Terra Nova: An Anthology of Contemporary Spanish Science Fiction

by Mariano Villarreal

  I smile at the landscape of the Peridier crater, as we approach it. The sun rises dusty, but not my future. Red on red.

  “I’m going to meet you now, my love,” I whisper into the night, wrapped in clouds of dust and the scent of vinyl. “I’m going to meet you now.”

  Original Title: Memoria

  Translated by Lawrence Schimel

  Science fiction from Spain is completely unknown outside its borders. Actually, this statement is somewhat exaggerated, since literature from Spain has been exported relatively often (and with occasional success) to a variety of Latin American countries (and vice versa) thanks to a shared language and cultural references. Yet we can hardly find books by Spanish authors in the English-speaking market. Fortunately, this situation is changing as science fiction in the United States and other countries is opening up to other cultures, united by means of the great social network that is the Internet.

  Without hesitation, I can offer plenty of examples to show that Spanish science fiction is excellent literature that would interest readers in English-speaking countries or anywhere else on the planet. It contains works of enormous literary and speculative quality with a wide variety of themes and subjects, and with internationally famous authors and its own classics. Over time, it has constantly evolved toward higher levels of excellence, professionalism, and social acceptance, and today it holds a small but stable portion of the national publishing market, despite the current economic crisis.

  Nevertheless, it is true that science fiction in Spain has not reached the popularity and relevance that it enjoys in other countries. While there are many reasons for that, most analysts say the main ones are the overwhelming importance of realism, the traditional discrediting of genres in general by critics, and the repressive effect of the Franco dictatorship. When democracy began to open up Spanish culture in 1975, speculative fiction and more literary science fiction enjoyed a notable opportunity to flourish, resulting in greater interest by society, critics, and academics. An authentic explosion of publications, authors, and works followed, most of which have become reference points for our writers after so many decades of imitating foreign works. Science fiction achieved what we could call its Spanish Golden Age at the end of the 1990s.

  However, this bubble —like so many others— largely deflated at the start of the new century due to limitations inherent in the Spanish market. Many of the writers left the genre or alternated between more commercial genres such as young adult and historical novels, or fantasy or cult speculative fiction, with notable success both in readers and awards. This is the current situation.

  In Spanish science fiction today, you can find new editions of successful titles, new books by young writers seeking to reclaim its social relevance or entertainment value, and new works by acclaimed writers. They all coexist in harmony and relative normality in bookstores, universities, forums, public events, and cultural supplements in newspapers and magazines, although the space dedicated to the genre is still relatively small.

  1. Two Classics and Ten Authors

  Just as there is no complete consensus —although there is a general agreement— for designating Frankenstein by Mary Shelley as the first science fiction novel, there is also no uncontested event to mark of the start of the modern era of the genre in Spain. For some it was when the legendary magazine Nueva Dimensión appeared at the end of the 1960s; with its 148 issues published over 15 years, it brought outstanding works to a still-naive public readership. For others it was the 1984 publication of the first modern Spanish SF classic: the novel Lágrimas de luz [Tears of Light] by Rafael Marín.

  This work, written with a polished lyrical style, a disillusioned tone, and an attractive medievalized high technology background, narrates the life of the bard Hamlet Evans, a troubadour hired by an economic-military corporation to extol the virtues of the conquest of space and to erase the memory of its excesses and crimes. The novel occupies a place of honor in the history of Spanish science fiction, since its unarguable literary merits are united with its status as the first work that aimed at being universal. It broke Spain’s long-standing inferiority complex.

  Soon after, in 1988 and 1990, two novels consolidated the definite maturity of the genre in Spain: Mundos en el abismo [Worlds in the Abyss] and Hijos de la eternidad [Children of Eternity] coauthored by Juan Miguel Aguilera and Javier Redal, which were later combined into a single book: Mundos en la eternidad [Worlds in Eternity]. This hard science fiction epic is set in the remote future, in Akasa-Puspa (literally “the flower in the sky” in Sanskrit), a global cluster in one of the spiral arms of the Milky Way where the short distance between the stars allows for quick travel in manned Imperial fusion ships or the slower but equally effective self-directed solar sail mercantile ships of the Utsarpini or religious caste of the Brotherhood. In Akasa-Puspa, humans coexist with alien species like the extremely bellicose Angriffs, the enigmatic Hivers, or the strange nested creatures of the Little Guild. This vast cosmic background in a state of permanent conflict is the setting for scientific discoveries and an ingenious commerce system of unmanned ships, for disputes over political and economic interests, and for several wars. The novel was written with careful scientific and speculative rigor, incorporating the latest theories in biology, evolution, cosmology, and eschatology. It has been justly compared to classics like The Mote in God’s Eye by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle or Ringworld by Larry Niven.

