The Persian translation of ‘The Tripods’ in three new volumes has been released by the Institute for Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults (IIDCYA).
The most celebrated work of English writer John Christopher (1922-2012), the revised editions of the trilogy, are now available in Iran’s thriving market of sci-fi books, Mehr News Agency reported.
The post-apocalyptic stories tell about humanity that has been enslaved by ‘Tripods’, gigantic three-legged walking machines, piloted by unseen alien entities, later identified as ‘Masters’. Human society is largely pastoral, with few habitations larger than villages, and what little industry exists is conducted under the watchful presence of the Tripods.
Humans are controlled from the age of 14 by implants called ‘Caps’, which suppress curiosity and creativity. Some people, whose minds are broken by the Caps, become vagrants.
IIDCYA’s newly released Persian translations exclude the 1988 prequel to the trilogy. Twenty years after the publication of the original trilogy that received global attention, Christopher published the prequel titled ‘When the Tripods Came’.
The prequel has already been translated into Persian by Mehrdad Toyserkani, 50, translator and researcher in sci-fi literature, and published by the Tehran-based Ghadyani Publishing House.
Copyright Not Defined
In an interview with IBNA some years ago, Toyserkani had pointed out that translator of children and young adult books Hussein Ebrahimi Alvand (1951-2007), had wanted to translate Christopher’s books into Persian. So he wrote him a letter stating that “copyright is not defined in Iran, but I want to translate your books.”
Christopher (whose real name was Samuel Youd) sent him a chivalrous reply: “Since law requires me to charge you for copyright of my books, I grant you the publishing rights of my books for one dollar.”
“Thus we obtained the right to translate and publish his books. He didn’t care about royalty; what was important for him was the release of his works.”
John Christopher made a similar gracious gesture when Toyserkani requested him to grant copyright for translating the American edition of The White Mountains, “a meticulous piece of work.”
“But since we were under western sanctions, the US publishers couldn’t give us the publishing rights even if they wanted to. I asked Christopher to intervene, which he did and resolved the problem,” Toyserkani said.
The first volume of The Tripods trilogy ‘The White Mountains’, published in 1967, was originally translated into Persian by Soraya Kazemi, a translator of young adult books; the second sequel ‘The City of Gold and Lead’ published in 1968, was translated by writer, journalist and translator Ataollah Nourian (1944-1984) and the third ‘The Pool of Fire’, also published in 1968, was translated into Persian by Mohammad Reza Zamani.
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