An English‑Language Anthology of Europe’s New Speculative Imagination

The European Science Fiction anthology project, coordinated by Francesco Verso through the multicultural Future Fiction platform, represents a critical and essential editorial undertaking aimed at reshaping the European speculative fiction map.

The Importance of the Series: Continuing the Lines of Darko Suvin and Franz Rottensteiner

It must be acknowledged, after all, that there is nothing truly revolutionary in this project, nothing resembling an absolute premiere, but rather the deliberate re‑knotting of a tradition stretching back fifty‑six years, a lineage in which three names rise with particular clarity—Darko Suvin, Franz Rottensteiner, and Richard D. Nolane, the Americanized pseudonym of French editor Olivier Raynaud.

Their anthologies—Other Worlds, Other Seas (1970), View from the Other Shore (1973), and the two volumes of Terra SF: The Year’s Best European SF (1981, 1983) — form a kind of triptych illustrating how European speculative fiction was first framed for the English‑speaking world.

Later works such as The Penguin World Omnibus of Science Fiction (Brian Aldiss and Sam Lundwall, 1986), Donald A. Wollheim’s The Best from the Rest of the World: European Science Fiction (1976), and James Gunn’s The Road to Science Fiction, volumes 5 and 6 (1998), mark a more reflective, self‑aware phase of this long cultural mediation, a phase continued by The SFWA European Hall of Fame (James and Kathryn Morrow, 2007) and carried forward into Anthology of European Speculative Fiction (2013), edited by Cristian Tamaș and Roberto Mendes.

The emergence of such a series is not merely an editorial exercise but a geopolitical and cultural necessity.

It directly continues the theoretical and critical legacy of Darko Suvin—the father of the concepts of „novum” and “cognitive estrangement”—and Franz Rottensteiner, the Austrian editor and critic who tirelessly promoted East‑European SF and Stanisław Lem in the West.

The two‑volume European Science Fiction series curated by Francesco Verso for Future Fiction stands today as one of the most lucid, ambitious, and culturally necessary literary projects of the decade.

The series is both useful and vital because it’s trying to heal a cultural anomaly:

European readers know American subgenres far better than the speculative fiction writings of their own continental neighbors.

And the reason, whispered first in publishing houses and then absorbed into the collective imagination, is as old as the post‑war cultural order: post-WW2 Europe learned to dream in English long before it learned to dream in its own voices.

From the 1950s onward, Western Europe built an industrial pipeline for Anglo‑American SFF.

Translations arrived in waves—cheap, fast, abundant—flooding bookstores with rockets, cowboys of the future, dystopian empires, cybernetic prophets.

The machinery of distribution was already in place for English‑language entertainment; speculative fiction simply rode the same rails as Hollywood cinema, pop music, and paperback thrillers.

By contrast, the fantastical literatures of neighboring nations remained scattered, provincial, and slow to cross borders.

A French reader might know Bradbury better than a German contemporary; a Spaniard might recognize Tolkien’s Shire but not the mythic landscapes imagined in Warsaw or Prague.

Over time, this imbalance hardened into a kind of cultural reflex—a soft, pervasive malinchism, a belief that imported Anglophone goods were inherently superior.

Not because readers consciously despised their own traditions, but because the market taught them, day after day, shelf after shelf, that the “real” science fiction and fantasy happened elsewhere.

Publishers reinforced the lesson: Anglo‑American titles sold faster, sold wider, sold safer.

A British author could travel the continent in translation; an Italian or Romanian one rarely could.

With the notable exception of the UK—whose SFF exports circulate almost as easily as American ones—no European country has managed to sell its speculative fiction as a unified bloc.

Instead, only isolated stars break through: a Glukhovsky here, a Starobinets there, singular constellations rather than a shared sky.

Beneath all this lies a deeper absence: Europe does not possess a continental identity strong enough to bind its imaginative traditions together.

National literatures remain proud, inward‑facing, protective of their own mythologies.

There is no pan‑European narrative equivalent to the American frontier myth or the British imperial imaginary—no common reservoir of symbols from which a shared speculative canon might emerge.

