Atanas Slavov
										Editorial
	Everybody in the northern hemisphere has heard about the
Southern Cross and the stars over Australia, but how many have
ever seen them? And what can they say about their brilliance and
beauty? The same is true of Slavonic science-fiction: over the
horizons of your skies you can sometimes catch the reflected
light from such bright stars as Chapek, Zamyatin, Lem, Bulgakov
and the Strugatsky brothers, but do you want to know how they
measure up against the direct light of such luminaries as
Bradbury, Asimov, Clarke, Simak, Zelazny, Farmer, Silverberg,
Niven?
	We, the publishers of ORPHIA, the first-ever magazine for
Slavonic sci-fi in English, are trying to offer you a glimpse of
the view from the other side of these horizons and give you the
opportunity to peep into the space and time of Slavonic
science-fiction, to see with your own eyes a different universe
which has challenged our minds and souls for decades.
	ORPHIA is christened after Orpheus, our mythical ancestor
who entered Hell alive for love. It is our love for
science-fiction that gave birth to this magazine, and our will to
stretch the hands of imagination through the maelstrom of
political and cultural confrontation, and so to speed up its end.
	Each month ORPHIA will introduce you to 300 pages of the
best from Bulgarian, Russian, Ukrainian, Belorussian, Czech,
Slovak, Slovenian, Serbo-Croatian, Polish, Macedonian and Sorbian
science-fiction, fantasy, horror and comics.
	ORPHIA will include not only stories, novellas and
book-length novels: in every issue you'll see dozens of color and
graphic paintings, illustrations, designs and photo-collages, as
well as book and film reviews.In fact, you could easily say that
each ish. will feature its own album of SF art.
	ORPHIA will acquaint you with the life of Slavonic fandom,
giving you a chance to participate in our conventions and our
activities. We shall also do in-depth studies of writers, artists
and fans.
	ORPHIA will bring you closer to new technical, social and
philosophical SF ideas, will meet you with inventors of the
impossible, show you the mysteries of Nature and bring you news
about all sorts of transcendental incidents in our parts of the
world.
	ORPHIA is a country which doesn't exist on the map.Its
territory is the imagination of millions of Slavs, and its
boundaries are open for all who are curious enough to visit it.
	Trying to cover all this territory and show you samples of
each style, and from every country, is very hard work, especially
since we are the pioneers in this field. The only aim we have
with this, our first ish., is to mark out for you the boundaries
of Slavonic SF, and to promise you better, best, and more than
most!
	We have tried to unite here authors from all Slavonic
countries. And have succeeded. We feel that SF must stand above
petty national and nationalistic interests, and we are ready to
publish any author whose life-work is interwoven in the great
pan-Slavonic lattice.
	We are convinced, on the other hand, that the best way to
show you the state-of-the-art in Slavonic SF is to include as
many and as varied styles as possible.Thus the Soviet Union is
represented in these pages both by the Strugatsky brothers and
Sviatoslav Loghinov, the former undisputed leaders in their
field, the later an up-and-coming young author.All Bulgarian
writers - Velko Miloev, Lyubomir Nickolov and Svetlana Pencheva
are also at the start of their writing careers.
	It is impossible to encompass every aspect of the genre, but
still, we hope that we have at least partially succeeded.The
stories that follow span all SF epochs and view-points: from the
historical layers of "Virgil And The Water" to a timeless future,
as shown in the Strugatsky brothers' story, which is actually a
chapter from their novel "Lunch-Time, The 21st Century"; from the
classic stories by Karel Chapek to the contemporary prose of
Velko Miloev; from social satires like "The Murmur Of Vernal
Rain" to anti-utopias like the one by Chech author Marek Huberat;
from the pure fantasy of "Guard At The Pass" to the hard-core
adventure SF of "Along The Wall".
	The articles and reviews in this issue may not be
sensational:in fact, we intentionally chose them so. What they
are intended to do, though, is to give you a sneak preview into
our future articles and reviews, as well as to provide you with a
glimpse of the SF art in our countries. Each of these departments
will provide an in-depth study of its subject in the future.
	And the future, we hope, is bright. Our magazine will start
coming out monthly as of March 1990.
	We hope that ORPHIA, so lovingly and painstakingly nurtured
by us through its initial stages, will find its niche among
English-speaking fans the world over, giving us a chance to bring
you the best of Slavonic SF every month!
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