Ziemiański, Andrzej
Entry updated 22 September 2025. Tagged: Author.
(1960- ) is a Polish sf and fantasy author known for blending genres; he trained as an architect with a PhD in technical sciences. Emerging as part of the Polish Sociological SF wave during the late Communist era, alongside authors like Janusz A Zajdel, he began to publish work of sf interest in "Zakład zamknięty" ["Total Institution"] (1979 Sigma #101), about inmates of a seemingly abandoned mental hospital whose perception of reality collapses; a tale more psychological than Fantastika, though it can be read in terms of Absurdist SF and Inner Space. His subsequent work began moving closer to fantastika. His second short story, "Twarze" ["Faces"] (Bunt robotów ["Rebellion of the Robots"] 1980 anth) depicts a lone survivor on a damaged Starship, living in an illusory world while trying to overcome Amnesia, dramatizing the perilous shift from passive routine to questioning consciousness. These and other stories of his were collected in his first book, a short story collection Daimonion (coll 1985), which contained mainly allegorical tales examining life under oppression.
Ziemiański's early novels Wojny urojone ["Imaginary Wars"] (1987) and Bramy strachu ["Gates of Fear"] (1990) dramatize Dystopian Post-Holocaust scenarios that mirrored the era's pessimistic social mood. In Wojny urojone, survivors orbiting Earth on decaying Space Habitats return to the surface to find civilization regressed to medieval levels after a nuclear Holocaust – a setting reminiscent of Arkady and Boris Strugatski's Hard to Be a God (though more Pulp-like in execution). Ziemiański uses this setting to explore how fragile social order becomes in isolation, resulting in cultural and technological collapse: hierarchy on the stations disintegrates into corruption and fatalism, while survivors on Earth live within reconstructed mythologies. Bramy strachu continued in a similar vein, offering a parable of totalitarian decay and societal fear at the end of the Communist period. The novel alternates between two intertwined storylines, with a teenage street gangster recruited into the totalitarian secret police, and a revolutionary Mad Scientist perfecting his Technology for mind-control.
During this phase Ziemiański also collaborated with Andrzej Drzewiński on two sf-tinged thrillers: Zabójcy szatana ["Satan's Killers"] (1989), a mix of thriller action, Horror and sf motifs in which British operatives pursue rogue Scientists in the Bolivian jungle, and Nostalgia za Sluag Side ["Sluag Side Nostalgia"] (1990). The latter, nominally a police procedural set in the United States, follows a detective and a visiting statistician as they investigate a wave of motiveless killings committed by ordinary citizens who afterwards have no memory of their crimes. The statistical clue points to a vanished town whose descendants carry a hidden curse, edging the novel into the territory of supernatural or parapsychology-tinged sf. Though energetically narrated, both collaborations are marred by incoherence, perfunctory closure, and unresolved strands, leaving them among the less substantial entries in Ziemiański's oeuvre.
In 1991 Ziemiański issued two further novels. Dziennik czasu plagi ["The Plague Time Journal"] (1991) follows a university lecturer, Warren Ramsay, who abandons academic routine to enter a military-guarded Zone where language and culture are mutating. What begins as a Linguistic expedition becomes a violent, Mad Max-like road narrative across a devastated American South, mixing biker-gang sociology, religious cults and fragmentary debates about authority and survival. The result hovers uneasily between Post-Holocaust sf and psychological crime thriller; though intermittently vivid, the book again suffered from incoherence and lack of resolution. More straightforwardly sf, Przesiadka w przedpieklu ["Transit in Hell Antechamber"] (1991 as by Patrick Shoughnessy; rev vt Przesiadka w piekle ["Transit in Hell"] 2004) depicts a near-future drifter, Lynn Fargo, who discovers the ability to enter other minds. His search for identity entangles him with secret agencies and parapsychic assassins, evoking paranoid thrillers and proto-Cyberpunk tales of psychic hacking. Rewritten for its 2004 edition to smooth anachronisms, the novel reads as an energetic if derivative blend of action sf and Metaphysical speculation. These early 1990s novels illustrate Ziemiański's uneven search for a sustainable long-form voice, reading as tentative experiments in grafting Polish fantastika motifs onto predominantly American settings; one was even issued under the Anglophone pseudonym "Patrick Shoughnessy," in hopes of better sales at a time when the Polish market was suddenly flooded with translations from English.