And so readers reach instinctively for what feels familiar, cohesive, already validated by decades of global prestige.

In the end, European SFF is not unloved; it is simply unheard, drowned out by the thunder of English‑language worlds that arrived earlier, louder, and in overwhelming abundance.

The European continent reads in translation not because it must, but because it has been taught—slowly, subtly, and across generations—that the future is best imagined in someone else’s tongue.

The European Science Fiction anthology project through translation and direct dialogue, it’s strive to transform Europe from a mere consumer of foreign visions into a living laboratory for humanity’s future.

Across “Knowing the Neighbours” (2021) and “Building Bridges across Borders” (2026), Francesco Verso constructs not merely an anthology cycle but an euro-continental cartography of imagination—an editorial gesture that restores Europe to its rightful place as a generator of speculative thought, rather than a passive consumer of Anglophone futures.

From the first volume’s near‑future panoramas—stories that move with ease from disaster tourism to animatronic companionship—one senses a deliberate attempt to reclaim the philosophical density and aesthetic daring that have long defined Europe’s speculative tradition.

As the document notes, the anthology “ brings together top authors from fifteen European countries, translated from eleven different languages, offering a unique panorama of the near future.” .

This multilingual constellation is not a decorative flourish; it is the very engine of the project.

Each story becomes a cultural vector, carrying with it the anxieties, textures, and intellectual genealogies of its linguistic home.

The second volume, “Building Bridges across Borders” (2026), expands this ambition into a fully articulated literary infrastructure.

It is a book that refuses the gravitational pull of centralized Anglophone distribution and instead insists on the legitimacy of Europe’s own speculative ecosystems.

The anthology’s mission is articulated with crystalline clarity:

“Fifteen stories from ten languages to represent one continent’s imagination” .

In these pages, flooded landscapes, contested bodies, and human‑machine intimacies do not merely gesture toward possible futures—they interrogate the present with a precision that renders it obsolete.

What emerges from the diptych is a profound reconfiguration of the speculative field.

Verso’s editorial vision restores the intellectual lineage of Darko Suvin and Franz Rottensteiner, whose insistence on cognitive estrangement and cultural alterity finds new life in these transnational dialogues.

The series demonstrates that European SF is not defined by spectacle but by inquiry; not by empire but by community; not by technological fetishism but by philosophical depth. It is a literature of borders only insofar as it seeks to dissolve them.

In an era when cultural homogenization threatens to flatten the imaginative landscape, Future Fiction’s European Science Fiction series performs an act of resistance.

It preserves what the document calls “literary biodiversity” and offers European Anglophone readers an alternative to “the the monolithic Anglo-Saxon vision”.

More importantly, it invites European readers to rediscover one another—to recognize that the future of the continent is not a single narrative but a polyphony.

These two anthologies do not simply collect stories; they articulate a manifesto.

They declare that the future is multilingual, that imagination is a shared resource, and that Europe’s speculative traditions—rooted in centuries of philosophical inquiry, artistic avant‑gardes, and cultural plurality—remain indispensable to the global conversation about what humanity might become.

Future Fiction has built a bridge across languages, histories, and sensibilities. It is now up to us to cross it.

As a closing aside, it bears saying—if only with a raised eyebrow—that the fifty‑six years washed over Europe without managing to distill anything resembling a shared continental consciousness, leaving us to wonder whether these grand pan‑European projects have ever truly stood a chance.

Tribalism, localism, and parochial reflexes still rule the landscape with the same stubborn authority they’ve always had; we are tribal first and European only by accident, and mostly when we’re safely outside Europe’s borders.

Within Europe, we revert instantly to being French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, and so on, each wrapped snugly in our own flag, waving politely at the idea of Europe from behind the ramparts of our “national” identities.

The European Science Fiction anthology series, featuring Knowing the Neighbours (2021) and Building Bridges across Borders (2026), operates as a crucial decentralized platform that bypasses Anglophone-centric publishing to directly connect European literary traditions.

By showcasing diverse, translated narratives that explore regional anxieties and speculative futures, the project has garnered significant acclaim within European Science Fiction Society (ESFS) circles and at events like Eurocon, strengthening a distinct,, local, and artistic identity for European SFF.

