Comments on: Russian Before and After

By: Ilya Popov

Ilya Popov — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 07:27:49 +0000

The choice of ‘ts’ is weird. I would have gone with ‘3′ over ‘ц’.

And seriously – odd title choice. Matt Stover’s ‘Blade of Tyshalle’ and Scott Lynch’s ‘Lies of Locke Lamora’ were both left alone, and they’re a bit odder (in so much as they feature fantasyish-sounding words/names) than ‘Old Man’s War’.

*shrug*

At least you walked away with cover-art that isn’t overly embarassing, unlike, say, Gibson’s Pattern Recognition: http://ilya.lokys.net/IMG_0717.jpg

By: krum

krum — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 09:26:26 +0000

It could be that, but the name is obviously Italian and also not rare at all, I suppose it didn’t occur to them the pronunciation might have been Americanized.

By: Buck

Buck — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 01:52:30 +0000

I’m wondering if the “ts” for the “z” in Scalzi is informed more by German to Russian than English to Russian. I was translating some stuff from Russian into English and ran across the word ‘tseit,’ and couldn’t figure it out at first, until I realized that it was the German “zeit.”

By: Doug M.

Doug M. — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 21:35:03 +0000

In Cyrillic, C is our S, K and A are the same, л is our L. So Скал = “Skal”.

3 is our Z. But ц is a sound we don’t have a single letter for: ts. (Not tz. ts, like in Betsy or bits.)

Скалзи = Skal-zee

Скалци = Skal-tsee

Also, your first name? Is “Dzhon”. Russian has trouble with our J-sound — they can do “dzh”, “dj” and “tch”, but none of those quite match.

Doug M.

By: Downstreamer 89

Downstreamer 89 — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 12:37:30 +0000

[transmission from downstream] Well, at least the Ruskies didn’t go with G-Force artwork from the 1980s. Congrats, Scalzi! You’re one of my favorite authors of the twenty-third century. [reeling . . .]

By: krum

krum — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 06:32:30 +0000

It hadn’t occurred to me you might be pronouncing it with з instead of ц. Googling for Скалци or Скалзи returns the same number of Bulgarian hits, with the latter only consisting of references to you, while all other Scalzis are always Скалци, and there’s also references to you. At the Bulgarian Wikipedia and on covers it’s Скалзи, the way that you pronounce it, if I understand correctly?

By: Matthew

Matthew — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 02:30:46 +0000

Maybe there were copyright issues, but otherwise Eksmo dropped the ball by not calling this V boy idut odni stariki. ("Only the old men are going into battle")

By: Anna

Anna — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 02:24:15 +0000

Definitely loving the newer cover :)
I had been re-reading this book recently actually, and I was wondering if there was any talk in making it into a movie?
First time reader, so sorry if this question has been asked ^^
Thanks!

By: Jamie

Jamie — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 23:37:49 +0000

After seeing the first book cover, I almost immediatly thought to my self: “Oh, so John Scalzi has written a Warhammer 40′000 book…in Russian…eh, stranger things have happened.”

By: Walter

Walter — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 21:32:06 +0000

This is a “I like your books!” type comment.

After hearing your short story in a podcast, I decided to buy one of your books. After reading the book, I bought several more! You are now added to the list of authors I look for at the bookstore.