Eastern-European Science-fictional Space through the General Representability of the Other
Eastern-European Science-fictional Space through the General Representability of the Other

Summary/Abstract: The equally rich traditions of Anglo-American and Eastern-European science fiction have significant historical, ideological and individual differences, but rarely have they been comparatively, comprehensively set side by side: for example, Roger Luckhurst, in his thorough historical characterization and overview of science fiction (see Luckhurst 2005) focuses solely on its Anglo-American field, whereas Darko Suvin’s equally well-known chapter on Russian science fiction (see Suvin 1979: 243–269) draws only a few comparisons with its Western counterpart. This can, of course, be explained by the monumental size of the task at hand: the (Anglo-)American and Eastern-European traditions have had fairly separate histories, they have developed in radically different ideological contexts and inhabited separate lingual spaces and, especially in the earlier phases of their historical development, the interaction between the two was not particularly intense. Nevertheless, it is my conviction that both traditions – and especially the less explored and less thoroughly characterized Eastern-European one – would benefit from an initial comparative approach. An attempt at this is, precisely, the theoretical aim of the current article. With any luck, such a comparison could also reveal something characteristic about the generic tendencies of Science Fiction in general, and, finally, say something meaningful about the way fiction itself “works” with respect to reality.

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