The European Science Fiction anthology project, coordinated by Francesco Verso through the multicultural Future Fiction platform, represents a critical and essential editorial undertaking aimed at reshaping the global speculative map.

The Importance of the Series: Continuing the Lines of Darko Suvin and Franz Rottensteiner

The emergence of such a series is not merely an editorial exercise but a geopolitical and cultural necessity. It directly continues the theoretical and critical legacy of Darko Suvin—the father of the concepts of novum and “cognitive estrangement”—and Franz Rottensteiner, the Austrian editor and critic who tirelessly promoted East‑European SF and Stanisław Lem in the West.

The Attempt to Crack the Anglo‑Saxon Cultural Monopoly

Historically, the Science Fiction genre has been dominated by centralized distribution channels in the Anglophone world. Suvin and Rottensteiner warned that this dominance tends to homogenize the collective imagination.

The European Science Fiction series functions as a bottom‑up infrastructure that allows European writers to communicate directly with one another and with the world, without passing through the commercial filters or standards of publishers in the United States or the United Kingdom.

Preserving “Speculative Biodiversity”

As Rottensteiner argued, Europe possesses a philosophical tradition profoundly different from American technical pragmatism.

This series demonstrates that the future can be conceptualized differently. Instead of galactic empires and space colonization—archetypes common in American SF—European SF foregrounds:

The tradition of artistic avant‑gardes (Futurism, Dadaism, Surrealism).

 Philosophical reflection on human limits and biopolitics.

Increased attention to small communities, historical memory, and aesthetics.

Updating the Concept of the Novum (Suvin)

For Suvin, quality SF is defined by the introduction of a scientific or social innovation (novum) that forces the reader to view their own reality from a critical perspective.

The Future Fiction anthologies do precisely this: they use themes such as artificial intelligence or climate change not as spectacular decorative elements but as social mirrors of contemporary Europe—old age, bureaucracy, political fragmentation, and cultural solidarity.

The series is both useful and vital because it heals a cultural anomaly: European readers know American subgenres far better than the speculative writings of their own continental neighbors. Through translation and direct dialogue, it transforms Europe from a mere consumer of foreign visions into a living laboratory for humanity’s future.

A detailed analysis of the first volume, Knowing the Neighbours (2021), reveals both the internal structure of the text and its ideological relevance within the lineage of major European SF theorists.

Volume 1: Knowing the Neighbours (2021)

The volume brings together top authors from fifteen European countries, translated from eleven different languages, offering a unique panorama of the Near Future as seen through the distinct lens of the old continent.

The main themes explored in the anthology include ecological technology and tradition, critiques of consumerism: the planned obsolescence of everyday household objects, climate change: community resilience in the face of environmental disasters and the rise of disaster tourism, digital humanism: the use of animatronics and social robots as surrogates to combat loneliness.

Critical Reception (Community Consensus): 

On specialized platforms such as Goodreads and Amazon UK, the anthology maintains a high rating of 4.5 out of 5 stars.

Critics praise its diversity and narrative biodiversity, noting that the volume offers Anglophone readers an alternative to the monolithic American vision, demonstrating that “the future is not spoken only in English.”

Readers highlight stories marked by a blend of subtle humor, characteristic European melancholy, and intelligent plot twists.

Each story is perceived as a complete ecosystem, showcasing the literary maturity of authors from countries less frequently translated, such as Finland, Latvia, Bulgaria, or Greece.

And the paradox grows sharper when one asks the simplest, most mercantile question:

How many Europeans, truly, would buy and read European SFF prose translated into English?

The answer is both hopeful and sobering.

Across Europe, roughly 35–40% of adults possess functional English, but only a fraction—perhaps 8–10%—read literature comfortably in English, at a level where nuance, metaphor, and stylistic ambition are not obstacles.

That gives us a continental pool of 30–40 million potential literary‑level English readers.

A vast number in theory, but in practice only a thin, shimmering surface of that ocean ever touches translated European SFF.

Because interest is not the same as willingness to pay.

