EUtopias and Other Futures: A European Journal of Science Fiction

Not an IR Theorist By Péter MARTON ** Join the  European Science Fiction group  on Facebook for related discussions. ** A few quick notes on this recent article in Foreign Policy , about "IR Theory and the Game of Thrones", in response to some bits and pieces of it that are noteworthy mostly in a negative sense. The author of the article is Paul Musgrave, a professor of Political Science at University of Massachusetts Amherst. He is setting out to criticise IR Theory (International Relations Theory) as well as Game of Thrones for some of the same things, including (mostly) their narrow reading and consequent misrepresentation of European history as a never-ending battle royale amongst sovereigns, the soverign-like and aspirant sovereigns. This is an interesting undertaking, reason number one being that IR Theory is a set of largely deductive theories about the way the relationships of states might function, and if deductive sounds like a difficult word here,...

Scene from Pervye na Lune (First on the Moon) By Péter MARTON Just a quick piece on mockumentaries. I recently had the chance to watch two such films and it may be good to pass the information on in case you might have an interest in tracking them down, especially if you're a fan of the (sub)genre. One is Trollhunter , a Norwegian movie from 2010, described as dark fantasy by some, written and directed by André Øvredal. The other is Pervye na Lune/First on the Moon ( Первые на Луне ) from 2005, directed by Alex Fedorchenko -- an alternative history piece. Both films focus on conspiracies of different sorts: a benevolent one in the case of Norway where the conspiracy is keeping people protected, and a cynical one in the case of Russia where the mockumentary mentions even one of the interviewees appearing in it as having disappeared during the shooting of the documentary. (A documentary about a supposedly long-past event, at that, which was probably a way for the fi...

By Péter MARTON ** Join the European Science Fiction group on Facebook for related discussions. ** A collection of stories by established writers as well as other authors (the latter were selected on a competitive basis), this book is an exciting new development on the Hungarian SF scene. It comes edited by Csilla Kleinheincz and Gábor Roboz, published by GABO (Budapest, 2018). A strong anthology, albeit with mostly not "pure SF" for contents. One may thus complain about the cover, given that astronauts do not exactly play a central role, or any role for that matter, in about 95% of the stories featured here. That slight astro-naughtiness aside, however, it's quality stuff that you find here, most of the way. Moreover, with my broad understanding of the "science" in science fiction, the dominance of fantasy and slipstream across the volume should not be such a big issue after all. The book's overall design could be, seemingly, more of a...

See what I did there? By Péter MARTON ** Join the European Science Fiction group on Facebook for related discussions. ** More reviews will ultimately follow -- Sam Miller's Calved and Transmissions by John Bonello are in the pipe. For now, just a brief mission statement. I am reviewing here mostly either pure science fiction or works that contain pure science fiction as a key element beside other things. I am aware of the term "speculative fiction" and how it conveniently encompasses both fantasy and science fiction; very conveniently indeed from a publisher's perspective, given that audiences of the two genres significantly overlap. To me, however, vampires, demons, dragons and fairies being involved is fantasy but not necessarily speculative fiction to any extent. I like to read speculative fiction, rather than just pure science fiction, exactly for the reason that there is not necessarily a major difference between the two. What I mean by this ...