Lukas Dubro was studying applied literary studies at the Freie Universität Berlin when he began working on what would become his master's thesis — and, unexpectedly, one of the most distinctive independent magazines in Germany. For two years, he sat in the university library developing the concept for Kapsel, a bilingual German-Chinese publication devoted to contemporary science fiction from China. The first issue appeared in May 2017, featuring a dystopian short story called "Das Insektennest" by Chi Hui, a freelance writer who lived alone with her cat above a hotpot restaurant and wrote World of Warcraft fan fiction in her spare time. It was exactly the kind of voice — female, Chinese, utterly unexpected — that Dubro wanted to amplify.
The name comes from two sources: the Hoi-Poi capsules in Dragon Ball, which release different objects when you press them, and the subtitle "Fantastische Geschichten" is a deliberate echo of the golden-age American pulps like Amazing Stories. Each issue of Kapsel is built around a single short story, published for the first time in German translation, and surrounded by an ecosystem of access points: an interview with the author, essays by researchers and fellow writers, letters to the editorial team, footnotes that save readers from reaching for their browsers, and — critically — illustrations rather than photographs, another homage to the science fiction magazines of the past. The text is printed bilingually: Chinese in red, German in black.
The editorial team grew around Dubro's original core: sinologist Felix Meyer zu Venne, Germanist Chong Shen who helped with early translations, designer Marius Wenker who has shaped the magazine's visual identity from the start, and researcher Frederike Schneider-Vielsäcker. Contributors have included Ken Liu, Chen Qiufan, Dietmar Dath, and Ann Cotten. Events at Berlin's ACUD brought authors like Chi Hui from China and Song Mingwei, one of the field's leading scholars, together with illustrators and musicians for evenings that extended the magazine's conversations into physical space. Kadavar and Ella Zwietnig have produced audio dramas of the stories.
Originally published through Fruehwerk Verlag, Kapsel moved to Maro Verlag in 2022 and has since expanded into anthologies and book-length translations alongside the magazine. Six issues deep, it remains a project driven by enthusiasm rather than infrastructure — a fact Dubro acknowledges openly. But within its niche, Kapsel has achieved something remarkable: it is the only publication in the German-speaking world seriously, beautifully, and consistently introducing readers to the vast and wildly inventive universe of Chinese science fiction. That a master's thesis from a Berlin university could become a bridge between two literary worlds separated by language, geography, and genre prejudice is, as the magazine's subtitle promises, a genuinely fantastic story.
Explore Kapsel at <a href="https://kapsel-magazin.de/" target="\_blank">kapsel-magazin.de