Yugoslavian Crazyscience Magazine Galaksija Shows the 1970s Balkan Vision of the Future

Hi,I'm from Croatia,some translations are not entirely correct:
image 4: "Gentle rhapsody of the universe"
image 10: "The New Series Hi-Fi: All about Amplifiers"
image 13: "Speculations: Hidden Universes"
"All of the world's energy"
"Build a windmill"

Thanks Constantine. I figured they were butchering a lot of the translation. It may be fun to laugh at but it isn't very informational. Yours make a little more sense.

makes*

Hi,
I'm from Serbia (former Yugoslav republic), I was a regular reader of "GALAKSIJA" (Galaxy), so I just wanted to clear up some things, since this article could be some misleading.

"GALAKSIJA" was, and up to this date probably stayed one of the most important magazines for science populatization and Sci-Fi in Yugoslavia. Later on while it continued it's releases in Serbia, it also stayed popular in other former YU-republics, until due to the lack of fundings it has been closed. One of the main reasons why I have started to follow Popular Science was the fact that these two are very similar in their concept: bringing the latest scientific and technological achievements and thoughts to the wide audithorium, presented by a normal language for a reader with basic or more advanced academical knowledge.

Since most of the readers interested for science and technology are also Sci-Fi fans, they kept the SciFi column, introducing world best from this: Arthur Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Staniclaw Lem, Frederik Pohl, Ray Bradbury etc.

Anyway I just didn't want to let this stay as a crazyscience mambo-jumbo, just because of the lack of the information about it.

Cheers

Example - cover stories from this cover page:
"Science vs. charlatans"
"New discoveries about the Sun"
"Factories in space"
"Genetic engineering"

Cheers again

I just wanted to say that I agree completely with Viks021. I am from Croatia. Galaksija was exactly the opposite of the crazyscience magazine, and very similar to Popular Science magazine. Thanks to that magazine many of us, school kids at that time, got interested in astronomy, engineering, computer science ...
And I was very sad when that magazine was closed ...

Sadly, I haven't had a chance to read Galaksija. I don't know when it was canceled but, as I can see, I can only regret for not having an opportunity to read it. Thank you Viks for explaining us what it was like to read it.

Greetings from Vukovar, Croatia!

I am very disappointed with your text. In this magazine were built generations. It is not difficult if you're a good journalist to come up to the texts and journals and see how it was progressive. Shame the superficial criticism of science. This kind of arrogance unbecoming a scientific journal. Not all the best and brightest came from America ... I guess somewhere people still allowed to look at the sky and write about it. And this magazine was popular in whole europe, not just former yugoslavia. It will be nice to apologize for this abusive text.

Galaksija would have never published such a poorly researched article.

It's not up to your journal reputation making pretentious and depreciatory comments about Galaksija magazine content just after seeing cover pages. This kind of superiority standpoint shouldn’t be part of PopSci ever! Using same "technique" I easily (and documented, unfortunately) can tell that while we at Balkan were having “bizarre vision of the future” (cutlery, tie, alternate current, radio transmission, robots…) common / rural Americans were killing Indians and hanging black colored people.

I was a member of the Galaksija editorial team, from January 1981 up to the end of the magazine. I wrote articles about programmable calculators and, later, personal computers. "Računari u vašoj kući" ("Computers in Your Home," later just "Computers"), the first personal computers magazine in former Yugoslavia, was founded by Galaksija in 1983.

Galaksija (Galaxy) was a great magazine and, whatever the translations you did might sometimes suggest, held a strong attitude against pseudo-science, astrology, and other similar nonsense. The founder of Galaksija, late Mr. Gavrilo Vučković, published quite a few editorials unmasking the pseudo-science. Dr. Vladimir Ajdačić and Dr. Branko Lalović also wrote on that subject.

Galaksija was a great project, an unique publication of its kind in former Yugoslavia. It was not profitable, but survived for more than two decades and made a difference for many people.

Dejan Ristanović (dejanristanovic.com)

it is so common now, the arrogance from the west, self-appointed experts on everything.... First of all, it was written in serbian language, not croatian, but you do not know that, do you? ...or care, for that matter.

"Don't judge a book by its cover" - remember that?

