EUtopias and Other Futures: A European Journal of Science Fiction

Remote hotel resort, check. But this is not in Colorado – and not from The Shining . By Cseperke TIKÁSZ ** Join the  European Science Fiction group  on Facebook for related discussions. ** When  extraterrestrials arrive for an invasion and  superheros stand up to save the world, as in more than one such movie that we can remember, police usually get only a faceless supporting role. But not in  Dead Mountaineer’s Hotel,  a Soviet movie from the 1970s. Here we get to see an ordinary police officer's reaction to an encounter of this kind. In fact,  Dead Mountaineer’s Hotel  is a Soviet-Estonian movie. The story was written by the famous Strugatsky brothers (Boris and Arkady) and it was played by Estonian actors. The original copy is in Estonian, and it was only later dubbed to Russian by Lenfilm. Briefly, the plot features somewhere in the Alps a resort called Dead Mountaineer’s Hotel where our Inspector Glebsky arrive...

Depiction of the Lunar Lander, as it would have been. By Péter MARTON ** Join the  European Science Fiction group  on Facebook for related discussions. ** Israel may be about to become the fourth nation on this planet , after the U.S., the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China to complete some kind of proper landing on the Moon. No simple manoeuvre! You have to transition to lunar orbit, get the descent right, and then find a good landing spot, which tends to be complicated in terrain covered by boulders, craters and extensive fully-shadowed areas where there may be... more boulders and craters. Some issues of typology. Lunar landings come in a variety. They can be manned or unmanned, soft (when you can still take off with what you touch down) or hard (when you touch down hard). If you crash-land, it may still be useful for various purposes but obviously requires less of a fine-tuned ability in approaching Luna. The three nations mentioned above are ...