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.
TimeSpace Warps 