Despite the international prominence of Stanisław Lem and, more recently, Andrzej Sapkowski's The Witcher, Polish science fiction and speculative literature remain strikingly underrepresented in English-language scholarship. Existing criticism tends to orbit a small number of canonical figures and a handful of frequently revisited texts, leaving a rich, historically complex tradition, spanning censorship-era political allegory, post-1989 transformation, contemporary literary crossover, and a distinct national cinema largely unexamined outside of Polish-language scholarship.

This edited collection seeks to address that gap. We invite chapter proposals that expand the scope of English-language engagement with Polish speculative fiction and film: introducing under-translated authors, revisiting canonical figures through new critical lenses, and treating Polish science-fiction cinema as a subject rather than solely through the lens of a single adaptation.

We welcome contributions from literary scholars, film scholars, translation studies specialists, and researchers in Slavic and Central European studies. We are especially interested in proposals that

• move beyond Lem and Sapkowski as the sole representatives of the tradition.

• Bring new theoretical frameworks (postcolonial theory, translation studies, media studies, gender studies, posthumanism) to bear on Polish speculative texts
• Address film and other media as legitimate objects of study, not only as adaptations of literary source material
• Situate Polish SF within broader Central/Eastern European or global speculative fiction discourse

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

1. Historical Foundations

• Science fiction under the Polish People's Republic
• Censorship, allegory, and political subtext in Cold War-era SF
• Fandom, zines, and early SF publishing culture in Poland

• Underexamined works (e.g. The Cyberiad, His Master's Voice, Fiasco, Return from the Stars)
• Lem's philosophy of science, epistemology, and technology
• Lem as critic and theorist of the genre (Fantastyka i futurologia)

• Jacek Dukaj, Jarosław Grzędowicz, Marek Huberath, and other contemporary authors
• Speculative elements in literary/crossover fiction (e.g. Olga Tokarczuk)
• Polish fantasy and its relationship to the SF tradition (including Sapkowski)

• The politics and practice of translating Polish SF into English
• Publishing history: which authors and works reach Anglophone readers, and why
• Comparative reception of Polish SF in the West versus domestically

• Polish-made dystopian and speculative cinema (e.g. Piotr Szulkin's tetralogy, Andrzej Żuławski)
• Adaptation studies: Lem's Solaris and its cinematic afterlives, approached through fresh angles (production politics, reception history, or contemporary resonance) rather than as a straightforward novel-versus-film comparison
• Polish SF's influence on or intersection with games and other media (e.g. CD Projekt Red)

Send an abstract of 300-500 words and a short (150-word max) academic biography by October 15, 2026, to Dr. Agnieszka Gutthy at agutthy@selu.edu

When accepted, full chapter (5000-8000 words including notes and bibliography) will be due May 15, 2027.