The Formability of History: Uchronia in Contemporary Hungarian Short Fiction

Domokos, Áron (2022) The Formability of History: Uchronia in Contemporary Hungarian Short Fiction. SFRA Review, 52 (2). pp. 53-64. ISSN 2641-2837

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Abstract

As a matter of fact, uchronia inherits the fundamental dilemmas of the philosophy of history and historical scholarship and calls attention to the fact that history is created by linguistic means. The main philosophical issues addressed by uchronia are related to time, determinism, and causality (Hellekson). As Angenot puts it: “Uchronia is less the refusal of real history, than the recognition of its ineluctable laws; by altering the course of events the author gives birth to a new history, but one that still contains the same rational determinism and contingency as empirical history” (qtd. in Csicsery-Ronay 105). The aims of the present study are: 1. to distinguish uchronia conceived of as literary fiction from uchronias combined with SF; and 2. to investigate the 281 short prose pieces of Hungarian-language published between 2014 and 2018 submitted in application for the Péter Zsoldos Award. The analysis of the short speculative narratives identified as uchronia proper or uchronic narratives will lend itself to useful generalizations on contemporary Hungarian science fiction

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