{"id":877693,"date":"2025-04-06T14:00:20","date_gmt":"2025-04-06T11:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rri.ro\/?p=877693"},"modified":"2026-03-23T09:47:03","modified_gmt":"2026-03-23T07:47:03","slug":"april-6-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rri.ro\/en\/weekend-edition\/april-6-2025-id877693.html","title":{"rendered":"Architects of the imaginary: the rise of speculative fiction"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Our guest on today&#8217;s show is Simina Lungu, a speculative fiction writer currently living in Timi\u0219oara, Romania with her rescue dog and cat. She started writing stories in her teenage years and quickly gravitated towards science-fiction and fantasy, enjoying the freedom of imagination offered by such genres.<\/p>\n<p>Simina made her writing debut in 2017 with the children fantasy novel <em>The Last Survivors, <\/em>published in both Romanian and English. Since then, she has written speculative short stories for various international publications and anthologies (such as <em>Night Picnic Journal, Mobius Blvd, Schlock!Magazine<\/em>). Her second novel, a science-fiction mystery called <em>A Song for Rust-city<\/em> was published in 2025 by Crossroad Press, appearing in print, ebook version, and as an audiobook narrated by Amber McCulloch. The novel delves into relevant themes and social issues such as prejudice, corruption, and the nature of humanity, while offering at the same time a fast-paced story and an intriguing mystery.<\/p>\n<p>Feel free to check out her website<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.siminalungustories.com\/\">https:\/\/www.siminalungustories.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>connect with her on Facebook:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/simina.lungu.writer\">https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/simina.lungu.writer<\/a><\/p>\n<p>or Instagram: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/siminalungu.author\/\">https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/siminalungu.author\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?url=https%3A\/\/api.soundcloud.com\/tracks\/2069755288%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-PoXM27dkyU1&amp;color=%23ff5500&amp;auto_play=false&amp;hide_related=false&amp;show_comments=true&amp;show_user=true&amp;show_reposts=false&amp;show_teaser=true&amp;visual=true\" width=\"100%\" height=\"300\" frameborder=\"no\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<div style=\"font-size: 10px; color: #cccccc; line-break: anywhere; word-break: normal; overflow: hidden; white-space: nowrap; text-overflow: ellipsis; font-family: Interstate,Lucida Grande,Lucida Sans Unicode,Lucida Sans,Garuda,Verdana,Tahoma,sans-serif; font-weight: 100;\"><a style=\"color: #cccccc; text-decoration: none;\" title=\"RadioRomaniaInternational\" href=\"https:\/\/soundcloud.com\/radioromaniainternational\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">RadioRomaniaInternational<\/a> \u00b7 <a style=\"color: #cccccc; text-decoration: none;\" title=\"Weekend Edition 06.04.2025\" href=\"https:\/\/soundcloud.com\/radioromaniainternational\/weekend-edition-06-04-2025\/s-PoXM27dkyU1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Weekend Edition 06.04.2025<\/a><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Our guest on today&#8217;s show is Simina Lungu, a speculative fiction writer currently living in Timi\u0219oara, Romania with her rescue dog and cat. She started writing stories in her teenage years and quickly gravitated towards science-fiction and fantasy, enjoying the freedom of imagination offered by such genres. Simina made her writing debut in 2017 with [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":41,"featured_media":808004,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"audio","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[154667],"tags":[187830,187828,187829],"coauthors":[114947],"class_list":["post-877693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-audio","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-weekend-edition","tag-short-stories-en","tag-simina-lungu","tag-speculative-fiction","post_format-post-format-audio"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Architects of the imaginary: the rise of speculative fiction - Radio Romania International<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.rri.ro\/en\/weekend-edition\/april-6-2025-id877693.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Architects of the imaginary: the rise of speculative fiction - Radio Romania International\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Our guest on today&#8217;s show is Simina Lungu, a speculative fiction writer currently living in Timi\u0219oara, Romania with her rescue dog and cat. 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