Written by Kat Jivkova
“There is no true Eastern European equivalent of the science fiction genre,” proclaims Peter Nicholls’ Encyclopaedia of Science Fiction. First published in 1979, Encyclopaedia enjoyed literary acclaim, winning the Locus, Hugo and British SF Awards for Best Non-Fiction Book. Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine claimed that Nicholls successfully assembled the works of every contemporary science fiction writer “of any significance,” while Library Journal praised its contents for possessing the most comprehensive collection of science fiction “than any other English-language publication to date.” Its breadth of coverage extends to Eastern Europe, though the sole Bulgarian entry in this anthology, Anton Donev’s Why Atlantis Sank, is not even considered a science fiction piece by Nicholls’ standards. This viewpoint is contested by Canadian author John Robert Colombo, who travelled to Sofia in 1980 for the capital’s Third International Writers’ Meeting, and experienced firsthand the country’s science fiction tradition. In this brief study, I contrast these two accounts of Bulgarian science fiction to demonstrate the lack of knowledge that the West possessed in Bulgarian science fiction during the 1980s. I use Maria Todorova’s concept of Balkanism as my framework in understanding Western perceptions of Bulgaria, which exists as a distinct discourse from Orientalism.
Communist Bulgaria’s preoccupation with technology manifested in its rich science fiction tradition, which flourished in the country’s final two decades of socialism. Ljuben Dilov, considered one of the most famous science fiction writers in Bulgaria, challenged the boundaries between person and machine, writing, “What is it to be a man when there are so many machines?” His works questioned whether technological advancement truly benefitted society, which was especially relevant given Bulgaria’s status as the Eastern Bloc’s “Silicon Valley” in this period. Indeed, Bulgaria was the leading exporter of computer technology to COMECON states, producing almost fifty per cent of computing devices used in the Eastern Bloc by the 1980s. In response to these developments, Bulgaria’s intellectual classes formed a new discourse centred on the implications of technology in the new age. One of Dilov’s earlier works, Path of Icarus (1974), tells the story of a community who lives on a starship, Icarus, made from an asteroid. In his novel, Dilov introduces the following law into Icarian society: “A robot must establish its identity as a robot in all cases”. Here, we see Dilov’s direct confrontation of the ethical dilemmas which surround artificial intelligence. By contrast to the limitations faced by humanity, technology, and robots in particular, had infinite potential – Dilov considered this a threat. Similarly, author Nikola Kesarovski built on Dilov’s new law in his collection of short stories titled The Fifth Law of Robotics (1983). One of these recounts a successful writer being killed by a robot, who had not initially declared himself as one under police investigation. Thus, Bulgarian science fiction can be characterised by the blurring of machine and man in the new age, and the frightening conditions that this could produce.
As mentioned, little attention has been paid by Anglophone scholars to Eastern European science fiction in the late twentieth century, let alone Bulgaria’s own tradition. To my knowledge, Jaak Tomberg’s comparative study on science fiction tradition in the Anglo-American and Eastern European contexts is the only work which sufficiently distinguishes Eastern European science fiction from its Western counterpart, with its focus being the 1980s. In this period, Tomberg argues, the science fiction genre was sympathetic toward technocratic ideology – this refers to the concept of a small group of individuals, motivated by scientific principles rather than power, governing the population. While the Anglo-American tradition unquestioningly channelled technocratic rhetoric, Eastern European science fiction shed light on the ethical implications of doing so. For instance, Anglo-American science fiction spent comparatively little time problematising the changing relationships between humans and technology in contrast to Eastern European modes, pre-1989. Dilov’s writing certainly supports this sentiment. These ideas are not reflected in the Encyclopaedia, which instead claims that Eastern European science fiction was influenced by “a familiarity … with the literary conventions of Anglo-American science fiction,” most prominently contained in the utopian and absurdist genre. This echoes the traditional view of science fiction history, which supposes that it spread from the West to the rest of the world. It is important to note here that Bulgaria was not necessarily viewed as the “West”. Todorova’s seminal work, Imagining the Balkans, describes the Balkans as “the other” within Europe, based on its historical association with the Ottoman Empire, and violent tendencies motivated by irredentist pursuit in the twentieth century. With this in mind, science fiction, according to Nicholls, diffused into mainstream Bulgarian literature from the West, which is not necessarily true.