  Both these masterpieces of Spanish SF are still awaiting a publisher who will dare to translate them to English. But besides these, many writers have contributed valuable works to the genre. For reasons of space, we will only look at ten of them:

  Rafael Marín, born in Cádiz in 1959, is an English teacher and translator. Besides Lágrimas de luz, his outstanding speculative works include the epic fantasy La leyenda del navegante [The Legend of the Navigator] in 1992; his tribute to superhero comics Mundo de dioses [World of Gods] in 1997; the Holmes-style pastiche Elemental, querido Chaplin [Elementary, My Dear Chaplin] in 2005; the medieval alternative history Juglar [Jongleur], which won the 2006 Ignotus and features the greatest hero of the reconquest of Spain from the Moors, Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, “El Cid”; a horror story set in his native Cádiz, La ciudad enmascarada [The Masked City] in 2011; the young adult novel Oceanum [Oceanum], written with Juan Miguel Aguilera, in 2012; and, above all, his two exceptional short story collections, Unicornios sin cabeza [Headless Unicorns] in 1987 and Piel de fantasma [Ghost Skin] in 2010, which reflect his concern for style and his efforts to make local references and create original, sensitive, and extraordinarily provocative stories.

  Juan Miguel Aguilera, born in Valencia in 1960, is a graphic designer; Javier Redal was born in Valencia in 1952 and teaches science. The importance of Mundos en el abismo and Hijos de la eternidad has already been mentioned. Other books set in the same universe followed: in 1994, the Ignotus-winning En un vacío insonable [In an Unfathomable Emptiness]; in 1994, the Ignotus-winning El refugio [The Refuge]; in 2011, Némesis [Nemesis]; and a handful of magnificent short stories comparable to the world’s best science fiction, such as the 1996 Ignotus-winning novelette “El bosque del hielo” [“The Ice Forest”]. Aguilera went on to have a successful solo career with works published in France and Italy, where he has won important literary awards. These include novels like the 1998 Ignotus-winning medieval alternate history La locura de dios [The Madness of God]; and in 2008, the magnificent Rhila, about the possible discovery of America by Muslims; along with El sueño de la razón [The Sleep of Reason] in 2006, and the 2009 thriller La red de Indra [Indra’s Net]. He is passionate about science and travel novels, and his works transmit like few others the sense of wonder so characteristic of science fiction.

  Elia Barceló was born in Elda, Alicante, in 1957, and is a professor of Hispanic literature at the University of Innsbruck, Austria. She is the most outstanding female writer in the genre in Spain: Spanish science fiction’s leading lady. Her 1989 collection Sagrada
[Sacred] brings together her most relevant shorter works from the 1980s, and her 1995 anthropological novelette El mundo de Yarek [Yarek’s World] won the UPC award and serves as a landmark. Although she has not completely abandoned the genre, her later work leans toward the more literary side of speculative fiction with titles like El vuelo del hipogrifo [The Flight of the Hipogriffe] in 2002; El secreto de orfebre [The Goldsmith’s Secret] in 2003; and Corazón de tango [Tango Heart] in 2007. The horror novel El contricante [The Opponent] in 2007 was followed by the young adult books Cordeluna in 2007 and Hijos del clan rojo [Children of the Red Clan] in 2013. She has also published academic works analyzing Julio Cortázar.

  César Mallorquí was born in Barcelona in 1953 and is a writer, publicist, and journalist. His 1995 short story collection El círculo de Jericó [The Jericho Ring] brought together a handful of stories considered among the best ever written in Spanish science fiction —exceptional stories that won both awards and recognition. His 1996 novella “El coleccionista de sellos” won the UPC award: set during the Spanish Civil War, it marked a new landmark in Spanish science fiction. Mallorquí was one of the first to jump into young adult literature with a number of speculative fiction works that deservedly won the genre's most important prizes: La fraternidad de Elhwaz [The Eihwaz Fraternity] in 1998; Las lágrimas de Shiva [Shiva’s Tears] in 2002; Leonís in 2011; or La isla de Bowen [Bowen’s Island] in 2012, an exciting adventure written in the style of Jules Verne and with explicit tributes to the works of Arthur Conan Doyle.

