Letter from the Editor

Science fiction explores the way we interact with technology and science, translating both the past and the future into different realities and offering us a distorted mirror view of our own present. Our hopes and fears have been passing through science fiction’s filter for a long time, and the genre has developed strong traditions parallel to the English-speaking one, and their coincidences are as striking as their differences.

Our sixth issue is dedicated to the power one can find in contemporary science fiction. This issue seeks to explore—on a global scale—the relationship between science, technology, and imaginative speculation. And so we’ve included five projects from around the world (one from just the other side of the border) to illustrate this exploratory melding.

Our own Pepe Rojo, teaming up with Alchemy staff members Lilibeth Moreno and Bryan Constantino, tackle micro sci-fi bursts from Tijuana, while Sergey Lukyanenko and translation team Paulina Duda and Jodi Greig offer a closer glimpse into these alternate worlds (from Russian and Polish, respectively). Another translation team, Ignacio Azcueta and María Pape, alongside Maximiliano Frini, bring a South American perspective to this issue’s mix, from Uruguay and Argentina.

Translation is about possibilities. The possibility to inhabit multiple worlds, tongues, and contexts. The possibility that a text can be embodied in different forms. This is what the work in this issue reminds us of: the mounting possibilities of language. And sometimes that language stems from other dimensions and alternate realities. We hope you find your own alternate worlds in this issue, new ways of embracing the unknown, the unsayable, the undeniable.

Paola Capó-García and Pepe Rojo, Editors