Review (#4): "Utópia 501," an anthology published by Petőfi Literary Museum (Petőfi Irodalmi Múzeum, 2018)

By Péter MARTON
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If you are a member of the European Science Ficton group on Facebook, you must have seen me share a link there to this recently-published digital anthology earlier on. "Utópia 501" is a collection of texts from various Central and Eastern European authors, rather loosely organised around the apropos of Thomas More's Utopia, published 501 years ago at the time when the idea of this anthology was born (and 502 years before its actual publication this year). Hence the illustration above: the left side features the cover art of More's original work from 1516, and on the right you have the cover of Utópia 501. What follows is a brief review and a way to highlight some of the pieces included in the volume.

As to the concept of the collection: it's not bad – I'm happy to see any idea that may inspire a publisher in Central Europe to think of publishing the speculative fiction of regional authors. Having said that, it is not entirely clear to me why more original pieces (definitely not with a capital M in "more") could not make it into the anthology. There are some works that were previously published elsewhere (including two of those highlighted by me below), there are some excerpts from larger works, there are some pieces that are not really "thoughts about the future" (contrary to what the publisher suggests in its description of the concept), and there is even a piece that's not fiction but an essay with otherwise interesting thoughts. What were the key principles in the selection of the authors and these texts? This is not entirely transparent. As this is a non-profit publication, available for free download, I really don't think only established names should have been promoted through it – it is a wasted opportunity in this respect. By the way, I know that these authors are established either because I have already read some of their works or because I have investigated them. The volume itself doesn't provide information about them or their past works.

The big value of the anthology is that it is making available translations of these texts – in most cases you can find Hungarian, Czech, Slovak and Polish versions, although not entirely consistently. Why aren't there English translations? At least the shorter pieces could have been translated easily. Hell, I would have offered to translate those highlighted below myself! Inasmuch as the aim was to promote already established authors, again, this is a wasted opportunity. (I guess I may be making up for this in a way.)

With that, here's my selection (the English titles are my unofficial translations):

Michal Hvorecký (Slovakia): The First Victory of the Hypermarkets (Prvé víťazstvo hypermarketov – 2001)
Anita Moskát (Hungary): Buds (Rügyeid – 2018)
Ziemowit Szczerek (Poland): Reap-Public: Max Rockatansky (Rzeź Pospolita: Max Rockatansky – 2018)
Pavla Horáková (Czech Republic): The House for the Restless Elderly (Dům nepokojného stáří – 2018)
Vladimir Sorokin (Russia): The First Subotnik (Первый cубботник - 1978)

• Michal Hvorecký's work is damn funny to read! His story (published in Slovak in 2001) reflects on the actual science of revenue-maximising supermarket design by the means of exaggeration – we follow the finishing touches of a designer before a major hypermarket opening which then works out "well" beyond expectations.
• Anita Moskát's short piece sketches a dystopian future where the air is terribly polluted and trees can only be seen in indoor botanical gardens. Were they enclosed there only when the quality of the air outside turned too bad for them? (Note: increased CO₂ may actually benefit vegetation...) Or did their enclosure contribute to the deteriorating condition of the air? The story doesn't make this clear, but given the way urban spaces around the world suffer from concrete and stone taking the place of trees and grass, due at least in part to crony capitalism... indeed, we may say that we live in an age when trees are being enclosed in ever smaller spaces, as we speak. The ending of the story is similarly ambiguous, with the beautiful-and-sad metaphorical meaning given to trees. Haunting!
• Ziemowit Szczerek, the author of Mordor's Coming to Eat Us: A Secret History of the Slavs, contributed a short piece to the anthology that should cause you to laugh your ass off. In an alternative history of Poland told in the future, a comical rebellion takes place starting in Wrocław, striving as ever for German-like orderliness and modernisation in the face of PiS (Law and Justice) and Andrzej Duda being in power. This develops into a full-blown phoney war between the hipsters and the football hooligans, with few direct battles but loads of fun (and drinking). Something of more general significance to take away may be the wisdom with which Szczerek looks at the East-West divisions that emerged not just in Poland, but in Slovakia and Hungary as well.
• Pavla Horáková's story is short and simple - and yet grand. And a fucking universal tragedy as such, in an implicit way. What it describes is perhaps exactly how people should act with a view to old age. Yet few ultimately find themselves in such a situation in that stage of life :(
• From Vladimir Sorokin, author of Day of the Oprichnik, we have an old short story of his, about a subotnik, or a Saturday of "mandatory volunteer" work under communism (a lot of meaning packed into one word). The brigade heads out to the field according to plan and delivers according to expectation... the kind of expectation you should have if you have some experience of what "existing socialism" was like in the Eastern bloc, or if you are well-informed about it from your historical studies... 

And the rest of the stories are worth a read, too, of course. The leading story is by György Dragomán, for instance. The above selection is based on my subjective experience – in other news, the sun rises in the east and settles in the west.

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Previously reviewed on EUtopias and Other Futures: "The Anchoring Place," a 2015 novel by Anita Moskát.