The fact that other priorities have been set, that the stars have not been crossed or why they are known, has meant that for years there has been a rather important gap in Basque literature: science fiction and, in a broader sense, speculative fiction has hardly been written. And I say “it’s been,” because among the news that you can buy at this year’s Durango Fair, you can include several books within this genre.

Sign that something is changing? Are we on the verge of a new Basque interplanetary renaissance? Yeah, yeah, they've started thinking I'm flipping. And so it is. Speculative fiction opens the door for us to imagine what is unthinkable today. Exercise necessary to think that the future may be different in these times when the slogan no future has been introduced in a non-punching way.

To illustrate, for example, what the xxiii century will look like: not only the world, but the whole universe is governed by Basques, ruled by unfamiliar happiness and well-being. But resistance to this superiority begins to be organized: some want to recover the supremacy of Spanish culture and language of yesteryear and for this they have planned to travel to the 21st century, when the Great Revolution occurred.

This is what the novel Euskalia (Elkar) by Mikel Alvarez Sarriegi tells a very serious question: if the Basque language were a hegemonic language, how would we act? This story, initially designed to be a script for a series, takes the form of a science fiction novel, without losing audiovisual references – Matrix, Terminator...–. It's the first novel of beasaindarra.

Next stop of the spacecraft: Planet Ostadar 7310 (Denonarte). In this third book of Pamplona Iñigo Ibarra we will see what coexistence is like between men and androids. It seems that people in bone meat and those in circuit and cable adapt well to each other, but there's always a disorder that goes wrong. The protagonist of the novel works in his reprogramming. Until the android H57 drops into his hands. The instinct, by imperative, decides not to reschedule it and from there everything is turned upside down.

This novel, unforeseen in each chapter, contemplates the world that can bring hyperconnected life today: the reader can imagine through this story the consequences that digital controls of information and tools can have that record everything we do. And of course, these conclusions are not very nice.

Ai, technology. We cannot ignore it, but at the same time, the issue we are turning through it is worrying. Or, at least, something that awakens our interest, because otherwise not so many novels focused on this topic would be published. In fact, we no longer differentiate physical from virtual reality, which will soon have effects that are still difficult to gauge. Suppose it comes in the middle of this century. The novel Berriz zentauro (Elkar) by Katixa Agirre brings us to a future that does not seem so distant, through the protagonist Paula Pagaldai, who travels to Paris to investigate feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft.

After marking a before and a after with the novel (Elkar, 2018), Agirre returns to the shelves of novelties with a work that combines several plans: a near future, the 18th century, sex, the frontiers between genders... Virtual sex, extended reality, increased experiences. Everything will be very different in the future. Or not so much?

At this Durango Fair we have the opportunity to teleport ourselves to the latest novel by another long-standing writer and to imagine a somewhat different future. The novel by Asel Luzarraga Esan gabe doa (Txalaparta) is a book that inaugurates a trilogy. This story, written by the fictional writer Simun Palsu, discovers the Askayala Free Peoples Federation, which has been in force for ten years.

This is a tense situation, which threatens the invasion of an international alliance. In this context, Luzarraga has produced a novel based on four main characters, which invites us to think about the utopia of the future, combining speculative fiction with the magical realism that has so strong roots in Latin America.

Since within this literary genre it is free to travel back in time, we have to recommend a book that is not a noble novelty. Because, although science fiction is something little worked on in Basque literature, it has a background and deserves recognition. The writer Mayi Pelot pioneered the collection of stories Biharko gogogoan (May), published in 1985. This contribution continued with the short novel Teleamarauna (May) of 1987.

After a long neglect, critics began to reclaim their work in the decade of 2010, first Aritz Galarraga and then Amaia Alvarez Uria in this same medium. After the death of Pelot, promoted by the Sareinak group, he was also honoured three years ago in Baiona and the editorial Mayo republishes all his works: Poems, stories and novels (2019). Surely in Durango you will be able to buy. I don't have to explain to you the importance of remembering this antecedent, because they were. Or, well, with the logic of science fiction: we are because they will be.