Review (#15): "Distant Colonies" (Távoli kolóniák), an anthology edited by Sándor Szélesi (2016)
By Péter MARTON ** Join the European Science Fiction group on Facebook for related discussions. ** Published by Ad Astra (a Hungarian SF publishing house that operated from 2012 to 2018) as the third volume in a series of similar, thematically organised collections, this is a much weaker anthology of Hungarian authors' works than the one I wrote about here during the holidays. Whereas that one was world-class, this one feels more like the output of a distant colony of the SF universe... with due respect to some exceptions to this mentioned below. Even so, it is very interesting to read a volume like this, because the dividing line between good and bad is very strongly visible here (this also shows the importance of editing, I guess). Some authors just don't take what they write seriously enough and what they publish feels like they just wanted to get it over with, even if that took finding the cheapest, stupidest cliché one could think of in the given situation ...