Młody Technik
Entry updated 8 December 2025. Tagged: Publication.
["Young Technician"] Polish popular science and technology magazine (1932-current) for younger readers. Originally founded in 1932 under the current title; renamed 1935-1950 as Młody Zawodowiec ["Young Practitioner"]. For most of its history it appeared monthly.
Under editor-in-chief Zbigniew Przyrowski (who led the magazine from its 1950 relaunch until 1981), Młody Technik became an important venue for sf during the communist era. Lacking dedicated sf magazines in Poland at the time, it filled the void by regularly including short sf short, typical one story per issue. Przyrowski, called the "Polish Gernsback", actively nurtured Polish sf through the magazine's sf content, and even compiled four themed anthologies drawing on stories first published in Młody Technik: Posłanie z piątej planety ["A Message from the Fifth Planet"] (anth 1964), Nowa cywilizacja ["New Civilization"] (anth 1973), Wołanie na Mlecznej Drodze ["The Calling at the Milky Way"] (anth 1976) and Drugi próg życia ["The Second Threshold of Life"] (anth 1980).
From 1955 to 1991 the magazine showcased both prominent and emerging sf writers. Stanisław Lem contributed several early stories, including such tales from his Pilot Pirx cycle such "Test" (October-November 1958), "On Patrol" (January 1959) and "Terminus" (February-April 1960). Janusz A Zajdel made his debut there with the story "Tau Wieloryba" ["Tau Ceti"] (October 1961), and established authors like Wiktor Żwikiewicz, Krzysztof Boruń and Andrzej Trepka and engineer-turned-writer Konrad Fiałkowski were regular contributors through the 1960s and 1970s. In the 1980s Młody Technik continued to cultivate new talent, publishing work by a younger generation of sf authors such as Tomasz Kołodziejczak, Jacek Piekara, Andrzej Ziemiański and Rafał A Ziemkiewicz.
After the late 1980s, as Poland's sf scene developed its own specialist outlets (including the dedicated Fantastika magazine, Fantastyka), Młody Technik gradually shifted away from fiction, refocusing on core scientific and technical topics. Nevertheless, its historical importance as an incubator for Polish sf remained well recognized. In 2024 the magazine revived its sf tradition with a regular science-fiction story slot.
Unlike the majority of Polish fantastika outlets, Młody Technik was (and is again) also one of the very few pure science fiction outlets for Polish authors. In addition to fiction, the magazine has also published numerous Futures Studies essays tackling such expected themes as Robots and space colonization; also, less frequently, critical pieces about sf. It has also occasionally supported and even co-organized sf writing competitions. [PKo]
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