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    João Barreiros, Portuguese Writer, Editor, Translator and Critic Interviewed by Cristian Tamas

    João Barreiros

    Cristian Tamas : Is Europe the last continent that the portuguese have discovered ?

    João Barreiros : Europa remains to be discovered. We are, I believe, enclosed in a kind of a black hole where not even light can enter. Much less books. We don’t know nothing at all about European SF. Not even spanish SF, and they stand right around the corner. Not a single gender book written by a french, german, italian, polish writer gets published or translated. There is a kind of a anathema when we suggest anything by a french author to a publisher. They turn very pale, shed a tear or two, and they answer with trembling voices: My dear fellow. No one wants to read stuff by a guy with a french name on the cover…

    So Europe remains a great unknown. There were two major foreign book importers but they went down the river a few years ago. The portuguese bookshops are empty of gender books. And the publishers just don’t care. If, by any chance, an European SF book appears in the market, the sales are just awfull. See what I mean?, the gentle publisher exclaims. I’m right! Just forget it!

    Cristian Tamas : I don’t know if you’re aware of, but we have the same concept in the romanian culture and language for “saudade1 (“a deep emotional state of nostalgic or profound melancholic longing for an absent something or someone that one loves”). We’re calling it “dor1 ! Isn’t it amazing that two neo-latin nations at the extremities of Europe, one facing the Atlantic Ocean and the other facing an Ocean of Slavs, are sharing a common concept reflecting a common weltanschauung and that without cultural and human contacts ?

    João Barreiros : We still cling to the past as if the past was ever good or perfect. As a matter of fact, it wasn’t. We had forty years of a mellow dictatorship. Books got censored, daring scenes from films were cut, people were forbidden to write about delicate matters. Even almost innocent books like the “War of the Newts” published in our old and now extinct, “Colecção Argonauta” (Argonaut Collection) was censored by the “Thought Police”. And before that, there was the Inquisition. No way to escaped that. No one could ever hoper for better times, because there was no future. “Fado”, the longing for things past, was a way to convince people that being poor, and sad, and nostalgic was the only option.

    The better option.

    Listen: most people hate science and turn to religion. Fatima and the so called “apparitions”, calls every year for thousands and thousands of people. They go to the Sanctuary, on their knees, hurting like hell, believing that the indifferent Cosmos will help them after a pain sacrifice. Believing that we still live in an Aristotelic Universe, and that God resides in the seventh sphere. Is this strange? What about the new generations? Have they forgotten the Past? Have the moved on? Nope. They read (those who still read) juvenile medieval fantasies and Harry Potters lookalikes.  Science? Aliens? Weir ecosystems? The horror! The horror! Better a dragon. Better a spell!

    And still, I miss the future. I miss the aerocars and the jetpacks. It really is a kind of saudade for things that will never come.

    Cristian Tamas : Romania and Portugal are the two neo-latin countries that faced incredibily long periods of dictatorship : Romania for 52 years (from 1938 until December 1989, suffering all possible types of dictatorship – royal dictatorship, fascist dictatorship, military dictatorship, communist dictatorship) and Portugal for 48 years (28 May 1926-25 April 1974). Is just a coincidence or there is something in the neo-latin cultures that creates democracy weaknesses as in Spain (the military dictatorship of Miguel Primo de Rivera for 6 years and the francoist dictatorship for 39 years) and Italy (fascist dictatorship for 21 years) ?

    João Barreiros : In our case, that the main problem was religion. Obey. Comply. Be still. Don’t think. Saying “no” is bad for your health. Behave. Don’t think, we will think for you!

    I my mind, those in power, hate SF is a kind of resistance. A way of breaking windows. But that does not explain all.

    Poland, Czechoslovakia, were themselves under the iron boot for years and years. And still, in the last few years, they developed good hard sf writers.

