![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.sfintranslation.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/twelve-romanian-anth.jpg\")
<\/figure>selected and introduced by Cornel Robu<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n Sedona Publishing House<\/strong> (Timi\u015foara, Romania)<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n 1995<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n more information about the anthology here<\/span><\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n Stories included<\/strong> (in order of original Romanian publication):<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIgor\u2019s Mannequin\u201d (1938) by Victor Papilian, tr by Virgil Stanciu<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cTristan\u2019s Last Avatar\u201d\/ \u201cThe Last Avatar of Tristan the Old\u201d (1966) by Vladimir Colin, tr by Mihaela Avr\u0103mu\u0163<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cLes Trois Gr\u00e2ces\u201d (1976) by Mircea Eliade, tr by Mihaela Avr\u0103mu\u0163<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe Judges\u201d (1976) by Mircea Oprit\u0326a\u0306, tr by Linda Harris-Marco\u015f and Ioana Robu<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAlgernon\u2019s Escape\u201d (1978) by Gheorghe Sa\u0306sa\u0306rman, tr by Virgil Stanciu<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe Neuhof Treaty\u201d (1980) by Ovid S. Crohm\u0103lniceanu, tr by Ioana Robu<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cPhenotype of Mist and Drops of Nothing\u201d (1981) by Mihail Gr\u0103mescu, tr by Linda Harris-Marco\u015f and Ioana Robu<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cModern Martial Arts\u201d (1982) by Alexandru Ungureanu, tr by Linda Harris-Marco\u015f<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cProsthesosaurs\u201d (1983) by Gheorghe P\u0103un, tr by Linda Harris-Marco\u015f and Ioana Robu<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOmohom\u201d (1987) by Cristian Tudor Popescu, tr by Ioana Robu<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe Shakespeare Variant\u201d (1988) by Silviu Genescu, tr by Antuza and Silviu Genescu<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHaustoria\u201d (1989) by Lucian Ionic\u0103, tr by Dana Andreea Chetrinescu<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n Twelve<\/em> is a remarkable anthology. Unfortunately out of print and difficult to find online, it is a testament to the talent and creativity of Romanian authors who have written speculative fiction since the 1930s, under the shadow of censorship. The names listed above are quite recognizable to Romanian readers, though Anglophone readers have not heard of most of them. This is mainly due to the stranglehold of communism and totalitarianism on the country that lasted from 1947 to 1989, when Romanians succeeded in overthrowing dictator Nicolae Ceau\u0219escu. As Twelve<\/em>‘s editor Cornel Robu says of Cristian Tudor Popescu’s “Omohom,” for example, the story “lingers in the reader’s intellectual memory by its desperate message sent from the no-way-out inferno which was Romania before December 1989 under the communist dictatorship.” Several of these stories remark obliquely on the destruction wrought in Romania by totalitarianism via social and intellectual control, much like Stanislaw Lem and the Strugatsky brothers’ work condemned similar political situations in Poland and Russia through the lens of science fiction, allowing them to dodge the censors.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n Just two of these stories take place off-planet, while the other ten explore ethical and scientific questions in the context of an evolving human society. Papilian, Colin, Eliade, Oprit\u0326a\u0306, and (to some extent) Sa\u0306sa\u0306rman all grapple with how power over the natural world or a deep understanding of human physiology and psychology can give those who wield it immense destructive capabilities. Gr\u0103mescu, Ungureanu, P\u0103un, and Popescu take as their central theme the unique threat that advanced technology poses to humanity; while Crohm\u0103lniceanu and Ionic\u0103 offer us works of body horror (as we call it today) in the context of alien\/viral invasion and biological manipulation, respectively. Finally, Popescu and Genescu set their stories somewhere other than Earth, even as they comment on problems of social engineering and technology that is easily applicable to our own planet. Below I go into more detail about each of these stories and their authors in the hopes that all of you reading this review and following Romanian SFT Month will seek out and read more Romanian speculative fiction in English (and in Romanian, if possible!).<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n * * *<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIgor\u2019s Mannequin\u201d <\/b>(1938)<\/b> by Victor Papilian, <\/b>tr by Virgil Stanciu<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n Papilian (1888-1956) was a professor of human anatomy at the Medical School of the University of Cluj. Considered a \u201cmainstream\u201d writer who also wrote sf, he was also a theater director and literary patron.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n “Igor’s Mannequin” is a chilling story about a mad scientist (Voronyuk) who kills convicts and captures the images of those they loved most in life just before death. The narrator, a friend and war buddy of Voronyuk, first hears his strange theories at a scientific congress: “memory was not a brain function, but a function of the sensors, of the eye, ear, nose, and skin required, no doubt, the guts of a poet or of a madman…According to him, visual images were stored in the eye-chamber (like slides in a projector), auditive images were stored in the ear (like songs recorded on score-sheets), tactile ones in the skin and so on. The brain was but a motor the only function of which was to flick these images on instantly, as needed\u2014just like a chessplayer handles his pieces, but at a cosmic speed\u201d (13). According to Voronyuk, \u201cwhen a man dies, the most endeared face remains engraved in his memory….the eyes are the venue of the memory of visual images and as a dear face has a material existence, a picture of it can be taken from the retina. I have construed a highly sensitive camera which, applied on the eye in the brief interval between being and nonbeing, takes a picture of that face, thus peremptorily proving my theory\u201d (15-16). As the narrator explains, Voronyuk becomes so obsessed with his theory that murder means nothing to him anymore, to the extent that he kills his own lover just to learn with whom she was having an affair.