I received my comp copies of the Polish edition of Sun of Suns today. You never know when stuff like this is going to show up, so surprise packages are always exciting.  I love the edition, it's a nice substantial paperback with original cover art.

This edition joins the Japanese and German translations, making this my most internationally successful book yet.  (Other languages I've had books translated into? French, Spanish, Lithuanian and Russian. Not a bad haul--though I still don't have actual copies of the Russian editions, sadly.)

The Poles recently bought ebook rights to Sun of Suns as well, which should make for an extended run in that market. 

The second book of my Virga series, Queen of Candesce, has hit the bookshelves in Germany.  The publisher is Heyne, and once again, it's translated by the inestimable Irene Holicki.  Pirate Sun will be available as well, in 2011.

I basically wrote Lady of Mazes for Europe.  I thought that of all people, Europeans would understand what I was getting at when I talked about a world of customizable realities and a technology of cultural preservation.  Canadians too, I hasten to add; I was lamenting aloud about the death of the counterculture to a Quebecois friend of mine, and he said, "The counterculture isn't dead.  It's other countries."  (This statement will make perfect sense to the Quebecois, and to Europeans and pretty well anybody in the world--except Anglos and particularly mainstream Americans--because everywhere in the world must constantly compare their own cultural productions to those of America.  It's not a bad thing, necessarily; it's just something we're all aware of all the time.)

So I'm delighted that thanks to the staff at the Factory of Ideas, and the hard work of my translator, Virginia Sanmartín López, Lady of Mazes is now available in Spanish, from a variety of booksellers including casadellibro.com and IberLibro.com.  It's also getting good reviews--for instance this one in Literatura Prospectiva and this one by LiteRatos.  (Both reviews acknowledge that it's a difficult read, and that, of course, was the case for many people with the English edition, too.  I refused to dumb down this book.)

One thing that particularly delights me, for no reason, is that the round-trip translation through Google of Lady of Mazes, to La Senora de los Laberintos and back to English, is The Lady of the Labyrinth.  Which, perhaps even better than my original, indicates just who it is I'm alluding to here. 

Sun of Suns continues to spread around the world.  The Germans are the latest to announce an edition, and check out the cover art! It's by Ioan Dumitrescu; you can find more of his work at the CG Society.

I like the design elements on this cover, which was crafted by Nele Schütz Design; I may poach it for a re-do of my site banner, which currently uses the excellent Stephan Martiniere cover for Queen of Candesce.  In any case this is a beautiful cover and a beautiful design, and I look forward to holding this edition in my hands.

Thanks to Davide Mana, the Alia project in Italy has translated my short story "Halo" for the ALIA project of L'ARCIPELAGO DEL FANTASTICO.  ALIA is an anthology in several volumes, and in several languages.

I'm honored to part of this collection, and hope it's very successful for Davide and his team.

I've had two books translated into Russian so far:  Ventus, and Sun of Suns.  Both are published by AST in Moscow, and are available online through the Ozon bookstore.  (For instance, here's the link to Sun of Suns, and here's where to find Ventus.)

The summary for Sun of Suns describes the book this way:

История Хайдена Гриффина - обычного мальчишки из искусственной галактике Вирга - огромного наполненного воздухом шара, в центре которого сияет Солнце Солнц, гигантский ядерный реактор - сад, где растут, как цисты, зародыши солнц поменьше.

История его родного мира, уничтоженного флотом "кочевой" планеты Слипстрим.

История его похищения и его странствий с космическими пиратами. История его опасных приключений - поисков легендарных сокровищ древнего капитана Анетина и смертельной борьбы с представителями цивилизации Искусственных сущностей, захватившей уже едва не все планеты за пределами Вирги...

And here's their description of Ventus:

...Вентус. Планета, на которой люди, веками остававшиеся рабами ИскИнов, поднимают наконец восстание против `хозяев`.

Вентус. Планета, на которой людям-повстанцам просто нечего терять!

Здесь сражаются до последнего.

До последнего вздоха. До последней пули.

Здесь цена выживания человечества проста: `Свобода - или смерть!`

I don't read Russian very well, but this seems to be a really over-the-top description--"here, they battle to the last breath!"  But hey.  If it sells books, go for it. 

But now I'm curious.  If anybody has read either or both of these translations, I'd love to know what you thought of them.  It's always really cool to find out, once the translation to a language is complete, how ideas and characters--and, well, just story--translate to other cultures.

I've created a Japanese page for Sun of Suns (太陽の日曜).  This is an experiment, so if there's anybody out there bilingual enough to interpret what I've done, please let me know if there's any howlers or flat-out insults accidentally rendered into the page.  I used WorldLingo.com's automated translation service, so I have no idea whether any of the text I've dropped in there makes sense. 

If this works, I'm going to create pages for each of the other translated languages/works. 

Here's the complete list under the Best Foreign Novel category.  As you can see, I'm in the best possible company this year; in fact, since these books are distilled from years of English-language SF rather than the Hugo's one-year pool, I'd venture to say that winning a Seiun is probably a lot harder than winning a Hugo.  Just look at this collection of titles!

• Spin, Robert Charles Wilson
• The Ghost Brigades, John Scalzi
• Redemption Ark, Alastair Reynolds
• Light, M. John Harrison
• The Urth of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe
• Sun of Suns, Karl Schroeder
• Seeker, Jack McDevitt

Note that the complete list of nominations doesn't seem to have been translated yet.  You can find ongoing updates on that here.

My thanks go out to Hayakawa Publishing for their excellent edition of Sun of Suns; and of course, a deep bow to Naoya Nakahara, whose translation is really what is being nominated here.

I've just sold Japanese rights to SoS, and have several other countries interested as well.  For the Japanese market, the publisher will be Hayakawa Publishing Company.  No date yet for publication, but keep an eye on their catalogue!

My second novel, Permanence, has been released in a beautiful mass-market edition.  The cover art is cool--it shows Rue's Ediacaran fossil pendant, which figures prominently in the story.

Amazon describes the novel like this:

La jeune Rue Cassels est née et a toujours vécu dans le Halo, cette région riche en naines brunes située à mi-chemin entre le Système solaire et les Mondes illuminés. Fuyant la tyrannie de son frère Jentry et l'ambiance interlope de la station d'exploitation cométaire Allemagne, elle s'empare d'une navette pour rejoindre Erythrion. Chemin faisant, elle fait valoir ses droits sur un objet stellaire non répertorié, ignorant que sa découverte aura des répercussions sans précédent. Avec ses combats spatiaux, ses énigmes extraterrestres plus anciennes que l'humanité et ses planètes exotiques décrites avec minutie, Permanence est un roman palpitant, s'inscrivant dans la mouvance du Nouveau Space Opera illustrée par des auteurs comme Iain M. Banks, Peter Hamilton ou Alastair Reynolds.

My first novel Ventus is also available in Folio SF mass-market format.