Ably translated into English by Todd C. Hanlin, The Best Of Austrian Science Fiction comprises outstanding selections by Franz Rottensteiner showcasing some the very best of that nation's science fiction authors. Beginning with Rottensteiner's informative introduction "A Short History of Austrian Science Fiction"; the short stories include Martin Auer's Time Travels; Alfred Bittner's Homo superior; Kurt Bracharz's Venice 2; Andreas Findig's Godel's Exit; H.W. Franke's Breath of the Sun; Marianne Gruber's The Invasion; Peter Marginter's The Machine; Barbara Neuwirth's The Character of the Huntress; Heinz Riedler's Cottage Industry; Peter Schattschneider's Banana Streams and The Jez'r Fragments; Michael Springer's Ite missa est; and Oswald Wiener's The Bio-Adapter. Highly recommended reading for all science fiction enthusiasts, The Best Of Austrian Science Fiction aptly concludes with Rottensteiner's "Notes on the Authors".

The best thing about Meyrink's novels, and particularly about "The Green Face", is that the depth of its meanings goes beyond one single interpretation. It's very true that it deals with tantric love, and also with the "Wandering Jew" legend, but it has other hidden deep significances, like the mystic conception of life as it's taught in the Upanishads, Buddhism or Taoism. There is also a big chain that links Meyrink's images with avant-garde Expresionism; and it finally could be seen as the anticipating view of a totalitarian Europe under Nationalsocialism projecting its shadow in a sombre and sinister Amsterdam, which is the new disguised shape of Prague described by Kafka, and by Meyrink himself in "The Golem". The content of the novel is finally enriched by references to Jewish Cabalistic experience, Egyptian ancient religion and to African Vudu. It's a very complex novel, full of symbols and allegories, difficult to understand but definitely worth the trouble.

This is a tantric story about trust and love. But love in the way known only by tantric people. Is about spiritual path, and how can one rise other if there is love and trust.

Gustav Meyrink's "The Green Face" is an exhilarating vision of apocalypse. First published in 1916, the novel sets its action in the near future of post-war Amsterdam, a city brimming with displaced people and with a stifling atmosphere of unrelenting tension. At this critical time appears an enigmatic being named Chidher Green, the mythical Wandering Jew.

Meyrink reworks and amplifies the legend of the Wandering Jew (a being fated to walk the earth from the days of Christ till the end of time), portraying his Chidher Green as a harbinger of cataclysmic change both for the novel's protagonist, Fortunatus Hauberrisser, and for Amsterdam in general. The story begins with Hauberrisser encountering Chidher Green in a magic shop one day, oblivious to his identity. Soon after, Hauberrisser finds a peculiar chain of old memories and chance encounters erupting around him. As in a house of mirrors, this one image of a bronze-green face suddenly appears around every corner. The face becomes a sort of totem of meditative contemplation (drawing associations with Zen Buddhism). Finally, Hauberrisser and his companions reach a consensus over the phenomenon's significance: If one were to attain a spiritual state in which this face manifested internally, a unique form of transcendence would then be achieved.

When all is said and done, Fortunatus Hauberrisser does not prove to be one of Meyrink's most memorable characters. However, it is also true that his protagonists are often intended as ciphers. If this novel is Meyrink's "Book of Revelation," then Hauberrisser is certainly his Saint John, valuable largely for his role as privileged witness to the spirit world's mysteries.

Also, the route Hauberrisser must take through the story is Meyrink's familiar path of enlightenment-a moment of sudden spiritual awareness followed by a period of isolation, which at last leads to promises of a mystical marriage. Though this path echoes through Meyrink's other work, it would be a mistake to imagine he is simply repeating himself or relying on a formula here. Meyrink has a very distinct vision of the soul's progress; and it is this intense conviction that again manifests so clearly in "The Green Face."

"At the beginning, when we make our first, hesitant attempts, it is like a mindless groping in the dark, and sometimes we do things that resemble the actions of a madman and for a long time seem to lack all consistency. It is only gradually that the chaos forms into a countenance, in whose varying expressions we can read the will of destiny. At first they are grimaces, but that is the way it is with all great matters."

I found this book totally by accident, while browsing the sf&f shelves of one of the big bookstores without much hope, and I'm glad I did, because Lem's essay, "Science-fiction : a hopeless case - with exceptions", really crystallised a lot of the things that concerned me about science fiction, and showed that at least one other person thought that sf should at least try to be literature. (Although written in 1970, and from the isolated position of Communist Poland, this essay is still depressingly accurate - although things have improved since his time.)

The guy is a heavy thinker, and come from a European tradition of taking science fiction seriously as a literature of ideas (Lem wrote the classic Solaris, which was made into a Russian movie). He is quite readable, however, and is obviously passionate about his subject. This book is essential for any academic study of science fiction, and for any reader who takes the genre's potential seriously.

One of the essays in this book got the author's honorary membership of the American SF Association revoked. Or rather, some of it did, in a way. "Science Fiction - A Hopeless Case with Exceptions" was published in the US in a mutilated "translation" under the tactful title "A Scientist's Choice of the World's Worst Writing", and Lem was unceremoniously booted out of the organisation. The essay in question is in fact a harsh, but in its essentials accurate, dissection of the deplorable state of science fiction and science fiction criticism as compared with the rest of literature, and deserves serious attention. (The exception discussed, by the way, is the work of Philip K Dick, and a detailed review of Dick's Ubik, justifying its claim to be taken as serious fiction, also appears in Microworlds.) There is also a fine review of the Strugatsky brothers' extraordinary novella Roadside Picnic, which was the basis for Andrei Tarkovsky's equally extraordinary though somewhat different film Stalker; an interesting essay on Jorge Luis Borges, noting the unique qualities and the limitations apparent in his stories; and, perhaps most valuably, a couple of long essays on what science fiction could be if it could only kick its maleficient Star Wars-style good-guy/bad-guy simplemindedness. Lem is precise, logical, detailed, cantankerous and fascinating. The world's greatest writer of grown-up science fiction and fantasy is once again pointing the way for the rest of us.