EUtopias and Other Futures: A European Journal of Science Fiction

By Péter MARTON ** Join the European Science Fiction group on Facebook for related discussions. ** A collection of stories by established writers as well as other authors (the latter were selected on a competitive basis), this book is an exciting new development on the Hungarian SF scene. It comes edited by Csilla Kleinheincz and Gábor Roboz, published by GABO (Budapest, 2018). A strong anthology, albeit with mostly not "pure SF" for contents. One may thus complain about the cover, given that astronauts do not exactly play a central role, or any role for that matter, in about 95% of the stories featured here. That slight astro-naughtiness aside, however, it's quality stuff that you find here, most of the way. Moreover, with my broad understanding of the "science" in science fiction, the dominance of fantasy and slipstream across the volume should not be such a big issue after all. The book's overall design could be, seemingly, more of a...

By Péter MARTON ** Join the European Science Fiction group on Facebook for related discussions. ** 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 t...

By Péter MARTON ** Join the European Science Fiction group on Facebook for related discussions. ** Anita Moskát 's novel, "The Anchoring Place," shares its title – in my translation of the original Hungarian Horgonyhely – with Aleksei Bogolyubov's 19th century painting, used (with that excuse) as convenient illustration above. The two works do not have too much in common, though: for example, Moskát's novel doesn't have anything to do with Russia. But there certainly are steamers and anchoring places in it (unconnected to each other). The "anchoring places" play the key role: every person has one, right on the spot where one was born. Should one try to leave it (and its vicinity within a certain radius) behind, it won't work – it pulls one back, makes one physically ill. Fatally, even, if this is stretched to the limit. There is only one exception, one segment of the population that has freedom of movement: pregnant women. The ...