Adam Roberts on new novel ‘Splinter’ and re-translating Jules Verne : UK SF Book News

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Aug

23

Adam Roberts on new novel ‘Splinter’ and re-translating Jules Verne

Posted in: UKSFBN Talks To on 23rd August 2007 by UKSFBN admin

Science Fiction author, critic and academic Adam Roberts' new novel, Splinter, will be published next month by UK genre imprint Solaris Books. In a freely acknowledged nod to one of the past-masters of the genre, Splinter has inspired by a classic Jules Verne novel, one which hasn't seen a fresh translation into English in over 130 years, until now: Solaris are also publishing a two-volume slipcased edition that includes Roberts' re-translation of the Verne in question, which will be exclusivley available from Waterstone's in the UK.

We dropped Adam a line to ask him a few questions about Splinter and about the inspirational monsieur Verne.

UKSFBN: Could you give us quick introduction to Splinter and tell us where it fits in your canon of work to-date?

Adam Roberts: Splinter is an end of the world story, but based on this twist: what if the world ends and nobody notices? Or more precisely: what if the world ends and you find yourself asking 'hey, did the world just end? Or not?'

"It's a reaction, really, against a tendency in recent apocalyptic sf, the grand barnstorming The Day After Tomorrow style of disaster: nothing wrong with those BANG BANG BANG sorts of stories, but to do something subtler and hopefully more eloquent.

I suppose it's based on the sense I have that, whilst catastrophes can strike our lives in ways that shatter us and leave us lying in the rubble, it's more usually the case that a catastrophe strikes our life and we don't, at first, even notice it's happened; or else we misunderstand it. It is a new departure for me, I think; although I'm not sure how you'd characterise 'an Adam Roberts novel' except in terms of trying something new each time.

UKSFBN: Splinter is inspired by a classic Jules Verne novel; can you tell us which one, and why you were inspired by that one in particular?

Adam Roberts: The germ of the novel was a short story I wrote for a collection edited by Mike Ashley and Eric Brown - The Mammoth Book of New Jules Verne Stories [Amazon] - where the brief was: take a Verne title and riff off it. I took Hector Servadac (1877), not one of Verne's best known titles, but one of my favourites, and a weird and haunting book. It's the only Verne title (except Autour de la Lune) in which characters actually leave the Earth.

Anyway I liked the story, though it didn't go very far; so I plotted out the whole novel as a way of transferring what I took to be Verne's core fascinations into a twenty-first century idiom.

UKSFBN: What are the book's major themes?

Adam Roberts: It's main theme, I think, is about the different ways in which worlds end, and the different kinds of worlds that are subject to that style of catastrophic asteroid-strike dinosaur-killing disaster. In that sense it's really a book about growing up, a theme SF (which I'd argue is the form of literature most precisely poised on the borderline between Adolescence and Maturity ... SF books can go either way) is very well suited to.

So: in the novel the main character's father has visions of the impending end of the world, and has holed up in a compound in the Mojave desert with a bunch of followers; and his son Hector comes to visit disbelieving the predictions and trying to preserve his distance from all these weirdos. The novel them develops inside this tight-knit community of this compound, with Hector coming to terms with his relationship with his Dad, and his past, and other people. It's about memory and prediction and that trickiest thing of all, living-in-the-present.

UKSFBN: The Waterstone's exclusive edition of Splinter includes a copy of the original Verne, which you're re-translated yourself. Was this a particularly challenging task, and how different did you discover the original to be to the existing translation(s)?

"I went through the whole thing re-translating ... I let the original stand where it's serviceable, but about a third of it is newly rendered."Adam Roberts: Most of Verne's books were translated into English (and other languages) soon after publication; but most of these early translations were, as we academics say, deeply rubbish. The philosophy of translation at this time was not one of fidelity; English publishers tended to cut out a lot of the stuff that makes Verne most distinctive - particularly his scientific and technical explanations - and often summarised his dialogue rather than actually rendering it. They abridged or, sometimes, expanded.

Now, some Verne titles have since been retranslated by proper scholars, and good reliable modern editions exist of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Journey to the Center of the Earth and so on. But not of Hector Servadac; the only English translation was undertaken in the 1870s and is staggeringly bad; large chunks missing from most chapters, dialogue cut or altered throughout, one entire chapter simply missed out. So I went through the whole thing re-translating - it was an interesting experience, though rather time-consuming. The result is based on the original, and I let the original stand where it's serviceable, but about a third of it is newly rendered.

UKSFBN: As a Professor of literature and literary theorist, how much analysis do you do of your own work during the writing process? And do you think that your academic background helps or hinders the actual writing process?

Adam Roberts: Can't do it. Can't be done. If you try and analyse what you're writing as you write it you seize up, like a 1950s evil robot whose just had some contradiction in its programming pointed out to it by the hero. The bits of the brain needful for creative work are in a separate hemisphere to the bits used in analysis and criticism; trying to segue the two in practice leads to that terrible thing, writers block.

What I do when I write (after, that is, I've planned out a fair bit of a project) is distract my right-hemisphere by playing loud music through headphones whilst my fingers are flying over the keyboard. Loud hard-edged indie works best for me. Re-reading what I wrote when I'm revising and self-editing can be a startling process (I often find myself encountering writing that I had, effectively, forgotten writing; even if the actual act of writing took place only a week or so earlier).

But, yes, it can mean that I look back over several novels and start to see patterns that strike me as obvious even though I had not noticed them at the time, as I wrote about in a recent blog entry.

UKSFBN: Finally, what are you working on at the moment; what's the next addition to the Roberts canon?

Adam Roberts: The next addition will be a big book about - basically - poo, called Swiftly. Poo, that is, in the Swiftian and Rabelaisian senses of the word. After that I'm going to write a thriller set in Russia in the 1980s, though with a fairly strong sfnal edge to it. It'll be about science fiction writers, about alien invasion, about Chernobyl and communism and its fall. My working title is Yellow Blue Tibia.

UKSFBN: Adam Roberts, thank you very much.

Catch up on the latest news over at Adam's official website, www.adamroberts.com, where you can also read extracts from his novels to-date. Splinter [Amazon] will be published by Solaris Books in the UK and US in September 2007. Adam's recent novel, Land of the Headless, published by Gollancz books, is available now from all good bookstores and online retailers such as Amazon.co.uk.

Source: Adam Roberts

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