  Rodolfo Martínez was born in Candás, Asturias, in 1965, and is a computer programmer. He is one of Spain’s most prolific writers and probably the author who has won the most awards in the genre. With a transparent style and a special willingness to experiment and change registers, his works fall into every subgenre of speculative fiction. Several years ago he also took on the role of publisher for Sportula. Among his best-known works are the cyberpunk novels La sonrisa del gato [The Cat’s Smile] in 1995 and El sueño del rey rojo [The Red King’s Dream] in 2004; the ambitious space opera Tierra de nadie: Jormungand [No-Man’s Land: Jormungand], which won the 1996 Ignotus award; the unclassifiable Este relámpago, esta locura [This Lightning, This Madness], which won the 1999 Ignotus; the 1999 thriller El abismo te devuelve la mirada [The Abyss Looks Back at You]; the 2011 mythological novel Sondela; and two urban fantasies, Los sicarios del cielo [The Heavenly Assassins], winner of the 2005 Minotauro prize, and Fieramente humano [Fiercely Human], which won the 2011 Ignotus award. He has also written several Sherlock Holmes pastiches with a fantastic bend; another series featuring a character somewhat like James Bond in an alternate universe with unique physics includes two novels, El adepto de la reina [The Queen’s Adept] in 2009 and El jardín de la memoria [The Garden of Memory] in 2011. His short fiction has been collected in Callejones sin salida [Blind Alleys] in 2005, Laberinto de espejos [Labyrinth of Mirrors] in 2011, Horizonte de sucesos [Event Horizon] in 2011, and Porciones individuales [Single portions] in 2013.

  Javier Negrete was born in Madrid in 1963 and teaches Greek. He is one of the best stylists of the genre, with a marked preference for the classics and epic stories. This is apparent in the artistic skills displayed in his novels like the Las miradas de las furias [The Gaze of the Furies], which won the 1997 Ignotus; or the alternate history Alejandro Magno y las águilas de Roma [Alexander the Great and the Eagles of Rome], which won the 2007 Ignotus, in which he portrays nothing less than a face-off between the best military strategist in history and the incipient Roman Empire. He also wrote an epic fantasy trilogy with science fiction echoes: La espada de fuego [The Sword of Fire] which won a 2003 Ignotus; the mythological Señores de Olimpo [Lords of Olympus] in 2006, which won the first Minotauro Prize; and Atlántida [Atlantis] in 2010. He currently combines writing speculative fiction novels with historical novels, his specialty.

  Félix J. Palma, born in Sanlúcar de Barrameda, Cádiz, in 1968, is a writer whose dedication to short fiction has earned him more than a hundred prizes since the early 1990s. His elegantly-styled stories about everyday life are marked by absurdities and humor. His short works have been collected in El vigilante de la salamandra [The Salamander’s Guard] in 1998; Métodos de supervivencia [Means of Survival] in 1999; Las interioridades [Innermost Beings] in 2002; Los arácnidos [Arachnids] in 2004; and El menor espectáculo del mundo [The Smallest Show on Earth] in 2010. In 2008, he earned widespread fame with his first novel, El mapa del tiempo [The Map of Time], which won the Ateneo of Seville prize. It is the first part of a Victorian trilogy that pays tribute to the works of H.G. Wells, and rights to it have been sold in twenty-two countries. The second part was El mapa del cielo [The Map of the Sky], published in 2012, and the series should end in 2013. He has also edited the 2012 anthology Steampunk: Antología retrofuturist [Steampunk: A Retrofuturist Anthology], which includes some notable stories in the subgenre.

  León Arsenal was born in Madrid in 1960 and is a writer whose indispensable short story collection Besos de alacrán [The Scorpion’s Kiss] won the 2000 Ignotus award. His epic fantasy novel Máscaras de matar [Masks to Kill] won the 2004 Minotauro award. An African alternate history novel, Bula Matari, written in 2000 with José Miguel Pallarés, features a Zulu warlord who faces the all-powerful Carthage Empire. Since then, he has almost entirely left the genre to dedicate himself to historical novels and thrillers.

