EUtopias and Other Futures: A European Journal of Science Fiction

By Péter MARTON ** Join the  European Science Fiction group  on Facebook for related discussions. ** Review of "East of a Known Galaxy" – An Anthology of Romanian Sci-Fi Short Stories , edited by Daniel Timariu and Cristian Vicol. București (Bucharest): Tritonic, 2019. Get ready for a journey... into the unknown. A journey into the known is a semantic paradox, of course. You can only journey into the unknown. The long-established greats of sci-fi can certainly take you on such a journey and, if you're a fan, no doubt many a great English-language work has already done that for you. But — exactly in the same vein as this blogzine's introduction did back in the day — the editors of this anthology of Romanian sci-fi challenge you to read what people from very different cultural, social, political and historical circumstances might tell you in the framework of your beloved genre. No one should be so naive as to think that one only finds talent for sci-fi (...

By Péter MARTON ** Join the European Science Fiction group on Facebook for related discussions. ** Definitely a book I can recommend to be translated into English. The story is set in the far future of 2140. Biotechnology and genome-editing have seen huge advances, just in time to compensate for the effects of a pandemic which made most humans sterile. Designed humans co-inhabit Earth with some of the leftover as well as the ageing populations of the more "traditional" political entities... which are so traditional that successor clones are designed and imported for the wealthy among them -- and these traditional entities need working hands, too, of course, to avoid going extinct. Hybrid servants are designed for the fun of it (lion-human hybrids, for example), as well as hybrid and intelligent pets. The incel movement wasn't so much on the radar at the time of the writing of the book as it is now, but they have their equivalents in the plot in the ...