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 […]
This year marks the first time that The Twenty Days of Turin, written by Giorgio De Maria in 1975, has been translated into English. Its translation couldn’t be any more timely: De Maria’s novel, partly a reaction to the violent fascism that plagued Italy during the 1970s, perfectly reflects the bleak political landscape and uncertain times we find ourselves […]
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 […]
Translated by Marian Womack “The Ruins of Granada” (1899) is unique in that it is one of Spain’s first speculative fiction stories and its author, Ángel Ganivet (1865 — 1898), was known mostly for his “serious” writing which helped genre fiction enter the mainstream of Spanish literature. Early in the century, the distinction between “fantasy” and “science […]
Translated from German by Daniel Ableev and Sarah Kassem This summer at Weird Fiction Review, we’re featuring weird science fiction stories that we uncovered while doing research for The Big Book of Science Fiction. To kick off this series, we’re featuring a story by early-20th-century German writer Paul Scheerbart. Another one of Scheerbart’s stories, “The New Overworld,” appears in The Big Book […]