After that, Ziemiański took a decade-long break from genre writing; but remained connected with the Polish fantastika Fandom. Notably, in 1997, he co-founded (together with another writer, Eugueniusz Dębski) Poland's first online fantastika Fanzine, Fahrenheit, and was its chief editor until 2001.
Ziemiański resurfaced as a writer in 2000 with a series of short works that quickly reestablished him as a a major name in Polish fantastika. His "Bomba Heisenberga" ["Heisenberg's Bomb"] (September 2000 Nowa Fantastyka) is an Alternate History in which the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (once the largest nation in Europe) survived, here, becoming the Commonwealth of Three Nations; in this reality's version of World War Two, Poland finds itself allied with Nazi Germany. The tale subverted typical Hitler Wins scenarios, as well as stirring controversy among Polish readers, by making Poland a major world power – but an Axis one. The tale won that year's Sfinks Award for best short story.
In one of his most acclaimed short pieces, "Autobahn nach Poznań" (February 2001 Science Fiction), Ziemiański once again used Mad Max-like imagery, but this time with much better results, replacing boilerplate American settings with more impactful Polish ones. This time, it is a devastated, post-apocalyptic Poland that is traversed by a surviving soldier along the titular highway. This grim, action-packed tale won him the country's premier fantastika award, the Janusz A Zajdel Award for best short story (alongside a regional award, Puchar Bachusa). This year also saw "Waniliowe plantacje Wrocławia" ["Vanilla Plantations of Wrocław"] (September 2001 Nowa Fantastyka), a Paranoid thriller in which a man's miraculous survival of a car crash attracts ominous attention from various agencies, hinting at conspiracies in an altered reality – and netting Ziemiański his second Sfinks Award.
"Legenda, czyli pijąc wódkę we Wrocławiu w 1999 roku" ["Legend, or Drinking Vodka in Wrocław in 1999"] (October-December 2002 Nowa Fantastyka) explored Parallel Worlds via a secret sleep research institute – a concept that echoes Cyberpunk Virtual Reality (the story's dual-world premise drew comparisons to The Matrix (1999), and also brought him his third Sfinks Award). Another celebrated story, "Zapach szkła" ["The Smell of Glass"] (October-December 2003 Nowa Fantastyka) mixed sf with noir mystery: a Wrocław police detective uncovers a secret Cold War experiment involving angelic beings and psychokinetic children. The story earned Ziemiański his second Zajdel Award, his fourth consecutive Sfinks Award, and a Nautilus Award.
These and other tales were collected in Zapach szkła (coll 2004). Many of the stories in that volume were set in the author's native Wrocław, and use City settings as backdrops for the fantastic. His focus on his hometown, visible in many of his works, makes him that city's greatest partisan in Polish sf, if not in modern Polish literature in general.
While Ziemiański proved adept at short-form sf, his popular renown came with the Achaja cycle. He launched it with a three-part trilogy (2002-2004), a sprawling swords-and-sorcery saga about a young princess's struggles and rise to legend. Its gritty realism and well-written battle scenes struck a chord with Polish readers: the series became a nationwide bestseller and is considered a modern classic of Polish Fantasy. The trilogy garnered multiple award nominations, winning one Sfinks Award and one Nautilus Award. Ziemiański continued the saga with the five-volume Pomnik cesarzowej Achai ["The Empress Achaja's Monument"] (2012-2016), a second series set a thousand years after the original trilogy. This sequel surprisingly shifts the setting into a a mix of Parallel Worlds and Alternate History, when an alternate version of Poland, portrayed in a fashion similar to that in his "Bomba Heisenberga", i.e. a major power with colonial ambitions (see Imperialism), discovers technology that enable it to enter the now-Renaissance-era world of Achaja. The expanded Achaja universe has since spawned a major prequel focusing on ancillary characters from the original trilogy: the nine-volume Virion series [see Checklist below]. Achaja is widely regarded as one of Poland's most significant, and one of its longest, fantasy cycles (although Ziemiański himself argued that, particularly taking the second series into account, classifying his series as fantasy is inaccurate).
