoss, um autor cubano . E tive a possibilidade de conhecê-los durante um festival, aqui na França.

Com a ajuda da Sylvie Miller, vamos tentar abrir ainda mais o mercado francês a outras sensibilidades e a outras FC, como a portuguesa e a brasileira.

Foi graças à internet que comecei a descobrir os autores lusófonos e pude entrar em contato com eles. Agora tento partilhar minhas descobertas com os leitores franceses. Estou frente a uma montanha e só agora comecei a galgá-la. Tenho que subir com calma para poder chegar ao topo (riso)...

O A – Você acredita que há a possibilidade do desenvolvimento de um mercado de literatura de FC de cunho mundial, fora do universo editorial anglófono?

P M – Sinceramente, creio que sim. Porque penso que pode haver outros modos de escrever FC, outras sensibilidades além daquela dos anglo-saxônicos. A pouco, tive uma conversa com a Sylvie Miller, onde ela me disse que a FC americana é, por vezes, demasiado maniqueísta e um tanto redutora. Enquanto que a FC espanhola ou lusófona aparece mais colorida e mais diversa.

Na França, os leitores puderam descobrir nestes últimos anos, autores alemães, espanhóis, italianos, cubanos, jamaicanos. Todos eles propõem visões e alternativas diferentes da FC anglo-saxônica. Não quero dizer que a FC não-anglosaxônica seja melhor, mas é diferente, e desenvolve outras maneiras de escrever temas clássicos como space-opera, hard-science, cyberpunk, steampunk e outros.

Pegamos, por exemplo, o steampunk, que conheço bem: a princípio, trata-se de uma nova corrente que se iniciou nos EUA e na Inglaterra, com os livros de Powers, Blaylock, Gibson e demais. Mas, por volta de 1995, reparamos que vários autores francos souberam recuperar esse tema e adaptá-lo ao público francês. Em vez de situar a ação em Londres dos finais do século XIX, transpuseram as suas historias à Paris, mas na mesma época, com personagens (verdadeiros ou imaginarios) bem conhecidos, como Arsène Lupin, Jules Verne, Vidocq etc... Acho que o steampunk “à francesa” não deve nada ao anglófono, e até pode interessar o público português, espanhol ou brasileiro. Mas será que esses públicos alguma vez ouviram falar desses livros? Julgo que não, e acho uma pena.

Ademais, a FC estrangeira pode contar histórias com temas bem diferentes dos habituais, temas usados na França, tal como Eu matei Paolo Rossi, de Octavio Aragão. Nesse conto, um dos pontos focais é a paixão pelo futebol que existe no Brasil, o que soa um pouco "exótico" na França.

É preciso saber se as editoras portuguesas, brasileiras e as outras, podem ter vontade de buscar e traduzir contos franceses, e realizar um trabalho similar ao de alguns editores franceses.

Se ninguém der o primeiro passo, todo o trabalho realizado por várias pessoas para tentar descobrir essa "outra" FC pode não ser mais do que un coup d'épée dans l'eau (un golpe de espada na água) e as várias FC existentes no resto do mundo continuarão a ignorar-se, medindo forças com a FC anglófona.


O A – Seria o advento da Internet um elemento indispensável para essa unificação, esse reconhecimento mundial?

P M – Creio que a Internet têm sido um meio fantástico para promover e descobrir a FC de vários países, seja com os diversos sites, seja pelas listas e grupos de discussão. É so ver o número de sites dedicados à FC existindo na rede, é simplesmente incrível!

Foi a minha descuberta da Internet que me levou a criar o site sobre Ucronias, e sei que é regularmente visitado por internautas oriundos do Canadá, Nova Zelandia, Japão, Tahiti, Brasil, USA, sem falar dos países europeus. E trata-se de um site modesto, dedicado às ucronias em francês. Fico espantado!

A Internet abre uma janela maior sobre o nosso mundo, permintindo-nos saber realmente o que habitantes de vários países podem pensar de tal ou tal aspecto ou acontecimento. Ainda mais quando se trata de pessoas que partilham uma paixão para a FC.


O A – Em que ponto estão seus vários projetos editoriais?

P M – Estou finalizando a tradução de um autor brasileiro para uma revista francesa. Disseram-me que existe possibilidade para propor contos lusófonos na França, e eis o meu principal objetivo nos próximos meses: fazer que alguns autores de língua portuguesa sejam publicados aqui.

Mas também gostaria fazer a mesma coisa no sentido contrário: apresentar autores franceses aos leitores de Brasil e Portugal.

Estou finalizando para breve uma antologia de contos ucrônicos cujo tema é a França, com histórias inéditas de autores americanos, cubanos, brasileiros e franceses, e que se chamará Douze Frances – um "piscar de olhos" à canção de Charles Trenet, Douce France –, e também estou trabalhando para realizar outro do meus sonhos: abrir uma pequena livraria e trabalhar com o que eu mais gosto: os livros.

A New Hard SF: Interview with Edward M. Lerner

Edward M. Lerner is part of the new generation of the American hard Science Fiction writers, with works published in the prestigious magazine Analog Science Fiction and Fact, and in a lot of sites in the Internet.
Here he will talk about his stories – with a mix of Physics, Space Engineering, History and Sociology –, his time in NASA and the state of American Science Fiction nowadays.

With you, Edward M. Lerner.

Octavio Aragão – Hello, Edward. Glad to have you here, in the Intempol site.