    Not the case in Portugal. Not a single author has risen to fight the complacent darkness. And now we are under the spell of a new kind of ditactorship: the political correct one. We are under the  spell of the “mainstream” literature. If you write a book about your sick brother, your dying father, the banality of everyday life, that book wins prizes. Lots of prizes. TV interviews. That’s what the publishers love, that’s what it really sells. Not the plot. Not the ideas. Only the style.  Precious words are good. Ideas are bad. Always the tyranny of your belly button. I’m afraid that there is no way out.

    Cristian Tamas : Fernando Pessoa, Jose Saramago, Manoel de Oliveira… Aren’t they the giant oak trees under which almost nothing could grow ?

    João Barreiros : No, Cristian. As a matter of fact almost no one reads them. Of course, they must be studied by the poor kids in school. But not a single one of them has read “The Memorial of the Convent” from the beginning to the end. They only read resumés, and that’s that… Pessoa is for the academics. Volumes to put on your shelves just to show off.

    Manoel de Oliveira movies are so awful that no one dares to say aloud “that the king goes naked”. The only explanation is that Portugal is a poor country. So, if that State can only finance a single movie, that movie must be made by Oliveira. No author wants to write like Saramago, no movie director wants too make films like Oliveira. Do you want to suffer, Cristian? Do you want to scream in horror for hours and hours of gentle suplice? Then I recommend that you go see “Non ou a vã glória de mandar” (No, or the Vain Glory of Command) by Manoel de Oliveira.

    Cristian Tamas : Is the portuguese speculative fiction syncronized with the portuguese mainstream and the portuguese culture, sharing the same characteristics – mythology, symbolism, social and political issues – or is just subserviently following the anglo-saxon commercial and escapist junk trends (fantasy/dark fantasy, steampunk/dieselpunk, weird, slipstream, young adults dystopies, alternate realities, etc.) ?

    João Barreiros : No, not at all. The people who read mainstream do not read us. We just don’t exist. We are nothing. And yes, you are right in a way. The few portuguese authors who write romantic fantasies the do so in a similar vain of the few books that get translated. Those interested in steampunk, only care about clothes, not the books. New Weird, slipstream, hard SF, Dieselpunk, alternate history, what’s that? The new readers are not political. They are just kids. Forever.

    Cristian Tamas : Portuguese SF&F is a terra incognita not only in Romania but also in Europe and in the world. Why is it so ? For example there is no “Portugal” monograph in the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/) …

    João Barreiros : Because none of our few works was ever translated into french. My friend Luis Filipe Silva promised, years and years ago, that he will write an article about Portuguese SF. An article promised to John Clute’s SF Encyclopedia. Recently he told me that much expected article was finally written and sent to Clute. We shall see what we shall see.

    Cristian Tamas : How you characterize the Portuguese science fiction ? What’s its unique voice ?

    João Barreiros : Dear Cristian:  Awful news. There is no Portuguese SF. Really. None at all. The few books that were written by Portuguese authors, are now lost forever in the distant past destroyed by the massive gravity of the black hole where we live. No chance of getting them republished. They are not that interesting. Trivial stuff, full of pacifist humanism. None of them pretend to be aggressive, ironic or dystopic.

    Remember: forty years of dictatorship does that to people. It drains the hope for a future where everything will be different.

    In the present days, when some publisher tries to edit a thematic anthology (with lovecraftian or retro pulpish stories) most of the contributors  (some of them very young) stay away from the future and technology as if the matter was something nasty, incomprehensible. It’s only natural. The only thing they read is medieval fantasies, most of them juveniles, and that’s what they want to write about. Stuff they are familiar with. Twenty years ago all the publishers that really published SF went down the drain, became extinct like the Dodo. Twenty years is an abyss of time, a new generation of readers. Readers that have never read a single SF book. Maybe because the books are no longer available. Or maybe they just don’t care.

