Rachel Cordasco

Fantastic Fiction: Italian SFT: Calvino and Buzzati

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The text Fantastic Fiction against a retrofuturistic design of a rounded triangle shape with a gold swirl pattern.

Four authors dominated SFT in 20th century Italy: Buzzati, Landolfi, Calvino, and Levi. The first three wrote what most would call “fantastic” literature, while Levi wrote more allegorical and historical science fiction. Referred to as fantascienza (a fusion of fantasy and science) in Italian, the speculative fiction coming out of that country following World War Two was influenced by the political and social upheavals of that war and the fascism that had dominated Italian politics.

French SFT in F&SF, 1962

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The text Fantastic Fiction against a retrofuturistic design of a rounded triangle shape with a gold swirl pattern.

Three works of short science fiction/fantasy from France (in English translation) appeared in the pages of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1962: Henri Damonti’s “The Notary and the Conspiracy,” Charles and Nathalie Henneberg’s “Moon Fishers,” and Suzanne Malaval’s “The Devil’s God-Daughter.” All three were translated by Damon Knight, who was responsible for bringing several French-language speculative pieces into English during the 1960s and 70s.

Fantastic Fiction: Perry Rhodan

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The text Fantastic Fiction against a retrofuturistic design of a rounded triangle shape with a gold swirl pattern.

One of the most interesting phenomena to emerge from the German-language speculative fiction universe is the internationally popular Perry Rhodan space opera series. Created in 1961 by Walter Ernsting and Karl-Herbert Scheer, this ongoing saga of a spaceman continues into the present day, in much the same manner as Doctor Who in the Anglophone world.

Fantastic Fiction: Nathalie Henneberg’s Forays into the Strange

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The text Fantastic Fiction against a retrofuturistic design of a rounded triangle shape with a gold swirl pattern.

The Russian-born French author Nathalie Henneberg collaborated with her husband Charles for years on works of fantasy and science fiction, but after his death in 1959, Nathalie continued to write and make a name for herself. Her 1960 story, “The Blind Pilot,” included in David G. Hartwell’s wide-ranging anthology The World Treasury of Science Fiction, is a prime example of the author’s extraordinary prose.

Fantastic Fiction: SF in Central/Eastern Europe

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The text Fantastic Fiction against a retrofuturistic design of a rounded triangle shape with a gold swirl pattern.

The year 1961 brought Anglophonic readers three fascinating works of speculative fiction in translation, two of which were by Jewish authors. Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis and Other Stories, Isaac Bashevis Singer’s The Spinoza of Market Street, and Witold Gombrowicz’s Ferdydurke are concerned with the world lurking beneath what we see as reality. Dark fantasy, the occult, magic, and the grotesque come together to make these texts unsettling forays into an alternate way of seeing the world.

Fantastic Fiction: French SF in Translation in F&SF (1961)

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The text Fantastic Fiction against a retrofuturistic design of a rounded triangle shape with a gold swirl pattern.

The early years of the 1960s brought a number of French science fiction stories into English, thanks in a big way to the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. This kicked off decades of French science fiction in English, including several Pierre Boulle novels (like Planet of the Apes), that in turn inspired major films, introducing American readers to a more expansive view of SF.