Reading Soviet Sci-Fi at the End of the World
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My other favorite by Strugatskys is A Billion Years Before The End Of The World (translated as Definitely Maybe), which you can read as a somewhat humorous story involving paranormal events, or as a critique of the state suppressing unwanted research. (As far as I know, one of the brothers was involved with a dissident and questioned before writing it)
It's actually about a soviet software engineer, and A LOT of the things in this book is still very relevant to our trade today.
Incidentally, the spirit of the book fits both communistic, and hacker's views: work overtime, because you like it, not for an extra reward.
I still think it could have the potential be a really interesting TV show. Personally I think the slow nature of the book lends itself towards the show format.
Further, IIRC I believe that soviet authors/translators were able to skirt censorship for the LoTR books by wrapping them in a Sci-Fi setting. Soviet writer for science fiction are some of my favorites.
I re-read their books every ten years or so (along with some of Philip K. Dick's) because I keep forgetting the plot and the details. The Noon Universe books, along with Roadside Picnic are quite cryptic.
Anyway, The Doomed City is considered one of their most depressing of their novels, with a feeling of hopelessness characteristic of the Brezhnev era. I've long posponed reading it due to this and the fact that it's the last of their books published in my language that I haven't read.
Roadside Picnic is a lovely perspective on the genre, in that it isn't at all about the zone or any supposed aliens. The zone makes for a fascinating backdrop for the story, but in the end it is about the people just trying to carve out a life while exposed to an extraordinary, incomprehensible situation grown mundane. The zone could be swapped out for a disaster area or a hostile jungle or whatever, but by being the zone it becomes very alien to the reader as well. It contributes to what I really like about the book, simply being very atmospheric and immersive. It's all show-don't-tell, the reader experiences everything through what the characters see or hear, and the reader's picture of the world is as clouded and uncertain as those living in it. I found a bit of the same feeling in Metro 2033, where anything happening outside of a couple kilometers range is just rumours. Nobody really knows anything for sure and neither does the reader!
Also there was actually a RP TV-series in production with a really cool trailer, but I think the pilot didn't take off so it shut down.
Found this video about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoGkB5yvDDk
its imdb page: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5024734/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0
There was an NBC TV series in 2021 called Debris, canceled after 1 season, that must have taken some inspiration from Roadside Picnic (at least from what I see in this failed series trailer). It's about 2 federal agents searching for parts of an exploded alien spacecraft. It was your typical "monster of the week" while building up an overarching story. Each piece of the ship would have some unique and crazy affect on the area and/or people around it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debris_(TV_series)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11640020/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0
edit:
ah, looks like I'm not the first to notice this connection: https://www.reddit.com/r/Debris/comments/nz6pkl/debris_and_r...
I am also a little surprised it hasn't been made into modern show. It would perfectly fit the paradigm of the modern story arc-based show that's centered around a big mystery. But, there's some consolation when one can see the influence of Roadside Picnic on other shows. Seems like it was a big influence on Lost.
It's already a movie. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalker_(1979_film)
A critique of the state messing with research is "the tale of Troika", and it's also a weird, weak-ish book (it also comes in a pair, not unlike Janus Poluektovich).
I'd say the same about Blindsight, but it hasn't spawned much. Although, it's core trope is arguably the most unique I've ever read before.
I don't want to go into too much for fear of spoilers, but the video game Prey is at least playing in the same ballpark as Blindsight.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prey_(2017_video_game)
(tons of spoilers there, I'm sure)
[EDIT] It'd also have been pretty weird if the '06 Prey had seemed like it had some Blindsight DNA, since that novel was released a few months after the '06 Prey. And I don't want to overstate the connection, but it's enough that I'm reasonably sure that someone involved in writing '17 Prey had read Blindsight.
[EDIT AGAIN] In fact, I'd literally bet money someone involved had also read a certain Watts short story in addition to Blindsight, which story I hesitate to even name for super-spoilery reasons.
Do you know that current 1sqkm radio telescopes produce data that can't be processed at real time in any cluster environment in use at 2015-2016? They scan skies at precision I just cannot express in words, let's try math.
https://www.skatelescope.org/uploaded/2950_31734_2007_IAU_Ta...
"...with a resolution of few micro-angular-seconds..."
sin(5/57/60/60/1000000) equals to 2.4366472e-11. It is sine of roughly 5 micro angular seconds (1 radian is about 57 degrees). 1/sin(5/57/60/60/1000000) is roughly equal to distance where current SKA can distinguish 1 meter radio-emitting object and it equals to about 41 million kilometers - a fourth of the distance between Sun and Earth.