    Cristian Tamas :Why are you so sardonic in your writing, why are you attracted by satire and black comedy ? Is this reflecting the absurd of the human existence, the lack of any real objective, the impossibility of the moral and ethical evolution of the human species ?

    João Barreiros : Being sardonic is the Portuguese way. If you can’t change things, why not laugh at them? Yes, human life is absurd. The cosmos is cruel for the little people.

    Le plus grand mange le plus petit, c’est cruel mais c’est la vie.

    Entropy rules the waves. The center cannot hold, and all that. And because there is no other way to fight this sadness of things lost, I like to write about terrible things that will come very soon. About how difficult it is to deal with monsters (either humans or aliens).

    But the Portuguese are known to survive even in the worst circumstances. To laugh at the tragedy of existence.  To joke about it. We have a term that defines us as a people: “desenrascanso”. It means something like this: always find a way to be on top. By all means available. So yes, all my stories are filled with horror. A kind of horror that you can joke about. And take immense pleasure in doing nasty things to my characters.

    Cristian Tamas : What is the status, if any, of the Portuguese Science Fiction & Fantasy within the Portuguese culture ? Is it considered just genre junk as in the rest of the european continental countries ?

    João Barreiros : As I said before, we are completely invisible. Critics never review our books. In the academic world SF books are never studied in classes. And if by any chance something appears in the TV, we are always connected with the literature for kids.

    Let me tell you a short horror story: in illo tempore, when I was a kid, I took a test at The Institute of Professional Orientation. My parents, in despair, wanted to know if I was good for anything. In that test, I was asked about my literary interests (I was 14). Evidently I said that I liked SF. I told them that I read Van Vogt, Simak, Bradbury, Bester. After the test was concluded, there was an evaluation of my mental capabilities. Tsk, tsk. Reading kid stuff, shame on me, stuck in the age of twelve forever…. My mother, in tears, asked the psychologist: What shall I do, what shall I do to save him? And the good doctor, with kindness in his hearth, raised a finger towards me and answered: Still reading Verne? Don’t worry, mother of João. He will grow out of it. Soon. He will be an adult and never read SF again. I promise!

    Cristian Tamas : What is the status in Portugal of the Portuguese SF&F writer and of the Portuguese editor and scholar interested by the local domain of the imaginary ? Are there in Portugal, literary critics and theoreticians focused on SF&F, or only reviewers ? Do you have a literary canon in Portugal ? Who is establishing the literary canon ? The Portuguese Academy or some influent literary critic/s ? What about Portuguese fantastic literature (literatura fantástica portuguesa), it exists ?

    João Barreiros : It does not exist. No scholar is interested in what we write. As a matter of fact, there aren’t enough books written in Portuguese to create a critical mass. The SF literary critics went belly up when the SF publishers disappeared from the market.

    The few times I was interviewed, they usually looked at me like I was an alien from Tau Ceti.

    And here is another horror story from yours truly: I wrote a steampunk/cyberpunk book about H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, Dr, Moreau, John Carter, Edgar Rice Burroughs on Mars in the aftermath of the Martian invasion.

    I went to the TV to talk about the book. By a couple of young interviewers that had never read “THE WAR OF THE WORLDS”. They didn’t even know that once there was a guy called Wells. They thought, and insisted, as if the mistake was mine, that the writer of the “War of the Worlds” was indeed Orson Welles.

    Cristian Tamas :How would you describe the Portuguese SF&F scene between 2000-2015 ? Writers, titles, publishers, magazines, fanzines, anthologies, collections, sites, clubs, self publishing, digital format, etc. ? In average how many Portuguese SF&F titles are published yearly ? What’s the average print run ? And how many translated SF&F titles ? What’s the average print run ? Is any printed SF&F magazine existing ? What about the online SF&F magazines ? Any SF/F conventions or festivals and SF clubs and associations ?

    João Barreiros : Well, Forum Fantastico is by now the most literary and serious Convention. We meet yearly. Back in the nineties, about 36 SF books were published every year.

