This Portal was created with the intent of sharing the work that is done in Portugal or by Portuguese creators in the genres of science fiction and fantasy. If you are looking for exciting new books, songs, games, or any other media – you’ve come to the right place.
We have gathered a multidisciplinary team with a broad range of interests and fields of expertise and we hope to bring you the best of Science Fiction and Fantasy from Portugal, either old or new.
Portugal may be a tiny country – but its Sci-fi & Fantasy scene is thriving in several fields, so we hope you stick around and enjoy some of the hidden gems this country has to offer in terms of speculative fiction.
Staff
With a master degree in biology (microbiology and genetics) Cristina Alves tried to be a scientist for some years, however the career in Portugal is too precarious and she moved into the world of programming and consulting. Cristina Alves enjoys reading, mainly science fiction and comics. From reading to reviewing it was a small step, and nowadays she talks about science fiction, comics and boardgames at several Portuguese CONs, at the webpage/ blog Rascunhos and at the program/ podcast, with the same name, on the Radio Voz Online. She also collaborates as a jury for some fiction awards and has recently edited an anthology of Portuguese space opera.
Born in 1989, Carlos Silva is a Portuguese writer whose main interests are science fiction and weird fiction. He is also editor at Imaginauta (Indie press – http://www.imaginauta.net) and organizes several events as the Festival Contacto.
Adriano Ferreira
Born in 1995 and with a degree in Communication Studies, Adriano works as a cameraman and video editor. Rants about movies and television shows on the YouTube channel Cabo Cinético and has worked on numerous short-films. Has also written articles for Espalha-Factos and Sem Bilhete.
Ana Winterborn of the House Mota, the First of Her Name, Bringer of Hope and Healer of Souls, Breaker of Rules and Mother of Gamers, designing games since 1988, followed a career in human resources to return recently to the gaming industry – partner on a videogame studio called Bapa Dreams, is now responsible for game design and project managing. Videogames are an art form, a way of expression and a tool of interaction, entertainment and communication. The perfect world was made by Heinlein and Roberta Williams and smells like clouds and cold summer breezes.
António Monteiro
Born in Lisbon, sometime after the Stone Age. Married, with two daughters and five grandsons. University professor of Mathematics, author of many books, with a wide range of interests that include Malacology (was a founding member and president of the Sociedade Portuguesa de Malacologia, and coordinates the international project The Cone Collector; has published several books and numerous articles, comics (especially the works of Hergé and Edgar P. Jacobs, among several others) and supernatural horror fiction (with a special interest in the works of authors such as M. R. James, Jean Ray, etc.). Was co-organizer of the cycle Sustos às Sextas.
Specialist in 3D printing for educational contexts, passionate about educational robotics, maker culture and the world of Fablabs. Gives workshops around the country about introduction to 3D printing. Participated in the three Maker Faires of Lisbon, and in Maker Faire Galicia and Rome – European Edition. Distinguished with the Digital Inclusion and Literacy Award in 2016 (FCT / ICT Network and Society). Teacher-trainer, specialized in introducing 3D modeling and printing at ANPRI and CFAERC. Co-creator of the open source educational robot Robot Anprino. Founding member of fablab Lab Aberto, in Torres Vedras. Graduated in Visual and Technological Education, Master in Educational Informatics from the Portuguese Catholic University, currently attending postgraduate studies in Programming and Robotics Teaching Methodologies at Institute of Education of the University of Lisbon. Since 2004, he has been an ICT teacher and PTE coordinator at Agrupamento de Escolas Venda do Pinheiro, where he has been involved with TIC em 3D ICT projec, LCD – Robotics Club, and Fab@rts: 3D in the Hands of Education, distinguished with merit award from the Rede de Bibliotecas Escolares. Passionate about Science Fiction and Futurism, collaborated with critical reviews for the aCalopsia project, and writes for H-alt (comics culture portal) and Bit2Geek (science and futurism portal). Collaborates with the Sci-Fi Lx Festival, and only loses the annual Fórum Fantastico event when it overlaps Maker Faire Rome. His latest projects are being one of the coordinators of the 3Digital contest, which encourages the use of 3D technologies with elementary and junior high school students, and an EU Codeweek Leading Teacher for Portugal.
