Sci Phi Journal

Still elated by Sci Phi co-editor Mariano’s European SF Translation award at the 2026 EuroCon in Berlin, we are happy to bring you this latest issue of the Journal. Our autumn edition strikes a pensive tone, with thought experiments and concept-driven short fiction tugging at problems related to states of transition, in-between places and the clash of worlds perhaps too different to bridge by communication.

The present issue is rounded out by two essays, on classical Borgesian ideas and a more recent work exploring the philosophy of care between mutually unintelligible beings. One of our short stories, “Our Home Is Safe” by Mark Ifanson, also inspired the cover art, hand-drawn by our resident artist Dustin Jacobus, who has a soft spot for ants.

Whether you like to peruse your quarterly dose of speculative philosophy printed on trusty old paper, or the slightly less old, but no less trusty screen of your e-reader, go ahead and download your free PDF copy just below.

We hope our collection of tales and essays will serve as a stimulating read for the fall months (or Southern Hemisphere spring) ahead!

Enjoy the journey,

the Sci Phi crew

With Northern hemisphere summer upon us, t’is time for the 2026 EuroCon in Berlin, where our magazine’s contributors will be represented across seven panel discussions and an art exhibition. To mark this annual festival of our favourite genre, Sci Phi Journal’s 2026 Q2 edition comes chock full of light-hearted, but hopefully still thought-provoking stories and essays, and a brand new cover art hand-drawn by our resident artist Dustin Jacobus for your viewing pleasure.

Whether you like to peruse your quarterly dose of speculative philosophy printed on trusty old paper, or the slightly less old, but no less trusty screen of your e-reader, go ahead and download your free PDF copy just below.

We hope our collection of tales and essays will serve as a stimulating read for the sweltering vacation months ahead!

Enjoy the journey,

the Sci Phi crew

Lectori salutem.

By the time you are reading this, balmy summer weather (or scorching heat waves) have enveloped Europe and the Sci Phi crew disperses for the vacation season. But not before the highlight of our annual sci-fi calendar: the 2026 EuroCon in Berlin, Germany, where on 2-5 July the old continent’s fandom of speculative literature and the fantastic arts gather for four days of non-stop geeky networking and bonding over our favourite speculative hobbies.

Sci Phi Journal is heavily involved in the programme, with our regular columnist Mina presenting on recursive time loops, cover artist Dustin exhibiting his work and talking about solarpunk, co-editor Mariano lecturing on the history of high fantasy, and Ádám chairing two panels, including that of SF magazine editors, and speaking on another three, from SF philosophy to post-Soviet science fiction.

In this sociable spirit, the present issue of Sci Phi is perhaps also more emotionally relatable than readers may be used to. Our fiction authors bring you stories ranging from the intimate and physical to the epic and incorporeal. They remind us that words have power, whether tattooed on the flayed skin of a traveller of multiverses or spoken hastily in the medical bay of a star freighter. But so do numbers, from universal constants that move worlds with each decimal shift, to the barely measurable flicker of the first halo to grace an alien brow.

These tales are flanked by two essays: one on reading the Book of Mormon as a masterwork of high fantasy, and another about the need for sci-fi ‘with heart’. (Hitherto not our customary editorial stance, as you may remark, but we are glad to introduce different perspectives.)

We hope you enjoy this literary journey, and look forward to encountering some of our readers and authors in person at EuroCon, to confabulate either at our various panel discussions by day or over a stein of Teuton ale under the night sky.

Speculatively yours,

Sci Phi co-editors and crew

~

Northern hemisphere spring is here, blossoming with a caleidoscope of colours, scents… and fresh stories! Sci Phi Journal’s 2026 Q1 issue sports original solarpunk cover art by Dustin Jacobus, inspired by the arrival of the street market season and the gradual re-emergence of Belgians from winter hybernation.

Whether you like to peruse your quarterly dose of speculative philosophy printed on trusty old paper, or the slightly less old, but no less trusty screen of your e-reader, go ahead and download your free PDF copy just below.

We hope our collection of tales and essays will serve as a stimulating read for the balmy months ahead!

Enjoy the journey,

the Sci Phi crew

Lectori salutem.

Welcome to our first issue of 2026. The year got off to a busy start at our editorial “offices”, as Sci Phi Journal received its largest volume of short fiction submissions to date. The crew spent many a night reading, contemplating and discussing the countless thoughtful and surprising pieces – the review experience was, once again, like placing a gentle hand on the pulse of the international sci-fi community and discovering what moves our authors in this day and age.

