Kontakt: An Anthology of Croatian SF

by Tatjana Jambrišak (Editor), Darko Macan (Editor), Zoran Vlahović, Milena Benini, Aleksandar Žiljak

Overview

The original paperback edition of Kontakt was produced in conjunction with the 2012 the European Science Fiction Convention (Eurocon) in Zagreb, and given away free to members. It has never been generally available for sale. All of the stories in it are translated into English, with the intention of showcasing Croatian science fiction and fantasy fiction to the wider world.

Of the twelve stories in the book, two have already achieved recognition outside of Croatia. “The Corridor” by Darko Macan won the Lapis Histriae, an international short story competition open to writers from Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia and Montenegro. “Every Time We Say Goodbye” by Zoran Vlahović received an honorable mention in the 2013 Science Fiction and Fantasy Translation Awards.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940148288220
Publisher:	Wizard's Tower Press
Publication date:	02/11/2014
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	278 KB

About the Author

Tatjana is an editrix supreme, editing annual anthologies of Croatian prose for eighteen years now, along with a number of books on the side, yet this sometimes detracts from her accomplishments as a writer. Her very first published story, the award-winning "Duh novog svijeta" (Spirit of the New World), caused a stir right out of the gates by depicting a near-future Zagreb deserted by men and left to women. Tatjana tried to fence off the accusations of radical feminism - being an Aquarius she is a strong believer in equality - but the etiquette stuck. After collecting "Duh novog svijeta" along with other "Una Razum" novellas in a book, Tatjana seemingly apostated from writing SF, and her next five books were collections of brilliantly executed verse, short-form prose and non-fiction, with the sixth one a collection of unorthodox travelogues. However, the SF readers recognized her deep-rooted genre sensibility and awarded her poetry collection "Slova iz snova" (Dream Letters) with another (she won a total of five) SFERA award. Her stories and poems were translated and published in the English, German, French, Spanish, Bulgarian, Polish and Romanian language. Tatjana recently returned to longer form SF and is presented here with, for her, an unusually strongly plotted novella on the good life after the end of the world.

Darko was given an invaluable advice by a tall and ginger foreign gentleman at Eurocon: "When picking their own stories for anthologies, writers make mistake by choosing the ones they feel were underappreciated." So, in order to avoid this trap, Darko picked the story that won an international literary competition, wowing its non-genre judges. Not that Darko is lacking in recognition: he is a habitual SFera winner, he won two esteemed literary awards for best Croatian YA novels and even some awards for his work in comics. During his twenty-five years as a pro, he wrote a dozen books - "Texas Kid", "42" and a YA horror series "Neruševac" among them - thrice that many graphic novels (he spent a decade working for US publishers on licensed characters, from Star Wars to Captain America) and is probably responsible for kickstarting the generation of Croatian SF writers that this book introduces to you. The Croatian name "Darko" comes from a root meaning "gift", yet Darko works very hard at making everyone believe it originates from the English word "dark", as the little story that follows - called "kafkaesque" by others