Literature – An Echo That's Reversing

The Barbarella Library

Back in October of last year I started collecting different editions of the Barbarella comics. As my collection grew and my personal documentation–by language, year, format–expanded, I decided to create a public website to share all of that information, along with details from items I don’t own, and so created The Barbarella Library. The website is a work-in-progress because, as I’ve found while chasing various and more rare editions, Barbarella has an unexpectedly rich bibliography.

The comics, written by Jean-Claude Forest, first appeared in eight chapters from 1962 to 1963 in the French magazine V and then collected and published in 1964 by Le Terrain Vague in oversized hardback. Eric Losfeld was the publisher of both the magazine and the book. The stories were first translated in English in 1965 and 1966 in the American literary magazine Evergreen Review–along with works by writers such as Jack Kerouac, Samuel Beckett, and Alain Robbe-Grillet–then compiled in an oversized hardback edition. Both magazine and book were published by Grove Press.

Three books followed the initial one. Les Coleres du Mange Minutes (The Rage of the Minute Eaters) in 1974, Le Semble-Lune (The False-Moon) in 1977, and Le Miroir aux Tempetes (The Storm Mirror) in 1982. Most of these four have been translated into English, German, Italian, Polish, and Czech. The presence of the last two languages surprised me, however I’ve been unable to find any other translations so far. “Barbarella hunting” has become a weird pastime for me so eventually they’ll show up somewhere.

I continue working on the site because, aside from missing editions and some missing photos, there are a lot of features I’d like to add and bugs that need addressing. I had first thought of using Drupal or WordPress or Mediawiki to create the site, but building from the ground up felt more fun. And it was… also pretty humbling at times.

It’s weird, but Barbarella has stopped really meaning anything to me except for a concept. She’s become kind of an abstract space-lady separate from the somewhat nonsensical stories (the first book feels like it was completely improvved, almost from page-to-page), and I guess that’s what she was to the French public at the time? The closer I got to the nonsense, the more she rose above it and became an archetype despite herself.

Or maybe she’s just silly, 60s sci-fi erotica.

Survivor’s guilt

The pandemic was good to me.

I thrive alone and so, even as the wife was not in her best place like most others in the world, though I was distraught by what the global “We” were going through, I could deal. Even before the pandemic I worked from home and spent many non-work hours in my office doing non-work things. Not necessarily a very guy thing but just a very introvert thing. I actually have fond memories of the isolation because within that isolation there was, without a better phrase to express it, a warm online camaraderie of artists who gave their time to create that warmth.

The 11th of this month was the four year anniversary of the start (as I noted here when it started).

Aniara

Updated 16 May 2024

A few years back I watched the Swedish sci-fi film Aniara [ IMDB | Wikipedia ] and it shook me. The prompting to watch was from some now-lost review that described it as eccentric and bleak (my remembered words, not theirs) and highly recommended it but with warning w/r/t that last characteristic. And it is that last characteristic that continually resurfaces to shake me.

Four pulp sci-fi novels (set #6)

Continuing my re-visiting of pulp sci-fi started back in 2018 on a lark. I picked these up at Book Nook when I picked up the three romance novels because at this point it’s an addiction.

My visit to the land of romance

The Twitter account @PulpLibrarian–when not posting covers of the absolutely baffling history of Nazi BDSM fantasy magazines of the 70s or the less baffling 50s/60s/70s sci-fi magazines–periodically posts covers from romance novels. One thread had focused on the covers of a specific, named, artist; another on those covers that shared similar landscapes and poses (e.g. that of a frightened woman, fleeing a Victorian castle, across the forbidding moors). I was surprised when in the first artist-focused thread, many readers commented on how much they appreciated the artist and knew their name, referencing other books whose covers they were responsible for. Seldom in other genres are artists so recognizable. (Although, admittedly, I have done my own research on pulp sci-fi covers, and it’s likely this is a common venture. I can now spot in the wilds the hand of several of the more productive artists.)