Welcome back to Oculus Presents, folks.
Pre-90's Hungarian speculative fiction was... Well, it sure was. Oh, there's some truly legendary stuff out there - Péter Zsoldos was one of our pioneers of science-fiction and even had a literary award named after him, the old run of the sci-fi magazine Galaktika is still fondly spoken of for bringing the stories of the genre greats into Hungary (as for the resurrected version of the magazine, let's... just not go into that) and even early literary fiction giants like Mór Jókai, Frigyes Karinthy and Mihály Babits had written some genuinely creative fantastic fiction that stand out as true curiosities in the genre. Translations of stuff like Soviet sci-fi, classics like The Black Corridor as well as unapologetic pulp fiction have brought color to everyone's bookshelves since the second half of the 20th century. But there have been some truly mediocre, forgettable and straight-up unbearable Hungarian sci-fi books out there as well. I suppose that's just Sturgeon's Law for you, but there's one particular, not very fondly remembered Hungarian sci-fi anthology that still lives in my brain rent-free. For reasons.
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Morel találmánya is a 1986 speculative fiction anthology released in Bucharest by the publishing house Kriterion, edited by Hugó Ágoston and illustrated by artist Géza Nagy. It collects stories from Voltaire, Guy de Maupassant, several Hungarian authors and others, as well as the somewhat famous novella by Adolfo Bioy Casares, The Invention of Morel, which also gives the anthology its title. It's a book which I have seen in literally every single used bookstore and library I've ever set foot into, and my family owns a copy as well, but even though it's everywhere in the literary scene, it's not widely read at all. Oh, boy.
The truth is that this anthology is just... not super great. It does contain a few interesting tidbits of Hungarian and European speculative fiction history (I'd legit had no idea that Voltaire had written sci-fi until I opened this book), but several of the stories chosen are stuffy, bloated and dated, more curiosities than actually enjoyable reads. I'll admit that I've tried and failed to get through this book a few times in the past; but there are reasons I'm featuring it on the blog.
Reason one: two of the stories. The Horla by Guy de Maupassant is by far the highest point of this book, a suffocating 1887 horror tale with only a tinge of the fantastic. More than anything, it's a tale of slowly mounting paranoia and dread turning into near-insanity, as the nameless narrator's life gets twisted and dominated by a mysterious creature haunting his home: a being he simply calls Horla. You can read the story at East of the Web, just be sure not to do it when you're home alone in the dark (or hell, that might just be the perfect way to read it), because I'm not kidding when I say that this is one scary-ass tale - a near-perfect example of pre-Lovecraft eldritch horror.
The other story in this book that's seriously worth reading is Argentine writer Adolfo Bioy Casares's award-winning 1940 novella, The Invention of Morel. I also hesitate to call it a sci-fi story, as it calls to mind more the maddeningly logical, labyrinthine and unsettling works of Jorge Luis Borges (who himself commented on the story when it came out). The narrator is a nameless fugitive, hiding on what he thinks is a deserted island after his life in the outside world gets upended. Except the island isn't quite deserted: every now and then a flock of vacationers appears pretty much from nowhere, and disappears by the next day. And for whatever reason, they all totally ignore the fugitive despite his attempts to approach them. And when you find out who these people are, what they're doing on the island and why they just plain don't notice the narrator... Well, I won't spoil it for ya, but I still remember the chill crawling up my spine when I first read the conclusion to this novella. It's a little-talked about gem of fantastic fiction with a truly unsettling and suspenseful atmosphere, which culminates in an ending that won't leave your head any time soon. An absolute must-read for adventurous specfic readers who like oddities.
Now, reason two why I'm featuring this anthology here has nothing to do with the stories in it, and everything to do with the absolute creative genius of illustrator Géza Nagy. The book is full of crystal-clear and hyper-detailed black-and-white drawings, often done with a lot more style and personality than the stories themselves. The illustration for The Horla holds a truly special place in my heart as the scariest goddamn thing I've ever seen - I recall being maybe eight years old, innocently looking through the pages of the neat-looking book with the cool title, looking for something fun to read after I got through a few children's books from my family's library. And oh, god, I turned a page and got smacked in the face with freaking THIS:
Folks, I was days getting over the shock of this one. To this day I haven't seen such stark, gaunt terror captured in a drawing, except maybe in Munch's
The Scream or the art of Junji Ito. An absolute, spine-tingling masterpiece.
This is my other favorite, from an odd and slightly creepy, but otherwise forgettable Hungarian story - just look at the rich details!
In conclusion... well, recommending this book would be a bit of a moot point unless you speak Hungarian, but it's definitely a real curiosity for genre fiction fans. Just not, you know, a great one. Read The Horla and read The Invention of Morel in English if you can find them, because they absolutely are worth a read - but given that both of these stories have been anthologized in other Hungarian editions, even as a Hungarian sci-fi fan it doesn't terribly bother me that this book kind of vanished from most people's eyes.
Except for the drawings. Man, those drawings.
