Zayets Article Published in the Journal of Science Fiction and Philosophy¶

The article "Volodymyr Zayets: A Ukrainian Postmodern behind the Iron Curtain" by Oleh Shynkarenko has been published in Volume 9 (2026) of the Journal of Science Fiction and Philosophy, in the section "Charting the Stars". The full text is freely available on the journal's website and as a PDF.

The article argues that Volodymyr Zayets (1949–2003), known in Ukraine mainly as a children's science fiction writer, was an unwitting postmodernist. Reading the novellas Plaster Cramp (1990) and Heavy Shadows (1991) and the collection The Temponauts (1986), it shows how Zayets portrayed Soviet institutions as rituals that kept running after their meaning had died. He arrived at ideas close to Lyotard, Derrida and Baudrillard through the lived experience of late socialism, without access to their theory.

The Journal of Science Fiction and Philosophy (ISSN 2573-881X) is a peer-reviewed, open-access academic journal founded in 2017. It studies science fiction as a medium for philosophical reflection, in all its formats. Every article passes double-blind review by at least two reviewers, and authors pay no publication fees. The journal publishes one volume a year. Its editor, Dr. Alfredo Mac Laughlin, works at St. Ambrose University in Davenport, Iowa (USA), which has supported the journal with a research grant. The journal is indexed in the Philosopher's Index, the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) and PhilPapers.

The article is published under a Creative Commons Attribution–NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) licence. The author keeps the copyright, and anyone may read, share and quote the article for non-commercial purposes, provided they credit the author and the journal. The editors will also deposit a copy on PhilPapers, so the text will remain available even if the journal's website changes.

For the dissertation, From Utopia to Dystopia: Ukrainian Science Fiction and the Collapse of Techno-Communism, this is the publication of a full chapter after independent peer review. The Zayets chapter, which describes the late-Soviet turn from techno-communist optimism to postmodern doubt, now stands as a verified scholarly result and adds to the publication record required for the doctoral defence. It is also the first article of this research in an English-language philosophy journal: indexing in the Philosopher's Index places a forgotten Ukrainian author in front of philosophers and science fiction scholars worldwide.

The editor wrote that he particularly enjoyed learning about Zayets and is curious about the Temponauts series, which has not yet been translated into English or Spanish. The journal welcomes responses to its articles: colleagues are invited to discuss the article in a Letter to the Editor.