EUtopias and Other Futures: A European Journal of Science Fiction

Cities under domes: The future of our existence? By Péter MARTON ** Join the European Science Fiction group on Facebook for related discussions. ** A friend has recently shared this article as a reminder (from a couple of years ago). In it, US speculative fiction author Neal Stephenson is mentioned, calling, at the time (in 2012), for less dystopias and more of the optimistic futuristic in science fiction, addressing the call to "SF authors" as such. I don't think the call by Stephenson projected a truly representative characterisation of the huge and diverse population of SF authors (and their equally, if not more, diverse set of works). But I did talk in a critical way about there being a dystopia bandwagon of sorts earlier on myself, so this may be worth reflecting on. The trend of dystopia mania is most visible, ironically, outside the SF realm, when authors who rather belong to mainstream literature choose to go down this road -- think Cormac ...

Brighton Pier, for reasons explained below - picture by Jean Housen (Wikimedia Commons) By Péter MARTON ** Join the European Science Fiction group on Facebook for related discussions. ** Science fiction would not be what it is today if it wouldn't deal with the topic of climate change as a very prominent subject. Many stories address Europe's future as it may be impacted by related processes, and to do a comprehensive review of all those that are relevant in this respect would be... wonderful! For lack of time, and in appreciation of all the collective wisdom out there, however, this brief post only looks to sow some seeds, mention a few works, call attention to the issue, and, basically, invite others to point out further, other works that pertain to our interests here, in the comments... if there are other survivors out there ready to make such comments. (1) One of the first authors who come to mind, historically speaking, is J. G. Ballard (a.k.a. James ...

By Péter MARTON ** Join the European Science Fiction group on Facebook for related discussions. ** This will be the first today in a series of brief posts about things that make Dmitry Glukhovsky's 2005 novel Metro 2033 very interesting, and a must-have in the collection of all true fans of speculative fiction. (Yes, the matchbox label art is also there. Scroll down first if you wish, and then come back to read this.) The first reason I will name is the location. (To point out the obvious.) It's the Moscow Metro in the post-(nuclear)-apocalypse. A location that we, readers, along with chief protagonist Artyom and the rest of the survivors, are closed into. The plot traverses only around 25 stations - the full network consists today, as of 2018, of up to 14 lines and 245 stations over up to 419 kms ("up to," i.e. depending on how you count; note that the network has expanded since the writing of the book). In this dark new world, some of the stations a...

Underground springwater reservoir beneath Mount Gellért in Budapest, the author's photo (2018) By Péter MARTON ** Join the European Science Fiction group on Facebook for related discussions. ** Seeing my reviews full of praise for writers like Bo Balder , Anita Moskát or Yuriy Shcherbak you may wonder: Can this guy bite? Does he have the guts to write something really critical for a review? Well, the wondering ends today... This will be a takedown. "Lovely," "lyrical," "beautiful," etc. These are the adjectives I've typically heard from people describing how Finnish author Emmi Itäranta's book is written. They had less to say about its substance. Now, I'm really not hard put to suspend disbelief for the sake of a good story. I like to enjoy literary values independently of plausibility issues. For a recent and good example of when I benefited from this, take Emily St. John Mandel's Station Eleven , another dystop...