Astronautilia • Hacker News Board

Re: Astronautilia

#11

Post by stjnvcm » Mon, Jan 23, 2023, 8:44 PM UTC

TbobbyZ wrote: post #6

I would love to know how Czech culture influenced the novel.

Sadly I hear about this for first time myself. The word hvězdoplavba is somehow know and used, mostly in poetic context. I don't think it had any particular affect on the society tho. I'll go check some second hand bookstores for this gem.

Edit: after reading bit more about this, the author was kind of inspired by another Czech author Karel Čapek, whose works did and keeps influencing people (also coined the word Robot for "mechanical worker" (that's enough bragging for today)

Re: Astronautilia

#12

Post by giraffe_lady » Mon, Jan 23, 2023, 8:47 PM UTC

mjfl wrote: post #10

I always wonder what books there are out there, that are very interesting, with no English translation. Must be a lot of them.

Arabic and chinese each have literary traditions approximately as broad and deep as the western canon. I'm sure there are plenty of others. In all likelihood most excellent and interesting works are not available in english.

Re: Astronautilia

#13

Post by tntermini » Mon, Jan 23, 2023, 8:54 PM UTC

"but a violent revolution breaks out amongst the women; one approaches the Queen and, pulling out a penis, rapes her. The other rebel women follow suit." (quoting from wikipedia summary)

Re: Astronautilia

#14

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jan 23, 2023, 8:56 PM UTC

tntermini wrote: post #13

"but a violent revolution breaks out amongst the women; one approaches the Queen and, pulling out a penis, rapes her. The other rebel women follow suit." (quoting from wikipedia summary)

[deleted]

Re: Astronautilia

#15

Post by yourself92 » Mon, Jan 23, 2023, 9:09 PM UTC

mjfl wrote: post #10

I always wonder what books there are out there, that are very interesting, with no English translation. Must be a lot of them.

I have the same thoughts about content on the web

Re: Astronautilia

#16

Post by strbean » Mon, Jan 23, 2023, 9:11 PM UTC

pattisapu wrote: post #7

As science fiction and fantasy have evolved, they have converged. We can see plenty of fantasy in works of science fiction in the conventional _forms_ of science fiction -- short stories, novels, TV shows, movies, video games. It will be interesting to see science fiction in the conventional _forms_ of fantasy -- epics, ballads, poetry, fairy tales, onomastics, runic and incantatory forms of language.... (As an aside…

> It will be interesting to see science fiction in the conventional _forms_ of fantasy

I think this happened a fair amount in the forms of religious texts / mythology and mysticism in the early/mid 20th century, no?

Re: Astronautilia

#17

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jan 23, 2023, 9:20 PM UTC

isoprophlex wrote: post #9

Tell me about a complicated sheep, o Muse, of how it bleated as it saw all of our world and made it real just being there, a holy ewe Maybe we'll have an Emily Wilson translation of the Astronautilia one day, I'd read that for sure!

[deleted]

Re: Astronautilia

#18

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jan 23, 2023, 9:20 PM UTC

algon33 wrote: post #2

This is the most insane thing I've read about this year.

[deleted]

Re: Astronautilia

#19

Post by legerdemain » Mon, Jan 23, 2023, 9:25 PM UTC

TbobbyZ wrote: post #6

I would love to know how Czech culture influenced the novel.

My impression is that central Europe (which I apologize for lumping together) has a pretty long-running tradition of literary absurdism and surrealism. They're works that are more allegorical than "scientific" or "futuristic," even though they might be responding to (or "riffing on") actual early sci-fi of the techno-futurism variety.

As some examples, besides his R.U.R., Capek (Czech) also wrote The War with the Newts. It's an animal fairy tale that predates George Orwell's animal fairy tale by a decade.

Franz Kafka, obviously, was born in Prague and spent his life in central Europe.

Witold Gombrowicz's Ferdydurke (1937) is a Polish analogue from the same decade. Bruno Schulz's short story anthology The Street of Crocodiles is another one.

After World War 2, you have people like Stanislaw Lem (Polish) writing a lot of farcical science fiction and Jan Svankmajer (Czech) making a lot of grotesque, farcical stop-motion animation.

Re: Astronautilia

#20

Post by wongarsu » Mon, Jan 23, 2023, 9:25 PM UTC

yourself92 wrote: post #15

mjfl wrote: post #10

I always wonder what books there are out there, that are very interesting, with no English translation. Must be a lot of them.

I have the same thoughts about content on the web

The Russian web is surprisingly helpful for cyber security or undocumented Windows APIs. They also seem to have a better ecosystem of small Windows utilities to do obscure system tasks (like look up your connected USB devices, or check your memory for defects).