Science Fiktion (The Seagull Library of German Literature)
Seagull Books:
New York: 2023
First English edition, Trade paperback, New,
231 pp.
“In seven interlocking stories, Science Fiktion offers a steampunk takedown of the logic of the Cold War. In this imagined future, two nations compete for global dominance: Uniterr, an exaggeration of the Eastern Bloc, in which personal freedom is curtailed and life regulated with cartoonish strictness; and Libroterr, in which the decadence of the West has been pushed beyond all reason. The stories follow three young citizens of Uniterr: Jirro, a young neutrinologist whose life is forever changed by a year spent abroad in Libroterr; Janno, a causologist condemned to a life of mediocrity in Uniterr's bureaucracy for the briefest of impure thoughts; and Pavlo, an inventor and a drunkard, whose mind pushes against the limits of what his world allows. Through these three lives, Fühmann gradually unfolds the contours of their bizarre world in a master class of understated world-making. As the reader is swept up in the madness of Libroterr's predator ads (which grab you on the street) and Uniterr's mandatory mind readings, Fühmann's dark comedy from the last century comes to seem all the more prescient in ours.” #76432
Price: $21.00