Bruno Martins Soares writes fiction since he was 12 years old, and his first book, ‘O Massacre’ (The Massacre), a collection of short-stories, came out in Portugal in 1998. It was followed by several contributions to newspapers, magazines and other collective books. In 1996, he won the National Young Creators Award for Writing, representing Portugal at the 1997 Torino Young Creators of Europe and the Mediterranean Fair, where his short-story ‘Mindsweeper’ was translated and published in Italian. His first novel ‘A Saga de Alex 9′ (The Alex 9 Saga) was published in Portugal in 2012, by publisher Saída de Emergência, within a series that features authors like George R.R.Martin or Bernard Cornwell. After that he published several books and short-stories in different media, in Portuguese and English, including the Scifi novels ‘The Dark Sea War Chronicles’ and ‘Laura and the Shadow King’. He worked in Project Development for Television, and was a journalist and a communications, HR and management consultant among other trades. He was also an international correspondent in Portugal for Jane’s Defense Weekly and a researcher for The Washington Post. He wrote several plays, TV-pilots and short and full length pictures’ screenplays, and he wrote and produced English-spoken Castaway Entertainment’s full length feature film ‘Regret’, distributed in the USA and Canada in 2015. He lives and works in Lisbon.
Luís Filipe Silva (b. 1969) is a Portuguese SF author of O Futuro à Janela (Caminho award winner in 1991) and several novels, including Terrarium with João Barreiros (1996, redux edition in 2016). He’s also a translator and editor of anthologies, and his short fiction has appeared in several venues in Portugal and abroad. Lately, he’s been researching the history of Portuguese literary SF, having written the entry about “Portugal” for the online SF Encyclopedia
Holds no academic title what so ever. Obviously loves to read Science Fiction, Fantasy, lots of comics and books of Science to understand what surrounds him. Occasionally writes in is blog, O Senhor Luvas (Mr Gloves). Watches too much tv shows. As part of is family heritage black humor runs deep in him so expect him to laugh out loud at things that would make other people cry or be shocked. His superpower is the ability to fall asleep while doing an MRI.
Self-described as state-of-the-art idiocy, Gazervici is a 22-year-old communicologist, freelance content creator and jack of all trades living in South Portugal. Can be found working a day job as a Head of Communication, talking about books on the YouTube channel Cabo Cinético, writing about LGBT stuff, ranting on Twitter about anything at all or waiting for the next bus back home.
Marco Fraga Silva
Marco Fraga da Silva is a Ph.D. student in Media Arts at the Universidade Lusófona de Humanidades e Tecnologias where he is researching Cinema, Comics, Speculative Fiction, Transmedia Storytelling, and Worldbuilding. Marco is the director of an international comics contest since 2009: the contest – Avenida Marginal – is open to every Lusophone country and the Portuguese diaspora. Moreover, he’s also the writer of a digital culture column for the Açoriano Oriental newspaper.
Patrícia Carreira
She is a BAFTA Cymru award winner for Best Short Film in 2010, with The List, co-directed with Rungano Nyoni.
She also worked as Casting Director and Acting Coach, with Lynne Ramsey, in the UN add Save the Meal, and with Rungano Nyoni, in I Am Not a Witch, UK representation at the Oscars for Best Foreign Film and presented in the Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes Film Festival.
She started working in Circus at Chapitô (Lisbon) as Artistic Director, Curator and coordinating social projects of integration through art. Nowadays, she is continuing this path through Kilig, a performative arts company.
Patrícia completed her master degree, in Directing for Screen, at Central Saint Martins, UK. Before that she did her BA at Escola Superior de Teatro e Cinema, in Theatre Directing. She was an Erasmus student at Real Escuela Superior de Arte Dramático, and an intern at Compañia Nacional de Teatro Clásico, at Madrid.
Pedro Cipriano
Pedro Cipriano was born in 1986 in Vagos (Portugal). He has a PhD in Natural Sciences (Particles physics) and worked as an associate scientist at CERN. Nowadays he creates AI in a digital marketing company. In his free time he practices Haidong Gumdo and Capoeira In 2014 he published his first book, O Caderno Vermelho (The Red Book). As Nuvens de Hamburgo (The Clouds of Hamburg), published in 2017, won the Great Prize Adamastor for Portuguese Fantastic Fiction in 2018 and his tale, A Aranha (The Spider), published in the anthology Steampunk Internacional (International Steampunk) won the Adamastor Prize for Portuguese Short Fiction in 2018. He is the author of several tales and essays, and has participated in several anthologies, magazines, blogs, and newspapers. You can find some of his works translated into English, Finnish, Philipin.
In 2014 he created the Editorial Divergência, a publishing company specialized in speculative fiction. Later on, he also created Edições Viriato in 2016 and Trebaruna in 2018. He is also the founder of Convergência and the Projecto Foco – an online bookshop for fantasy and science fiction books and comics, and a publishing services provider.
