EUtopias and Other Futures: A European Journal of Science Fiction

Collage by yours truly: Portraits of Vladislav Surkov (top left and top right) + a portrait of Natan Dubovitsky (top middle) + screenshot of the source of the latter portrait, with the intro to Dubovitsky's short story By Péter MARTON ** Join the European Science Fiction group on Facebook for related discussions. ** A friend sent along the link to this short story , titled "Without Sky" or Без неба in Russian. The author is indicated as Natan Dubovitsky -- a pseudonym. Keep this in mind for now. The Wikipedia page on none other than Vladislav Surkov says that "journalists in Russia and abroad have speculated that Surkov writes under the pseudonym Natan Dubovitsky, although the Kremlin denies it." If I look at the above collage, with two of Surkov's publicly available portraits and the drawn portrait of Natan Dubovitsky (from the site where the short story in question was published), I probably don't need a forensic investigation of the st...

The cover of the Polish edition. By Péter MARTON ** Join the European Science Fiction group on Facebook for related discussions. ** "Extensa" is far future SF by Polish author Jacek Dukaj . It is well written, and may inspire a number of different interpretations, all of them interesting as potentialities -- I made up mine upon reading the book twice, to make sure I was not overlooking important clues. But there remain some puzzling aspects of the story as well as issues for ethical and philosophical debate even after this. Examples of these may be provided if along the way I also reflect on this other review of Dukaj's book by Luke Maciak . (This will come with spoilers, of course.) Jacek Dukaj, author of Extensa To start with, I'm not sure if it's good that the book has to be re-read to appreciate all the "clues" placed there, given that they only work as actual clues upon re-reading the text, when you know what to look for. There...

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...