define the human condition." Basmele Omului, one of Colin's first books in this series, groups modern-day fairy tales, and has been described writer and journalist Mihai Iovănel as a "wonderful" work. Published soon after, Legendele ţării lui Vam is written as a collection of myths relating to a vanished civilization, which is supposed to have lived in the Black Sea area in the neolithic period. Introduced as the translation of archeological finds in Northern Dobruja, the narrative centers on Vamland's founding myth, a fight between the god-of-gods Ormag and the human male Vam, one which starts as a "cat-and-mouse game" and ends in defeat for the family of gods and victory for the small tribe of humans. Trapped and chained by Ormag early in the narrative, Vam and his mistress Una inspire their descendants to meet the gods' cruelty with a passive form of resistance, and obtain their own immortality in the hearts of people. Commenting on this plot line, Horia Aramă believes that as "the symbol of the vital force of humanity", Colin's "hero without cape and sword" Vam, adds a new layer of significance to the ancient mythologies which are believed to have inspired it. Author Bogdan Suceavă describes the central elements of the books as being "the battle against fear" and "a cosmogony of fantasy", and praises the text for its "solidity and coherence." Debut in science fiction Colin's science fiction prose has been noted for its lyrical approach to the subject and the classical line of its narrative, displaying influences from Karel Čapek, H. P. Lovecraft and A. Merritt. Commentators have described his adoption of the genre as his distancing from older and newer communist imperatives of the period. Thus, according to Iovănel, Colin's writings of the period were equivalent with "an error in the system", for being "more aerial [than other works], and therefore less useful [to the regime]". According to critic Mircea Opriţă, Colin, like Aramă, "did not penetrate into the science fiction realm just so they could exercise lightheartedly among the genre's cliché ideas and patented motifs." Likewise, Iovănel believes that, after the 1960s, Romanian science fiction literature, freed from the more stringent of ideological commands, was foremost represented by "survivors" whose early careers were marked by "sufficient compromises" with the regime, but whose later contributions to the genre were often outstanding. This criterion, he argued, applied to Colin, Rogoz, Fărcăşan, Camil Baciu