CZECH IT OUT ! GOLEMS AND ROBOTS? WATCH FOR THE NEWTS, TOO!
There are anthologies that gather stories, and then there are anthologies that gather worlds.
“From the Land of Robots and Golems” belongs fiercely, unapologetically to the second category.
It is not a book so much as a tectonic shift, a declaration that Czech speculative fiction—long brilliant, long overlooked—has decided to step into the global spotlight with the force of a supernova.
And at the center of this eruption stands Julie Nováková, the indefatigable architect of a cultural renaissance that feels less like literary work and more like a rescue mission for the imagination.
To read this anthology is to feel her presence on every page.
Not in the intrusive way of an editor who wants to be noticed, but in the electric hum of someone who has poured her entire being into making sure her country’s voices are heard.
She is the kind of figure who appears once in a generation: a writer of luminous intelligence, an astrobiologist with the curiosity of a deep‑space probe, a translator who treats language like a living organism, and an editor whose generosity borders on myth.
The book itself is a kaleidoscope of Czech speculative thought—stories of alien ciphers, lunar annihilation, fungal intelligences, mythic wanderers, and the quiet tragedies of worlds that never were.
But the true miracle is how seamlessly it all coheres under her stewardship.
She doesn’t simply curate; she orchestrates.
She builds a constellation out of disparate stars and then hands the reader a map.
What astonishes most is her stamina.
While others would be content to publish their own fiction and retreat into the comfortable solitude of creation, she does the opposite: she expands outward.
She translates, she edits, she writes introductions that feel like lanterns held aloft in a dark forest.
She attends conventions, organizes panels, mentors emerging authors, and advocates tirelessly for Czech SF on the world stage.
She is not merely a promoter—she is a force of nature, a gravitational field pulling international attention toward Prague, Brno, Ostrava, and every corner of her country where imagination is fermenting.
Her solidarity with fellow writers is almost startling in its intensity.
She lifts them, showcases them, contextualizes them, and refuses to let any voice be lost in the noise of global publishing.
In an era where literary ecosystems often feel like battlegrounds, she cultivates something gentler, fiercer, more enduring: a community.
A sense that Czech speculative fiction is not a collection of isolated works but a living, breathing organism evolving across decades.
And then there is her work ethic—monstrous, radiant, unstoppable.
You can feel it in the meticulous author notes, the careful translations, the thoughtful selection of stories that span genres, generations, and tonal registers. She approaches editing with the same intensity that scientists bring to planetary exploration: every detail matters, every voice deserves clarity, every story is a world worth mapping.
This anthology is more than a book; it is a manifest. A manifest of what one person can accomplish when they refuse to let borders—linguistic, cultural, or institutional—dictate the reach of their dreams.
Julie Nováková has not only opened a door for Czech SF; she has kicked it off its hinges and invited the world inside.
In doing so, she has given us something rare: a glimpse of a literary tradition that is both deeply rooted and wildly futuristic, shaped by history yet propelled by cosmic ambition.
She has shown that science fiction is not merely entertainment but a form of cultural diplomacy, a way of saying:
Here we are. These are our stories. They matter.
And because of her, they do.
THE ELECTRIC BESTIARY OF A NATION: INSIDE JULIE NOVÁKOVÁ’S COSMIC MENAGERIE
Open the anthology and you feel it immediately: a voltage, a crackle, the unmistakable sensation that you’re not entering a book but crossing a border.
On one side lies the familiar terrain of Anglophone speculative fiction; on the other, a landscape shaped by Czech imaginations that have spent decades mutating in the dark, unbothered by global trends, answering only to their own obsessions.
Julie Nováková stands at the threshold like a conductor of strange energies, ushering you in with a smile that says: brace yourself.
The opening essay, “Of Legacies and Futures,” is her invocation.
It reads like a cartographer’s confession—half history, half prophecy—mapping the lineage of Czech SF while insisting that its future is already erupting beneath our feet. She writes with the urgency of someone who knows her country’s stories have been underestimated for too long, and with the tenderness of a guardian who has watched these voices grow, fracture, recombine, and finally demand to be heard. It is not an introduction; it is a manifesto disguised as one.
Then the stories begin, each one a creature with its own anatomy.