Ziemiański has written several other standalone novels. Miecz Orientu ["Sword of Orient"] (2006) marked a puzzling detour: an experimental tale whose bizarre premise – a largely unguarded Prison camp – can only tenuously be read in terms of Inner Space or Absurdist SF. Largely devoid of fantastika and closer in tone to his debut ("Zakład zamknięty"), the novel was poorly received and remains an outlier within his twenty-first-century output. After this misstep he resumed alternation between sf and more mainstream projects. His Toy Wars (coll 2008) was a collection centered on a female detective/mercenary (often described as a futuristic Achaja) in a Near Future underworld – a pulpy mix of Cyberpunk-like action and detective noir. While this work represented Ziemiański's venture into true sf territory, the next few years saw the opposite, with a well-received crime novel, Breslau Forever (2008), followed by the World War Two-era historical thriller Ucieczka z Festung Breslau ["Escape from Fortress Breslau"] (2009), and two more crime novels, Żołnierze grzechu ["Soldiers of Sin"] (2010) and Za progiem grobu ["Beyond the Threshold of the Grave"] (2012). He also continued publishing more sf-like stories, some collected in Pułapka Tesli ["Tesla's Trap"] (coll 2013), and a few years later released a run-of-the-mill Cyberpunk action-adventure novel, Cyberpunk. Odrodzenie ["Cyberpunk. Rebirth"] (2020).
His narrative voice is known for its fast-paced, colloquial register and a cynically humorous undertone, qualities that sustained his popularity across formats from serialized magazine fiction to blog posts (he wrote a popular blog about Wrocław, 2010-2012). He has often remarked that he writes with little pre-planning, allowing characters to "take over" and plots to crystallize in mid-composition, describing the process as a kind of compulsive creative drive. This spontaneous method, supported only by minimal handwritten notes, contributes to the immediacy of his fiction but also to its unevenness. His heroine, Princess Achaja of the eponymous sequence, became iconic within Polish fantasy, with the name itself entering fan slang and pop culture. At the same time, Ziemiański has faced criticism for simplifying and sexualizing female characters.
Despite his local fame, Ziemiański's work remains little-known in English. As of 2025, none of his major novels have official English translations, and his stories have appeared only in Polish and neighboring languages (Czech, Slovak, Russian). Nevertheless, within Polish sf circles Ziemiański is regarded as an influential figure whose cross-genre imagination and pop-cultural savvy bridged the gap between the Soviet-era sf tradition and the twenty-first-century renaissance of Polish fantastika. [PKo]
Andrzej Ziemiański
born Wrocław, Poland: 17 February 1960
works
Achaja series
Achaja
- Achaja tom 1 ["Achaja Vol. 1"] (Lublin, Poland: Fabryka Słów, 2002) [Achaja: pb/]
- Achaja tom 2 ["Achaja Vol. 2"] (Lublin, Poland: Fabryka Słów, 2003) [Achaja: pb/]
- Achaja tom 3 ["Achaja Vol. 3"] (Lublin, Poland: Fabryka Słów, 2004) [Achaja: pb/]
Achaja: Pomnik cesarzowej Achai ["The Empress Achaja's Monument"]
