SFera
Entry updated 29 December 2025. Tagged: Publication.
["Sphere"] Polish SF Magazine/Fanzine hybrid (1984-1988; briefly revived 2003).
The publicly available run of SFera appeared irregularly from December 1984 to 1988 as a club bulletin of the Polish SF fandom organization PSMF, produced with student-association support and edited by Andrzej Szatkowski. Its initial issue had already been printed in late 1981 but never left the print shop due to martial-law disruptions; if not for that, SFera might have pre-empted Fantastyka as Poland's first sf periodical (the latter debuted in 1982).
SFera aimed for a bimonthly or quarterly run, but ended up with a run of six issues (including two double numbers) over five years: 1/1984, 1-2/1985, 3/1985, 1/1986, 2-3/1986 and 1/1988. The issues were typically 16 pages in A3 format, with print runs reported around 3,000-6,000 and an average of roughly 5,000.
In the stated editorial aims, Szatkowski framed the magazine as a vehicle to puncture myths, explain how club culture works, and foreground PSMF activity – an inward-looking, movement-documenting agenda typical of Fanzine culture. In practice it mixed news, commentary, and criticism of fantastic literature and fandom, plus popular-science pieces, fiction by Polish and foreign writers, and reviews of Board Games and computer games. Its first issue in 1984 carried one of Poland's earliest texts on Role Playing Games, and in 1986 it printed the first Manga published in Poland: Buichi Terasawa's Black Knight Batto, albeit (as was the case with many translations published behind the Iron Curtain) without the creator's permission.
A short-lived revival recast SFera as a monthly newsstand-style magazine in 2003, edited by Piotr Pieńkowski; six issues appeared by year's end, published by Dom Mediowy's "Sukces", with straplines positioning it as a "new fantastic magazine" covering literature, film, games, and comics. [PKo]
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