“The Hexagrammaton” arrives first like a coded visitation from another star. Hanuš Seiner’s tale is a labyrinth of living ciphers, alien logic, and Europan fugitives who treat encryption as both language and survival instinct. It feels less like reading and more like being initiated into a secret society whose rituals you only half understand. The story pulses with iterative loops, recursive keys, and the eerie sense that the text itself might be watching you back.
“The World of Silver” shifts the tone entirely. Tomáš Petrásek gives us a war-torn planet where a human engineer and an alien survivor must collaborate or perish. It’s a story of reluctant compassion forged under duress, a reminder that coexistence is rarely philosophical—it’s practical, messy, and born from necessity. The silver world glints with danger, but also with the fragile possibility of trust.
Then comes “The Thanatos Mode,” a story that feels like a funeral for starships. Tom Hadrava writes about vessels as if they possess souls, and about humans as if they are merely temporary passengers in a universe that does not negotiate. It is bleak, beautiful, and strangely comforting in its honesty. No one gets out alive, but the journey is still worth taking.
“Ex Luna, Annihilatio” detonates next—a lunar thriller where alien invaders sterilize humanity and an all‑women crew becomes the last hope for biological continuity. Jan Kotouč blends space opera with reproductive dread, crafting a narrative that feels like a countdown. Every page ticks. Every decision matters. The Moon becomes a battlefield not of armies but of survival itself.
“Devil in the Deep” drags us underground, into a mine where danger is geological and salvation microbial. Lucie Lukačovičová writes with the precision of someone who has tasted dust and fear. Her sentient microbe is both miracle and menace, a reminder that intelligence may bloom in places we never think to look.
“The Real One” is a quiet blade. Petra Slováková gives us a girl who may not be human in a society where humanity is a disposable commodity. The story whispers rather than shouts, but its echo lingers. It is a meditation on identity, fragility, and the cruelty of systems that treat people as replaceable parts.
“A Flaw in the Works” is Julie Nováková’s own contribution, and it is a triumph. A spiritual heir to Čapek’s R.U.R., it revisits the robot mythos with a modern sensibility—sharp, mournful, and slyly hopeful. She writes machines with more emotional nuance than many authors grant their humans, and the result is a story that feels like a conversation across a century of Czech SF.
“Who’s Afraid of Maushie?” bursts in like a mythological fever dream. Tereza Matoušková reimagines Persephone wandering through a world where stories themselves can be rewritten—if you can find the right storyteller. It is playful, tragic, and utterly intoxicating, a reminder that fantasy can be as subversive as any dystopia.
“The Dragon Star” is a shimmering puzzle of dragons, hunters, and celestial destinies. Pavel Renčín writes with the confidence of someone who knows myth is a living organism, not a relic. The story resists easy interpretation, but that is its charm—it refuses to be tamed.
“Book of Forbidden Secrets” introduces metallists who bend metal like sorcerers, thieves who steal books that might reshape worlds, and factions at war over knowledge itself. Jakub Mařík’s tale is kinetic, inventive, and delightfully strange, a reminder that Czech SF often thrives in the borderlands between science and alchemy.
“The New Planet” (Martin Vopěnka) and “Mycelium” close the volume with excerpts—one a meditation on exile and irritation, the other a fungal epic that hints at alien symbiosis on a scale that dwarfs human comprehension. Even in fragmentary form, Vilma Kadlečková’s mycelial universe feels vast enough to swallow you whole.
And through all of this, one presence remains constant: Julie Nováková, the curator, the translator, the champion.
Her fingerprints are everywhere—not in a controlling way, but in the way of someone who has spent years nurturing a literary ecosystem and now watches it bloom with ferocious beauty.
She is the quiet heartbeat beneath the anthology’s chaos, the one who gathered these voices, polished them, translated them, contextualized them, and released them into the world like a flock of mechanical birds.
This book is not merely a collection. It is a revelation. A declaration that Czech speculative fiction is not a footnote but a frontier.
And Julie Nováková is the explorer who mapped it for us, with generosity, stamina, and a devotion that borders on the heroic.
In her hands, the future feels not just possible, but inevitable.
“FROM THE LAND OF ROBOTS AND GOLEMS”: Chronicles of Czech Science Fiction, vol. 5, 21st Century Czech Speculative Fiction, Julie Nováková editor, 2025 Nová Vlna Publishing Press
Julie Nováková has compiled a representative selection of the current young generation of Czech science fiction and fantasy authors.