    The fall of the towers ended that. The future crashed. Books stoped being published. Readers are few, the publishers say. How many copies of a single book were sold? Not many.

    In a country of ten million souls, no more than seven hundred copies per single book were sold. Or even less than that. So who cares? Today not a single Hard SF book sees the light of the day in our sunny shores.

    Of course some medieval fantasy and kids fighting against dystopias still appear in the market. Maybe twelve books a year? But I don’t read them. Have pity in poor old little me! Those who still read SF, do that with the help of auntie Amazon. But I think my friend Rogerio Ribeiro is more capable of answering that, mostly about what gets published online.

    Cristian Tamas : Has anything from the portuguese SF&F been translated into english, french, german, spanish, italian, etc. ?

    João Barreiros : My “A verdadeira invasão dos Marcianos” (The Real Invasion of Martians) was published in Spain. My short novel “A bondade dos Estranhos” ( The Kindness of Strangers) was published in Brasil. Some of my short stories appeared here and there, in France, Italy, Servia, England, USA, and now Romania, right? I really don’t know about any other authors.

    Cristian Tamas : Are there any histories of Portuguese SF&F or overviews or panoramas or articles available in the main international languages ? Or other english/french language studies written by portuguese scholars ?

    João Barreiros : I don’t really know. Maybe Rogerio or Luis Filipe Silva could answer that.

    Cristian Tamas : Can a Portuguese SF&F writer just make a living only by writing ?

    João Barreiros : Ah! I wish. Most of the times, when they publish something I’ve written, I never get paid. Everything is pro bonum. We are slaves of the system.When I do get paid, I have to wait a year to see how many copies were sold. And I only get paid a small percentage of those. There is no way to really know if the are lying to us, if they have sold more copies. They have always the same excuse: slow sales, no one cares, the bookshops hide the books in the juvenile shelves, or in the computer programs section, or…well…you know…  Seven hundred copies, tops. That amounts to nothing. Newspapers and magazines certainly pay better. They pay for a short story almost the same amount of money I’ve received for a 600 pages book, with all my novellas. But that happens once in a lifetime.

    Cristian Tamas : What do you recommend to our readers from the Portuguese SF ?

    João Barreiros : Will I be to much forward when I say: please read my books ! Just because you can’t find any other guy who writes SF in Portuguese in Europe… Cross my heart and hope to die. This is a true story.

    Cristian Tamas : You’re also an editor in Portugal. Allow me to kindly ask why did you choose only anglo-saxon SF writers as Iain M. Banks, William Gibson, Peter Straub, Dan Simmons, A. A. Attanasio. Stephen R. Donaldson, Nancy A. Collins, James Blaylock, etc. Aren’t there any other relevant SF writers in Europe and in the world ? SF&F is only an anglo-saxon phenomenon ? Or is it just an anglocentric approach ?

    João Barreiros : Yes, there are. And I did want to translate French authors, but the publisher, when I spoke of Michel Jeury, for example, went pale around the gills and said no, no, not the French. I received exactly the same kind of answer from two distinct publishers. There really must be a nasty meme floating around.

    The other problem mentioned is that no one here, in Portugal,  knows anything about Polish or Czech language. Who will translate them for a mere pittance? But this seems to be a universal constant.

    Today, who dares to translate Jacek Dukaj, after the “Ice” catastrophy?   But remember, in those golden days, now gone forever, I was only the guy who organized the collections. I had not the last word in the matter. And do you think editors care? They don’t. Do you think they love SF? They don’t. One of them, that shall forever remain nameless, when he chose me to this painful task, thought that I was going to chose kid stuff books for all the familiy, in the vain of “Back to the future”. Imagine the horror when I put the translated and finished version in his hands of Brian Aldiss’s “Hothouse”. He tried, he really tried to give the book to his ten year old son.

