A spark of reality in literary dystopia

Literature translated from Turkish into German usually deals with contemporary historical topics and is critical of society. Publishers select works for translation based primarily on German media debates. Genre literature, which is often seen as purely entertaining, has a tough time, crime novels aside. 

Translations from genres such as fantasy, horror, or science fiction are virtually non-existent, a problem which applies not just to Turkish literature but to almost all literature from outside the West. Translations from English or other European languages are popular; translations from Turkish, Persian or Arabic are almost unheard of. 

What the German literary world is missing out on is illuminated by the anthology ‘Über den Wolken und andere Geschichten – Science-Fiction aus der Türkei’ [Above the Clouds and Other Stories – Science Fiction from Turkey], edited by Ünver Alibey, translated into German by Inci Asena German and published by Memoranda Verlag in Berlin in October. After a collection of South Korean science fiction, this book is the publisher's second project to look into (in Germany) little-explored literary realms. 

It is a minor sensation: a slim volume of almost 180 pages and eight stories, it is the very first collection of Turkish science fiction to be published in Germany. Editor Alibey has focused on texts by authors who write exclusively in this genre. He wants to give as good an impression as possible of what drives the Turkish science fiction scene. 

Among the authors are several who have received awards in recent years, including Semin Güven, who won the Turkish Informatics Society Science Fiction Contest in 2021 and Tolga Aydin, whose story won the 2018 Future Science Team prize. Unfortunately, the anthology itself does not tell us anything about the authors, as the publisher has chosen not to include short biographies. 

In the opening text, "The Incident in the Recovery Unit", Semin Güven paints a picture of the future as we know it from Hollywood: a highly technological humanity lives on platforms above the no longer habitable planet in a depoliticized environment and indulges in hedonism. The Earth has been devastated by several nuclear wars. People no longer have goals or ambitions; instead, they let themselves be entertained and pass the time. Long ago, when the earth was destroyed, people were frozen in order to save them for the future. Every now and then, such people are thawed out and given an introduction to their new reality. But no one has thought about the fact that some of those thawed out might not like it at all. And so, disaster takes its course.

The appearance of a better future

The story that gives the collection its title, “Above the Clouds” by Funda Özlem Şeran, is the longest at around forty pages and one of the strongest in the book. In a future Istanbul, which due to a lack of digitalisation exudes a certain 1970s atmosphere, a dentist leaps to his death from the Bosporus Bridge after suffering terrible nightmares. Something not uncommon in our reality since the early 2000s, is a scandal in this future because neither violence nor dissatisfaction exists in this social order. Consequently, no one kills themselves – or should even come up with the idea. 

A police officer investigates the mysterious case and comes across a whole series of strange deaths which have been written off as accidents by his colleagues but on closer inspection show similarities. Then he himself begins to suffer from inexplicable nightmares and suspects that his supposedly ideal world is nothing but a huge web of lies. 

This is something that these two stories have in common with several others in the volume: they are set in a supposedly better future, where people have left the evils of earlier times behind them, but this proves to be a mere façade, often controlled by repressive systems. For some readers, this is reminiscent of present-day Turkey, where the façade built by politicians and enforced by repressive means has little to do with the reality of people's lives. This dystopian reference to the present is not a uniquely Turkish element, but universal to the genre. 

The most impressive and at the same time most disturbing text is Selin Arapkirli's short story “Please Do Not Disturb”. The text is vividly told in the second person and takes the perspective of a young woman who is brutally forced to look behind the scenes of her own seemingly ideal world. When she is just twelve years old, she is taken to an island where she is supposed to be well looked after and have her every wish fulfilled. Instead, she is locked in a room for 13 years, where supposed clean-cut politicians abuse her unrestrainedly as a sex toy. 

The references to similar scandals in Islamic-run children's homes in present-day Turkey are obvious, but even without this background, the story unfolds with incredible literary and emotional heft. In the end, the plot turns and becomes a well-thought-out story of revenge which symbolically strikes back on behalf of all children and women who have suffered a similar fate. 

Typically Turkish science fiction?

Names and settings aside, these stories often do not correspond to any explicitly Turkish reality or literature. Whether this is good or problematic, whether representative or due to the selection, is not to be evaluated here. They are worth reading, that is ultimately what matters. 

At the end of the book, Özgür Tacer examines the history of Turkish science fiction, from the Ottoman Empire to the present day. He notes that the genre – like many others, with the exception of the inevitable crime thriller – has a hard time in Turkey, perhaps even harder than in the rest of the world. He identifies Ziya Pasa's story “The Dream”, which appeared in the newspaper Hürriyet in 1869, as the first Turkish science fiction text. 

According to Tacer, the genre as a whole received little attention until a few years ago, and translations of genre pieces from other countries were often sloppy. This combination earned science fiction a reputation as trash literature, suitable at best as entertainment for children. This is a problem well-known in Germany; it was only with the help of the internet that a new genre scene emerged. Given the strong texts in this book, hopefully the international audience can look forward to further translations. 

Above the Clouds and Other Stories – Science Fiction from Turkey 

Edited by Ünver Alibey; translated from Turkish by İnci Asena German 

Memoranda Verlag 2024 

184 pages, 23 euros