Two Ways of Imagining Modernity in Recent Romanian Speculative Fiction: Steampunk and Alternate History

There are two main ways to envisage the evolution of a society, of a country and its people, by literary means: describing the impact of progress, taken mainly as technology, or changing the historical narratives, taking the start at an eventful point in time. For the Romanian space, modernity is generally believed to begin either with the revolution of 1848, or sometimes in the 20th century. There are arguments for any of these historical landmarks. As far as the literary approach is concerned, the genre of speculative fiction has its say on the matter throughout its own history. Recently, meaning over. the last 20 years, two Romanian writers are more interesting for this matter: Sebastian A. Corn and Liviu Radu. The former gave the first Romanian novel in the sub-genre of steampunk meaning the construction of the literary plot in a Victorian era, with a steam, coal and steel based economy, in which the informational revolution might have happened - 2084 Quirinal Ave. The latter is projecting three alternative aftermaths of World War I, for the Romanian space, according each of them with the 19th century predominant influence of one of the three Romania's neighbors the Austrian, Russian or Ottoman empires, in the volume Constanta 1919. Both Corn and Radu succeed in creating disbalancing images between what we know as modernity and normal evolution, and what they write with implacable logic about their alternate worlds. There is no conclusion coming out of Corn and Radu's writings, as they refrain to valorize explicitly their choices, the reader being trusted with the verdict.