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cTristan\u2019s Last Avatar\u201d\/ \u201cThe Last Avatar of Tristan the Old\u201d (1966) by Vladimir Colin, tr by Mihaela Avr\u0103mu\u0163<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n also available in English:<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe Contact,\u201d translated by the author (Other Worlds, Other Seas, 1970).<\/em><\/span> Colin (1921-1991) was an sf author and editor, well-known abroad, especially in France. He wrote fairy tales, fantasy, and \u201cscience fantasy.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cTristan\u2019s Last Avatar\u201d is an intriguing nested story about a biographer (the narrator) researching the mysterious disappearance of a sixteenth-century French alchemist named Tristan le Vieux, who refused to turn a large amount of lead into gold for King Henry III of Valois. According to a contemporaneous biography of Tristan (which the narrator is reading), when the Swiss guards came to kill him on the order of the king, Tristan declares himself a free man and vanishes into thin air. We, the readers, are then transported into the place to which Tristan actually<\/em> escaped: the fourth dimension, which the alchemist had searched for his entire life. There, he is met by an old sage named Mirgh, who confesses that he has watched over Tristan’s work for years and guided him whenever possible. Mirgh gives Tristan the ability to visit his own past and future, and in the latter he witnesses the writing of his own biography by the very narrator who opened the story itself–a deft use of the mise en abyme<\/em> technique.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cLes Trois Gr\u00e2ces\u201d (1976) by Mircea Eliade, tr by Mihaela Avr\u0103mu<\/strong>\u0163 [also published in English in Tales of the Sacred and Supernatural<\/em>, 1981]<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n also available in English:<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cGypsies,\u201d translated by Ana Cartianu (Romanian Fantastic Tales, 1981 \/ Tales of the Sacred and Supernatural, 1981).<\/span> Eliade (1907-1986) was a historian of religion (comparative religion) and author of some of the most important works in the field. Eliade studied at the University of Calcutta from 1928-1931, and from 1956-1986, he was Professor of the History of Religion at the University of Chicago. Considered a \u201cmainstream\u201d writer who wrote science fiction and fantasy. According to Cornel Robu, Eliade \u201cextrapolates in a sciencefictional manner various hypotheses drawn from Indian doctrines and esoteric practices such as Yoga and Tantra.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cLes Trois Gr\u00e2ces\u201d was written in Paris and appears in its first English translation in Twelve<\/em>. According to Eliade (and noted by Robu), the author explores an idea he found in the “Apocrypha” of the Old Testament and transforms it into a mutant story. First introduced to this occult doctrine of Apocrypha by an old monk, Dr. Aurelian T\u0103taru comes up with a rejuvenation treatment that he gives to three old women suffering from cancer. Set in 1950s Romania, its people imprisoned behind the Iron Curtain and at the mercy of the Secret Police, the story picks up after the treatment is suddenly stopped and forbidden by government order. As one former colleague of his explains, \u201cT\u0103taru is alleged to have once said in public that, in Paradise, Adam and Eve were periodically regenerated, that is rejuvenated, through cancerous tumors. And that\u2014only after the original sin did the human body lose the secret of periodical rejuvenation, that is youth everlasting; and that ever since whenever the human body tries\u2014suddenly and strangely anamnestic\u2014to repeat the process, the blind proliferation of cancerous cells ends in malign tumor…\u201d (34). Dr. T\u0103taru destroys all his notes before moving to another hospital, while the three women are abandoned and condemned to grow old in the autumn and grow younger in the spring. When Dr. T\u0103taru meets up with a couple of old friends near the old hospital many years later, he dies under mysterious circumstances, which results in the Secret Police visiting his friend Filip Zalomit and questioning him in order to find out the secret to rejuvenation that T\u0103taru had discovered. We ultimately learn that T\u0103taru had encountered one of the Three Graces during her youthful period and was so terrified that he fell down a steep hill and died. Zalomit decides to commit suicide when the Secret Police come to him to demand the secret to rejuvenation.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe Judges\u201d (1976) by Mircea Oprit\u0326a\u0306, tr by Linda Harris-Marco\u015f and Ioana Robu<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n also available in English: <\/em><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSign of the Unicorn,\u201d translated by Cezar Ionescu, Gabriel Stoian and Pia Luttmann (Nemira \u201894<\/em>]<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n Oprit\u0326a\u0306 (b. 1943) was staff editor at Dacia Publishing House from 1972-74 and became secretary of the Writers\u2019 Union Cluj Branch and president of the Syndicate Association Writers in Cluj in 1995. He published five collections of sf stories, realistic novels, the first Romanian book-length study of H. G. Wells, and a massive study of Romanian sf from its origins to the end of the twentieth century (The Romanian Anticipation<\/em>, 1994).<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n
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\u201cBeyond,\u201d translated by ? (Edge, Autumn\/Winter 1973).<\/em><\/span>
\u201cWithin the Circle. Closer and Closer,\u201d translated by ? (Jurnalul SF #72-73, 1994).<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cTwelve Thousand Head of Cattle,\u201d translated by Eric Tappe (Fantastic Tales, 1969).<\/span>
\u201cA Great Man,\u201d translated by Eric Tappe (Fantastic Tales, 1969).<\/span>
\u201cMidnight at Serampore,\u201d translated by William Ames Coates (Two Tales of the Occult, 1970).<\/span>
\u201cThe Secret of Dr. Honigberger,\u201d tr by William Ames Coates (Two Tales of the Occult, 1970).<\/span>
The Forbidden Forest, translated by Mac L. Ricketts and Mary Park Stevenson (University of Notre Dame Press, 1978).<\/span>
Youth Without Youth and Other Novellas, translated by Mac L. Ricketts (Ohio State University Press, 1988).<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n