On the Need for European Science Fiction
By Péter MARTON This essay argues that although there is a considerable body of European SF literature, there may be a need, with a view to contemporary world trends, for a more acute understanding of what it altogether represents in terms of implicit discourses and general character. And that to this end, it needs to be consciously and explicitly framed as "European," something that has not often been done in the past. *** In the popular understanding, science fiction often appears as a U.S.-based genre. No one necessarily thinks of it that way, yet that's how it appears according to key measures of impact. Ask fans of Science Fiction just about anywhere in comparatively open societies around the globe to list the names of the greatest SF writers in the world, and they will invariably drop mostly U.S. names. Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Frederik Pohl, Frank Herbert, Philip K. Dick, Theodore Sturgeon, Samuel Delany, Ursula K. Le Guin, Cordwainer Smith, Harl...