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I read a book that was edited by Orson Scott Card. OSC also was instrumental in getting it translated from the original German. I agree that it was worth translating. The story is about an family of weavers that spends its entire lifetime to produce one gigantic rug made of hair. The rug is then sold for enough to enable the eldest son to create yet another rug in his lifetime. These rugs are then shipped to a hidden planet that is being carpeted with these rugs on its surface. This is the result of an insult to the Emperor concerning him being bald when the conquered ruler was encarcerated. I need to reacquire this German Author's name and see if OSC did any other translations for this fantastic German Sci-Fi Author. Does anyone know the name of the author? I am very sad to hear that OSC suffered a stroke in January. I haven't visited Hatrack River in a while.
Posts: 3 | Registered: Mar 2011
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You're talking about Andreas Eschbach, who's well-known in the German SF scene. The novel in question is "The Carpet Makers" (OT: Die Haarteppichknüpfer).
Eschbach's novels are quite varied as to theme and also target audience. Even though much of his fiction has an SF edge hardly any of the books resemble each other; among other things he's also written several YA novels and three installments in the long-running Perry Rhodan series.
I haven't read this book yet but it's on my reading pile. I have read Eschbach's "Das Jesus Video", though, and was blown away. It's a thriller with a time travel twist: A video camera is found at an archeological site in Israel next to a human skeleton. It appears to be as old (around 2,000 years) as the bones, yet the cam model is one that has yet to be brought to the market. One fantastical explanation is that this is a camera from the future which was carried by a time traveler back to the Israelian past. Now, what would you tape if you went back 2,000 years in time in Israel? That's the premise of the story which keeps being great. The ending fall a little flat IMHO but even though I've read the book almost ten years ago, I'm still enthusiastic about it as you can see! ;-)
It's a pity that there are so few English translations of Eschbach material. If you look at the novel section (non-YA) at his website beneath each novel there's an overview of the languages that novel was translated to: http://andreaseschbach.de/werke/romane/romane.html "Das Jesus Video" I talked, e.g., was translated into French, Italian, Japanese, Czech, Polish, Russian, Dutch, and even Latvian! Alas, no English...
Posts: 4 | Registered: Oct 2009
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Fantastic comments and very, very helpful. He is one of my sci-fi authors i have put on my must read list along wtih OSC of course. Thanks again for a well thoght out reply with alot of good information and links.
Posts: 3 | Registered: Mar 2011
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