Since it seems to me that Americans are in Orvel's 1984, would you be so kind to update me who do you fight and kill next month? And for that matter, would you be so kind to pause murdering of non-US people at least few months a year? Another suggestion, maybe you should post a list of resources of other nations that you want to grab, so those people would not have to die for bogus causes (democracy, human rights) and just hand you what you want. Ignorant greedy bullies...

First of all this is not Croatian, this is Serbian language... This magazine was published by Belgrade company "Bigz".
And second it's not very journalistic to sarcastically comment something you can't even read...

Instead of laughing at "Balkan quack science" magazine, the readers are laughing back at Mr. Kane's quack journalism. This misfired badly because he didn't follow the scientific principles - ask a question (i.e. 'what are these funny pictures?', learn you facts, make a hypothesis (i.e. 'is "Galaksija" quack magazine?', use proper instrumentation, test, analyze, draw a conclusion and then dare to comment, this if you feel competent...It would be so easy to hit even harder at Mr. Kane, for example, using a 'Galaksija' June 1981 cover with a picture of a Space Shuttle Crew and the caption below that says "To Space and Back". Now, were they suckers or what?

www.flickr.com/photos/64750877@N07/5966616648/in/set-72157626977181903

For the record, "Galaksija" was a serious stuff, compared to what is today sold as a 'popular science magazine'.

So you saw some interesting pictures from a magazine from Yugoslavia with some text which you did not understand a single word of it and you immediately looked for the translation into Croatian?! Than you were not really satisfied with the translation but you still decided to write a bunch of comments about the pictures, about the Galaksija magazine itself, you made your conclusion about it and you presented all that to your dear readers ...
How did you decide to look for Croatian dictionary? Why didn't you try Bosnian, or Montenegrian first. Or Serbian? Do you know which language was spoken in Yugoslavia? Did you try to find if Galaksija was really printed form somewhere in today's Croatia? ...

I am not sure if I can find the best words to show you how ridiculous this must look to somebody objective trying to catch what you want to report here!
There are thousands of us who grow up with Galaksija (and with many other good things in Yugoslavia), the country itelf was a kind of result of, what we'd today call 'united europe idea' but 'only' 80 years before that 'great european idea'. The language in Yugoslavia was Serbo-Croatian - that is the official name of the language we all learned in school, that is the language of Galaksija. The biggest part of Yugoslavia and basically the reason for its existence was Serbia, not Croatia. Today, when some stupid and some evil people destroyed Yugoslavia, you must decide which language out of 6-7 possibilities (Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, ..) you should translate to, if you find a Serbo-Croatian text. I hope you don't belong to the same kind of people like those who still write in the newspapers that the best tennis player in the world is Croatian! ... and all you really need to do today is to click a few times on the web and you get any info you need in a second. Galaksija existed in time when it was much harder to get a proper information, and still they did 100 times better job than you.

I think that the automatic, kind of 'let's not think' reactions you demonstrated here are a clear result of two things:
1. arrogance - only western magazines were good - and if you do not understand the covers - well, that's even better - it just proves that the magazine was bad
2. propaganda - you already have in your mind deeply written from the tv screens, that if you find something interesting from Yugoslavia - go check Croatia, (I guess if it is something that looks bad - go check Serbia)

Now you can see from the other comments - Galaksija came actually from Belgrade, Serbia. Language is Serbian (according to today's standards, Serbo-Croatian originally), and you can also see that the magazine's titles were not stupid at all, just in contrary. I just hope you are able to imagine that the content was also not so stupid as you might think.

I guess, now you can really prepare a new article about the influence of propaganda to journalism - for your next release, although I am sure I am not going to read it. I have created my account here just because it was necessary to make this comment, you are free to delete it right now - I am not going to need it any more.

Many thanks
gd

Galaksija wasn`t a picture book!

I am surprised with Your superficiality, while writing this article. Writing articles in this manner is expected in Yellow journalism, and I was in fallacy that this magazine has some degree of professionalism. Obviously, I was wrong. Only thing I could say about article written in this way is:
Ignorance Is Bliss, very good for You, Dear Author.