If hundreds of creative minds from around the globe are an indication, we as humans are equal part concerned and fascinated by near-future challenges, from the rise of artificial “intelligence” and the sense of alienation brought on by ubiquitous technology, to a diverse menu of options for ending the world as we know it. Meanwhile, we also remain intrigued by the less practical: ephemeral vistas of distant worlds, cosmic time scales and philosophical musings.

The short fiction presented in this issue traverses a broad spectrum of the above SF landscape, taking us from the exploits of Greek gods and ancient miracles to the travails of insurance administration during an alien invasion and budgetary concerns within the bureaucracies of subterranean survivors. We also pick up the thread of our erstwhile series publishing the missing pieces of Romanian SF master Gheorghe Săsărman’s imaginary cities hitherto unavailable in English – we hope to complete the entire cycle in our four quarterly issues this year.

Two essays complement this tour of the literary horizon, one on sci-fi anthologies by Mina, and another on the television series Severance by Jimmy Alonso Licon. As customary since 2021, our publication is graced by original cover art from the inkwell of Belgian solarpunk artist Dustin Jacobus.

May your reading pleasure, here and elsewhere, bring joy to your neurons!

Speculatively yours,

Sci Phi co-editors and crew

Ps: We hope to encounter many of you at the 2026 EuroCon in Berlin, Germany, on 2-5 July, where you’ll be able to meet and confabulate with most of us in person, either at our various panel discussions or over a stein of Teuton ale.

~

As winter draws over the Northern hemisphere, Belgians and other humanoids retreat to their lairs to celebrate festivities, play games, read books, savour dark (t)ales and hibernate until the spring. This is a time of looking back over the past year and preparing for the new one. Thus, Sci Phi Journal’s 2025Q4 issue is a special edition dedicated to (loosely interpreted) sequels to past stories, moods and ideas that had previously appeared on our pages.

If you like to peruse your quarterly dose of speculative philosophy printed on trusty old paper, or the slightly less old, but no less trusty screen of your device, go ahead and download your free PDF copy just below. Otherwise head to our site to browse the stories in their online glory, complete with author bios and philosophy notes for each tale.

We sincerely hope our AI-free, entirely human-made collection of short fiction and essays, and the above hand-crafted illustration by our resident solarpunk artist Dustin Jacobus, will serve as a stimulating companion for the winter months ahead (or summer, if you’re south of the equator).

Enjoy the journey,

the Sci Phi crew

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** 2026 Fundraiser: Sci Phi Journal is volunteer-run, ad-free, AI-free, and pays human authors of niche, handcrafted fiction. We rely on donations to keep philosophical sci-fi free to read in 2026 and beyond. If every reader were to donate just a single euro/dollar once a year, we could buy more stories and commission translations. It is your generous support that got us this far. Thank you ✿(◠‿◠) **

Lectori salutem.

As the current incarnation of Sci Phi Journal is completing the 11^th year of its ‘print’ run, we’ve looked back over the past decade and decided to diverge slightly from our usual approach in crafting our 2025 winter edition.

Over the summer, we invited authors who had published with us before to create a spiritual sequel to their previous works that appeared on our pages – whether a direct follow-up of the first story, or rather an associated reflection on the themes and ideas contained therein.

The resulting tales range from the woes of the ancient Greek pantheon to an alternate history of French North America, from an imaginary visit to a utilitarian heaven to a somnolent descent into Dante’s inferno, from a cosmic hunt for impossible objects to a theological response to Le Guin’s “Omelas”.

These are complemented by two essays, as we continue our tradition of surveying lesser-known SF language communities, this time marking the 200^th anniversary of Mór Jókai, the “father of Hungarian SF”, while also featuring a piece of speculation fiction and philosophy in memory of the work of the late Anand Vaidya, founding member of the SF & Philosophy Society and past contributor to Sci Phi Journal, who had passed away recently.

Preparing for the Northern winter months, the Sci Phi crew has been active on other fronts, too. Co-editor Ádám contributed a short story to the European Union Joint Research Centre’s first SF anthology, Future Snapshots. He also continued his string of encounters with science fiction clubs around the globe, with special thanks to MonSFFA for their generous hospitality in Montréal, Québec. Meanwhile, Mariano was hard at work on the latest edition of our sister journal, Hélice, containing critical SF essays and translations of unjustly neglected works in both Spanish and English, as well as author interviews.

With this, we welcome you to our Sequels Issue, and wish all our readers, contributors and their loved ones a happy Christmas and a safe start into the future year.

Speculatively yours,

Sci Phi co-editors and crew

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As Belgian skies darken with rainclouds, humans in this part of the world get ready to hibernate in their scriptoriums, where stories bloom like the verdant foliage of our soggy gardens. Fittingly, Sci Phi Journal’s 2025Q3 issue features a new solarpunk cover art by Dustin Jacobus, inspired by the wet season upon us.

