15 Comments on “Why, Hello, My Little French Book”

1. Holy crap. That cover almost looks like it has something to do with events and characters that appear in the book!

2. I love that cover. (Actually most of your Agent covers have been great fun, but a Kidby? Oh, man, the Awesome is slathered on with abandon!)

3. ben @#1, now I’m intrigued. I wonder if we’re all actually mistaken about the plot of the book.

   Paul Kidby rocks. And I love the French title.

4. Is that “Agent of the Third Kind”? My French is a little rusty but “troisieme” sounds like something to do with three, rather than “etoile” (star)…

   If so, isn’t that kinda unusual? A country so vehemently insistent on its own cinema over American cinema, referencing an American movie?

5. Well, it translates directly as “Impresario of the Third Kind,” which makes sense; an impresario is a manager or director, so that’s about as close to “agent” as you can get. I thought the reference was pretty clever, and it has a nice ring to it!

6. No argument there; I agree it is pretty clever. That said, the French are fiercely independent with their cinema, even going so far as to legislate a maximum non-French content that movie theatres are allowed to show. (At least they did; this may have changed; I am not French, nor French resident…)

7. am I the only one who thinks that the cover makes it look like John Scalzi is an Impresario of some form? Not that you aren’t, just that that isn’t the title of the book…

8. Scalzi, I love your life, too. I’ll “friend” you when I get my BrainPal. I’m saving up for it now, in 2019. I’m tired of posting text back in your old 2011 blog, but I simply don’t have the hardware to post in the present. I’d Iove to post the smell of the blossoming neuro-flowers inside my head.

9. The guy on the cover could almost be French actor Mathieu Kassovitz, from Amelie.

10. yodasears: To be fair, most countries have ways of encouraging local content via legislation; Agent to the Stars even mentions it at one point.

11. yodasears@4:”A country so vehemently insistent on its own cinema over American cinema, referencing an American movie?”

    Well, Close Encounters did have François Truffaut. Maybe they gave it a pass for his sake.

12. Is it wrong that as much as I love this cover, I keep hearing “Hello my baby! Hello my honey! Hello my ragtime gal!” ?

13. If so, isn’t that kinda unusual? A country so vehemently insistent on its own cinema over American cinema, referencing an American movie?

    “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” took its name from French UFOlogy, specifically the work of Jacques Vallee, who named human-to-alien interaction “un rencontre de troisieme type” (readers should fill in the necessary diacritics, I’m too lazy).

    So “Impresario de troisieme type” is the best French translation of “Agent to the Stars” there is–the equivalent of a Hollywood agent (a bit between agent and manager, actually) in France is called “un impresario,” and the pun works pretty well (“the third kind of agent”/”an agent interacting with aliens”). The French word for entertainment star is either “vedette” or “star” but neither is linked to stars in the sky, which are “etoiles”.

    I like the frog, too. And the guy looks like Jean Dujardin, which makes it funny right there!

14. Why does the beautiful blue-eyed Ghlaghghlee have yellow eyes in this picture?

15. Plus, when you’re a french sci-fi fan, there is not lots of french sci-fi movies to refers ;)