These Firefall objects just won't be "unnoticeable until their entry to the atmosphere" in the state of the art sky scaling systems of Blindsight's time.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18381870
Despite me being very unrespectful to Watts works, I recognize his influence. So, what is this Blindsight-related-story you are talking about? I read many of them and I cannot remember any that resembles your description.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35133627-the-doomed-city
https://www.chicagoreviewpress.com/doomed-city--the-products...
Stalker is only very loosely based on the Roadside Picnic universe, since you like you movie you should definitely give the book a go.
Pelevin is not a sci-fi writer, and Pelevin is anything but a “soviet” writer. Pelevin is a 100% anti-soviet writer.
I did add Roadside Picnic from the link to my list, but thanks commenters for helping me find:
- We (very excited about this one given the possible influence to 1984 and Brave New World)
- Red Star
- Monday Starts on Saturday
Do you maintain this list publicly anywhere? "Books that have been recommended in HN comments" would be an interesting list to see.
"Ethnic" writers were accorded more freedom of topic than white Russians, confined to village prose in the Breznev era. Aitmatov's book sweeps the vast steppes of Central Asia and interstellar space, begins from the perspective of a fox, considers traumas of the Great Patriotic War and Stalin's resettlement, thousand-year-old traditions, the quest to give a dead railroad switchman a proper Muslim burial, and an international incident caused in space.
Aitmatov was ethnically Kyrgyz. The book's mostly set on Kazakh steppes.
OP was looking for context on the meat-grinder in Ukraine. He won't find it in the meat-grinder near the end of Roadsite Picnic.
Sienkiewicz (1884), With Fire and Sword, set in 1640s-1650s Khmelnytsky Uprising (Cossacks of Zaporozhian Sich vs Polish-Lithuanian empire) is remarkably good, and geographically contiguous with the current meat grinder in Ukraine. A pre-Soviet book from outside what became USSR (Polish), not scifi, but which clearly inspired Frank Herbert and possibly Tolkein. Scifi and fantasy continued the adventure genre, after all. If you read it, be prepared for Iliad or The Bridge on the Drina-level violence at times.
For more non-scifi lit grounded in war in previous iterations of Ukrainian statehood, see especially Bulgakov's (1925) The White Guard. A love song to Kiev, loving and complex critique of its bourgeoisie that could only have been written by a physician.
Roadside Picnic's a fast-paced philosophical read. Solaris (yes it's Polish, but Tarkovsky painted it in film) has the dreamy, encyclopedic quality of something like Moby-Dick. (Post-Soviet) Metro 2033 is lower quality, more pulpy, feels like it was written to be turned into a series, video game, etc. (it was), but it's an interesting page-turner.
Highly recommended!
I love Soviet era Sci-Fi, a lot of it is actually written by scientists of the time. I've also heard that We by Yevgeny Zamyatin is good.
Alexander Bogdanov, the Red Star
Interesting person and interesting book, considering it is from 1905
https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...
Why? Because they consider America the culprit of 9/11, you know 9/11, nine eleven, nine eleven. The 9/11 bombings. The 9/11 bombings and terrorism. The 9/11 bombings and terrorism that were commemorated 38 years later with similar direct deaths and highly monument-specific bombs, as a retaliation for 9/11. 3000 dead, 3000 dead, no children, no children, monument, monument, capital, capital, terrorism, terrorism. Nine eleven.
Even now as an adult, sometimes I would dream that I can fly in the same way as Margot flew on top of the streets in Moscow...
It is just one of the greatest books ever, but I am not sure it can be fully understood and appreciated by people that did not spent some time behind the iron curtain...
> I am a citizen of the sentence first and foremost, and so when I read Pelevin uncorking a massive, soaring line from within Omon’s young consciousness, I did not think: “does this qualify as Soviet if it’s about the Soviet space program but it’s published in 1991?”
> PATRICK MCGINTY (...) teaches in the Department of Languages, Literatures, Cultures, and Writing at Slippery Rock University
That strongly influences, actually directly shapes, what works does the writer or the artist produces.
You're putting the cart before the horse.
Soviet Union's case is an exception to this: The Soviets were literally brainwashed by Hollywood movies and bootleg CIA video tapes to believe that everybody in the capitalist west lived like how the rich lived in Manhattan. They thought that they would keep all the good stuff from socialism (guaranteed jobs, reasonable pay, housing, free education, higher education, healthcare, reasonable retirement etc) but would also get the consumerism and the glamor depicted in Hollywood movies. They learned that things don't work that way.
Even until recently, there were Russians who still didn't know that there were homeless in the US. The Internet has likely changed that though...
And specifically, Poland was occupied by Soviet long enough to deserve not tonhave own art attributes to them.