    Cristian Tamas : “The consequences of the trade imbalance between the AngloSFere – 5% of the humans  – and the Rest of the World : 95% of the humans – are diverse and farreaching. By routinely translating large numbers of the most varied English-language books, foreign publishers have exploited the global drift toward American political and economic hegemony in the postwar period, actively supporting the international expansion of Anglo-American culture. This trend has been reinforced by English-language book imports: the range of foreign countries receiving these books and the various categories into which the books fall show not only the worldwide reach of English, but the depth of its presence in foreign cultures, circulating through the school, the library, the bookstore, determining diverse areas, disciplines, and constituencies—academic and religious, literary and technical, elite and popular, adult and child. British and American publishing, in turn, has reaped the financial benefits of successfully imposing Anglo-American cultural values on a vast foreign readership, while producing cultures in the United Kingdom and the United States and other native anglophone countries (the 3% countries – only 3% of the total yearly published titles are translations, literature representing less than 1%) that are aggressively monolingual, unreceptive to the foreign, accustomed to fluent translations that invisibly inscribe foreign texts with English-language values and provide readers with the narcissistic experience of recognizing their own culture in a cultural other.” – Prof.Dr.Lawrence Venuti, Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA ; Isn’t that the definition of “cultural imperialism”, the result being mass malinchism and mankurtization of the “Rest of the World” ? Globalization means in fact americanization ?

    João Barreiros : In my humble case, I read what I love to read. I don’t care if the author is Spanish, French, Italian, German or anglo-saxon. As long as it is a good book. And I do read in Spanish, French and English. When I try German or Polish authors, I have to wait for a English or French translation. Which are very rare, or almost inexistent. But the fault is, also, in the hands of Portuguese publishers. They don’t even try to sell our books in the Amsterdam Book Fair. They don’t like to spend money into trivial, shameful stuff. For that they have to translate at least a piece of our books, and that costs money. More money that the have paid us in copywrite. As I said before, we are nothing, we don’t exist, we are as volatile as smoke, just because we are not mainstream writers, with beautiful belly buttons.

    Cristian Tamas : “SF remains bound up with the hegemony of Anglophone culture, which now includes the former colonies of the US and the UK. The notorious lack of interest in non-hegemonic cultures means that written SF that is not written or translated into English has a limited influence. Non-US science fiction tends to reproduce the characteristics of the US-dominated international style, while supplementing it with messages directed to local audiences. The main breakthroughs of SF art in the future will probably arrive via internet artforms, but one cannot say for certain whether these will be genuine alternatives to the Anglo hegemony or expansions of it.” – Prof.Dr.Istvan Csicsery-Ronay Jr., De Pauw University, Indiana, USA ;  Will Earth become an “All-Americana” planet, speaking pidgin “inglish”, consuming just anglo junk ?

    João Barreiros : I hope not. I love reading in French. The melody of the words is completely different from English language. And I love writing in Portuguese. I can do things with it that I cannot do in English or in French.

    Cristian Tamas : What do you think about the „vernacular” languages and „vernacular” literatures’ future ? Will they resist to the mcdonaldization of the world ? Will portuguese language resist the anglo-globalization of the world ?

    João Barreiros : I don’t really know. Portuguese have words that just don’t exist in other languages. We are talking about the Babel Syndrome here. Although I can understand Spanish, the Spanish people cannot understand Portuguese. Different brain wiring, I’m afraid. And the Brazilians just don’t understand a book written in Portuguese. When my “Bondade dos Estranhos” ( The Kindness of Strangers) was published in Brasil, the written text had to be completely redone.

