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,...

By Péter MARTON ** Join the European Science Fiction group on Facebook for related discussions. ** Anita Moskát 's novel, "The Anchoring Place," shares its title – in my translation of the original Hungarian Horgonyhely – with Aleksei Bogolyubov's 19th century painting, used (with that excuse) as convenient illustration above. The two works do not have too much in common, though: for example, Moskát's novel doesn't have anything to do with Russia. But there certainly are steamers and anchoring places in it (unconnected to each other). The "anchoring places" play the key role: every person has one, right on the spot where one was born. Should one try to leave it (and its vicinity within a certain radius) behind, it won't work – it pulls one back, makes one physically ill. Fatally, even, if this is stretched to the limit. There is only one exception, one segment of the population that has freedom of movement: pregnant women. The ...