[jbcohen]

In another thread a question came up: Why is it that there are very few popular black and asian fantasy authors? This is a good topic for a seperate debate.

[Bardos]

For the same reason there are very few Russian, Europian, and Oriental authors. The US market is dominant. It's not a matter of how well you write; it's a matter of how much money you have to publish, advertise, and ship your books.
And, oh, it's the English language also. If a book is not writen in English, then it's chances of becoming popular around the globe are zero.

[This message has been edited by Bardos (edited December 27, 2001).]

[jbcohen]

Why is this so?

[SirRob]

So what if there aren't many popular black or a... etc authors, doesn't affect anything does it except the cultural div...blah of blah blah........... snore

[estranghero]

I figure that this is kind of a egg-shell careful topic. Hope I don't step on any.

Why? Well, if you ask why are there few popular black and asian fantasy authors, then you have to ask: so can you divide authors into nationalities? Skin color? Then you have to make sure that you're not stepping on any toes on the matter of countries and race.

I think Bardos got it right the first time-- the US market is the biggest, as well as one of the main proponents of the English language. Like the perennial question of "how do you get published as a writer", you have to reach your market. Unless you can create one.

As for whether or not it matters, well, there is such a thing as globalism and nationalism. Not everyone who reads (and reads fantasy) is in the US or is caucasian.

Okay, easy on the tempers, people. I'm not bashing anything or anyone, just stating a humble opinion.

[jbcohen]

Don't worry about stepping on any egg shells yet estranghero. I am not sure that there are any egg shells out there to be stepped on as yet. My purpose for opening the thread in the first place is two fold, one at the suggestion of estranghero in a previous thread and two, curiosity. I always like reading the debate that goes on here about different topics concerning fantasy litterature.

Do you mean to tell me that there is no market for foreign languege books? I wandered into a local Borders books and found a rather extensive foreign langeuge book rack.

Second, why is it that publishers do not transport foreign author's works to the US and translate the works into english for this countrie's readers.

Granted that the US is the largest market for these books, but that should not stop people from other nations from writing and or selling copies of their works here in the US. Why is it that I have not seen foreign writters selling copies of their books here in the US more often?

[Loaba]

I think you have ask how many black and asian people read fantasy novels. While the total might just be more than I think I still supsect that the majority of fantasy readers are anglo.

I also think that the majority of black authors in particular have chosen much more serious topics to write about. I am of course excluding Dennis Rodman from the black author catagory. http://www.sffworld.com/ubb/smile.gif

[Llama]

Consider the following:

1. Genre fiction is a luxury. It tends to be produced by writers in developed countries and consumed by readers in developed countries (and maybe some comparatively well-off readers in developing countries; I was one of these, by the way). A writer growing up in a country that is poor/oppressed/etc is unlikely to want to grow up writing about orcs and hobbits. And if he does, he'll likely get it beaten out of him at the first writers' workshop, when everybody asks him why on earth he's writing about middle-earth when his colleagues on this earth are being put in jail and tortured by the regime de jour. That does not mean, however, that these writers don't use fantasy when they write about their societies -- they certainly do, but as a serious literary creation and not as a genre confection. Which is why I keep telling people that the best fantasy is found OUTSIDE the genre, in works like One Hundred Years of Solitude (Colombia), House of Spirits (Chile), Ficciones (Argentina), Midnight's Children (UK/India), Arabian Nights and Days (Egyypt), Palace of Dreams (Albania), Black Book (Turkey), etc. But believe me -- you will find few orcs and hobbits in those pages.

2. IMO, not all but certainly most genre fantasy is trash -- generic, unimaginative, uninspired, comforting to timid readers in its repetitive familiarity (again, it's just my opinion, put away the knives). The US produces a lot of this trash, and quite cheaply, and when other countries have need of our trash we're happy to export it, the same way that we export Hollywood trash. So why don't we read other folks' genre fiction? Because there's no need to read other people's trash. We are "trash self-sufficient" - we produce more than enough trash to keep our folks happy and that's all that trash is required to do. Why translate trash, which is expensive, when you've got enough of your own?

3. So if you are asking, as you seem to be, why isn't there a Japanese Terry Goodkind, I think the answer is that there probably is one but no one seems to see the need to translate him because we've got our own Goodkind and he's painful enough to read in English, why would we want to read the same thing translated from the Japanese? Plus when you're done reading Goodkind you can head on over to Borders and read sixty other bad Tolkien clones. But if what you are asking is where can I find some good Japanese fantasy, the answer is -- not in the fantasy aisles. Hoever, if you move over to the fiction section you'll find Haruki Murakami's Wild Sheep Chase or his Elephant Vanishes or his Wind-up Bird Chronicle. And you'll find Kobo Abe's Woman in the Dunes or his Box Man or his Secret Rendezvous, etc. etc.

(Sorry if the above sounded like a bit of a rant, that was not my intention. But it's already written and I don't have time to soften it.)

[mundanemies]

Writing is a big thing. And people usually write in their own language. You just can't beat the flow of your own tongue lolling and rolling with sounds and nuances that typify Finnish or English or Romanian or German or Swedish or Russian or Swahili or Spanish or Thai or whatever. There are very few authors who have managed to grasp the second language well enough to be able to write worthy books with it. Joseph Conrad springs to mind. I reckon Salmon Rushdie is another.

Translating books is tedious affair and to really do it right and with skill and dedication, you usually end up spending a mammoth of a time on something that is not really a well-paying job. Trust me, I know. It rarely pays well enough to be worth your while and thus you're pushed into doing the job as good as you can in a far too sort period of a time.

And yes, there are hundreds of different coutries in the world, where there are multitude's of books published in their own language. Lot of books are translated from other languages too, mainly English, because as said earlier, the US (and thus GB, Can, Aus et al) market is so much bigger than anything else.

There are hundreds, thousands of people writing SF and fantasy in English. Most of those will never be published. Publishers are flooded with manuscripts already, why should they really bother with foreign stuff? Yes, it can be a huge success in one's own country, but then the market is most probably very different. Gosh, it may even be a literate SF/F-book!

Even more a reason to translate that then, but to translate basically more of the same middle-of-the-rodeo SF/F-books that plague tha best sellers list, hardly worth it. If the authors goes thru the whole shebang and translates his/her own book and tries to sell it to US publishers it really doesn't matter much whether s/he is a big deal in Bohemia or Outer-Mongolia, s/he's still just one of the many thousands of hopeful's who are trying to get their stuff published. And the longer it takes, the more difficult it gets. And you have to earn your living.

It rarely pays well, this book-writing business. It takes the whim of the public and a lot of hard work. There are several obstacles and many more for those non-American.

However, there are tons of Asian and European and African SF/F-authors. I/You are never going to read them, unless we start to learn foreign languages. Try Italian, they have some strikingly beautiful and interesting fantasy-authors there. Or French. They publish quite a lot of SF/F per annum. Japan... Well, their SF/F-market is very big and not only is it manga or anime only, but books too.

There are also many non-caucasian SF/F-writers. They're unknown to be of color, because people seldom know what the authors look like. One other thing that still exists (most unfortunately) is the fact that we are living in a society that has prejudices, especially those based on the color of skin or whatever as stupid as that.

A name is just a name. There are several people on this board who don't care who's writing the stuff, they just want to read the books, not to be intimately knowledgable of their authors. That's fine.

[mundanemies]

Oh god Llama, you said so much better than I did http://www.sffworld.com/ubb/smile.gif I tried to be civilised and thus managed only appear toothless and incoherent.
Well said. http://www.sffworld.com/ubb/biggrin.gif