A story by Khristo Poshtakov
Once the non-time effect was over, Ditt Raskin sleepily opened his eyes and was greeted by the greenish-blue disc of the planet filling two thirds of the main monitor. The sight made him think he had scored a hit this time.
"Land on it, Tim," he commanded the ship AI.
"But tell me first, how much is two plus two?"
"Four, chief," Tim responded to the in-joke. "I suggest you fasten your belts."
The brilliant points of the plasma drive blazed up in the blackness. A few hours later, the single-person exploration boat entered orbit around the planet and began the landing maneuvers. After scanning the data from the analysis system, Tim reported: "Fit for habitation; large bodies of water present; no traces of intelligent life and, quite surprisingly, complete absence of animal species. This is the first time I register a planet of floral type."
"That’s odd," Ditt muttered to himself. He said aloud, "Prepare my biodefense suit."
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Atanas P. Slavov, Bulgaria
Denn Sirr felt quite odd when he first stepped on the dark-red flagstones. A living body seemed to breathe under his feet. The flags were hard and rough, true, yet they were giving off heat – not the warmth of the sun, another. It seemed to belong to the red stone, just like the silent road stretching among the trees.
"What wonder this?" Denn Sirr muttered and crouched to examine the flag. A sudden conviction smote him that this was old, really old...
More than thirty centuries ago, the obscure people of the Deinors had built this road to set out no one knew where or when, leaving almost no traces and no judgment of time. Thank heaven for the "almost" – it was what brought Denn Sirr here.
They told him that strange shapes flew over the road now and then, as if a man ran across, yet none were around; as if Deinors revived, wandered along the Road and returned to the Unknown Peace.
"Gobbledygook, the ancients reviving!" mumbled Denn Sirr. "Though perhaps truly ... nay, it’s flyans them ... flyans that is! Surely their shadows have flown over the road, and before you can look up..."
For thirty centuries this road had not been stomped on by human feet, not counting the curious. Yet the curious would not dare reach the end. That Denn Sirr knew for certain. He’d dare...
Aleksander Karapantschev, Bulgaria
On 29 September 1849, a tired lean man with a battered suitcase traveled on the Baltimore boat. His appearance was glum and at the same time brilliant. He had a finely chiseled lordly head and an almond-colored face; the lines of his eyebrows, perfect in his youth, had been distorted by trials, disparate from his thirsts; and his eyes - violet-blue, radiant - gazed somewhat absently, enshrouded in eternal sorrow. Occasionally, he would tighten his elegant scarf, touch his forehead, and then his hands would uncertainly disappear into the pockets of the creased frock-coat.
He was watching the morning bustle presently. Behind his back, the deck lived its usual chaotic life. Whistling, inky smoke wreaths mixed with a painfully hissing vapor....
Poul Pinn, England
With muted breath flesh in rags flash eyes acutely aware. Flesh and rags pull closer, their hope-lessness uncomfortably bare. Paladins scan these tramps and hags, catch gleams of intelligence in the eyes of the decimated faces behind the filthy hanging hair. Feeling uneasy they move on, leaving the huddled damned behind as they enter a crumbling labyrinth smelling of every foul odour imaginable, and a few far removed from the imagination.
With a rapid studiousness born of disciplined training they cautiously inspect a flux of ill-lit alleys that rush at them from all directions. Dark unformed shapes move swiftly across penumbral edges, fending off dull glows draining from rectangular yellow lights hanging watchful from stunted stalks of stone. A web-woven silence stifles with its eerie gloom, perhaps presaging things the paladins would rather not know. It smothers any wish they may have to produce a sound and acknowledge the existence of something more than just the rustle of decay, the whisper of death, the anxious heartbeat of cruelty and fear. Their footfalls are silent, their thin mouths set grim. They cannot hear themselves breathe....
Aleksandar Žiljak, Croatia
Space port, rainy night. Lukas listens to the raindrops as they drum against the roof, pour into the gutter and gurgle, watering the Aldebaran vines coiling around the hotel in the firm embrace that is probably the only thing holding it from collapsing. The vestibule is becalmed in semi-darkness. Sleeping lantern-fungi, rooted all over the ceiling and walls, hardly smoulder. It is almost two o'clock and the hotel finally sunk into silence. Even the Baglins in the room 131 quieted down, the merry band with their beer and frantic songs. Their ship landed three days ago and, as far as Lukas heard, they plan to stay for at least three more days.
Lukas rummages through the pile of mangas that he read and re-read long ago. Then he pours himself some coffee from a thermos flask. After all these years, he should be used to boredom and solitude of a night shift. If only some girl would drop by to take shelter before the rain, there's enough coffee in the flask...
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Atanas P. Slavov, Bulgaria
It's not even blackness around. Black is a color, and the total absence of light is beyond that ... beyond blindness...
Whose thoughts are these? Mine? But I should be dead ... which evidently I'm not...
Or - this is what death's like? Hovering in the absolute boundlessness of the nothingness, reasoning like a living man?
"You are not dead, Neo, nor are you alive
in the human sense of the word."
"Who said that? Is this the machine world?"
"Yes, it is a virtual environment,
and you too are software."
"You've downloaded my personality information matrix for fun? Wasn't it enough, having Trinity die in my arms?"....
Paul Pinn, England
I stepped outside my hotel to look for the kid. Two fat drops of liquid hit me in the face. I stepped back inside, wiped them off, not that my face would look any different after a brief acid etching. Some women find it handsomely rugged, usually the sweet poisons who fall in love with crumpled bank notes, or pimps and dealers with faces like maps of the New York subway system.
I stared out the glass doors at the street and sky, both as threatening as each other. The sky struck first, rain pounding abruptly. I hoped the gang of hustlers outside would run like rats, but in a shitwreck like Morocco they don't let little things interfere with the business of antagonizing the few foreigners staying on their patch...
