EUtopias and Other Futures: A European Journal of Science Fiction

Remote hotel resort, check. But this is not in Colorado – and not from The Shining . By Cseperke TIKÁSZ ** Join the  European Science Fiction group  on Facebook for related discussions. ** When  extraterrestrials arrive for an invasion and  superheros stand up to save the world, as in more than one such movie that we can remember, police usually get only a faceless supporting role. But not in  Dead Mountaineer’s Hotel,  a Soviet movie from the 1970s. Here we get to see an ordinary police officer's reaction to an encounter of this kind. In fact,  Dead Mountaineer’s Hotel  is a Soviet-Estonian movie. The story was written by the famous Strugatsky brothers (Boris and Arkady) and it was played by Estonian actors. The original copy is in Estonian, and it was only later dubbed to Russian by Lenfilm. Briefly, the plot features somewhere in the Alps a resort called Dead Mountaineer’s Hotel where our Inspector Glebsky arrive...

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...

By Péter MARTON ** Join the European Science Fiction group on Facebook for related discussions. ** What you get here: three reasons why Venom may be worth seeing, spoiler-free. Plus, after those three points, some observations about the plot (those are not spolier-free). 1. Hardly enough in and of itself, but still... Hardy! This is not a European movie. It doesn't even have European settings (the plot starts off in space, Malaysia is implicated, and then we're off to San Francisco and the Bay Area). But it has Tom Hardy, one of our own, I mean, speaking from the point of view of a good European patriot... Hardy didn't stay put in Europe for too long in his life, of course. He made his leap into the big unknown at just about the right time. He abandoned his studies at the Drama Centre at University of the Arts London because he was given the chance to play in Black Hawk Down . He had his ups and downs since, some of them self-made, but ...

By Péter MARTON ** Join the European Science Fiction group on Facebook for related discussions. ** Used as illustration above is a detail of Anton Semenov's cover art for the 2012 album " Army of Mushrooms " by Infected Mushroom, a psychedelic musical duo from Israel. Bo Balder's story strongly reminded me of it, hence its inclusion here... Speaking of infections: before we delve into Balder's work, the very first story reviewed here in our series, imagine the following scenario. It will be worth it, the detour... We are in a small village in the Democratic Republic of Nowhere. A small team of medical personnel and members of what passes for the "local" police force (ordered in from a town fifty kilometres away) approach a house where several sick patients are thought to be suffering from hemorrhagic fever. Those who feel healthy are ordered to come out. Those who are sick at bed should stay inside, they are told. The medical team moves...