Among those millions, the subset who actively buy speculative fiction in English shrinks dramatically.

Most read Anglo‑American SFF because it is omnipresent, aggressively marketed, and culturally validated.

When confronted with European authors translated into English, the average reader hesitates:

Is this worth my time? Is this canon? Is this safe?

The malinchism of the continent whispers: Better the imported giant than the local unknown.

Thus, the real market for a European SFF novel translated into English is not millions, but hundreds or low thousands.

A debut or midlist European SFF title, translated into English and published without major marketing muscle, would likely sell:

300–600 copies in its first year if released by a small or medium press

800–1,500 copies if it receives modest festival visibility or niche critical attention

2,000–4,000 copies only if it catches a wave of online enthusiasm or wins a notable award

Beyond that, sales become exceptional rather than typical.

Only rare figures— Lem, Strugatsky, Glukhovski, Sapkowski, Starobinets—break the gravitational pull of national markets and circulate widely across borders.

Europe does not export its speculative imagination as a unified cultural bloc; it exports individuals, meteors rather than constellations.

And the reason is structural, historical, psychological.

For seventy years, Western Europe has consumed Anglo‑American SFF at industrial scale.

The pipelines of translation, distribution, and marketing were built for English‑language culture, and they have never been dismantled.

Readers grew up with Asimov, Bradbury, Clarke, Heinlein, Philip K.Dick.  Le Guin, Tolkien, King, Gibson, Gaiman—names that formed a shared continental mythology.

Meanwhile, the speculative traditions of Italy, Spain, Romania, Hungary, Portugal, Finland, or Greece remained local, fragmented, untranslated, invisible beyond their borders.

Without a pan‑European identity strong enough to bind its imaginative traditions, each nation dreams alone.

There is no continental mythos, no shared symbolic reservoir, no unified narrative of “European futurity.”

And so the reader, standing before a shelf, reaches instinctively for the familiar Anglophone universe—the one already validated by decades of cultural prestige.

In the end, the potential audience for European SFF in English exists—real, curious, intelligent—but it is small, scattered, and unaccustomed to looking toward its own continent for visions of the future.

A few hundred readers will always come; a few thousand may follow; but the great majority still believe, quietly and unconsciously, that the future is best imagined in English, and preferably from across the ocean.

European Science Fiction #2 Building Bridges across Borders (Future Fiction, 2026)

Fifteen stories from ten languages to represent one continent’s imagination.

While Science Fiction literature has historically relied on Anglophone, centralized channels to reach global readers, this second volume of European Science Fiction seeks to build a more expansive landscape by establishing direct dialogues between European literary traditions.

This is not a rejection of any single perspective, but an embrace of a Sense of Wander – a commitment to encountering these imaginative territories on their own terms. We are building infrastructure to ensure these voices can travel more freely. From flooded landscapes to contested bodies and human-machine intimacies, these narratives do more than predict the future; they make the present obsolete.

Forget your preconceptions and look beyond standard expectations. The borders are open, the infrastructure is built from below, and the futures offered are as vibrant as their original languages.

It is time to wander.

Table of Contents

Saint Dismas and the Sorrow of the Mitten Crabs by Tais Teng (Netherlands)

Diary of a Repentant Poliorcete by Ugo Bellagamba (France)

In Bloom by Clelia Farris (Italy)

Golden Fern by Lucie Lukačovičová (Czech Rep)

Green Tide by Cristina Jurado (Spain)

Utopia 27 by Aiki Mira (Germany)

Those We Serve by Eugenia Triantafyllou (Greece)

A Pilgrimage to Memories Tattooed by Elena Pavlova (Bulgaria)

Signs of an Upcoming Apocalypse by Sandor Szelesi (Hungary)

Red Petals by Sylwester Gdela (Poland)

Lubarbri by Jakob Drud (Denmark)

The Successors by Ploum (Belgium)

My Dear House by Taru Kumara-Moisio (Finland)

Eukaryotic Variations by Luis Filipe Silvia (Portugal)

Tunnel Fever by Margret Helgadottir (Norway)

Translations into English by Sheryl Curtis, Carlotta Codebò, Sally McCorry, Elena Pavlova and Desislava Sivilova, Gergely Kamper, Christina Saarinen, and C.D. Covington.