Also, literature before revolutions and after them is much different. Topics, style of writing, who could get published or become famous are all much different. You can't attribute to Soviet what was done after Soviet broke up.
It's a touchy subject, and the recent Russian invasion explains why.
Eastern European writers did contribute a sizeable bookshelf of writings about bright space communist future, until it began to turn sour. One lesser-known one who I remember from my childhood is Pavel Vezhinov's Death of Ajax.
UPD: Maybe we should use Eastern Bloc Science Fiction as a term?
One like Democracy and Republic and the literal translation is "Council".
So, you can surely be democratic outside of (hypothetical) Democratic Union, much like you may be soviet outside of USSR.
> Lem was born in 1921 in Lwów, interwar Poland (now Lviv, Ukraine)
> In 1945, Lwow was annexed into the Soviet Ukraine, and the family, along with many other Polish citizens, was resettled to Kraków, where Lem, at his father's insistence, took up medical studies at the Jagiellonian University.
> After the war, under the Polish People's Republic (officially declared in 1952), the intellectual and academic community of Kraków came under complete political control. The universities were soon deprived of printing rights and autonomy.[79] The Stalinist government of Poland ordered the construction of the country's largest steel mill in the newly-created suburb of Nowa Huta.[80] The creation of the giant Lenin Steelworks (now Sendzimir Steelworks owned by Mittal) sealed Kraków's transformation from a university city into an industrial centre.
It's a stretch, but not by much, to consider Lem as someone who spent time under the Soviet umbrella.
For most Polish people this would be quite an insult even disregarding current war waged by russia just next to them, which is pretty much impossible to ignore if you live there.
In reality, for as late as 1939 the main differences were language and religion, and considerable chunk of rural population considered themselves "locals" not linking with nation-state idea.
This reflects on Commonwealth being rather multi-ethnic and Austro-Hungarian occupation and repression changing little on the areas they took.
Modern states in the region are real, but contingent, and shouldn't falsely be projected backwards through history.
Clearly.
There is plenty of information regarding history of Lviv and this region in general. It's long and sad, tragic and sometimes beautiful but never simple.
Besides, I found that most people who feign ignorance know history very well and use it for their own agenda. If you know what to search in someone post history it becomes more or less obvious.
The phrase "Soviet Writer" can be treated more loosely though and can be taken to embrace those that wrote about or had their writing influenced by Soviet events and it's difficult to imagine Lem not being aware of nor affected by the social upheaval radiating out from the formation of the USSR.
His identity is Polish, his writing contains elements that stem from | react to Soviet history and culture .. it's hard to write and not be affected by loud neighbours that raid your kitchen and stomp on your belongings.
But it did not go unnoticed. I remember very particular Russian TV-series about Arctic Explorers on Finnish TV, which censored scenes where the crew ignored stupid and repulsive Communist Party official.
The parable from Soviet Sci-Fi to the current events is quite confusing. It's an attempt to create a narrative where there isn't.
Russia has some truly great fantasy series of their own. I never tire of recommending Lukyanenkos Night Watch series. Especially in contrast to trope heavy feel good stuff like Harry Potter that falls back to the heroic fight against ultimate villains. In contrast even the magic system of Night Watch throws the difficulty of the shades of grey in your face. Its especially nice that the whole thing starts as black and white as you can get with the protagonist developing throughout the whole series.
edit: Only read it in German, so not sure about the English translation
I could recommend them a Russian (or Ukrainian) writer or two who are likely sharing their world views today, but they just aren't the booky type in general. Why read more books when you get the knowledge of the current thing from Twitter. And the general life framework from Harry Potter. I don't even think you have to read that one to the end. Most of the memes like the magic hat are in the book one.
I would say that the low quality and race to the bottom in Russian opposition is one of the pillars that lets Putin remain in his chair uncontested. And they keep digging. They reproduce by managing to recruit a new generation of even worse youth.
Likely why? You got any real info?
They are living in it. Right now they moved from the chapters in the "Inhabited Island/Prisoners of Power" describing totalitarian state covered with propaganda broadcasting towers and dissent suppression into the chapter where the main characters are loaded into tanks and sent into [tactical] nukes battlefield.
The power of Dostoyevsky/Strugatskis/Pelevin (to me they are parts of the same axis, though it is hard to describe why in short post) is whatever happens (or yet to happen) in Russia you still feel like you're inside one of their novel.
In Inhabited Island, Maxim takes some time to ponder whether the society he appeared in is actually unhappy and needs any help, considering its level of develoment.
Yeah, that's completely false. As someone who has been on these streets and it these political circles for a LONG time, I can with confidence tell you that vast majority were familiar with at least most (if not all) writers in that list.