    Ian McDonald recently wrote a book about lunar colonies (“Luna: New Moon”), some of them brazilian ones. But he got all the words, names, expressions wrong. For example: he associated the term “saudade” with the Bossa Nova Music. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. “Saudade” has nothing to do with Bossa Nova. “Saudade” belongs to FADO, which is a Portuguese song. I love his books, but this time reading “Luna” was a pain, because of these conceptual gaps. Especially when he concocted small phrases in “McDonald’s Portuguese”, all of them incomprehensible. I mean, the words were there, but they sound like a lazy google translation of an English phrase. The true meaning of them was a semantic void. And yet, and yet, I loved the miscellaneous pidgin language (French, English, Spanish) that Norman Spinrad did in his “Void’s Captain Tale”.

    Cristian Tamas : What do you know about the euro-continental SF&F ? Or about any other non-anglo-saxon SF&Fs ?

    João Barreiros : I try to follow the French authors. And the Spanish. And some of the translated Russians and Germans. But I really, really wanted to read Jack Dukaj and I just can’t. Shame on me.

    Cristian Tamas : Kindly address some words to the EUROPA SF ! Thank you !

    João Barreiros : Thanks for spending some time reading me, folks. We are a few, but we all stand together, defending a genre that we all love. Tomorrow is ours. We will get there, for better or worst. We all feell saudades of that future that will come someday. And keep reading good books !

    Cristian Tamas : Thank you very much for your time and frank answers !

    Interviewer’s Notes :

    1“At a first glance, apart from their Latin heritage, Portugal and Romania don’t appear to have much in common. In fact, Portuguese and Romanians share a common cultural and historical matrix that dates back to the origins of the European civilization: the Roman Empire. Given the dissimilar historical contexts in which the two nations have evolved, it might seem far-fetched to seek any resemblance as far as national identity is concerned. However, surprising similarities may be found at the deepest level of cultural identity. Both Portuguese and Romanian peoples have un-consciously and separately created a symbol of cultural identity though the notion of longing: the Portuguese saudade and the Romanian dor respectively. A monograph could be easily written about the meanings and the variants of the word dor, just as one might be written about the richness and the affective nuances of the word saudade. Moreover, a foreigner cannot write a page of impressions on Portugal without using at least once the word saudade; likewise, there cannot be a book or an article on Romania without the word dor appearing immediately, in the first lines or on the first pages.”- Mircea Eliade

    2 “Luna: New Moon : Ian McDonald has already said in interviews that his new novel Luna: New Moon is ‘‘Dallas on the moon’’. The story largely concerns the powerful Corta family, originally from Brazil, ruled by the fierce but dying matriarch Adriana Corta. Her first-born son and heir, Rafa Corta, is a hothead, the Sonny Corleone of the novel; his younger brother Lucas, calmer and a better tactician, is more Michael Corleone. The Cortas are effectively at war with the “Mackenzie Metals” family, originally from Australia.”

    João Manuel Rosado Barreiros (born July 31, 1952), also known by the pseudonym José de Barros, is a Portuguese science fiction writer, editor, translator and critic. He graduated in Philosophy from the University of Lisbon in 1977, and has been teaching it in high school since 1975. His experiences in education eventually led him to write a semi-autobiographical satire titled “O Teste” (The Test) in 2000.

    Barreiros’s writing style, influenced by that of Robert Silverberg and James Tiptree, Jr, is distinctively sardonic and shows a marked tendency towards satire and black comedy.

    João Barreiros – “A verdadeira invasão dos marcianos” (The Real Invasion of the Martians).

    His plots frequently employ unlikeable protagonists in dystopic settings, where they are faced with the brutality of everyday life and are often thwarted by their own actions in the end. The stories tend to offer extremely graphic depictions of violence, and utterly reject political correctness and its icons — Walt Disney and Sesame Street are frequent targets of derision by Barreiros, for example, and he has gone so far as to cast Big Bird analogues as the principal antagonists in “A verdadeira invasão dos marcianos” (The Real Invasion of the Martians).

    João Barreiros – O caçador de brinquedos e outras histórias/The Toys Hunter and Other Stories (collection, 1994)

    Some of Barreiros’s work has been translated into English, Spanish, French, Italian and Serbian.

