The following is an excerpt from Dempow Torishima’s 2018 book Sisyphean. It is the second chapter of the title story “Sisyphean.” Be sure to also check out our interview with author Dempow Torishima. Translation by Daniel Huddleston 1 When the on-site disassembler came to the synthorgan factory carrying his packing case, he stared for a moment […]
Translated by Edward Gauvin The bicycle is an ancient model, deliberately picked for its thick, heavy frame and pedals, bare of rubber cover, whose serrated ridges as the hours go by cut first into callus, then the flesh of feet that press upon them. The crankset, big as a gear from a belfry clock, is covered in the […]
Translated by Edward Gauvin It was like a gigantic pyre rising from the center of the gray, argil plain. A colossal intertwining of branches atop which the city seemed bizarrely unbalanced, with its towers broader at the base than the summit, its keeps oddly narrowed toward their crenellations, such that from a distance they might be taken for […]
After you read this story, check out our interview with translator Erik Simon for some background on it and Alfred Leman. Translated by Erik Simon From Der unsichtbare Dispatcher (Berlin, 1980). Kioshi Tokito and Anatol Bykov are plodding over the black sintered tuff. They are silent. There are some things to be discussed, but right now they prefer just […]
It’s pretty rare to see science fiction from Germany much less from the German Democratic Republic (aka East Germany). Today we’re featuring a weird scifi story called “Two Episodes” from GDR writer Alfred Leman (1925 — 2015). This story combines two episodes from Leman’s second short story collection, Der unsichtbare Dispatcher. We asked translator Erik Simon, a German science […]