Aliens don't only speak English

There are plenty of English-language science fiction books out there that I don't have to go looking for foreign SF titles, but I am always interested to see how other cultures handle a genre which owes a lot to the writers of the U.S. and the U.K.

To promote good translations of foreign-language science ficiton and fantasy books into English, a new translation award has been launched. Unfortunately, we are going to have to wait a while until the first award winners are announced since they are expecting the first awards to be handed out to books published in 2010.

One country which is a big producer of science fiction is Japan, but most of that is in the form of manga or anime. The bulk of serious genre novels published in Japan are translations, but the market is small. Home-grown science fiction and fantasy novels tend to be manga or anime tie-ins.

If you are interested in sampling some of those books, VIZ Media is a specialty publisher which has a special imprint called Haikasoru which began releasing translated Japanese novels for the English market earlier this year.