Come on,guys, get real. I am from Banja Luka, I also grew up with Galaksija and I liked it. It was a good magazine but not exceptional. Also, from the 2011 perspective and viewed from a different culture, it does look a bit weird. And so does the Newsweek from the 70's to me. However, you are idealizing Galaksija a bit and unjustifiably attacking a different view. It appears we have a zero sense of humor, yet we think we are always the smartest asses... And how come we do not rule the world, but the inane Americans? And if we had been so advanced and scientific in those times how come we have recently committed such savage crimes and killed each other for nothing. Also, if you are so scientific what's the real difference between Serbian and Croatian? We were, or so it seems, very smart, growing up and feeding on such unrealistic idealizations, Galaksija included. I am a Yugoslav and feel Yugoslav, but I simply find such unrealistic Yugo-nostalgia laughable. Let us not idealize ourselves, because we have recently demonstrated to the world we are a bunch of heartless weirdos. Get real and maybe there will be hope for more normal generations here. Petar

@petarb
We don't attack a different view 'cause here we can't see any view. This article looks like it was written by 8 year old boy.
"ha, ha look at this picture, ha, it looks like those two had a picnic and flying saucer ruin it, ha, ha, funny" sad Cartman from South Park for one eminent US magazine.

And Petar do you even know serbian language when you don't know the difference, I wonder!?!?!?

And the final, we had one savage war, unlike Amerikans who had at least a dozen hartless wars just from that time... in other parts of the world killing millions of inosent people.

And for your info Chinesse rule the world, Amerikans are just show off...

You miss the point Mr. Sean Kane it was very serious magazine, despite wierd artistic front page, stand along with New Scientist, Omni, Science Didest, La Recherche, Co m'interesse... ringing any bell? So, never judge the book by cover. Best regards!

Respecting a view that looks like an eight year old boy's view is exactly what it means to be tolerant. The last war when the Americans were savagely killing each other was between 1861 and 1865. We, on the other hand, have savagely killed each other at least five times since that time and apparently still have not learned a thing from such history. This is not to excuse their wars around the globe (but I have already said that they rule the world, and not us) but that is not the issue. As to the language, I do know Serbian, Croatian and also Serbo-Croatian and I firmly believe them to be one language. I find evidence of this every single day of my life when talking to the people around me. I also speak a bit of Italian but I do not see what my knowledge of language has anything to do with this. I wish the Chinese ruled the world, but I do not believe so. I want us to be better though and that might be the sole reason I have an opinion that is somewhat different from the majority of others voiced here. Cheers, Petar

This level of arrogance and ignorance is absolutely unbelievable. You have no idea what was "Galaksija". You have no idea what influence "Galaksija" made to teenagers and young people at that time. You do not know what text was inside. But you made some comments based on some pictures totally taken from context and time. Translation made by google translator is obviously wrong and inadequate (and it was serbian not croatian language). I was teenager at that time. Black holes, Big Bang, quasars, neutron stars, supernova, and many other interesting topics were explained at the level that almost everybody was able to understand. But it was not low level. It was not for children. I can congratulate to people in "Galaksija" who did fantastic job of introduction young people into the world of science. And by the way, "Galaksija" would never say anything about any magazine like you did about "Galaksija". People in "Galaksija" had dignity and respect for everybody, what you obviously do not have even in a micro level. You can delete my account now. You do not deserve that we waste our time reading Popular Science. You do not deserve any attention.

I don't understand why did you deleted my comment. I am resending it now, just in case it was mistaken for a spam.

Just to be clear, I was just a regular reader until Yugoslavia has split up ( I live in Slovenia ).

Galaksija was quite good, especially given its environment ant timeframe. In fact, I prefered it over many foreign magazines.

It had its special editions ( I remember one about Rubik's cube) and computers ( "Računari u vašoj kući"- Computers in Your House, it continued as a separate magazine with shortened name "Računari"-"Computers" ).

I think main quality of Galaksija and its children like "Računari" was, that they were magazines with big percentage of very good articles and above all, they had a soul. It was published by a small team of fanatically devoted and passionate people.

Their materials weren't a simple copies by clueless "authors" of garbage that was collected elsewhere and it was evident that many of them took considerable effort.

