EUtopias and Other Futures: A European Journal of Science Fiction

Collage by yours truly: Portraits of Vladislav Surkov (top left and top right) + a portrait of Natan Dubovitsky (top middle) + screenshot of the source of the latter portrait, with the intro to Dubovitsky's short story By Péter MARTON ** Join the European Science Fiction group on Facebook for related discussions. ** A friend sent along the link to this short story , titled "Without Sky" or Без неба in Russian. The author is indicated as Natan Dubovitsky -- a pseudonym. Keep this in mind for now. The Wikipedia page on none other than Vladislav Surkov says that "journalists in Russia and abroad have speculated that Surkov writes under the pseudonym Natan Dubovitsky, although the Kremlin denies it." If I look at the above collage, with two of Surkov's publicly available portraits and the drawn portrait of Natan Dubovitsky (from the site where the short story in question was published), I probably don't need a forensic investigation of the st...

By Péter MARTON ** Join the European Science Fiction group on Facebook for related discussions. ** This will be an open-ended post. You're more than welcome to contribute to it in the form of suggestions in comments here or on Facebook (see the link to our group above). The aim is to collect European music videos that use sci-fi and/or fantasy themes. The image of a funny robot or monster flying by typically will not do: the connection to the speculative genre has to be more substantial. It has to be exciting enough to get us to speculate about it! So I expect the clip in question to either present a narrative or at least an interesting situation that features the performers and/or clip characters in an actual sci-fi or fantasy setting for the duration of the video. 1. The Chemical Brothers: Free Yourself (2018) Directors: Dom & Nic (Dominic Hawley and Nic Goffey) Robots with AI used as "AI Labour Solutions" by a company called Roboforce await a...

Cities under domes: The future of our existence? By Péter MARTON ** Join the European Science Fiction group on Facebook for related discussions. ** A friend has recently shared this article as a reminder (from a couple of years ago). In it, US speculative fiction author Neal Stephenson is mentioned, calling, at the time (in 2012), for less dystopias and more of the optimistic futuristic in science fiction, addressing the call to "SF authors" as such. I don't think the call by Stephenson projected a truly representative characterisation of the huge and diverse population of SF authors (and their equally, if not more, diverse set of works). But I did talk in a critical way about there being a dystopia bandwagon of sorts earlier on myself, so this may be worth reflecting on. The trend of dystopia mania is most visible, ironically, outside the SF realm, when authors who rather belong to mainstream literature choose to go down this road -- think Cormac ...

By Péter MARTON ** Join the European Science Fiction group on Facebook for related discussions. ** Last year, in the European Science Fiction group on Facebook, we had a quiz series for which a prize is given out to the winner, and that prize is visible above. As the founder of this community, I am very happy to report that the logistics of getting the brand new copy to its owner have by now been arranged. This is the best choice I could think of, for the book prize, given worldwide awareness of Lem's work and also his genius that is on full display in Solaris . The psychic ocean of the planet Solaris, an entity that cannot be conveniently anthropomorphised in the name of universal understanding, generates endless debates among scientists in the novel – this forms the background to the story in which a team of researchers grapples with the challenge of making sense of interactions with the ultimate, unfathomable Other. An Other that increasingly takes the init...

By Péter MARTON ** Join the European Science Fiction group on Facebook for related discussions. ** Based on a children's book by British author Philip Reeve, Mortal Engines hit the cinemas last December. It is certainly interesting as a piece of European science fiction as it shows far future London and other cities, the cities on wheels known as the Traction Cities in the book, as resource-devouring monstrous structures which you can't help but think metropolises actually are, as we speak. The greed of cities that persists even in the post-apocalypse is clearly a bit of an anti-Capitalist theme here (the scenes from the movie, of people cheering as London captures Salzhaken or as it meets the Capitalist Frontier in the Shield Wall of Shan Guo, may remind one of a shareholder meeting where the juicy takeover of another company is on the agenda). London, rolling, with St. Paul's on top    The idea is thus serious enough and regardless of Brexit it is Euro...