EUtopias and Other Futures: A European Journal of Science Fiction

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 ...

Underground springwater reservoir beneath Mount Gellért in Budapest, the author's photo (2018) By Péter MARTON ** Join the European Science Fiction group on Facebook for related discussions. ** Seeing my reviews full of praise for writers like Bo Balder , Anita Moskát or Yuriy Shcherbak you may wonder: Can this guy bite? Does he have the guts to write something really critical for a review? Well, the wondering ends today... This will be a takedown. "Lovely," "lyrical," "beautiful," etc. These are the adjectives I've typically heard from people describing how Finnish author Emmi Itäranta's book is written. They had less to say about its substance. Now, I'm really not hard put to suspend disbelief for the sake of a good story. I like to enjoy literary values independently of plausibility issues. For a recent and good example of when I benefited from this, take Emily St. John Mandel's Station Eleven , another dystop...