L’Age des Etoiles – Robert Heinlein

Presses Pocket, 

Copyright 1956, printed 1981,  222 pages

ISBN: 2-266-01062-X

Read: August 2011 (at age 33)

First time read in French, but I read it once in English, maybe 10 years ago.

I picked this book up because I had some generally good feelings about the English version, Time for the Stars, and I hadn’t read a book in French since…1990?  Something like that, anyway.  There were a couple of questions that I wanted to answer with it:

• Could I still do it?
• Why don’t I like to read in French? – I really like reading in English.  Shouldn’t it be kind of the same?

From the back cover:

L’Institut de Recherches Prospectives devai en permanence garder le contact avec ses navigateurs spatiaux.  Et pour couper court aux lenteurs des transmissions radio, un seul moyen : la télépathie.  C’est ainsi que Pat et son jumeau Tom vont mettre au service du grand projet de colonization interstellaire leurs dons exceptionnels dans ce domaine.  Tandis que Pat vieillira sur la Terre, Tom et tout l’équipage de l’Elsie échapperont l’emprise du Temps.  Mais auront-ils jamais la chance de revoir le monde qu’ils ont quitté au terme des aventures extraordinaires qui les attendent?

Reactions below the break: (no spoilers):

Reading Experience: 

The reading experience was the most interesting bit for me – I knew the book would be fine.  I quite enjoy Heinlein’s juveniles for the most part, and I had good, but vague feelings regarding this one.  I’ve got a copy in English on my bookshelf.  In a while, once I’ve forgotten a bit, I’ll read it in English and review the book properly.

Man, did it ever take a long time to get through the first hundred pages.  I think it took on the order of thirty hours.  It was almost like learning to read all over again… no, it was more like reading in grade 2.  I knew pretty much all of the simple words, but anything hard took some looking up.  My vocabulary stank, and I spent more time with my French-English dictionary than I did with the book.  I don’t think I’ve ever read anything Sci-Fi in French, so that’s a whole new set of lingo to learn, as well.  The last hundred pages went by in about three-and-a-half hours, so that’s MUCH better.  Still slower than normal, but much better.

Next time, I need to get a French dictionary – I still know enough words that I can decipher a definition, and it would help if I could jar my brain out of French and into English as seldom as possible.

I’m not sure if it’s because this book was written in English and translated into French, but I got the humour in the book, something that I don’t always find I get in French-language media.

I did thoroughly enjoy the book.  It was a story that made exploration and conquest of the stars fun.  The characters were all right.  The setting was great.  The end was a bit of a let-down, but it was done that way on purpose, and had value in the let-down.  The anti-climax… well… cheesy, and perhaps a bit incestuous, and probably not necessary, but…  It didn’t detract from the rest, anyhow.

Rating: 4


So, apparently I can enjoy reading French.  Why did I hate it in school?

I don’t really know, but here’s my hypothesis:

Short version:  They were always too easy.  The stories were too simple, and there was nothing better in the library. 

Long version:  I was always a pretty advanced reader.  I don’t remember learning to read, but apparently well before school-age, I wouldn’t let my parents read to me, because they were too slow.  By Grade 1, I’d finished every Hardy Boys written, The Lord of the Rings, the Collins Encyclopedia, and was reading pretty much anything I could get my hands on.  By Grade 6, I’d moved on to Anne McCaffrey, Tom Clancy, Jean Auel, as well as younger fare like Gordon Korman, Jim Kjelgaard, and the like.  All this in English, of course. 

Grade 1 was fully French immersion.  No English allowed in the classroom at all.  By Grade 6, we had English Language Arts – a couple of hours a week.  We were also the first French class in our school, and also in our town.  So the library would bring in age-appropriate materials for our year, each year, as we got older.  Which meant that in Grade 1, we were bought essentially the equivalent of board books.  By Grade 6, we’d moved on to R.L. Stine, and… I really don’t know much else.  By then, I’d pretty much given up on everything except for Asterix and Obelix. 

Anyway, the stories were so much simpler than the ones I was reading in English, I don’t think it’s any surprise that I didn’t enjoy them.  And it wasn’t like I could just move up and read books in the more advanced areas of the library – they hadn’t been purchased yet.

If I’d been thinking back then, I could have either ordered something in, or found a translation of something I read in English.  Or even *gasp* buy a book, I guess.  My book choice then, though, was pretty much to see what I hadn’t read in the areas of the library that held books that I had read and enjoyed.  And the English books were much more fun and available.  Anyway, enough of defending my 12-year-old self.

Does anyone have a suggestion for my next French-language book?  Please leave a comment, if you do.  It can’t be written too hard, and it would be nice if the plot moved right along, without getting too bogged down in description.  I’d also prefer something that’s originally French-language, and I’m not at all familiar with any authors in that language.

Other reactions:

They’re all in French, of course.

Traquer-Stellaire
Brief, positive review.

Le Dragon Galactique
Another brief, positive review.

Mes Ailleurs
A nice plot summary, positive review.