Yesterday’s Technological Tomorrows?

By Paul Kincaid

A review of Futures of the Past: An Anthology of Science Fiction Stories from the 19th and Early 20th Centuries, with Critical Essays, edited by Ivy Roberts. McFarland, 2020, 196pp. 978-1-4766-7810-8.

For a literature supposedly intent upon the new, the inventive, the futuristic, science fiction seems inordinately interested in its own past. I am as guilty as anyone of this, which may be why I notice the phenomenon so much. But the question is: what are we looking for in the past, and (a very different question) what are we finding? Generally, the past is assumed to hold the key to where we are now and what we might become. That, however, is far from always being the case. The history of science fiction is extraordinarily full of false trails, dead ends, U-turns, twists, side tracks, abrupt changes of direction, and so on. Somehow, where we are today emerged out of the mess of what we once were, but in retrospect the route is neither clear nor consistent. Simply diving willy-nilly into the science fiction of days gone by, shining a light at random onto a story over here, a novel over there, offers no clue as to how or even if those writings are connected. And it offers even less of a clue about the evolution of what came after.

That, in a nutshell, is my problem with this latest selection of hoary tales from the dusty and neglected by-ways of science fiction’s infancy. Or rather, since the various contributors seem wedded to Gary Westfahl’s bizarre argument that true science fiction only came into being with the launch of Amazing Stories, this is science fiction from before there was science fiction. There are seven stories and three novel extracts gathered here, the earliest of which was written in 1826 (though not published until 1863), and the most recent published in 1923. Ten pieces of writing drawn from near enough a century of science fiction, each accompanied by an introduction (to call them “critical essays” as the subtitle does is, to my mind, to over-inflate their role); there should be enough here to forge a narrative, give us a perspective from which to consider where we come from and where we might be going.

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“Gypsy in Space”: A Note on the Representation of the Roma in Contemporary Hungarian SF Short Stories

By Áron Domokos

The representation of marginalized communities is extensively explored in both academic SF studies, and popular discourse around SF, particularly since the second half of the 1960s. Themes such as to what extent and by what means the living conditions, adversities, modes of resistances, worldviews, etc. of such communities are represented in SF narratives, as well as the role that individuals identifying themselves as community members play in the production/consumption/reception of SF, have been investigated by practitioners of quantitative and qualitative research. To date, however, there appear to be no studies that address the representation of the Roma in contemporary Hungarian SF speculative fiction. The present paper aims to do the following: (1) to introduce contemporary Hungarian SF short fiction and its readership; (2) to briefly explore the politics of “integration” and “reverse integration” as a means to contextualize the Roma within contemporary Hungarian society; (3) to give an outline of those “semiotic” means by which Roma characters in the short stories under scrutiny are identified; (4) to characterize the particular Roma representations from “invisibility” through “genocide” to “social mobility” that are present in the narratives in question. The texts used for my investigation are the relevant pieces of those submitted in 2014-2018 as candidates for the Péter Zsoldos Award, a national annual prize awarded for the best (published) Hungarian SF novel and short story.

Review: This article underwent one anonymous peer review and editorial review from three editors.
License: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.
Citation: Domokos, Áron. 2022. “Gypsy in Space”: A Note on the Representation of the Roma in Contemporary Hungarian SF Short Stories. Vector. 28 May 2022.
Keywords: Roma; Hungarian SF; representation
DOI: Forthcoming

“Gypsy in Space”: A Note on the Representation of the Roma in Contemporary Hungarian SF Short Stories

Together and apart: that is the definition of fraternity. The one we love is another. But the one we love is as close to us as we are to ourselves. So what is needed is not to see the Roma as only a ‘problem’ – and especially not as a ‘problem’ of the white majority – but to act according to the well-known rules of human love, which as a sentiment is not so simple (I have also described it as a contradiction), but in my humble view it is the only right one.

(Tamás 2017)

“Well, white folks ain’t planning for us to be here.”

I want to begin by mentioning that it is comparatively easy to notice the lack of Black representation in mainstream American SF up to the 1970s. Observing that there was not a single Black character in the now legendary 1976 dystopian film Logan’s Run, stand-up comedian Richard Pryor commented: “Well, white folks ain’t planning for us to be here. That’s why we got to make movies” (Pryor 1976). As for the Roma,¹ science fiction literature in English and other languages since the 19^th century had very few Romani characters, and even fewer narratives were written by Romani authors. Let us now take a closer look at the Hungarian-language SF scene.

My study considers nearly 300 pieces of short fiction shortlisted for the 2014-2018 Péter Zsoldos SF Award, and takes a brief look at works in other media. I am going (1) to place the discourses on the representation of the Roma in a social-philosophical framework; (2) to problematize the issue of Roma representation and its “semiotic” aspect; and, in light of this, (3) to classify different ways in which Romani people are represented in contemporary Hungarian SF.

