Europarama

Uchronia refers to a hypothetical or fictional time-period of our world, in contrast to altogether fictional lands or worlds. A concept similar to alternate history but different in the manner that uchronic times are not easily defined, mainly placed in some distant or unspecified point in time, sometimes reminiscent of a constructed world.

In this episode Giuseppe Porcaro , Julie Novakova and Vilma Kadlečková experiment with the genre and they explore a universe where noble families still rule over Europe, feudalism never fell, and perhaps the Austria-Hungary Empire would still be alive. But most importantly, we are in the future, and royal families run the businesses, including space stations, and top notch research to find the source of eternal youth.

Vilma Kadlečková has written the comprehensive pentalogy Mycelium, a complex work in which humanity is merely a less advanced species within the universe. The majority of her works belong to the “Legends of Argenite” cycle. These are tales on the boundary of science fiction and fantasy, mapping the future history of the universe, which is similar to ours, but which contains “argenite”: a fictional mineral serving as a source of energy with psychotronic powers. Vilma received the Book of the Year award from the Czech Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror, and the Best Original Czech and Slovak Book of the Year 2013.

Julie Novakova is not only an author and a translator but also an evolutionary biologist and takes a keen interest in planetary science. She has published short fiction in Clarkesworld, Asimov’s, Analog and elsewhere. Some of her works have been also translated into Chinese, Romanian, Estonian, German, Filipino and Portuguese. She received the Encouragement Award of the European science fiction and fantasy society in 2013, the Aeronautilus award for the best Czech short story of 2014 and 2015, and for the best novel of 2015. She’s currently polishing her first novel in English and translating more Czech stories into English.

Giuseppe Porcaro is the author of DISCO SOUR, a novel about Europe and democracy in the age of algorithms, among the winners of the Altiero Spinelli Prize for Outrech of the European Union in 2018. Giuseppe is interested in how the intersection between technology and politics is moving towards uncharted territories in the future. He also focuses on narrative-building and political representations in the European Union. He works as the head of communications for Bruegel.