Pedro Pimenta
Born in 1992, started studying Artistic Studies, but ended up quitting so as to follow his dream of working in videogames.
This interest that has accompanied him since childhood reflected itself on a personal research about the history of videogames in Portugal that started in 2013 with the involvement in the book Videojogos em Portugal: História Tecnologia e Arte by Nelson Zagalo. This book opened a totally new world that motivated him to collect Portuguese videogames, interview various people and research in old magazines and newspapers to know more about our relatively unknown history.
After this various articles were written for the physical and online magazines Espectro, Jogos80, Pushstart, Unseen64 and a personal blog currently offline. This led to an invitation by Cineblog to collaborate on a series of videos, each analizing a decade of videogame production and a feature length documentary, still in production.
Combining his love for music and videogames, he made music for Massive Galaxy and Proxima Centauri (two sci-fi themed PC videogames in development), aside from several small projects. Then he delved into 8-bit platforms working in several videogames for the ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC and MSX, collaborating with people from Portugal, Spain, Germany, England, Argentina and Brazil. His love for Sci-fi and videogames was what led him to work on his first projects and now to write for this website.
Throughout his years, Renato Colaço always found solace in gaming. Of all kinds, he’s not too picky.At 6, he got his first gaming console and at 12 he became curious about Magic: the Gathering and other collectible card games. Later he went to live in the UK to study for his PhD – and it was there that he found the joy of tabletop gaming. Often it was so cold outside that the prospect of staying indoors pushing models around or playing board games was suddenly really appealing. Over the years he has amassed an impressive collection of game titles. If it’s a game – he has probably played it, even if just for a couple of hours. And if you visit, you have equal chance of finding him: 1) holding a Playstation controller and shouting at the TV; 2) painting miniatures of steampunk arachnids 3) pretending he’s a Blood Elf Necromancer lady online or 4) rebuilding Lisbon after the 1755 earthquake on his kitchen table. Just knock before you enter – it’s common courtesy.
Rola Iniciativa
Rola Iniciativa is an online platform that aims to expand the tabletop RPG community in Portugal. This growth is obtained through our Facebook and Patreon pages, our Discord server and our endless Twitch streams and YouTube videos. Contact with the community is key, and even though Dungeons & Dragons is a common interest, there are many other games that come to our attention (Vampire: The Masquerade, Call of Cthulhu, Mouse Guard), some of wich come from more independent sources (Solar Blades & Cosmic Spells, Demon Ninja). There are many more games out there, both to play and create. And we want to play them all with everyone.RPG Design is also a goal, since 2019 we have reached a lot of rpg designers to understand and learn with them, and to show our community that they can count on us, to help any project that they might have.
Rogério Ribeiro
Rogério Ribeiro is a biomedical researcher who lives looking for facts among the fictions conventionally called “scientific hypothesis”. Probably for that, he is so in love with storytelling! In the cultural and literary fields, Rogério has been a founder of Shortcutz (short movies festival), EuroSteamCon Portugal (steampunk festival), Épica (Portuguese Association for the Fantastic in the Arts), Conversas Imaginárias (genre talks) and the Trëma collective. Together with Safaa Dib, he was the founder of the international genre festival Fórum Fantástico, which he organises annually since 2005. Sporadically, he writes genre short stories, translates, and edits anthologies and magazines (including being a co-founder and first editor of BANG! magazine)
Tiago Cruz
Born in 1989, Lisbon. Graduate in Arts and Communication. Can be found amongst piles of books and comic books, horror movies, creepypastas, and videogames accompanied by an extensive soundtrack composed of several genres of metal, post-rock and synthwave music. Loves reading and writing since he can remember and fiercely grabbed the chance of writing his first comic book when the publisher Escorpião Azul invited him to do so. In 2017 did a one-year internship in the field of production aimed to educational services in the Culturgest Foundation. Nowadays does workshops and writes, while also collaborating with Museu Rafael Bordalo Pinheiro occasionally as a tour guide, while also participating in Game Jams, where the last one awarded him the first prize with the game “Marvila In Progress”.
Tomás Agostinho
Born in 1993. Lives in Lisbon. Philosophy student and tutor during the day and science fiction herald by nature. Collaborates with a small publishing house dedicated to speculative fiction called Imaginauta and has been involved in various projects regarding promoting the genre within Portugal for the past few years: Sci-Fi Lx, Contacto, It’s Alive. Besides being one part of a three person Portuguese podcast about ficcional universes in cinema called Universos Paralelos, he has also worked in film festivals like IndieLisboa and MOTELX and organizes several independent movie sessions.
The Portuguese Portal of Fantasy and Science Fiction 