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Everybody makes monsters: An interview with Kim Newman

Kim Newman is the author of Anno Dracula (1992), a novel set in an alternate Victorian London where Dracula has become the Prince Consort and vampires have emerged as the new ruling class. Since then he has written many more books in the series. Anno Dracula is being reissued by Titan Books in October 2022 as a deluxe signed hardcover edition with an introduction by Neil Gaiman and a new short story by the author. Under the name Jack Yeovil, Newman has also published books which helped to build Games Workshop’s Warhammer Fantasy and Dark Futures universes. In addition to writing fiction, Newman is a major critic of horror cinema whose work can be found in Nightmare Movies (1985) and his Sight & Sound columns. He also served as the executive producer of Prano Bailey-Bond’s Censor (2021).

Updates about Newman’s work can be found at his website and on Twitter @annodracula. We are delighted to have Kim back to chat to Vector, as Jordan S. Carroll asks him about Anno Dracula, shared world writing, film criticism, as well as Kim’s latest novel, Something More Than Night (2021), a horror-detective mystery set in Hollywood during the 1930s and starring Boris Karloff and Raymond Chandler …

How did you get started writing?

I hate defaulting to other people’s quotes, but somebody asked George Bernard Shaw that question, and he said he couldn’t remember — because writing was like the taste of the water in his mouth. It was something he’d always done.

I mean, I wrote from childhood. I’m not quite sure at what point that went from writing stories for my own purposes to writing for an audience. I think I always wanted to communicate. It took me a while to consider that this might also be a way of making a living. But as a teenager, I wrote plays and comedy sketches with my friends at school. I wrote novels, or rather novel length manuscripts, in my teens.

The useful thing about starting early is you get a lot of the embarrassing stuff out of the way early on when nobody can see it. Now, you just put your stuff online free for people to read, but it is there forever. It comes back to haunt people. I’m not even sure if I have copies of the stuff I wrote as a kid. I think if I do, it’s in a trunk somewhere very deep.

What drew you to horror in particular?

I started out being interested in monsters, I suppose. I was one of those kids who liked monster movies. I liked the effect of horror, I read a lot of it. But I read a lot of general stuff as well. I’m interested in genre, but I’m not necessarily somebody who wants to be confined by it. I don’t self-identify as a horror writer, or a science fiction writer, a crime writer, a mystery writer. I’ve done all of those things. But I do recognize that I operate best in that kind of arena.

When you tag yourself as a horror writer, that comes with an obligation to be frightening, in the same way that picking comedy comes with an obligation to be amusing. And I think some of my stuff is scary. Certainly other readers have reported that. But I think for a lot of my writing, being frightening is not its primary purpose. I’m interested in exploring other things. I tend to write more about what makes me angry than what makes me frightened. Although obviously there’s an overlap.

So what is it that makes you angry?

The world! And what’s more, I have not calmed down with age. Having written a series of books about what happens when really truly terrible evil people come to power … well, the last ten years have just made me think I overestimated people.

How would you describe your writing process?

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From Woman at Point Zero by Nawal El Saadawi to The Queue by Basma Abdel Aziz

Merit Ariane Stephanos

Even the titles of the novels – The Queue and Woman at Point Zero – reroute the thoughts towards recent emotionally exhausting lockdowns. They conjure interminable waiting, to the point of breakdown. In a way, this is precisely what these books describe. However, the denials of freedom to move, associate and connect are not caused by a global pandemic but by local patriarchal, totalitarian societies. The fictionalised/documentarian versions of Egypt spiritually and physically destroy the respective protagonists, Armani and Firdaus. Both women are driven to extreme forms of exile from their societies, Firdaus by accepting a death sentence, Armani by self-enforced mental alienation. Although all genders in these two novels suffer from oppression, women are subjected to specific forms of violence highlighted by the writers.

The sensitivity and detail in the portrayal of these forms of gendered violence is related to the fact that not only are respective authors both women, but they are both psychiatrists. Both writers are important figures in Egyptian society, renowned for their activism and respected as powerful intellectuals. The two authors have personally experienced state-inflicted violence for their resistance, their feminism, and their criticisms of other forms of oppression. Nawal El Saadawi was fired, exiled and threatened with imprisonment; Basma Abdel Aziz’s nickname is ‘the rebel’. Both novels portray an Egyptian society from a historical vantage point that are four decades apart (1975 and 2013). These have not been decades of ‘progress’: albeit fictionalised, oppression as presented by Basma Abdel Aziz in The Queue (2013) has become more suffocating and more all consuming.

