EUtopias and Other Futures: A European Journal of Science Fiction

By Péter MARTON ** Join the European Science Fiction group on Facebook for similar analyses and discussions. ** In the "Science Fiction" group on Facebook a question was posted recently about "powerful" biological weapons in sci-fi. There was a large number of responses – a total of 144 to date (as of August 24), showing that this kind of thread has considerable popularity. Yours truly also reacted, nominating Aldous Huxley's anthrax bombs there, because they are a very important example from the SF literature, with much in the way of contemporary relevance, and this makes them very "powerful" in a sense. Here's why, in a nutshell. In Brave New World (1932), Huxley gave a central role to anthrax bombs, even as he didn't speak about them at length. According to what we are told in the story, they were among the most horrible weapons of the "Nine Years War" that wrought devastation all around the globe, and their use h...

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 ...