[bala · home]
[okadenamatī · reviews]
[mesaramatiziye · other writings]
[tedbezī · languages]
language: Basque (English tr. Arrate Hidalgo)
country: France
year: 1985
form: short fiction
genre(s): sci-fi
dates read: 17.2.23-18.2.23
absolutely delighted to learn that Memories of Tomorrow, by the (Northern!) Basque writer Mayi Pelot, translated by Arrate Hidalgo, is not — as I had originally thought — a selection of Pelot’s short fiction but rather a full translation of her 1985 collection Biharko oroitzapenak. more translations like this, please! the collection has six stories, four of which are closely linked, set in a post-nuclear apocalypse 2050, and the final two are set in a distant future.
the more I reflect on this, the more I think I love it, actually. the first three stories — “Miren”, “Row, row”, and “Feedback” — are quite short, only a few pages each, giving us glimpses of the postapocalyptic future. I was particularly struck by “Row, row”, about a child learning the history of ocean pollution. “Miren” hints — it’s only two pages long — at the theme of ecological destruction, as its title character is euthanized because she’s contracted an incurable illness due to her work on the “Anti-Pollution Wall”, and “Feedback” offers an enigmatic glimpse of life in a re-Islamized Spain on the eve of (another) nuclear war. it also includes the concept of an “electronic automuezzin”, the implications of which I’m fascinated by.
“The Digital Maze”, though, is unquestionably the highlight of the collection, a grimly dystopian narrative about a young Basque woman returning home for her job as an employee of the “Sigma Society”, which she discovers is colluding with the governments of the “United States of the World” and “Panslavia” to ensure that the ruling class is safe from an impending second nuclear apocalypse. there’s a lot going on here, including the one thing that gave me some pause, which is the choice of Iran — which controls much of the Islamic world, including Spain — as one of the superpowers competing for global hegemony. I’m interested but it’s a weird vibe that I think could easily stray into islamophobic territory. overall, though, this was excellent, if extremely depressing.
“Choppy Water” projects the division of the Basque country into a science-fictional far future, where Neobaskia is a contested territory between two powers that are both trying to — both through legal mechanisms like eviction and simply through politically targeted violence — depopulate the “Neobask” city of Shuripi in order to expropriate its land and resources.
finally, “The Exchange” is a strange, meditative sci-fi reworking of part of Wagner’s Siegfried, in the vein perhaps of Yoon Ha Lee’s “Conservation of Shadows”, focused on the relationship between Wotan and Erda.
Hidalgo’s translation is, for the most part, solid, although there are occasional moments where it faltered, including some malapropisms here and there, and in particular a slight overreliance on names when pronouns would have felt more natural:
In Daleth’s thick atmosphere, Wotan had spent that day’s afternoon wandering through the planet’s rainforests. The heat rose from his lower back all the way to his shoulders, making his feet heavy, lightly shortening his breath. His blue eyes noticed a small, colorful rock standing by a beech. He needed to rest, perhaps slip into dreaming. Wotan’s strong shoulders settled against the trunk.
this was a recurring thing — not all the time, but often enough that I noticed it.
moods: dark, mysterious