You have a degree in Physics and a masters in Computer Science. But, you also have a heavy and clear interest in Sociology, as we can see in some of your short stories (By The Rules, published in Analog, in June, 2003) and novelettes (the serialized Moonstruck, Analog, to be finished in December, 2003), where we can see Alien races studying - or manipulating - Earth just like anthropologists like Lévi-Strauss used to do with other cultures in the early XX century. Do you use to research Sociology and Anthropology to build your stories of "alien contact"? If so, who are your favorite authors in this field?

Edward M. Lerner – By The Rules concludes with the acknowledgment: With thanks (and apologies) to Jenn. Jenn is my daughter and an ABD (all but dissertation) grad student of sociology. I did use her as a resource on that story – after which I exercised authorial privilege to ignore any inconvenient details. A case can be made that the apologies owed are for more than any poetic license I exercised. You see, the household rules in that story were mine, inflicted on Jenn and her brother Jeremy.

Moonstruck (and most of my fiction) was developed without Jenn’s help. I do draw upon a longstanding interest in history, however, in this serial and many other stories. In my mind, there’s a significant overlap between historical analysis and sociology.

OA – Your passion for, in your own words, "rocket science" is very deep and you claim that your experience working for NASA helped built and write a more realistic background to your stories, producing "a stockpile of source material for future stories". What, when and where did you used from the "NASA experience"? You just used the "good things" or you tend to show the ugly side of the great corporations in your work?

EML – Moonstruck draws heavily upon that NASA-contracting experience. (That said, allow me to be a bit general, since the final installment of the serial remains to be published. I don’t want to spoil the ending for anyone.) The space-shuttle scenes certainly benefit from my having ‘flown’ the shuttle training simulator. The fact that I ‘crashed’ every time has no bearing on the story. The years I spent working on NASA’s ‘mission to planet Earth’ also proved useful – although I twisted that knowledge into a scenario no practicing climatologist would ever expect to encounter.

Do I use the ugly side of corporate life? Absolutely! Consider my novelette Creative Destruction (first appearing in Analog, March 2001, and later included in Year’s Best SF 7 [David G. Hartwell, editor]). That story revolves around radio-based interstellar trade in intellectual property -- and a vast corporate conspiracy to circumvent the UN’s import/export controls. My imagined chicanery is certainly much uglier than anything Iíve experienced in the real corporate world – I know of no corporate-sanctioned murders! – but it reflects the many years I’ve spent in the corporate trenches.


Another example: my first novel, Probe, opens with a first-contact scenario and also involves corporate malfeasance. This time, however, the corporate plotters are as much in the dark as anyone else.

OA – You are part of a "new new wave" of SF writers that appeared in the last years in the pages of the magazines writing short stories. But we also can notice a huge amount of "trilogies" and famous authors doing their best to write the hugest books, full of sequels and prequels that smell a lot like just "moneymakers". How do you see the actual state of the literary SF as a viable media in US? Is it growing, is it stagnant or in plain flight upwards?

EML – I’m part of a wave? Who knew?

Yes, novels are getting longer, and series are becoming more prevalent. There are good and bad aspects to that state of affairs. I’m all for a series when the scale of an idea is bigger than one book can accommodate. Tolkien’s Lord of The Rings would provide a far poorer experience if it were compressed/scaled-back to one book. The same would be true of the original Asimov Foudation trilogy or Brin’s first Uplift trilogy. That said, some series have continued longer than (in my opinion) the core idea required. Honesty requires an admission: some of the ideas I’m working with support (again, just my opinion) a two- or three-book short series.

More broadly, what’s the state of SF in the US? Not entirely to my taste. My particular preference is for technically sound (“hard”) SF and a steady stream of big/bold new ideas. The many fantasy, media tie-in (such as Star Trek and Star Wars), and past-their-prime series books don’t leave much room for what I’d like to see. That’s too bad, because SF, of all genres, needs a steady stream of innovations.

OA – Let's talk a little about your process of work: your stories are very hard-science driven, with lots of data and references to your scientific knowledge (computer science or space flight engineering). With these characteristics, how do you do revision? All by yourself? Or are you like Stephen King, with a small group of colleagues that knows the same topics you do and helps you with the small typos and eventual factual/scientific inconsistencies? Do you use to discuss your ideas before begin writing? If so, with whom?

EML – Writing hard SF motivates me to learn esoteric topics – science and technology change so rapidly I can’t rely on what I retained from college. There are also plenty of exciting ideas too new to have studied in college, like nanotech and proteimics (protein engineering). The research I do is fun, and because it deals with strange, plot-centric needs, has a focus unlike general study.

I’ve discussed some plot ideas with colleagues, but that’s the exception. The one time I gave an early section draft to a colleague, she lost it!

My wife Ruth is my first reader. She’s an avid SF fan but not a technologist – her review is invaluable. She’s excellent at finding where Iíve said too much or too little about technology, or where the connection between the plot and the technology isn’t clear.

None of this is to say inaccuracies can’t creep into my writing. Stan Schmidt, the editor of Analog, is a PhD physicist and has saved me from myself a couple of times.

OA – Your series Moonstruck is full of details - a true, credible Universe -, and we can see the roots of a novel between it's pages. Any plans for a future book? What the future brings? Any other projects?

EML – Thanks for the kind words about that story. Moonstruck (like most four-part Analog serials) is actually novel-length, and I hope to interest a publisher in releasing it in book form.

Long-time Analog readers will also recognize some of my other near-term projects. Interstellarnet is a novel that expands upon several novelettes published in 2000 and 2001 (including the above-mentioned Creative Destruction). Interstellarnet Conspiracy is a (pardon the irony) follow-on – not a sequel, but set in the same universe. Finally, Fools’ Experiments is a novel that expands upon two 2002 Internet-centric Analog contributions, a novella (Presence of Mind) and a two-part serial (Survival Instinct).


Edward M. Lerner