If you like to peruse your quarterly dose of speculative philosophy printed on trusty old paper, or the slightly less old, but no less trusty screen of your e-reader, go ahead and download your free PDF copy just below. Otherwise head to our site to browse the stories in their online glory, complete with author bios and philosophy notes for each tale.

We sincerely hope our hand-crafted collection of short fiction and essays, this time dedicated to imaginary places both physical and spiritual, will serve as a stimulating read for the autumn (or Southern Hemisphere spring) ahead. If you like the work of our authors, illustrators and techies, please consider buying them a coffee 😉

Enjoy the journey,

the Sci Phi crew

Lectori salutem.

Welcome to Sci Phi Journal’s autumn edition… or spring, if you happen to read this from our home planet’s southern hemisphere. It is remarkable that since the golden age of science fiction, “living in a globalised world” has gone from a futurist trope to a tired cliché. Indeed, at the time of writing this, one of our co-editors is on deployment in South Africa while our crew are spread across three continents.

Travel is by no means a novel human endeavour, but working collaboratively as a team across such distances would have been considered speculative even a generation ago. Perhaps it is fitting then that our present issue is dedicated to imaginary places – ranging from the physical to the virtual and even spiritual realms.

How would the economics of a fantasy realm cope with questing heroes unearthing a constant supply of treasure? Should sentient non-player characters slain in a game receive burial rites? Can religion act as a problem-solving algorithm programmed into children sent to colonise planets? If trees were the dominant species, would they compete for power as we do?

These and many more armchair expeditions, brought to you by our human authors and illustrated by human hands (never AI), are rounded out by two essays, one celebrating the 200th anniversary of Orplid (conceived in 1825), arguably the first instance of comprehensive secondary world subcreation in high fantasy (our mundane world being the primary wherein SF arises), and a think piece on the place of spirituality in science fiction.

We hope you enjoy reading this latest issue as much as we enjoyed shepherding it together from around the globe.

Speculatively yours,

Sci Phi co-editors and crew

~

Northen hemisphere summer brings vacation vibes, sunny days, balmy nights and a fresh breeze of stories. Sci Phi Journal’s 2025 Q2 issue features another original solarpunk cover art by Dustin Jacobus, inspired by the age-old dream of humankind’s liberation from labour, applied to the harvest season.

If you like to peruse your quarterly dose of speculative philosophy printed on trusty old paper, or the slightly less old, but no less trusty screen of your e-reader, go ahead and download your free PDF copy just below.

We sincerely hope our collection of tales and essays, this time loosely dedicated to the dilemmas of progress and the place of human creativity therein, will serve as a stimulating read for the months ahead!

Enjoy the journey,

the Sci Phi crew

Lectori salutem.

Spring is giving way to summer in the northern hemisphere, which in Belgium merely means a gradual change in the angular velocity of rain drops that incessantly pummel the roofs under which yet another issue of Sci Phi Journal was lovingly crafted for you by our enthusiastic, if slightly D-vitamin deficient crew.

Our 2025 summer edition is once again thematic, in the loosest of senses, around topics of progress and creativity as seen through the lens of contemporary SF. It is often said that science fiction is the literature of ideas; indeed, by reading into the concerns and musings of writers interested in the future, one may get a sense of the questions that preoccupy the collective mind. A map of what troubles us as a species, as it were.

This time around, our tales revolve around AI, science, extraterrestrial exploration and the price society pays for the march of technological advancements, particularly if their pace outstrips our ability to adapt. These are complemented by two essays, covering changes in both our relations with humanity’s artificial creations, and the formal conventions of the SF genre itself, harkening back to the poetry of Arthur C. Clarke.

On a related note, while our crew would have to miss the annual European SF gathering due to clashing commitments, we hope that some of our readers make it to Archipelacon, which after our fantastic sojourn in Rotterdam last year carries on the torch of the EuroCon tradition – to be followed by MetropolCon in Berlin in 2026, where Sci Phi Journal will definitely be on the programme once more!

In the meantime, whether your region of the world is gradually heading into summer holidays or a cooler season, we hope the latest issue provides some welcome inspiration for thought experiments.

Speculatively yours,

the Sci Phi co-editors & crew

~

Spring blossoms with a caleidoscope of colours, scents… and fresh stories! Sci Phi Journal’s 2025 Q1 issue sports original solarpunk cover art by Dustin Jacobus, inspired by the arrival of the verdant season and the gradual re-emergence of Belgians from winter hybernation.

