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Comment by calimoro78 | Hacker News Reader

Can you share some examples of Soviet SF? Should be quite exciting.

Arkady and Boris Strugatsky were pretty prolific during this time (often writing in secret, and reciting their works only to trusted friends).

"The Doomed City" is one of the best pieces of philosophical scifi I've ever read:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Doomed_City

The Doomed City is a bad example since it was specifically released in a post-soviet era. It had very direct criticisms of communism which lead to the authors deciding to not release it during the soviet era they wrote it.

"Hard to be a God", mentioned below, is a better example. Soviet era Sci-Fi where Star Trek esque space communists try to uplift a medieval society into modern political belief before establishing official first contact.

The Doomed City is way deeper than "criticisms of communism".

People literally wake up in The Doomed City when the pandemic has started in 2020, for example.

What's deep about that?

You will never know until you read the book. That's the deal with good books.

Technically, 'The Doomed City' was released in Soviet times, not in the post-Soviet one, as a result of Glasnost'/Perestroika. It was published in serialized form in "Neva" magazine in '88-'89, then in book form, while the USSR would still be a going concern for a couple more years.

It had direct criticisms of capitalism too, if I recall. There were characters that thrived and drowned under many of the different social orders presented there. The main character tried to adapt to all and ultimately lost himself and everyone he knew in pursuit of his constantly changing ideals.

Never seen those names before this week, apparently there are new translations in 2023 : https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-beetle-in-the-anthill...

http://archive.today/xv6lX

I consider The Waves Extinguish the Wind their best novel, for its simplicity. But I didn't read any English translation, and it's a big "but".

"Roadside Picnic" is a well-known novel that was the basis for the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series of video games.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roadside_Picnic

I read Roadside Picnic a few months ago, and yeah, it's very good stuff. While there's a lot to be said for the context in which it was written, I think it also holds up on its own even if you're not very familiar with the history.

Roadside picnic is so ridiculously melancholy. Everyone in that book is so depressed! I also don't think I've ever seen so much smoking and drinking in a sci-fi book. You could tell the brothers were really not enjoying communism.

Now watch the film adaptation, Stalker - even more depressing!

The novel itself and the setting are not about communism though, not even in disguise. It would have to be in disguise because the setting is an unnamed North American (possibly Canadian?) city, but even if it was, the themes are not about communism.

Agreed about the melancholy.

Yes, that's Russian literature. Even before communism the melancholy is strong.

Try their other book, "The Doomed City".

it's as upbeat as the title suggests.

"The Dead Mountaineer's Inn" is a fairly unique sci-fi noir also from the Strugatsky brothers that was my first introduction to their work. It interested me enough that I read all their other books afterwards -- worth checking out!

1. https://www.npr.org/2015/03/19/392634682/mountaineer-is-a-mu...

Err, that's just a regular detective novel, no SF elements at all, you must be mistaken (nudge nudge)

One example would be "The Invincible" by Stanisław Lem [1].

Worth noting that a video game [2] based on the novel (which looks very well produced) is releasing in November.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Invincible

2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yo7Ca6kXz08

Lem's Invincible, Solaris and Eden form a trilogy of "what if we meet a civilization so alien to humans that we can't establish a contact with them"

Also „Fiasco“, which is depressing and great.

For a more recent take on a similar theme, see also „Blindsight“ by Peter Watts.

Here is Blindsight, free to read online from the author (and with PDF/ePub versions):

https://rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm

For specifically Soviet look for Ivan Yefremov, "The Bull's Hour". Other interesting authors could be Genrich Altov and Sever Gansovsky.

Kurt Vonnegut was accused once of ripping off George Orwell's 1984 with Player Piano. He responded by saying that he and Orwell had both just ripped off Yevgeny Zamyatin's We. Yevgeny Zamyatin was a Soviet author who ran afoul of Stalin and wrote We inspired by his perspective of the revolution.

I saw a We play a year back, and it was highly contemporary with its office-style glass walls, mixed-use spaces and complex rituals around dating.

That's probably a testament to the criticism. Interesting that what Yevgeny Zamyatin presents as a clear, almost too on the nose dystopian satire has been repackaged as a desirable work environment.

For those not aware, despite it seeming highly contemporary, the first English translation of the book was published in 1924.

"the heart of a dog" is quite a good example of sci-fi as social critique https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_of_a_Dog_(1988_film)

The Inhabited Island is an amazing book with a great ending. SF, government conflict/war, weird and fun machinery, etc.

Others are suggesting Hard to Be a God by the same authors, which is an okay book, but it's not really SF as most people think of SF IMO.

> it's not really SF as most people think of SF

As well as the Roadside picknick, the Doomed city, A billion years before the end of the world, the Ugly swans, etc etc - really most of their books - it’s a good literature and not a sf in its usual sense.

"It's Hard to be God"

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