    João Barreiros – “A bondade dos estranhos: Projecto Candyman”/The Kindness of Strangers: Candyman Project (2007)

    He has twice won the Brazilian Nova Award, offered by fans to the best foreign short story published in South America, for “Um Dia com Júlia na Necrosfera” (A Day With Júlia in the Necrosphere, 1992) and “A Arder Caíram os Anjos” (The Flaming Angel Fell,  1994).

     

    João Barreiros – “Uma noite na periferia do imperio”/A Night At the Perifery of the Empire ; Se acordar antes de morrer/If You Wake Up Before He Died (collection)

    João Barreiros’s book and film reviews have appeared in publications such as “Público”, “O Independente”, “Ler” and “Os Meus Livros”. The mercilessness of Barreiros’s criticism earned him a reputation among Portuguese science fiction fans, and his titanium nib fountain pen gained legendary status as a result.

    “Lisboa no ano 2000″/Lisbon in the Year 2000 – an anthology edited by João Barreiros 

    During the 1980s and early 1990s, Barreiros edited two science fiction and fantasy labels for Editora Clássica and Gradiva. Among the writers he introduced to a Portuguese audience are Iain M. Banks, William Gibson, Peter Straub, Dan Simmons and A. A. Attanasio. Publishers usually balked at Barreiros’s unorthodox picks, and so books like Stephen R. Donaldson’s “Lord Foul’s Bane”, Nancy A. Collins’s “Sunglasses After Dark” and James Blaylock’s “The Last Coin” were translated but never published.

    João Barreiros – “2 fabulas”/2 Fables

    Barreiros also co-founded Simetria” — Portuguese Science Fiction and Fantasy Association in 1995 (he later broke from it, in 1999), and The Portuguese Association for the Fantastic in the Arts in 2005.

    João Barreiros & Luís Filipe Silva -Terrarium: Um romance em mosaicos/Terrarium: A Novel In Mosaics 

    Bibliography

    Duas fábulas tecnocráticas/Two Technocratic Fables (collection, 1977)

    O caçador de brinquedos e outras histórias/The Toys Hunter  and Other Stories (collection, 1994)

    Terrarium: Um romance em mosaicos/Terrarium: A Novel In Mosaics (with Luís Filipe Silva, 1996)

    Disney no céu entre os Dumbos/Disney in Heaven Between Dumbos (2001 [online], 2006 [print])

    A verdadeira invasão dos marcianos/The Real Invasion of Martians (2004)(2004)

    A sombra sobre Lisboa/The Shadow over Lisbon (contributor, 2006)

    A bondade dos estranhos: Projecto Candyman/The Kindness of Strangers: Candyman Project (2007)

    Se acordar antes de morrer/If You Wake Up Before He Died (collection, 2010)

    Lisboa no ano 2000/Lisbon in 2000 (editor and contributor, 2013)

     

    http://bibliowiki.com.pt/index.php/Jo%C3%A3o_Barreiros

    Cristian Tamas

    Cristian Tamaș is a romanian editor, essayist, translator and SF fan active within the speculative fiction domain since the beginning of the 80s. 