If you like to peruse your quarterly dose of speculative philosophy printed on trusty old paper, or the slightly less old, but no less trusty screen of your e-reader, go ahead and download your free PDF copy just below.

We hope our collection of tales and essays, this time loosely dedicated to the ethical implications of societal and political challenges, will serve as a stimulating read for the balmy months ahead!

Enjoy the journey,

the Sci Phi crew

Lectori salutem.

We live in interesting times, both in science fiction and the world at large. This must have weighed on the minds of our wonderful community of authors as well, who have inundated us with a record number of submissions.

Sci Phi Journal has a tradition of advocating for timeless rather than timely speculative fiction. We enjoy both famous and barely known classics of the genre that, while products of their day and age, gaze dispassionately into the distance and explore alterities to the extant reality of their writers.

That said, we feel that we should make the same allowance for the literature of the present to be a fruit of the here and now. Geopolitical upheavals cast a shadow over the zeitgeist of our era, much like they did in the Cold War of previous generations, and germinate through the stories that emerge as a result.

Thus, we elected to subdue our misgivings and exceptionally allow some of that creative current to seep into these pages. Let the collective mind of science fiction get it ‘out of our system’, as it were. The tales that follow range from deglobalizing the units of time to war machines unleashed by great powers in space and unstoppable forces of nature down below. Two essays, on the ethics of time travel and hypocrisy in philosophical scripture and fiction, respectively, complete this slightly more political issue than usual.

Whichever side of the many available fences you happen to sit on, we sincerely hope you enjoy our first edition of 2025!

Speculatively yours,

the Sci Phi co-editors & crew

~

Hark and behold, t’is the season for Sci Phi Journal’s 2024 Winter issue – with cover art by Belgium’s very own Dustin Jacobus, this time with a solarpunk reimagining of the timeless Levant, the birthplace of our Christmas stories.

If you like to peruse your quarterly dose of speculative philosophy printed on trusty old paper, or the slightly less old, but no less trusty screen of your e-reader, go ahead and download your free PDF copy just below.

We hope our mostly light-hearted end-of-year collection of tales and essays will serve as a cosy read for the festive period!

Enjoy the journey,

the Sci Phi crew

Lectori salutem.

It is our fifth Christmas season that the current Sci Phi crew celebrates together at the helm of this tiny but indomitable literary vessel we are glad to call our home. Over the past half decade, since the previous passengers brought us out of cryo-sleep for changing the guards after their long service to the genre, our craft has been exploring the depths of cyberspace and we picked up formidable fellow travellers and long-term contributors along the way.

Speculative fiction, especially science fiction, is often focussed on the promise or dread (or both) the future may have in store for us. We hold the present world, it is said, as custodians, looking after it for our children. Thus we are pleased that through the years the number of Sci Phi babies multiplied, too, with the most recent addition being the newborn daughter of our Utopia-award finalist cover artist Dustin Jacobus. His latest handcrafted artwork gracing our title page this December is dedicated to all future readers and practitioners of our beloved literary genre. Let us hope that the creativity of our species remains an integral part of dreaming up avenues for philosophical speculation, rather than being reduced to mere consumers of ever-more personalised, artificially-generated content.

It is in this vein, and in keeping with the tradition of our winter issues being somewhat more light-hearted and, dare we say, festive, that our latest Christmas edition brings you a broad range of charming idea-driven tales, all wrought by human hands (and keyboards). The original fiction therein ranges from the society-altering power of celestial phenomena to the existential dilemmas of infinitely copied consciousnesses, complemented by another imaginary city of Romanian SF master Săsărman hitherto unpublished in English.

The present quarterly issue is completed by the return of our columnist Mina with an essay about children brought up in contact with, and thus “fluent in” science fiction, and a fascinating report from the world’s first academic conference dedicated to the study of Warhammer, penned by its dauntless organisers, with a view to the future of this hitherto under-researched universe. We for one are already excited to attend the second instalment of this forum, where many a stone remains as yet left unturned: philosophy among them.

In the meantime, we sincerely hope you enjoy our concluding issue of 2024!

Speculatively yours,

the Sci Phi co-editors & crew

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With a slight delay, but here is Sci Phi Journal’s 2024 Autumn issue – with seasonal solarpunk cover art fresh from Dustin Jacobus’ exhibition at this year’s Eurocon in Rotterdam!

If you like to peruse your quarterly dose of speculative philosophy printed on trusty old paper, or the slightly less old, but no less trusty screen of your e-reader, go ahead and download your free PDF copy just below.

We hope our slightly darker-than-usual collection of tales and essays will serve as a refreshingly chilling read for the Halloween period!

Enjoy the journey,

the Sci Phi crew