Bruce Goes To Russia?  Apparently So ... Bruce Campbell, Christopher Lee and Rutger Hauer to Star in

Reader Comments

1. Swarez 09/28/2004 @ 2:11am

   I got a copy of Night Watch a few days ago and I must say that it’s not a film for the casual viewer or anyone who hasn’t read the books. It’s pretty incoherent and they pound you with info and characters that you have no idea who are. Too bad, it had potential but it’s just too badly adapted.

2. Top Cat 09/28/2004 @ 7:08am

   I *tried* to watch Night Watch a while ago, and it was worse than Pitof’s Crapwoman. And now I hear they import this Ivan hack from russia to the US? God help Hollywood if they need to turn to lousy talentless commies for “inspiration”...

3. dude 09/28/2004 @ 11:51am

   Hehe, they aren’t commies anymore you half-wit!

4. Maureen 09/29/2004 @ 1:19pm

   First off, I _really really_ liked the movie of Night Watch, and I understood it without reading the book. I’m currently working my way through the book (slowly, as my Russian’s not great). The story is different; but it works for me. And since Lukyanenko co-wrote the screenplay, it must work for him, too.

   “Glubina” is supposed to be the Russian translation of what’s called “The Deep” in English, as it actually says in Sergei Lukyanenko’s novel _Labyrinth of Shadows_. The concept is basically that now people at home get online by getting themselves hypnotized into viewing cyberspace as real, and wearing full body suits to get all the appropriate tactile sensations. Most people can only exit the Deep by “going” to appropriate locations and hitting a button, or by staying online beyond a preset period. But there are a few people who are able to keep the fakeness of the Deep in mind and can unhypnotize themselves at will. These folks, called Divers, are sometimes legitimate but will often crack systems for hire. But they must keep their identities secret, because people are always trying to get hold of one. The story is the saga of a Diver trying to make a living, his cruddy real life in Moscow, his seedy but mostly loyal friends, a really huge permanent Doom game, and the computer he loves.

   Bear in mind that _Labyrinth of Reflections_ came out _before_ The Matrix did. (Lukyanenko joked in one interview that he wondered whether the Wachowsky brothers read Russian. And there used to be an English translation available on the Web….)

   There are two other novels in the series, _False Mirrors_ and _Clear Stained Glass Windows_, the latter of which was posted online as it was written and incorporated fan feedback. You can download the Russian versions of all three off Mr. Lukyanenko’s webpage.

5. Todd 09/29/2004 @ 1:47pm

   I’m just about to write up The Night Watch now and I’m somewhere in between on it ... there’s a lot of it that I really like, but also a lot that could have been cleaned up a bit in the script.  Do you speak Russian, Maureen?  I was wondering a bit whether some of my problems had to do with the subtitles not catching some of the subtlties ...

   I saw that site with the translated versions of his books and was tempted ... have you read the sequels?  Do you need to have read Labyrinth to understand them?

6. Maureen 09/29/2004 @ 5:04pm

   The subtitles were pretty good for having been written by a non-native speaker of English. The big thing to know is that all the magical folks, whether they chose to support the Light or Dark, are called Others (Inoi). The subtitles repeatedly said “He is the Other” when they meant “He is _an_ Other”. (Russian doesn’t have articles like “the” and “an”, so you just have to know what they mean.) They are all waiting for “the Great Other”, which the subtitles rather wisely translated as “The One”.

   There were a lot of things they never actually came right out and said, which I think either came out of Russian culture or which you were supposed to pick up from the story. (Frex, almost all the damage done to Anton in the present day reflects what he had done to other people in the 1992 prologue. Russian fairy tales love consequences to actions.) The magic system makes a lot of sense if you’ve read lots of Russian fairy tales and mythology, but it’s a bit more earthy than we usually see in Western European-based fantasy.

   The most important thing that they never came right out and said was that Others can see things that normal people can’t, like auras, and curses hanging over people’s heads in the form of mini-tornadoes. Also, there are magical ways to temporarily make a non-vampire have powers like a vampire, including the psychic ones, but obviously this has a menu downside. (Russian fantasy loves disads.) I still haven’t found out why Anton got picked out of the computer lab to roam around sensing vampires, unless it was his vampire-like lime green programmer tan.

   I haven’t read any of the sequels to Labyrinth of Dreams, so I don’t know anything about them except what I said. They do seem to be set fairly far apart in time from each other, so I imagine they must stand alone except for a certain amount of recap. You might still find the old translation if you Google…. I like the translated stories on Lukyanenko’s website, but they do suffer from the same problem with non-native English speakers doing the translating.

   Unfortunately, I’m not hearing about the publishing industry getting on the stick and buying Lukyanenko’s books, even though the movie industry seems to be relatively eager. I mean, geez, the man _only_ won the Russian equivalents to the Hugo Award and SF Grandmaster, and _then_ had a huge blockbuster movie. His work is just dripping with geek appeal and good scenes, and it’s not that difficult to translate. And then we wonder why the sf publishers aren’t rolling in money.

7. Todd 09/29/2004 @ 7:10pm

   The subs on the disc I have don’t call him The One, they just call him The Other.  There were an awful lot of ‘The Other’s, which caused a whole lot of confusion until I figured out what was going on ...

8. ComputerMage 10/07/2004 @ 7:45pm

   Maureen:
   Labyrinth of Reflections ( the right English translation of a Labirint Otrazhenij ( russian title) ) has been translated on English by team of professional English native translators.
   I suppose it was mixed team of Russian native speakers and English native speakers who did collaborative two-stage translation.
   I’ve read one quarter of that translation as beta-tester of translation. My English isn’t great, but I have a sense of good translation, because of living in Canada for some time.
   I can tell you that translation is very good, and my English-native friends were satisfied by it’s quality.

   A process of negotiation between some big US publishing companies and agent of Lukianenko has been started some time ago, but still in progress.

   PS: The information came to me from Sergey Lukianenko itself.

   BTW, I don’t think that Other is the right translation for russian word Inoi in book’s/movie’s context. It’s a little different flavor and cannot represent the whole depth of the word’s meaning.

   
   All the Best!
   ComputerMage.

9. Todd 10/07/2004 @ 8:15pm

   ComputerMage:

   Does Sergey speak English himself?  Any chance you’d care to pass his contact info this way?  I’d love to talk to him about this film and the coming Night Watch sequels ...

10. Vladimir 11/06/2004 @ 8:12pm

    “False Mirrors”-second novel about the Depth.
    Not so joyful as first.
    The third generation of virus weapon was invented.
    ,which can kill people!
    (second—only can destroy computer).

    The “Labirinth of death”(online multiuser game)
    became something look like Unreal 1 and very hard to win(cooperative game).
    The Emperor (computer personage in final level of labirinth) became AI.
    And at the end…
    OK. read this book! It is really good idea.

11. Dustin 08/06/2005 @ 11:26pm

    Just wanted to know if anyone knows if these books or any of his others are available in English?

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