Special Edition of Računari ( "Computers" ) has started around the time time when CLive Sinclair started offering his ZX-80 computer ( with a kit option) and it featured first home computer, designed entirely by "our guys" - "Galaksija". Interestingly, Sir Clive was later knighted due to his contributions to the computing world even though he never designed any of his computers. "Our guy" Voja Antonić did practically all heavy lifting by himself in extremely limited circumstances and AFAIK all he ever got was a little more than some popularity.

Galaksija- first small domestic DIY home computer was a small marvel, very DIY friendly, especially in our conditions ( socialism, custom restrictions, very low wages etc), but it performed on par with any comparable foreign solution. Its firmware was children of love- small but packed with features.It was based on Z-80, I think mainly beause its DRAM refresh circuitry could be effectively used for SW-based ( and thus cheaper) picture generation.

It was followed with similar more-or less homegrown efforts, like TIM-011 ( computer inside monitor terminal, based on Hitachi's HD-64180) and year of first Macintosh has seen domestic DIY project with MC-68000 ( "Vuk"- Wolf) etc etc.

I have learned how to draw a decent line, circle and ellipse in asm in that magazine and even before that there were many articles, dealing with numerical correctness of popular calculus and trigonometric algorithms etc.

Main stars of epic first edition were Voja Antonić ( he designed majority of the hardware of "Galaksija"), IIRC Voja Gašić and Dejan Ristanović ( can't remember atm who did what wrt to firmware)...

IOW, don't spit on things, about which you don't have a clue...

dear mr Kane,
living and working in the USA more than 10 years, observing dumb things around me and now reading your... I don't know how to call it, let's say "write-up" about something you don't understand, I have to say that I quite understand the expression "stupid American", widely accepted and used in and out of the USA. Cheers.

This article is a product of a feeble minded, arrogant American bully. His "Croatian" is rusty, indeed!
Galaksija (Galaxy), magazine for popular science was published in Belgrade, IN SERBIAN, and had absolutely nothing to do with Soviet magazines. It was in fact linked to the contemporary American and European science and SCI-FI. Do not pass cold war cliché judgments on something you do not comprehend.
America is full of Serbs (and Croats and Bosniaks) - you could have asked any of them to translate parts of the magazine for you. Then you would not call it either bizarre, crazy or retro.
In 70's and 80's Yugoslavia was relatively liberal country with full freedom of its citizens to travel anywhere in the world without visas (except of course to America and Greece)

Americans don't know much about Yugoslavia. They all think it was a Russian country. All the regions of the former Yugoslavia are so technically advanced even to this day. Wasn't Tesla from Dalmatia?

Wow.

"Popular Science" isn't a "scientific journal". It's a quick look at some of the more interesting things that come up around the world. The writers are journalists, not scientists. Even "PopSci" pokes fun at itself once in a while. Comparing Popular Science to a "scientific journal" is like comparing Michael Jackson to Mozart. Did they both create popular music? Yes. Do people listen to both? Yes. Do you have to go very far to see how they are different? No.

The writer said right up front that the translation came from Google. Popular Science even uses "crazy" to describe technology and inventions it reports about in itself!

As for the anti-American comments, I find it interesting that I am an American Citizen and a Cold War submarine veteran. My name is John Cain - but in my ancestral country of Ireland it would be spelled Sean Kane. I helped develop a device that was on the cover of Popular Science in July of 1996. It was developed in a hurry so that it could be used to keep some people from killing other people without killing people who weren't trying to kill other people, none of whom were Americans. Is YOUR English good enough to properly understand that poorly-written sentence? Do you think Google Translate would make it a properly written, grammatically correct sentence in your language, whatever language that happens to be?

I also remember the things that Petar (petarb above) mentions. I watched snipers shooting women and children who were trying to get water in the beautiful and culturally rich city of Sarajevo. I do not care if they were Serbs or Croats. I am proud of using my scientific skills to help stop them. Do I hate all Serbs or Croats for those actions, or blame all Serbs and Croats for things written about my country in any magazine you may have read or produced? NO.

As for Patar, I don't have to agree with everything he says to respect him, live next to him, help him or to accept his help. His ancestry makes no difference to me. His skin, eyes, hair, language or religion make no difference to me. He is another human being like I am. I would NEVER harm him or his family just because his father, or father's father, or father's father's father did anything or lived in a certain place. That is what it means to be American. Just like anywhere else, we cannot always control the day-to-day actions of our government and no American is exactly like another.