Western conceptions of Bulgarian science fiction barely existed in the late twentieth century, and the simple reason behind this was because they were barely known. Nicholls admits that Darko Suvin’s anthology, Other Worlds, Other Seas, “is one of the very few sources available in the West about Eastern European science fiction,” and further states that “so little of it [Bulgarian science fiction] is available in the West”. Certainly, Suvin’s collection was one of the only English language publications which featured Bulgarian science fiction. Nicholls expresses doubt that Donev’s story can even be categorised as science fiction, though I substantiate that it definitely can. Why Atlantis Sank is a humorous story in which a High Priest struggles to comprehend that two times two equals four – he initially sentences a slave-mathematician to death for maintaining this belief, before killing anybody else who agrees with him. Atlantis’ Tsar even begins to worry that nobody would be able to pay taxes because the city of Atlantis becomes so depopulated. The High Priests ends his narrative by concluding that, if two times two truly equals four, it is the end of science, the world and Atlantis; the next day, Atlantis sinks into the sea. Not many interpretations exist of this literary work, but I argue that it reflects the difficulties of welcoming scientific progress because of its ability to threaten, or disprove, traditional beliefs. Despite not initially appearing so, this fits within the genre of science fiction.
Colombo’s brief study of science fiction in Bulgaria also admits that “little known in the West, nauchna fantastika [science fiction] flourishes in Bulgaria today.” However, he endeavoured to change this during his personal travel to Bulgaria’s writing convention in 1981. Colombo personally met Dilov on a number of occasions during this visit, in the presence of a translator. He describes Dilov, alongside the older writer Pavel Vezinov, as “the twin supernovae of Bulgarian science fiction.” He later substantiates that Bulgaria’s science fiction has established itself in the mainstream of the country’s reading and writing, enjoying a large readership. Therefore, his optimism for the Bulgarian science fiction is far more apparent than in Nicholls’ Encyclopaedia. Colombo’s interest in Bulgaria can be attributed to Colombo’s personal attachment to the country, one of his close friends being from there. Thus, we see that the difference in Nicholls’ and Colombo’s interpretations of Bulgarian science fiction can be largely attributed to the latter’s direct experience with Bulgarian science fiction. In contrast, Nicholls only had access to a Bulgarian short story from an anthology produced by another author.
Dilov once told Colombo: “Bulgarian science fiction is in the tradition of Bulgarian literature generally, in trying to persuade the public to keep philosophical ideals alive.” This coincides with Tomberg’s argument that Eastern European science fiction more generally gravitates toward philosophical ethics in its writings, and rightly so. There are certainly many Bulgarian works of science fiction that may not appear to be a part of the genre until Western definitions of science fiction are challenged. Georgi Gospodinov’s most recent novel Time Shelter, is an example of this. Contrary to Anglo-American media platforms, I would describe this novel as a dystopian mystery with a science fiction twist. It won this year’s International Booker Prize, making it the first-ever Bulgarian-language novel to do so. Gospodinov’s impressive achievement has certainly attracted the public’s attention toward the possibilities of Bulgarian literature, and we can only hope that this continues in the near future. It is my hope that, following the success of this novel, Bulgaria’s science fiction tradition will feature more prevalently in future scholarship.
Bibliography
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Clute, John, and Peter Nicholls. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction / Edited by John Clute and Peter Nicholls; Contributing Editor, Brian Stableford; Technical Editor, John Grant. London: Orbit, 1993.
Donev, Anton. “Why Atlantis Sank”. In Other Worlds, Other Seas, edited by Darko Suvin, 111-114. New York: Random House, 1970.
Herbert, Rosemary. “The Science Fiction Encyclopedia.” Library Journal. Library Journals, LLC, 1979.
John Robert Colombo. “Science Fiction in Bulgaria (La Science-Fiction En Bulgarie).” Science-fiction studies 8, no. 2 (1981): 187–190.
Petrov, Victor. “Communist Robot Dreams.” Aeon. [Online]. [Accessed on 20 November 2023].
https://aeon.co/essays/how-communist-bulgaria-became-a-leader-in-tech-and-sci-fi
Scithers, George H., and Darrell Schweitzer. “SF Encyclopedia The Science Fiction Encyclopedia Peter Nicholls.” Bioscience 31, no. 1 (1981): 76–76.
Stanway, Elizabeth. “Technocracy and Scientism in SF.” University of Warwick; Cosmic Stories Blog. [Online]. [Accessed on 20 November 2023].
Tomberg, Jaak. “Eastern-European Science-Fictional Space through the General Representability of the Other.” Interlitteraria 16, no. 1 (2011): 269–287.
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