The SFWA European Hall of Fame by James Morrow and Kathryn Morrow

Author:James Morrow and Kathryn Morrow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

PANAGIOTIS KOUSTAS

ATHOS EMFOVOS IN THE TEMPLE OF SOUND

TRANSLATED FROM THE GREEK BY MARY MITCHELL AND GARY MITCHELL

If Darwinism implies that we are all apes under the skin, Western history reminds us that we are all Greeks under the skull. A person cannot come of age in our culture without absorbing subliminally the grand epistemological assumptions of the Hellenic world, and it’s impossible to imagine contemporary Western literature—science fiction included—apart from the myths, tragedies, tropes, and philosophical innovations of that heritage.

In “Athos Emfovos in the Temple of Sound” Panagiotis Koustas gives us the SF equivalent of a Greek myth, complete with a technotheophany and a microchip oblation. The structure is nonlinear and the sensibility postmodern, but the dense plot and the narrative drive suggest—to the present editors, at least—certain timeless accounts of transactions between gods and mortals. At once lyrical and political, it tells of antique coins, primal passions, social upheaval, and transcendent sacrifice.

Beyond its specifically Greek sources, “Athos Emfovos” will doubtless evoke for some readers the New Wave movement, most especially the sixties stories and novels of Michael Moorcock. One also detects a kinship with Samuel R. Delany’s 1967 novel The Einstein Intersection, whose mythopoetic alien hero variously incarnates Orpheus and Theseus.

Born in 1965, Koustas studied economics and drama, then proceeded to “work very hard at not having a career.” So far this noncareer has embraced translation, journalism, scripts for television and comics, and the authorship of critically acclaimed science fiction. In collaboration with his wife, writer Hedwig-Maria Karakouda, he has translated stories for 9, the comics and SF magazine routinely bundled inside Eleftherotypia, the most widely circulated Greek newspaper. Concerning the odd name of this popular supplement, Koustas informs us that in his country comics are regarded as the “ninth lively art.”

The hero of the following story likewise bears an odd—and symbolic—name. “Athos” is a diminutive of “Athanasios,” immortal. “Em” means in. “Fovos,” a word that SF readers frequently encounter in its variation “phobos,” means dread or awe. Symbolic, and also untranslatable.

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