Names such as Hanuš Seiner, Tomáš Petrásek, Tom Hadrava, Jan Kotouč, Lucie Lukačovičová, Petra Slováková, Julie Nováková, Tereza Matoušková, Pavel Renčín, Jakub Mařík are well known to Czech readers and now the world audience can get acquainted with them.
In addition to short stories, the book also contains excerpts from novels by Vilma Kadlečková and Martin Vopěnka.
“From the Land of Robots and Golems” was published on the occasion of the Worldcon 2025 in Seattle, where it was a great success.
An introduction, ten works of short fiction, and two novel excerpts
“Of Legacies and New Horizons” (Introduction) by Julie Nováková
“The Thanatos Mode” – Tom Hadrava
“A Flaw In The Works” – Julie Nováková
“Who’s Afraid Of Maushie?” – Tereza Matoušková (trans. by Melvyn Clarke)
“Mycelium” (excerpt) – Vilma Kadlečková (trans. by Lucie Mikolajková)
“The Hexagrammaton” – Hanuš Seiner (trans. by Julie Nováková)
“Ex Luna, Annihilatio” – Jan Kotouč (trans. by Isabel Stainsby)
“The Real One” – Petra Slováková
“The World Of Silver” – Tomáš Petrásek
“Book Of Forbidden Secrets” – Jakub Mařík
“Devil In The Deep” – Lucie Lukačovičová
“The Dragon Star” – Pavel Renčín (trans. by Darren Baker)
“The New Planet” (excerpt) – Martin Vopěnka (trans. by Anna Bryson)
“Authors and Translators” (Biographical essays and story notes_
Cover’s illustration by Radomil Dojiva
JULIE NOVÁKOVÁ (born 1991) is well-known Czech fiction and nonfiction writer, editor, playwright, translator, scientist (astrobiologist) and science communicator.
Julie Nováková has coordinated and edited, or co‑edited, six collective speculative‑fiction anthologies (four in English, one in Czech, and one bilingual/international), in addition to her own individual author volumes.
Below you will find the complete list of anthologies she has curated, followed by the structure of the historical project to which the fifth volume belongs.
Anthologies coordinated and edited by Julie Nováková
Terra Nullius (2015) — The only collective anthology edited by her exclusively in Czech.
Dreams From Beyond: An Anthology of Czech Speculative Fiction (2017) — Nová Vlna Publishing. The first major English‑language anthology dedicated to modern Czech SF.
Strangest of All (2020) — An English‑language anthology published by the European Astrobiology Institute, blending science‑fiction stories with scientific essays.
Life Beyond Us (2023) — Laksa Media Groups. Co‑edited with Lucas K. Law and Susan Forest. A major international astrobiology‑SF project in English.
From the Land of Robots and Golems: 21st Century Czech Speculative Fiction (2025) — Nová Vlna Publishing. Volume 5 of The Chronicles of Czech Science Fiction series.
Zpěv nesmrtelných / Song of the Immortals (2025) — An anthology focused on popularizing physics, published in the Czech Republic.
Julie Nováková — Chronological Bibliography (czech language volumes)
Zločin na Poseidon City (2009) — Crime at Poseidon City
Nikdy nevěř ničemu (2011) — Never Trust Anything [non-SF thriller]
Tichá planeta (2011) — Silent Planet
Bez naděje [Agent JFK #34] (2014) — Without Hope
Prstenec prozření [Blíženci #1/] (2015) — Ring of Insight / Gemini #1
Elysium [Blíženci #2] (2015) — Elysium / Gemini #2
Hvězdoměnci [Blíženci #3] (2015) — Star Nomads / Gemini #3
Terra Nullius (2015) — Terra Nullius (anthology edited by Nováková, but often listed among her major Czech‑language volumes)
Světy za obzorem (2018) — Worlds Beyond the Horizon (author’s short‑story collection)
700 exabytů nesmrtelnosti (2018) — 700 Exabytes of Immortality
Vyjednavač /The Negotiator [Žíravé duše #1 / Corosive Souls] (2025, with Jan Hlávka & Lucie Lukačovičová)
