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Kosik, Rafał

Entry updated 15 September 2025. Tagged: Author.

(1971-    ) Polish screenwriter, publisher and author. After studying architecture, he founded the Powergraph publishing house in 2004. He contributed fiction to Polish Fantastika magazines such as Nowa Fantastyka and Science Fiction, but is best known for high-concept sf novels and for a hugely popular Young Adult series (see discussion below of Felix, Net i Nika ["Felix, Net and Nika"]). Among Poland's most influential early twenty-first-century sf authors, he has won major national genre awards including multiple Janusz A Zajdel Awards and the Jerzy Żuławski Literary Award.

Across Kosik's work, a common thread is the tension between humanist values and high Technology: his stories frequently pit individual ingenuity and empathy against oppressive systems or unfathomable cosmic forces. His writing – often executing classic Hard SF ideas through the conventions of Polish Sociological SF – has invited comparisons to both Western authors like Brian W Aldiss or Isaac Asimov, and to Stanisław Lem; Kosik himself describes his style as a mix of Horror with sf.

He began to publish work of genre interest with "Pokoje przechodnie" ["Connecting Rooms"] in Nowa Fantastyka for September 2001 A Satirical Near Future parable, it imagines a consumer society where entire rooms are leased and Teleported into place from remote locations, making it possible for a Polish couple to host dinner in a Manhattan kitchen, retire to a Canadian bedroom or rent a ballroom for the night, masking hazards both comic and grotesque. Beneath its absurdist humour, the tale points to the fragility of technological systems and the alienation of relationships conducted through consumerist mediation.

Kosik's debut novel, Mars (2003), is a Near-Future story about the Terraforming of Mars (see Colonization of Other Worlds). The narrative spans three time periods – beginning with the launch of the terraforming project in 2040 and culminating centuries later, when the Martian settlers face a life-threatening failure of the planet's biosphere. This cautionary tale of technological hubris (with homages to Lem, Ray Bradbury and Philip K Dick), established Kosik's reputation for serious extrapolation. His second full-length fiction, Vertical (2006) – which Kosik has described as inspired by a vivid dream – presents a novel take on the trope of the Fantastic Voyage. Humanity lives in immense steel Cities that climb endlessly up a tangle of cables toward an unknown goal; the protagonists of the tale, expectedly, try to uncover their world's origins and purpose. The book won the Nautilus Award that year.

Kosik's most acclaimed novel to date is Kameleon ["Chameleon"] (2008). An elegant fusion of Space Opera mystery and philosophical speculation, exploring themes of Evolution and Identity, it portrays an enigma of a lost. Long after a Terraforming starship vanishes en route to planet Ruthar Larke (again see Colonization of Other Worlds) , a follow-up mission arrives – only to find, to its astonishment, a thriving human civilization of several million people on the supposedly uninhabited world. The society they encounter is at roughly a seventeenth-century level of development, with new Inventions and radical social ideas emerging at a bewildering pace. Hints of an chameleon-like Aliens who may be influencing events create a subtly Paranoid atmosphere (but the Prime Directive may need to be evoked). Kameleon swept all the major Polish sf awards, winning the Janusz A Zajdel Award, the Jerzy Żuławski Literary Award, and the Sfinks Award, making it one of the most honoured modern Polish sf novels.

After a decade focused on Young Adult projects, Kosik returned to adult sf with Różaniec ["Rosary"] (2017). The novel is a deft mix of Technothriller and political Dystopia, inspired by the Polish Sociological SF tradition of Janusz A Zajdel through its exploration of free will and resistance under a claustrophobically totalitarian order. Różaniec portrays a grim Near-Future vision of the world where surviving Ecological catastrophe has rendered the Earth barely habitable (see Climate Change; Post-Holocaust). Survivors live in a surveillance-driven society where AI-management and ubiquitous monitoring by "the System" dictate every aspect of life. The story takes place in a chain of artificial orbital enclaves, named after abandoned cities, that together form the titular "rosary" of Space Stations. In "Ring Warsaw", an ordinary man finds himself drawn into high-level conspiracies when his teenage daughter is kidnapped. This novel earned Kosik further Polish awards (Zajdel and Zuławski).

In recent years Kosik has ventured into explicit Cyberpunk territory. Cyberpunk 2077: Bez przypadku (2023; trans by Stefan Kiełbasiewicz as Cyberpunk 2077: No Coincidence 2023) is a tie-in novel set in the universe of the Videogame Cyberpunk 2077. It is a kinetic sf thriller following a ragtag crew of mercenaries in the neon-soaked, megacorporate Night City – but amidst the hyper-violent capers and body augmentations, Kosik's story emphasizes the human core of its Antiheroes, their longing for connection and empathy in a dehumanizing world. Although written as a Tie, No Coincidence allowed Kosik to play with classic cyberpunk motifs of corporate rule, street tech and urban decay that had only appeared obliquely in his earlier fiction. He was also involved in the story pre production for the Netflix Anime Cyberpunk: Edgerunners (2022).

In addition to novels, Kosik has written short fiction throughout his career, collected so far in Obywatel, który się zawiesił ["The Citizen Who Stalled"] (2011) and Nowi ludzie ["New People"] (2013). He has published over forty genre stories to date, many in Nowa Fantastyka and Science Fiction. These stories often echo the themes of his longer works – from technological hubris to societal transformation – in more experimental or satirical modes.

Parallel to his adult novels, Kosik is renowned for creating one of Polish Young Adult sf's signature series: the long-running Felix, Net i Nika ["Felix, Net and Nika"] sequence beginning with Felix, Net i Nika oraz Gang Niewidzialnych Ludzi ["Felix, Net and Nika and the Gang of Invisible People"] (2004). Set in present-day Warsaw, the series follows three middle-school friends – Felix (the inventor), Net (the hacker) and Nika (the intuitive everygirl) – whose normal school life keeps colliding with extraordinary adventures. Conceived for younger readers, the books merrily mash together sf, fantasy and horror tropes with teenage mystery capers. Kosik's youthful heroes face rogue Robots and self-aware AI, Antigravity doomsday devices, Time Travel to past, future, and Parallel Worlds, visit a derelict Space Station and a fully immersive Virtual Reality simulation – all on top of handling pop quizzes and bullies at school. The author takes care to keep even the wildest plot devices grounded in pseudo-scientific explanations or rational detective work, often turning what begins as seeming Science Fantasy turns into sf by the end, making the series an introduction to sf concepts within a familiar teen framework.The series as a whole has been credited with inspiring a new generation of genre readers. A live-action film adaptation of Felix, Net i Nika oraz Teoretycznie Możliwa Katastrofa ["Felix, Net i Nika and Theoretically Plausible Disaster"] (2012) brought Kosik's youthful heroes to an even wider audience.

In a practice recalling Władysław Umiński, Kosik periodically revises later editions of his books so that technological references remain current (for example, substituting DVD players with streaming platforms). He is also active as an illustrator, designing many of his own covers and interior drawings.

His fiction has not been translated into English, the only exception being Cyberpunk 2077, translated as part of that game's promotional cycle. In response to the limited receptivity of Anglophone publishers to translated Fantastika, Kosik began in 2025 to self-publish selected short stories on Amazon. Kosik also runs the Powergraph imprint, which has released numerous works of Polish Fantastika and, between 2010 and 2012, published six issues of the Polish-language edition of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. [PKo]

Rafał Kosik

born Pułtusk, Poland: 8 October 1971

works

series (selected)

Felix, Net i Nika

individual titles

collections and stories

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