Béla Kasztovszky
magyar | english
Béla Kasztovszky is a Hungarian writer, who became well-known through his science fiction short novels. According to the blurb on a sci-fi antology (Az idő hídján - A mai magyar SF tükre - On the Bridge of Time - A review of Hungarian sci-fi publications) published in 2000: "A contemporary author, who has written stories since the seventies. He is one of the most prestigious Hungarian authors in the field of science fiction, and he continues the long traditions of Hungarian science fiction literature (written by such great Hungarian authors as Mór Jókai, Frigyes Karinthy, Mihály Babits, etc.)".
Béla Kasztovszky was born in 1942, on the Great Hungarian Plain, in a place called Telekpuszta, near the village of Fülöpszállás, where his father was a junior clerk and his mother a village teacher. His ancestors were mostly teachers and lawyers (as well as some artists, priests and soldiers of fortune), and his roots go back on the paternal side to some 18th century noble families in Poland and on the maternal side to 17th century noble families in Hungary.
Not very long after his birth, his family moved back to the Hungarian capital, Budapest. His toddler years had been dramatically influenced by the horrible final years of the Second World War, which he spent in Budapest, and then came the years of peace and an enthusiastic 'socialist' reconstruction which was a very poor and yet happy era. Due to family reasons, Béla spent his primary school years in seven different elementary schools in various parts of Hungary. The memories of secondary school years recall a merry age, when he was free to act and think, including the thrilling days of the October 1956 Hungarian revolution, when he was still practically a child, and yet personally involved in the turmoil of the events (when the siege of the Hungarian Radio Building took place).
He acquired his electric engineer's diploma in 1967 at the Budapest University of Technology. Throughout his whole career he has worked in numerous technical fields with OVIT Rt. (National Power Line Company Ltd.), a Hungarian company specialising in installing and running the nation-wide high voltage electric grid. Béla is currently working in the Marketing and PR Department of that company.
It was a significant episode in his life when he contributed to producing (and then archiving) technical films about the power industry. Upon his own initiative, he had set up a video film studio (OVIT Technical Video Studio) in 1984 for the electric power industry to support the day-to-day image of companies operating in this field across the country as well as to create films with the purpose of introducing to viewers the history of the world-famous and pioneering Hungarian electrotechnology. He has contributed creatively - as a producer, cameraman, editor and scriptwriter - to making many hundreds of films about technical history and education.
He has always considered writing as his goal in life, but he could not turn this into a vocation, because - under the Hungarian conditions - he could never have made (and still would not be able to make) a living and support his family on the basis of being 'just' a writer.
Literature had already attracted him as a child, so he read a lot and won a school competition at the age of 14 with his utopist short novel (Az ifjúság városa - The town of youth). In his secondary school years, he had written poems and in his university years he started to have a go at writing prose. His individualism oriented, abstract writings (e.g. Este hétkor találkozunk - See you at 7pm) were not published, but his writing skills and individual style increasingly took shape.
In the early seventies - under the influence of well-known British, American, Polish, Russian and Hungarian fantasy writers of the previous decades - he was overwhelmed by the world of thoughts and expressions in science fiction, and then by the internationally renowned achievements of the poet, expert and editor Péter Kuczka, the sci-fi 'guru' in Hungary. The more sci-fi short novels he has read, the more he was convinced that he could write 'better' stories!
As the brand new beginner in a new young writers' generation, he participated in the workshop activities of the Science Fantasy Section of the Hungarian Writers' Federation. His first science fantasy short novel (Fehér kör - White Circle, later on: Kétszemélyes világ - A World for Two), a story highly motivated emotionally as Béla was a young father at the time, was published in 1977 in the No. 27 issue of the GALAKTIKA sci-fi antology (later on magazine) already well-known in Europe.
His very own book of short novels (under the title Kétszemélyes világ - A World for Two) was published in 1982 with a very high print-run in the series Kozmosz Fantasztikus Könyvek (Cosmos Fantasy Books), also edited by Péter Kuczka and highly popular at the time. In the epilogue of the volume containing 16 short novels, the author unveils his childhood with an open heart, almost 'objectively', describing his youth, which was rich in impressions and emotions, talking about the motivations of becoming a sci-fi writer and dwelling on the writer's ars poetica.
In those years, he had become a writer who meditates and makes you meditate (but never a prolific writer), who kept improving and correcting his stories (contrary to Isaac Asimov's well-known advice) every time until finally an almost perfect harmony in language and expression was achieved, even if it took many long years. (This is well proven by his short stories which were published twice, and for the second time even the title was not the same...).