- Pomnik cesarzowej Achai tom 1 ["The Empress Achaja's Monument Vol. 1"] (Lublin, Poland: Fabryka Słów, 2012) [Achaja: Pomnik cesarzowej Achai: pb/]
- Pomnik cesarzowej Achai tom 2 ["The Empress Achaja's Monument Vol. 2"] (Lublin, Poland: Fabryka Słów, 2013) [Achaja: Pomnik cesarzowej Achai: pb/]
- Pomnik cesarzowej Achai tom 3 ["The Empress Achaja's Monument Vol. 3"] (Lublin, Poland: Fabryka Słów, 2014) [Achaja: Pomnik cesarzowej Achai: pb/]
- Pomnik cesarzowej Achai tom 4 ["The Empress Achaja's Monument Vol. 4"] (Lublin, Poland: Fabryka Słów, 2014) [Achaja: Pomnik cesarzowej Achai: pb/]
- Pomnik cesarzowej Achai tom 5 ["The Empress Achaja's Monument Vol. 5"] (Lublin, Poland: Fabryka Słów, 2016) [Achaja: Pomnik cesarzowej Achai: pb/]
Achaja: Virion
- Virion – Wyrocznia ["Virion – Oracle"] (Lublin, Poland: Fabryka Słów, 2017) [Achaja: Virion: pb/]
- Virion – Obława ["Virion – Hunt"] (Lublin, Poland: Fabryka Słów, 2018) [Achaja: Virion: pb/]
- Virion – Adept ["Virion – Adeptus"] (Lublin, Poland: Fabryka Słów, 2019) [Achaja: Virion: pb/]
- Virion – Szermierz ["Virion – Fencer"] (Lublin, Poland: Fabryka Słów, 2019) [Achaja: Virion: pb/]
Achaja: Virion – Szermierz natchniony ["Virion – Fencer Inspired"]
- Zamek ["Castle"] (Lublin, Poland: Fabryka Słów, 2021) [Achaja: Virion – Szermierz natchniony: pb/]
- Pustynia ["Desert"] (Lublin, Poland: Fabryka Słów, 2022) [Achaja: Virion – Szermierz natchniony: pb/]
- Legion (Lublin, Poland: Fabryka Słów, 2023) [Achaja: Virion – Szermierz natchniony: pb/]
Achaja: Virion – Legenda miecza ["Virion – Legend of the Sword"] series
- Krew ["Blood"] (Lublin, Poland: Fabryka Słów, 2024) [Achaja: Virion – Legenda miecza: pb/]
- Ona ["She"] (Lublin, Poland: Fabryka Słów, 2025) [Achaja: Virion – Legenda miecza: pb/]
individual titles
- Wojny urojone ["Imaginary Wars"] (Warsaw, Poland: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Iskry, 1987) [pb/]
- Zabójcy szatana ["Satan's Killers"] (Wrocław, Poland: Krajowa Agencja Wydawnicza, 1989) [pb/]
- Bramy strachu ["Gates of Fear"] (Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Dolnośląskie, 1990) [pb/]
- Nostalgia za Sluag Side ["Sluag Side Nostalgia"] (Warsaw, Poland: Krajowa Agencja Wydawnicza, 1990) [pb/]
- Dziennik czasu plagi ["The Plague Time Journal"] (Wrocław, Poland: Europa, 1991) [pb/]
- Przesiadka w przedpieklu ["Transit in Hell Antechamber"] (Poznań, Poland: CIA-Books-SVARO, 1991) as by Patrick Shoughnessy [pb/]
- Przesiadka w piekle ["Transit in Hell"] (Katowice, Poland: Ares, 2004) as Andrzej Ziemiański [rev vt of the above: pb/]
- Miecz Orientu ["Sword of Orient"] (Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Dolnośląskie, 2006) [pb/]
- Cyberpunk. Odrodzenie ["Cyberpunk. Rebirth"] (Warsaw, Poland: Wydawnictwo Akurat, 2020) [pb/]
collections and stories
- Daimonion (Warsaw, Poland: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Iskry, 1985) [coll: pb/]
- Zapach szkła (Lublin, Poland: Fabryka Słów, 2004) [coll: pb/]
- Toy Wars (Lublin, Poland: Fabryka Słów, 2008) [coll: pb/]
- Pułapka Tesli ["Tesla's Trap"] (Lublin, Poland: Fabryka Słów, 2013) [coll: pb/]
links
previous versions of this entry