  Eduardo Vaquerizo was born in Madrid in 1967 and is an aeronautic engineer. After writing many short stories and some novelettes in the 1990s, in 2005 he published the novel Danza de Tinieblas [Dance in the Darkness], a brilliant and imaginative alternate history in which the Spanish empire forged in the 16th and 17th centuries lasts until 1927, the year when the book takes place. The second part, Memoria de tinieblas [Memory of Darkness] was just published in 2013. In addition, in 2009 he published the novel La última noche de Hipatia [The Last Night of Hypatia], a beautiful and tragic story of love across time framed by the city of Alexandria at the end of the 4th century. Vaquerizo is a stylist capable of both short and long works, intimate stories, cyberpunk, surrealism and hard science fiction.

  Victor Conde, born in Santa Cruz de Tenerife in 1973, is a systems programmer. He began writing pulp space operas, and in 2002 he published his ambitious El tercer nombre del emperador [The Third Name of the Emperor], the first title in his Multiverse saga. After that he published Mystes [Mystes] in 2005; Crónicas del Multiverso [Chronicles of the Multiverse] in 2010, which won the Minotauro prize; and the young adult novels El dragón estelar [The Stellar Dragon] in 2007; Heraldos de la luz [Heralds of Light] in 2010; and its sequel, Heraldos del bien y del mal [Heralds of Good and Evil] in 2012; a steampunk novel Los relojes de Alestes [Alestes’ Clocks] in 2010; the fantasy El teatro secreto [The Secret Theater] in 2008; and the horror novels Naturaleza muerta [Still Life] in 2009 and Hija de lobos [Daughter of Wolves] in 2011. His style shows a marked tendency toward adventure, hard science fiction, and metaphysics.

  Other outstanding writers include: Domingo Santos, pioneer in the introduction of science fiction in magazines and specialized story collections, and author of the SF classic Gabriel, published in 1962, which narrates the saga of a robot in search of its identity. Gabriel Bermúdez Castillo, author of such classics as Viaje a un planeta Wu-Wei [Voyage to a Wu-Wei Planet] in 1976 and El señor de la rueda [The Lord of the Wheel] in 1978. Miquel Barceló, known for editing specialized story collections and the driving force behind the UPC prize, as well as the author of the well-known book, Ciencia ficción: guía de lectura [Science Fiction: a reader’s guide] in 1990. José Antonio Cotrina, author of various young adult fantasies and some notable cyberpunk novellas, who is known as the Spanish Neil Gaiman. Ramón Muñoz, without a doubt Spain's best short story stylist. Ángel Torres Quesada, who wrote a multitude of pulp novels in the 1970s, most of them in the series Orden Estelar [Stellar Order]. Eduardo Gallego and Guillem Sánchez, very popular for their humor. Manuel de Pedrolo, author of the post-apocalyptic
bestseller Mecanoscrito del segundo orden [Mechanoscript of the Second Order] in 1984. José Carlos Somoza, Sergio Mars, Carlos Saiz Cidoncha, Juan Carlos Planells, Armando Boix, Carlos F. Castrosín, Daniel Mares, Santiago Eximeno, Juan Antonio Fernández Madrigal, Carlos Pavón, Joaquín Revuelta, José Ramón Vázquez, Lola Robles and a long list of other outstanding writers. In addition, some authors occasionally enter the genre, such as Torrente Ballester; Tomás Salvador, author of the classic La Nave [The Ship] in 1959; José María Merino; Rosa Montero; and Eduardo Mendoza.

  2. The Publishing Market

  According to a recent study, more than two hundred science fiction titles are published each year in Spain, and the production of speculative fiction overall —counting fantasy, horror, and other sub-genres as well as science fiction— reaches about a thousand different books. Half of these are originally written in Spanish and the rest are translations, mostly from English-speaking countries. Only one-fourth of them are e-books. Three out of four are new publications, and most are published as paperbacks. Only one out of ten is written by a woman. As far as sub-genres, space opera is the most popular, although dystopias can easily be found (mostly in young adult), alternative histories, military, post-apocalyptics, steampunk, cyberpunk, futuristic thrillers, voyages through space and time, near-future, post-human, genetic manipulation, clones, mutant viruses, and more.

  The current economic crisis has reduced print runs, although this downward trend could be observed earlier. In the 1970s and 1980s, it was common to find mass market print runs for the general public that reached ten thousand copies, but in the 1990s these dropped to two or three thousand —except for more commercial works and authors, which could reach five thousand copies. At the beginning of the 21st century, the number dropped to a thousand, and now publishers who supply production information report press runs of eight hundred copies on average: modest numbers for a market that has not found a way to exploit its potential export into Europe and South America.