Lectori salutem.
While autumn gradually settles over the northern hemisphere, the spirits of the Sci Phi crew are still warmed by fond memories of the 2026 EuroCon in Berlin, Germany.
We were particularly delighted that at the closing ceremony on 5 July, the SF community voted to award our co-editor Mariano the European SF Award for Translation for his lifetime contribution to bringing works of speculative fiction from oft-overlooked languages, from Romansch to Romanian, to a wider audience. As attentive readers may remember, the last time Sci Phi editors found themselves on the podium of laureates was in 2022, when the Journal won the Award for Best European SF Magazine.
The present issue you hold in your hands (or on your device) aims to continue in this spirit of building bridges between far-flung corners of our beloved genre. Original short fictions range from the micro, staring ecological calamity in the eye from the perspective of an ant colony (which also inspired our latest cover art by Dustin Jacobus), to the interstellar distances traversed by a space freighter, and from light-hearted explorations of calendar management on exoplanets to “computational beings” pondering the rules of the cosmic simulation.
We also continue publishing the missing vignettes of Săsărman’s Imaginary Cities cycle, hitherto unavailable in English. The anthology is rounded out by two essays on the works an old master of the genre, Borges, and a more recent voice of philosophical speculation, VanderMeer, respectively.
We hope you enjoy the reading journey, and encourage budding authors in your circles to take heed of our upcoming calls for submissions in late October and mid-January!
Speculatively yours,
Sci Phi co-editors and crew
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