All of us can always find a reason to hate or find fault. It takes courage and effort to help others understand and appreciate another country's magazine and the ideas it presented. Thank you to those who translated the text on the covers and told us about the magazine. I respect all those who take the time to help, not hate.

Jack Cain

Bucks, Blisters or Blood - Everyone needs to pay for the freedoms we enjoy!

For those who weren't here to understand the culturally-relevant words "bizarre", "crazy" or "retro":

In the USA, the late 1960's and most of the 1970’s WERE "bizarre", "crazy" and from today's perspective (and the dictionary) "retro". The cover of "GALAKSIJA" presented was very similar to 1960/1970 psychedelic posters commonly used for music concerts, but that also became accepted works of art. For those of us who were there, the picture & caption are culturally and socially coherent and in no way convey an insult. In fact, the context was inclusive – as in “look – they had psychedelic covers on magazines too!”. “Crazy, man” was a common American phrase during that time.

Unless you are part of a culture - any culture- how can you fully understand the subtle shades of context that can be used which are easily understood by everyone who is part of that culture?

Personally, I don't truly understand why so many people need to point out the language was this or that - because in my culture we generally only have one language. In your culture, it is a point of pride. Since Popular Science is an American publication, interpret it from American culture - or risk looking as ignorant as you accuse others of being.

Jack Cain

Bucks, Blisters or Blood - Everyone needs to pay for the freedoms we enjoy!

Nothing crazy about this magazine

interesting viewing

www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfJiNPZ38kY&feature=share

@Jack Cain aka Sean Kane?

Galaksija (Galaxy) was NOT "Crazyscience Magazine"! What it really was is: "Magazine for Science Popularization". (See how I wrote 'popularization' instead od 'popularisation' :) ). It is written under the title on the cover page, and it IS true.
That cover does NOT show "Balkan Vision of the Future"! It is just artistic.
You wrote: ""Popular Science" isn't a "scientific journal". It's a quick look at some of the more interesting things that come up around the world. The writers are journalists, not scientists."
Yet, on About Us page it can be read that "Popular Science has been a leading source of science and technology news since its inception way back in 1872."
What gives?

You also wrote: "Even "PopSci" pokes fun at itself once in a while.",
but meant: ""PopSci" pokes fun even at itself once in a while.", didn't you?
On the matter, first you say it was not poking, now, it was?
As for poorly written sentences, I can't believe that after reading those commenters' comments, you don't believe theirs English is good enough. (How's that for poorly written (not poorly-written)?) Of course it is good enough!
“Crazy, man” and "Crazyscience" do not correlate.
Snipers? What the hell?
Reason to find fault? How about because - there IS a fault and it is NOT true?
Language this or that? In "your" (you wrote your - singular!)(?) culture "you" (you wrote we - plural!) generally (?) only have one language? Have you heard of Spanish language? 36,000,000 of your fellow citizens speak Spanish as a primary language, but you "generally only have one language"?
Galaksija (read as ga'l-uhk-see-uh) was written in Serbian language, called by the communists, at the time, Serbo-Croatian. We didn't change our language at all after decomposition of Yugoslavia - only it's official name. Croatians changed theirs. I could tell Bulgarian from Russian, and if you show me Chinese and Japanese text, I will tell you which is which. And I even didn't go to college!
That cover is not psychedelic. Type 'psychedelic' in Google and click Images and compare them to the cover - you should have known better, talking about 60's and the 70's in USA.
One of my favorite (look, I even wrote favorite instead of favourite :) ) bands ever is Grateful Dead. (I wonder, what would late Garcia tell hearing about "one language"?)
I admit I prefer songs like Going Down The Road Feelin' Bad and Casey Jones to, for example, Stella Blue and Blues for Allah. And you know what, I'm listening to the Road right now, and it still gives me goose bumps, and I know that song is American folk song - traditional, so don't try to divert this communication to media circus' "Serbian hatred". Better start listening to those - ha!, I almost forgot - Whiskey In The Jar, too!
Baltasar Gracian wrote: Don't take the wrong side of an argument just because your opponent has taken the right side.
So, man, you made a mistake, don't make it worse by not admitting it... and listen to the Dead!
Cheers!