Volodymyr Zayets: A Ukrainian Postmodern behind the Iron Curtain

This article argues that the Ukrainian science fiction writer Volodymyr Zayets (1949–2003) was an unwitting postmodern writer, one who registered the collapse of modern hierarchical order without access to the theoretical vocabulary that named it. Similarly, this author's work was never considered postmodern in Ukrainian literary studies: he was considered a science fiction writer whose works were published mainly in children's literature publishing houses. However, Zayets diagnosed the Soviet hierarchy and its institutions as decorative survivals that continued to function ritually after their legitimating core had died. Reading his major novellas, Plaster Cramp (1990) and Heavy Shadows (1991), alongside the collection The Temponauts (1986), my article traces several features that Zayets shared with Western postmodern theory. It argues that Zayets reached these positions independently, through lived experience of late socialism rather than through Lyotard, Derrida, or Baudrillard, making him a rare case of postmodernism arrived at symptomatically. Original publication: Shynkarenko, Oleh. 2026. "Volodymyr Zayets: A Ukrainian Postmodern behind the Iron Curtain." Journal of Science Fiction and Philosophy 9: 1–26. ISSN 2573-881X. Published 15 October 2026. https://jsfphil.org/volume-9-2026/zayets-ukrainian-postmodern/ The Journal of Science Fiction and Philosophy is a peer-reviewed, open-access journal indexed in the Philosopher's Index, DOAJ and PhilPapers. This copy is deposited by the author under the journal's Creative Commons Attribution–NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) licence. Please cite the original publication in the Journal of Science Fiction and Philosophy. Author: Oleh Shynkarenko, University of Pécs, Hungary (ORCID 0009-0001-1690-8967). The article is part of the author's doctoral research on Ukrainian science fiction, 1920–2020: https://sci-fi-ua.netlify.app/