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Contemporary Greek Speculative Fiction: A Roundtable

With Natalia Theodoridou, Eugenia Triantafyllou, Eleanna Castroianni and George Cotronis

By Phoenix Alexander

Hi everyone. Let’s start by introducing ourselves to readers / each other!

ET: Hello! I am Eugenia Triantafyllou, a writer and artist currently based in Athens. My fiction has appeared in places like Uncanny, Strange Horizons, Apex and has been nominated for Ignyte and Nebula awards.I am also a Clarion West 2019 alumna. My preferred genres are dark fantasy and horror, although I do like to mix genres and switch it up a lot.

Twitter: @FoxesandRoses

eugeniatriantafyllou.com

NT: Hi! I am a speculative fiction writer and game designer. Originally from Thessaloniki, Greece, with roots in Russia, Georgia, and Turkey. I now split my time between Greece and the UK. I’ve published over 100 short stories in places like Clarkesworld, F&SF, Kenyon Review, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and Nightmare, among others, and have three games/interactive novels out by Choice of Games. If you want a taste of my work, I’d recommend starting with “Ribbons” in Uncanny Magazine, “The Birding: a Fairy Tale” in Strange Horizons (which won the World Fantasy Award for Short Fiction), or my Nebula-nominated game, Rent-a-Vice. My work is queer and dark, and I tend to overstep genre boundaries.

Twitter: @natalia_theodor

natalia-theodoridou.com

EC: Hi, I’m Eleanna, a writer and poet with work in Clarkesworld Magazine, Strange Horizons, Fireside, Beneath Ceaseless Skies and elsewhere. My usual setting is literary science fiction or fantasy where the repercussions of war and oppression feature prominently. I draw a lot from my background as a human geographer and, in particular, from Anthropocene humanities and landscapes of de-industrialization and decay. I am also heavily inspired by contemporary Greek history with its share of complex politics and violence, by the pagan darkness of folk traditions, and by the fragility and cruelty of childhood.

Twitter: @nomadological

eleannacastroianni.wordpress.com

GC: Hello! I’m George Cotronis and I’m a writer and illustrator from Greece by way of Sweden, where I was born. I’ve created book covers for authors like Stephen Graham Jones, Livia Llewellyn and Harry Connolly. When I’m not illustrating, I write short stories. I’ve sold a handful of stories mostly to anthologies like Lost Signals, Robots & Artificial Intelligence and places like Pantheon Magazine and Tales to Terrify.

Twitter: @ravenkult

cotronis.com

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“Part of the attraction was fear…” an interview with Alexis Panayiotou

Interviewed by Phoenix Alexander and Jo Lindsay Walton

This interview first appeared in Vector 295.

Hi Alexis. Could you introduce yourself and say a little bit about your background?

Hello, my name is Alexis Panayiotou. I’m a fine artist and a drawing tutor on the BA: Fashion course at Central St. Martins.

As you know, this is a special issue of Vector focused on Greek SFF. So our first question is: do you consider yourself a Greek artist?

I think of my identity as mixed or somewhere between cultures. I was born and raised in London. My parents are both Greek, from Cyprus, both came to London very young, my mum nine and dad fourteen. They have lived here ever since. I have never been to Cyprus so I only have a vicarious idea of the place, through my parents and other relatives, and a bit from TV and radio.

I grew up in a Greek household, eating Greek food, hearing Greek music every day. Greek was my first language until I started school, although now I only have a rudimentary grasp. At home I was steeped in Greek culture and as a young man I would have described myself as solely Greek, and I remember feeling very lucky and proud to be so.

As for ‘artist,’ I’ve only recently started being comfortable using the term — it comes with lots of lofty aspirations! When I was young I drew a lot, like most kids, so there were always parents or teachers telling me I was an artist, or that I would be one.

*Mother pinching her baby affectionately while breastfeeding*

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Five questions for SF Club of Athens

Interviewed by Hephaestion Christopoulos

Instead of introducing you to one or two artists, interviewing them thoroughly, I chose to present here a number of them, as I think they are all noteworthy and you should definitely get to know them. Besides, their work speaks for itself. So I gave ten authors plus one visual artist a limited space to answer the same set of questions:

Name one of your works that is special to you and briefly explain why.
It’s often said that artists have a central theme their work revolves around. Can you spot such a theme in your work?
What do you consider your greatest success in your creative career and what was your greatest frustration, if any?
What have been the challenges in getting your work known? What are the pros and cons of your local market vs getting your work abroad? Do social media really help?
Finally, please tell us what your next plans are.

I sincerely hope their answers will intrigue you enough to check them out.

**Lina Theodorou. J-scape, 102 cm X 222 cm, acrylics on canvas, 2021.**

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