In the last decades of the century, from time to time - relatively rarely - his short stories were published in different journals and magazines (Magyar Ifjúság, Ország-Világ, X-Magazin, Pharma Press Kiadó). In that period - because of his ab ovodefensive personality - he seemed to have been forgotten, but then the best representatives of the Hungarian (including SF) literature has found him again as one of the 'great doyens' of Hungarian science fiction. As a result, a new and dynamic period of his life had started - together with the commencing of the 21st century.
In the year 2000, in a representative antology of Hungarian science fiction (Az idő hídján - A magyar SF tükre - On the Bridge of Time, A review of Hungarian sci-fi publications, MÖBIUS Publishing House) one of his short stories originally written in 1984 as a 'historical' paradox predicting the Gulf War among other things (Ki állítja meg Speedway szenátort? - 'Who will stop Senator Speedway?') was published.
After this, for a period of almost two years, he had been an author of the monthly sci-fi column edited following a British example in an Internet forum (Puskás Hírmondó) of the Hungarian Telecommunications Company MATÁV. On this web-site, the Kasztovszky short stories were published monthly.
Three of his short novels were printed in ÁTJÁRÓ (Passage), an SF&F Magazine launched in 2002 following the traditions of GALAKTIKA. Álomutazás elérhető áron (Dream Trip at an Affordable Price) was the best Hungarian SF short novel in the year 2003, and it won the Zsoldos Péter Award, the most prestigious sci-fi prize in Hungary. A review by Sándor Szabó started the very positive assessment of the short story with the following words: "The most timely short story published in ÁTJÁRÓ..." and his concluding words were: "...I think this is where teaching while providing the incentive of entertainment begins!"
Worth mentioning is the author's short story A mi konzolunk (Our Shelf) which became the winner of the 2003 Hungarian finals in the bestseller writers 'World Competition' (Ponte Press Publishing House) launched by the American Michael Crawford, who has Hungarian roots. Unfortunately, this noble competition could not achieve its aim, because the world's top ten bestseller writers invited by Crawford were not interested.
The publication of ÁTJÁRÓ magazine had stopped in November 2004, but a group of businessmen - after a 9-year break! - relaunched the magazine now. The Kasztovszky short story published in the December 2004 issue of Új GALAKTIKA (New Galaktika) (Az időutazás technikája - The Technology of a Time Trip) is not at all a conventional sci-fi story, but rather a moralising prose-poem, which deeply, honestly and frankly reveals the author's frame of mind and ideas.
Béla Kasztovszky is no longer a young man, because he is more than sixty years old... However, in his thinking and writings (concerning the spirit and style of his stories) he can be considered as an 'ageless' figure. In fact, he is definitely young at heart! (See for example the short novel called A mi konzolunk - Our Shelf - which reaches out to the youth of the near future with an artistic empathy, issuing a warning about future dangers that stem from the risks of the present).
The same valuable writing skills are proven by his well-remembered 'great success' achieved as an invited speaker at the summer 2004 Budapest Island Festival (a well-known and popular rock festival with the European youth) where he read out a short novel called Van-e élet a Földön? (Is there life on Earth?). This short story lashes out at the hypocritical animal protection ideologies of meat-eating humans. It seems that the already senior writer is not only able to understand, but also to reach out to the youth of today.
At the end of the century, to characterise Béla Kasztovszky's world as a writer, the literary historian Dr Margit S. Sárdi (Lóránd Eötvös University of Sciences, Hungarian Institute of Literal History), the Chair of the Hungarian Sci-Fi Literature History Association wrote the following:
"Kasztovszky's short stories are infiltrated with awareness about human responsibility. He likes to toy with the problem of time, but his mind is also occupied with the future of mankind. His 'end of the world' concept is basically confident in spite of an apparent pessimism: mankind may destroy the Earth, but a new generation learning from the mistakes will save it. His very own volume of short novels and its title story 'Kétszemélyes világ' (A World for Two) symbolises the crushing of human selfishness, the personality radiated by ourselves to another human being. He is extremely sensitive to the human psyche with a genuine interest in the inner world of his characters."
And the author himself fully agrees - as this is his ars poetica!
The stubborn short novelist/poet has taken an important step forward in 2004, because he submitted to a Hungarian publishing house (Édesvíz Kiadó) his first science fantasy novel (Találtkapitány országa - Captain Longfound's Country) which will probably be published in the year 2005, and with which the author would have very much liked to participate in that already mentioned Bestseller Writers' World Championship...
December 2004