Science Fiction Fandom is the newest festival in Sofia, bringing together sci-fi fans – in literature, cinema, manga, computer games and all things virtual. Bulgarians have always had a penchant for science fiction. The first SF fan clubs were set up in the country more than 50 years ago and have never ceased to hold an irresistible attraction for the young. Sci-fi writing competitions have been mushrooming. The oldest such contest is named after renowned writer Agop Melkonyan, the club in Stara Zagora is organizing a competition for sci-fi short story, based entirely on Bulgarian mythology.

“More and more people have been writing in this genre,” says Dilyan Blagov, chairman of the Ivan Efremov, a club in Sofia that goes back 40 years.

“There has always been a SF community – people who love sci-fi and who create sci-fi products but in our day we need clarity, we need to iron out our differences. To do that we decided to organize a festival together, with the idea of bringing together, in one place, different projects by different clubs and authors. In our day science fiction has spilled over into all spheres of life, art and the silver screen. And as it turns out, there are so many things that have to do with SF that different people can do together. To my mind science fiction in Bulgaria is a source of really interesting ideas, style, stories, everything readers hope to find in literature. The trouble is that Bulgarian sci-fi has remained invisible even for science fiction fans. Major publishing houses do not publish Bulgarian authors and the translations of works by non-Bulgarian writers are inundating the market, suffocating it. Nonetheless our authors have been keeping up a very high standard, there are two or three who are really and truly appreciated, mostly because their works offer a social angle as well.”

Organizing the two-day festival took two months, and the idea came from the two e-magazines – Troubadour Coven and Shadow Dance. And as work on organizing the festival went ahead more and more people said they wanted to take part in Science Fiction Fandom. As Zhoro Penchev from the organizing committee says, the most difficult thing of all was to select the participants – they all wanted to take part on a volunteer principle and show their support for Bulgarian sci-fi.

“It is our grand ambition to help young budding writers make a name for themselves. We created an online platform called Hypertext. It is brand new but in no more than a fortnight we received over 30 works. We want to see new ideas being born, ideas on a grander scale and to help young authors master the secrets of their trade and find their readership. Every story sent we have spotted a potential in, is given attention by a skilled editor. To this aim we provide adequate payment, professional work and layout for the published work.”

Budding authors are invited to monthly meetings at a well-known bookstore in Sofia by university lecturer Alexander Popov who has himself taken his first steps in literature and science fiction.

“We have endeavoured to bring in people of all forms of art. Sci-fi fans have all kinds of professions. I myself have been reading science fiction and fantasy books as well as gamebooks since I was 12 and that has shaped much of my taste. At the moment I am running a reading club in Sofia where we discuss science fiction. The club has now expanded and we often rent a hall to watch films. We choose the old films we want to watch which are not to be seen anywhere else.”

English version: Milena Daynova