Kyiv will host the Portal International Science Fiction Assembly simultaneously with the Second Spring International Book Fair. The congress received international status last year, when representative of various creative trends assembled for the first time at the Eurocon, the European conference of science fiction writers. The conference took place at the Portal and gathered representatives from 30 countries.
This year the Portal founders hope to achieve a larger scope and are dreaming of making Kyiv the fantasy capital of Europe. “We are doing everything we can to make Kyiv the center of European science fiction,” says Serhii Diachenko, who was recognized last year as the best science fiction writer on our continent. “Not long ago, St. Petersburg had that status because of the Strugatsky brothers, then Moscow had it, later Kharkiv enjoyed it for some time. We are convinced that it’s Kyiv’s turn now.”
Well known science fiction writers, like the American John Crowley, Dmytro Bykov from Russia, and Andrzej Sapkowski from Poland, will be the deans of the “Literature Seminary,” to be held within the framework of the Portal. These and many other famous writers will hold autograph sessions, meetings, and book launches. Besides writers, artists also will attend the Portal and will display their work at the “Artists and Science Fiction” exhibition. Sculptors and artistic directors will also be attending. Serhii Masloboishchikov’s film dedicated to Mikhail Bulgakov will be screened on Bulgakov Day, which the congress organizers will hold on April 20.
The attention being focused on Bulgakov is not accidental. Dyachenko and other founders of the Portal consider him a fantasy writer and call his novel The Master and Margarita not a philosophical but a fantasy novel. “I do believe,” says Diachenko, “that had Bulgakov been born not in Kyiv, he would not have become a fantasy writer. Kyiv’s special air of mysticism colored Bulgakov’s soul with a shade of fantasy. Who knows, maybe he got the feeling of the Jerusalem Hills living on Andriivsky uzviz?” The Bulgakov Prize will be awarded to foreign guests for promoting the writer’s works abroad.
Mykhailo Lytvyniuk, the head of the organizing committee of the Portal International Science Fiction Assembly and the director of the My Computer Publishing House, claims that Ukrainian science fiction is very powerful, and, without exaggeration, one of the mightiest in Europe. “Our science fiction book,” he says, “is positioning itself quite well in Europe. There are a lot of Ukrainian writers and they are being read. No wonder, since elements of fantasy can be detected in both Taras Shevchenko and Lesia Ukrainka. That’s why fantasy is close to the Ukrainian nation. It’s important to publish not only pulp science fiction for young people but also intellectual sci-fi literature.”
Diachenko says: “Our science fiction novels are especially popular in Poland. Dozens of our books are going to be published there. It’s harder to break into English-language science fiction because it is very canonical and does not accept any moves to the left or right.”
