SFmag

Hungarian fantasy is based on the pre-existing anglophone literary traditions and did not develop independently. Hungarian fantastic literature is varied but authors did not form a movement based on the common usage of the surreal and the fantastic, and did not have a mentor-student tradition. Fantastic elements may be significant in a writer’s work and even influences can be observed between authors and writings, but these were isolated examples, and therefore lacked the influence to start a boom of fantasy writings. That came with the abundance of translated foreign fantasy.

Extracts from Péter Kuczka’s (1923-1999) afterword to Sam J. Lundwall’s It happened tomorrow, published in Hungarian in 1984. The present tense used in the article refers to the mid-80s. Péter Kuczka was the science-fiction editor of the leading (only…) publishing houses dealing with sci-fi, and the founder of the Galaktika sci-fi magazine.

Hungary is a small country in the middle of Europe, with a population of ten million and a language that has its closest relatives in the Ural Mountains. Consequently the number of science fiction and fantasy fans is small, and the number of writers even smaller, basically everyone knows everyone else. I’ll try to give  [ More ]