EUtopias and Other Futures: A European Journal of Science Fiction

By Péter MARTON ** Join the  European Science Fiction group  on Facebook for related discussions. ** In this new format, I will post one-paragraph/one-sentence briefs on books and short stories of interest, saving you (as well as for myself) a lot of time even as I hope to still be able to give you enough information to make up your mind as to whether you're interested in the given story. It might be useful to add that I very much remain interested in writing longer reviews of anthologies and novels, too -- this is just an additional trick to pull from the bag to keep things going and keep you posted. First up in Briefings on Readings is Celle qui n'avait pas peur de Cthulhu  (The One Who Wasn't Afraid of Cthulhu) by Karim Berrouka : At times light entertainment, mixing comedy and action, at times lightly philosophical, this book gives you a mildly critical take on the body of work by Lovecraft (and also about religion) and takes you on a ride through the wor...

Above : A snapshot from "Arrowsmith", by Kurt Busiek and Carlos Pacheco. By Péter MARTON ** Join the  European Science Fiction group  on Facebook for related discussions. ** If you have not heard of the Corvinus Journal of International Affairs so far, that is perhaps because it is no magazine of science-fiction. It is a scholarly publication, with a focus on International Relations. I am bringing it up here, because the next issue, a thematic issue on the 100th anniversary of the Versailles Treaty, features my article on WWI alternative history fiction, along the following lines — as outlined in the article's summary: This article offers a brief overview of the challenges of assessing counterfactual statements in terms of plausibility, to then consider the reasons for the comparative scarcity of WWI alternative histories in published alternative history (AH) speculative fiction. The relative rarity of such fiction may be striking, given the popularity of th...