Khristo D. Poshtakov, Bulgaria
It was pleasantly warm in the cave. Soft light streamed though back chambers. It brightened the nondescript wall colors only to dissipate in the semidarknees of side chambers. Outside sounds and smells wafted up from the base of the sheer slope, but they could not dispel the timid ghost of fear that more often than not showed up around the entrance barricaded with heavy objects.
Mel come up to one of the openings, stared out at the spiked outgrowths protruding around the edges, and grew thoughtful. It was now the third day that whiteskins had been trying to get in. The danger was increasing...
Aleksandar Žiljak, Croatia
Maybe I shook them off. I don't feel them breathing down my neck any more. I turn around, but I don't see them in the crowd. The Square is swarmed by people. I elbow through the sea of bodies, carried by the current of fear. Conversations, laughter, shouts everywhere around me. It's supper time, and crowds gather in front of manna machines. In Gaj Street, the Bolivians drawl El Condor Pasa on their flutes and drums, wood and stretched skin bringing snow from the Andean peaks. Performers are dancing under the clock and in front of the Vice-Roy, not giving a shit about ten degrees below zero...
Khristo D. Poshtakov, Bulgaria
The huge invisible circle covered part of large lowlands and a strip of the ocean with a few tiny islands scattered near the shore. The village stood in the centre of the fenced territory, close to a calm little lake. The low houses huddled in the brownish shrubs and, together with the sluggish clouds, got reflected on the mirror surface of the lake. There was no flutter of the stuffy air; eternal tranquility reigned in this part of the world due to the transparent, and yet resilient body of the fence.
That hateful frontier was all too familiar to Sargol. It could be traced out from the top of the hill where he was standing; the fence stood very near to him, only a few steps away...
Fantastic fiction - Worldwide
Akilis last apparition
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Dan Simmons Interview
We have met the enemy and they are us: Walls began rotting away, and the main character - the reader - realized that everything he had believed about his world was made up - a concensual hallucination. I love the early phrase of Gibson, when he was just creating the concept of cyberspace, while the web was actually being woven in the physical world, the electronic world. He talked about the cyberspace as being a concensual hallucination, and that is truly what it is, even now, when the majority doesnt have VR individually, and computers are crude, like watching television in 1937, on a black and white three inch screen...
The essential dictionary
The number of languages on Earth is falling. But the number of words is rising.
To investigate this evolution, I suggest a linguistic experiment: the minimal dictionary.
If you should choose one and only one word, for a dictionary with only 100 words,
which one would you choose..?
Each person may select one word.
Words may be changed while the book is still open.
The book closes when 100 words are chosen...
Essay by Lucian-Dragos Bogdan
One day I opened my mailbox and found a message from my danish friend, Mads. He asked me to help him in an ambitious project.
He intended to create a dictionary of only 100 words. "If you would have to choose a single word for a 100 word dictionary, which one would it be?"
As much as I appreciate and respect Mads, in the beginning I thought of his request as being silly. "How can you reduce hundred of thousands of years of human evolution based on communication to only ONE WORD?" No doubt that the development of language helped our race to grow and get stronger over the millennia. Should we deny that by throwing away what we think is unnecessary? Wouldn't this be a sacrilege...?
H. G. Wells further vision...
Tales of travels are as ancient as a genre possibly can be. But the destinations have differed and the means have changed.
Timetravels are not new at all. 'Sleeping beauty' is a wellknown example of travelling trough timedistortion; time is stopped, but only inside the castle. A century may pass in the blink of the princess' eyes. Or 'Snow White' who also falls into a potentially endless sleep.
Wells probably wrote the first modern tale of travelling in time, but most short versions usually omits the end. A pity since it is here Wells really unfolds the grandest perspective. In case you've missed it, here it is:
The timetraveller: I have already told you of the sickness and confusion that comes with time travelling. And this time I was not seated properly in the saddle, but sideways and in an unstable fashion. For an indefinite time I clung to the machine as it swayed and vibrated, quite unheeding how I went, and when I brought myself to look at the dials again I was amazed to find where I had arrived...
Arthur C. Clarke
Quotes
Even though I've seen 2001 dozens of times (and watched the actual filming just outside the Boreham Wood Studio, with the london busses rolling by in the background ) I'm still overwhelmed when Moonwatcher smashes down the weapon that will make him Master of the World. But when I was sitting behind the secretary general, I suddenly realized that right here was the place where we were trying to control what Moonwatcher had started - the four-million-year evolution from bone club to ICBM. And a moment later, another thought struck me with such violence that I was astonished it had never occurred to me before. My God! The monolith and the UN building look exactly the same! I still don't know if that's pure coincidence....
Introduction by H.H. Lřyche
As a modernistic literary offspring, the history of science fiction hardly dates back more than a century. You may define the beginning as early as Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein (1818) or as late as Hugo Gernsback's introduction of the word scientifiction (1926). But long before our tradition, the satire counted a number of untimedly, fantastic ideas. Ignorant of his future collegues, Lucian of Samosata (app. 120-180 AD) send people to the Moon, and Voltaire (1694-1778) let aliens from outer space pay us a visit...
Introduction by Aleksandar Žiljak
The beginnings: Although the elements of fantastic and speculative in the Croatian literature can be traced back to the years around World War I, probably the first Croatian SF novel was Na Pacifiku 2255 (On The Pacific In 2255) by Milan Šufflay, published in 1924.
In 1932 Mato Hanžekovic published Gospodin covjek (A Man Of Rank), a utopia about a group of people rebuilding the civilisation destroyed in the new world war. Even more novels were published in Zagreb during the 1920s and 1930s, mostly by authors using pen names or altogether omitting to sign themselves...
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