1978 – ORION #1 #2 #3 #4 #5, 1988-1990 issues (Romanian SF zine)

ORION science fiction art and literature zine was somehow my first true entry into science fiction when at the end of the 1980s, in the Romanian Southern city of Craiova at the local Lyrical Theatre and was really lavish in style (designed and layout by famous comic book artist and SF enthusiast Victor Pirligras). I could not wait to buy it at the local newsstand when I was visiting my grandparents in Ploiesti, back then it cost a small fortune yet affordable for everyone’s pocket money and I was completely blasted by its contents each time. Hard to describe the sentiment of reading – was keeping always article to read for later, to have the pleasure of discovering something new. The mutant hunter by V Pirligras was serialized and blew me apart with its labyrinthine and vast architectural assemblages. Many congrats to those who published it and those scanlaters who digitized it. This way I was able to include it in the Timpuri Noi: Xenogenze ale SF-ului show, especially the back cover of No 3 Orion with the headless, begging homeless robot drawn by V. Pirligras in 1983 and published in 1989.

Some technical details – it was made on a CoBra computer the only computer produced in the city of Brasov using a special ORION software coded by Liviu Cercelaru. It was made with the help of the Craiova-based Scifi club or cenaclu “Victor Anestin” (named after one of the pioneers of Romanian SF).

In two colors (black and red) it had a newspaper format and featured a lot of local comics book artist greats such as Victor Pirligras, Valentin Iordache and Marian Mirescu as well as for example the first (in my knowledge) serialization of Barbarella by J C Forrest. On 32 pages it had everything, including a lot of women authors (for those days), as well as SF criticism and SF studies by Dodo Niţă and V Pirligras – introductions to heroic fantasy, SF cinema etc Local SF greats as well as foreign names were present. A wide assortment from Asimov, J G Ballard to Gustav Meyrink, Richard Matheson, James Triptree Jr., Marion Zimmer Bradley, Ursula K. Le Guin, Olga Larionova, Michel Jeury, Liuben Dilov, Gustav Wahl, Constantina Paligora, Serge Brussolo, Anne McCaffrey, as well as Mihai Gramescu, Victor Martin, Radu Honga, Dragos Vasilescu and many more.

ORION issue #1 1988

ORION issue #2 1988

ORION issue #3 1989

1977 – bilingual EN/RO extraterrestrial publication of the New TEMPOrealities show (2021)

Here is the publication of the show with various critical, speculative, and theoretical texts related to the show.

This publication contains:

Stefan Tiron: Portals to New Temporealities: The Xenogeneses of SF

Ion Dumitrescu: No God in Cosmos

Steven Shaviro: Defining Speculation: speculative fiction, speculative philosophy and speculative finance

Mihaela Drăgan: Roma Futurism Manifesto Techno-witchcraft is the Future

Ralitsa Gerasimova: Galaxy Library: The Sci Fi Gem of the Socialist Bulgaria

Alin Răuţoiu: Invasion X

Irina Gheorghe: Foreign Language for Beginners

Centrul Dialectic/Mihai Lukacs + Bogdan Popa: Ice Money

Vilmos Koter: Help Message to the Universe

1493 – PLUTONICS: A Journal of Non-Standard Theory (2020)

Plutonics: A Journal of Non-Standard Theory is an open-access, sporadically published journal of contemporary theory. Coming from the geological term “plutonic” (which is, in turn, derived from the Roman God of the underworld, Pluto), meaning igneous rocks formed from deep geologic trauma and left to cool for thousands of years, often with traces of rare and weird metals, Plutonics aims to publish cutting edge theory that has no place within the ‘academy.’ With no real guiding thread but the Weird, we accept submissions from all disciplines (see more information) and actively encourage mixtures of philosophy, ‘hard’ science, poetry, visual arts, and other less-than standard forms of thought.

Vol XIII Contents

Vol XIII Contents

While there have been 12 published volumes of Plutonics, they have, sadly, been lost since The Event and although we are working on reconstructing them, this most recent run was started at the numeracilogically significant 13th volume. If you have any details regarding the existence of previous volumes, please contact us immediately.

Our review board is made up of geo-physicalists, philosophers, anorganic semoticians, structural bi0logists, and authors of the Weird and strange. When necessary, we commune with the ghosts of thinkers past to ask for guidance.

Following the general theme, or rather lack thereof, the journal accepts all types of submissions ranging from hard-nosed philosophic ramblings, to poetic musings on what it’s like to live without a spine. For those wanting concrete suggestions of what to submit, here is what one former editor suggested:

• ‘Serious’ engagement with the CCRU
• Deleuzian Beat Poetry
• Dolorous meditations on the anthropocene
• First-person accounts of philosophical epiphanies
• Self-help/Esoteric works
• Visual depictions of your communion with the Outside
• Meldings of Deleuze and Guattari with contemporary astro-physics
• Revivals of ‘disproven’ scientific theories
• Esoteric Posadism
• Etc.

From their submission page:

We welcome any and all submissions ranging from ‘rigorous’ theoretical thinking to erotic short stories to video games to artwork to anything else. 

General Guidelines:

• Written works should be somewhere between 1,000 and 5,000 words, but this is a malleable rule.
• To aid in editing, we prefer that citations be formatted in Chicago Notes style (with an optional bibliography if notes do not contain complete information).
• Ideal file formats are .doc(x), .png., .jpg, but if you have alternative ideas, we can integrate those.
• Please include a 1-100 word biography (can include social media links, blogs, etc.).