I wonder if Bulgaria really became leader in tech. In Czechoslovakia we also had some sort of computer industry. We also had state security agents buying western tech in disguise and importing it home for cloning.<p>I even know one guy who worked at computer reverse engineering institute back then. Also I have found memoirs of some random guy who worked as IT specialist for Stb (Czech equivalent of Stasi).<p>However, this article is really good introduction to Blugarian sci-fi which I didn't known before (unlike Polish and Soviet).
I grew up there. Every school had classrooms with Pravetz 8D (apple ii clone) running Karateka and those classes were full!
I was in kindergarden when my parents signed me up to learn computers and by 1st grade, I was writing chatbots in Basic. Fun times.
My first computer was a home computer from Bulgaria called Pravetz 8D. It’s amazing that it never occurred to me until now to look it up on the web and sure enough there is a Wikipedia page about them. If not for that thing, I wouldn’t be a software engineer today.
The author of the <i>Cyberpunk Manifesto</i> (1997), Christian As. Kirtchev, is also Bulgarian. He has a collection of Eastern European cyberpunk stories on Amazon (no idea how good they are) and is apparently active on Twitter too.<p>- <a href="http://project.cyberpunk.ru/idb/cyberpunk_manifesto.html" rel="nofollow">http://project.cyberpunk.ru/idb/cyberpunk_manifesto.html</a><p>- <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Chemical-Illusions-Anthology-Cyberpunk-Eastern/dp/144956402X" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/Chemical-Illusions-Anthology-Cyberpun...</a><p>- <a href="https://twitter.com/cyberkristiyan" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/cyberkristiyan</a>
Bulgaria is the origin of the oldest, still-functioning satellite in earth orbit, the Bulgaria 1300. It will turn 40 next year.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulgaria_1300" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulgaria_1300</a>
The first 286 I've worked on (in the USSR) was Bulgarian. It was pretty crappy, but still, 286 DOS software ran on it just fine. CGA display. Arkanoid, Prince of Persia, good times. At the time the USSR did not produce its own PC-compatible computers.
I certainly wasn't a part of the cultural context but I get the feeling that in many cases the messages werr really about the Soviet Bloc consciously or otherwise. Along with the anxieties attributed to the computers, which sound like an outlet for complaints about the top down system.<p>The bit about the experts seems downright allegorical for the suppression of "bourgeois pseudoscience" like cybernetics itself before they could rationalize it in the prevailing dogma for the party.<p><a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybernetics_in_the_Soviet_Union" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybernetics_in_the_Soviet_Un...</a>
I heard a story that at the opening ceremony of a semiconductor plant some Bulgarian communist party member made a speech where he said that semiconductors is just a first step and they are going in the direction of full conductors.
Concerning the fiction of Lyuben Dilov mentioned in the article which I had not heard of before, does anyone know if there are translations of his work either in English or German? Googling does not spit out much info.