     He is a founding member of the Romanian Science Fiction&Fantasy Society (SRSFF = Societatea Română de Science Fiction&Fantasy, www.srsff.ro/) since January 2009,  he’s a member of the jury of the SRSFF Ion Hobana Awards (http://www.srsff.ro/premiile-srsff/), 
    he coordinates ProspectArt (http://www.srsff.ro/cenaclul-prospectart/), the SRSFF’s SF club relaunched in April 2009 in Bucharest (Romania), the yearly Ion Hobana Colloquium (http://www.srsff.ro/colocviile-ion-hobana/), Fantastica, the online SFF magazine of SRSFF ( http://fantastica.ro/) and EUROPA SF, the pan-european portal dedicated to the support and promotion of the European speculative fiction (www.scifiportal.eu).
    Fantastica http://fantastica.ro/), a non-profit online magazine is dedicated to the promotion and support for the romanian SFF and the European SFF (special dossiers dedicated to France, Italy, Spain, Germany, Netherlands, Czech Republic, Greece, Croatia, Bulgaria), the international SFF : Brazil, India and in the future Poland, Portugal, Ireland, Finland, etc..
     Anthology of The European SF_cover
    He is a member of the International Speculative Fiction site and magazine.
     Bella Proxima_antologie trilingva de SF croat
     He is co-editor with Roberto Mendes of ‘The Anthology of the European SF”, co-editor of „Bella Proxima”, a trilingual croatian SF anthology (english-croatian-romanian), together with Antuza Genescu and Aleksandar Žiljak (Eagle Publishing House, Bucharest, 2012), editor of the SRSFF yearly short stories collections “Alte Tarmuri” (Other Shores), “Pangaia” and “Bing Bing Larissa“.
    He had interviewed the SF writers David Brin, Cat Rambo, Jason Sanford, Nina Allan, Gérard Klein, Ugo Bellagamba (french SF author awarded with Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire & Prix Rosny ), Francesco Verso (italian SF writer and editor), the polish writer Jacek Dukaj, the Polish Editor and Writer Jerzy Rzymowskithe dutch writers and editors Jan J.B. Kuipers, Mike Jansen, Floris Kleijne and Roelof Goudriaanthe peruvian-finnish writer Tanja Tynjala, the czech writers Julie Novákováand Lucie Lukačovičováthe greek SF writers Michalis ManoliosPanagiotis Koustas, Kostas Voulazeris and Kostas Paradias,  Alexandre Babeanu (Prix Solaris awarded canadian SF author), J.S. Bangs (american writer), Heather Anastasiu (american fantasy writer), the scholars Prof.Dr.George Slusser (University of California in Riverside), Prof. Rachel Haywood Ferreira (University of Iowa), Prof. M.Elizabeth Ginway (University of Florida), Prof. Arielle Saiber (Bowdoin College, USA; research focus : italian science fiction), Prof.Sonja Fritzsche (Illinois Wesleyan University, Bloomington, Illinois, USA; research focus : german science fiction)Gloria McMillan, research associate (Ph.D. in English at the University of Arizona, USA), Lars Schmeink, Co-founder and President of the Gesellschaft für Fantastikforschung (Association for Research in the Fantastic, Hamburg, Germany), Prof. Dr. Domna Pastourmatzi (Aristotle University, Thessaloniki, Greece), Mariano Martín Rodríguez (SF scholar, Spain), Prof.Maria-Ana Tupan (University of Bucharest, Romania), the austrian writer Nina Horvath, the italian writer Debora Montanari, the croatian writer Mihaela Marija Perković, the hungarian writer Judit Lörinczy, the bulgarian SF writer and astronomer Valentin Ivanovthe European Science Fiction Society’s Boardthe romanian SF&F writers Marian Truță, Cristian Mihail Teodorescu, Dănuț Ungureanu, Liviu Radu, Sebastian A.Corn, Silviu Genescu, George Lazăr, Dan Doboș, Antuza Genescu, Cosmin Perța, Feri Balin, Diana Alzner, Aurel Cărășel, the romanian editor Mugur Cornilă, the romanian SF translators Mihai Dan PavelescuLaura BocanciosAdina Barvinschi, the romanian film critic Andrei Crețulescu.
    He wrote articles and essays on the British science fiction (“Rule Britannia”, serialized in Nautilus, romanian online SF magazine), French science fiction, German science fiction, Spanish science fiction, Italian science fiction, Dutch science fiction, Polish science fiction, Czech science fiction, Latin-American science fiction (focus on Brazilian SFF), Greek science fiction, Croatian science fiction, Bulgarian science fiction, and the speculative fiction from India.

     

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