VOLUME 2 — Authors by Region (15 total)

Western Europe (11 authors)

• Tais Teng (Netherlands)
• Ugo Bellagamba (France)
• Clelia Farris (Italy)
• Cristina Jurado (Spain)
• Aiki Mira (Germany)
• Eugenia Triantafyllou (Greece)
• Jakob Drud (Denmark)
• Ploum (Belgium)
• Taru Kumara‑Moisio (Finland)
• Margret Helgadottir (Norway)
• Luis Filipe Silva (Portugal)

Eastern Europe (4 authors)

• Lucie Lukačovičová (Czech Republic)
• Elena Pavlova (Bulgaria)
• Sandor Szelesi (Hungary)
• Sylwester Gdela (Poland)

European Science Fiction #1: Knowing the Neighbours (Future Fiction, 2021)

The anthology “European Science Fiction #1: Knowing the Neighbours” features a selection of Near-Future stories written by some of the best European Science Fiction authors from 15 countries and in translation from 11 languages.

Europe has always been the forge of fantastic literature from “True Story” (Historia vera) by Lucian and “The Divine Comedy” by Dante Alighieri, passing from “Somnium” by Johannes Kepler, and “Micromegas” by Voltaire and up to the novels of Jules Verne and the short stories by Primo Levi.

Moreover, Europe has also been the founder of fundamental literary and artistic vanguards (like Futurism, Dadaism, and Surrealism) that deeply influenced our consciousness and thinking.

That’s why Europe has still a lot to offer to the future of humanity if only its stories would be translated more and more.

As European readers and writers know so much more about American and English Science Fiction than their own national ones, it’s about time to get to know our neighbours through the stories of our fellow European writers.

Ranging from disaster tourism to the use of AIs to improve the quality of wine, from planned obsolescence in common objects to aesthetic benchmarks to value everything, from animatronics as new friends to climate change and community resilience, their stories will take you on a tour along the many shapes of European futures.

Table of contents

Roseweed by Vasso Christou (Greece)

Amber Queen by Olivier Paquet (France)

Fragmentation by Tom Crosshill (Latvia)

Planned Obsolescence by Nina Horvath (Austria)

The Keresztury TVirs by Ivan Popov (Bulgaria)

The Golden Nose by Neil Williamson (UK)

Goal invariance under radical self-modification by Julie Novakova (Czech Republic)

Beautymark by Linda De Santi (Italy)

Petware by Uwe Post (Germany)

The Naming Tree by J.S. Meresmaa (Finland)

Any House in the Storm by Tais Teng (Netherlands)

Lying Weather by Krystyna Chodorowska (Poland)

Reaping Day by Anna Jakobsson Lund (Sweden)

The Rescue by Margrét Helgadóttir (Norway)

Team Memory by Carme Torras (Spain)

VOLUME 1 — Authors by Region (15 total)

Western Europe (11 authors)

• Olivier Paquet (France)
• Nina Horvath (Austria)
• Neil Williamson (UK)
• Linda De Santi (Italy)
• Uwe Post (Germany)
• J.S. Meresmaa (Finland)
• Tais Teng (Netherlands)
• Anna Jakobsson Lund (Sweden)
• Margrét Helgadóttir (Norway)
• Carme Torras (Spain)
• Vasso Christou (Greece)

Eastern Europe (4 authors)

• Tom Crosshill (Latvia)
• Ivan Popov (Bulgaria)
• Julie Novakova (Czech Republic)
• Krystyna Chodorowska (Poland)

Across the full roster of 30 contributors, the geography of European speculative fiction reveals a stark asymmetry.

The West speaks with 22 voices, confident and numerous, while the East answers with only 8 — fewer, rarer, yet often sharper in tone and distinct in imaginative lineage.

The imbalance is not merely statistical;

it sketches the cultural fault line of a continent where visibility, translation, and literary circulation still tilt decisively toward the Western half of Europe.