EUtopias and Other Futures: A European Journal of Science Fiction

At Solaris station, floating above the ocean of Solaris By Péter MARTON ** Join the  European Science Fiction group  on Facebook for related discussions. ** We've written about Solaris before... And that is Stanisław Lem's Solaris. Now, thanks to a screening of the 1971 Andrei Tarkovsky movie by the Russian Studies Department at ELTE University yesterday, we are here to revisit the subject. Only, it is not quite the same subject, of course. Much has been said and written about how Lem wasn't really happy about the way his work was adapted to film, and how Tarkovsky on the other hand was in a sense making an anti-SF film, stating that he doesn't like SF -- when the world around us is full of the fantastic, anyway. Why would you wish to be on another planet when you can enjoy being in a field like this? Isn't it full of wonder? Now, Tarkovsky may have been somewhat ignorant of the diversity of approaches and themes in SF when he stated the a...

By Péter MARTON ** Join the European Science Fiction group on Facebook for related discussions. ** Last year, in the European Science Fiction group on Facebook, we had a quiz series for which a prize is given out to the winner, and that prize is visible above. As the founder of this community, I am very happy to report that the logistics of getting the brand new copy to its owner have by now been arranged. This is the best choice I could think of, for the book prize, given worldwide awareness of Lem's work and also his genius that is on full display in Solaris . The psychic ocean of the planet Solaris, an entity that cannot be conveniently anthropomorphised in the name of universal understanding, generates endless debates among scientists in the novel – this forms the background to the story in which a team of researchers grapples with the challenge of making sense of interactions with the ultimate, unfathomable Other. An Other that increasingly takes the init...