EUtopias and Other Futures: A European Journal of Science Fiction

Above : A snapshot from "Arrowsmith", by Kurt Busiek and Carlos Pacheco. By Péter MARTON ** Join the  European Science Fiction group  on Facebook for related discussions. ** If you have not heard of the Corvinus Journal of International Affairs so far, that is perhaps because it is no magazine of science-fiction. It is a scholarly publication, with a focus on International Relations. I am bringing it up here, because the next issue, a thematic issue on the 100th anniversary of the Versailles Treaty, features my article on WWI alternative history fiction, along the following lines — as outlined in the article's summary: This article offers a brief overview of the challenges of assessing counterfactual statements in terms of plausibility, to then consider the reasons for the comparative scarcity of WWI alternative histories in published alternative history (AH) speculative fiction. The relative rarity of such fiction may be striking, given the popularity of th...

The main message. By Péter MARTON ** Join the  European Science Fiction group  on Facebook for related discussions. ** The idea behind this post is simple. I am re-reading The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy , the full series, novel(ette) by novel(ette). Again. Not for the first time. As I do this, I will write down a few reflections on what stands out for me now, after so much time since the publication of the story has passed (40 years! OMG!), and after so much time since even Douglas Adams' passing away has passed (since 2001, that is). I read HG2G such a long time ago for the first time myself that... it's seriously a lot of water under the bridge since then... and if I continue like this, it will be a lot of water under the bridge before this paragraph ends. So I'll stop here. The most important quantity is 42, anyways. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979) The very fruitful marriage of absurdism and science-fiction. From the lonely,...