by Jason Sacks

We here at the Journey pride ourselves on our international reach and viewpoint. We have writers from across the world, and we love to read work from a full spectrum of countries.

While we've dabbled a bit with Eastern European and Soviet fiction, this has been a bit of a blind spot for this zine.So when The Traveller asked me to review a new anthology of SF from behind the Iron Curtain, I jumped at the opportunity.

Other Worlds, Other Seas is a new anthology of  science fiction stories from Socialist countries, published by prestige publisher Random House and edited by expert Darko Suvin. Suvin was born in the Yugoslav province of Croatia, and emigrated to Canada where he teaches at McGill University in Montreal.

Suvin still has deep ties to his native region, and has gained a reputation as one of the foremost critics and experts on SF from that area of the world. As part of that effort, Suvin has assembled a collection of fiction from some of the most prominent writers from that region.

As Suvin himself says, this is by design a quick overview. Other Worlds, Other Seas is only 200 pages long, so longer pieces were unavailable, as were stories from countries like East Germany for various reasons.

What Suvin compiled here is a classic mixed bag of stories. A handful of tales here are brilliant, a handful feel pointless. Allow me to break down that roster below.

Continue reading [July 16, 1970] Journey Behind the Iron Curtain, Journey into Space →