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Comment by Swizec | Hacker News Reader

> The Soviet Venera program was really fascinating

Reading my uncle’s old tech magazines and sci-fi from the 70’s was fascinating. Eastern European sci fi was all about colonizing Venus and the Venera landers. The way kids in USA are obsessed with Mars, kids in my part of Europe used to be obsessed with Venus before the influx of Western media.

Getting to grow up on the cusp of that vibe shift was cool.

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This Kurzgesagt video is equally sci-fi, but of the "potentially possible if we wanted to bankrupt the planet" variety.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-WO-z-QuWI

Cool! What tech magazines are you talking about?

On the sci-fi side one notable example is The Land of Crimson Clouds (Страна багровых туч, 1959) by the Strugatsky brothers. Unfortunately, there’s no official English translation that I can find.

A great (if not incredibly satirical and cynical) sci-fi book on Venus colonization is The Space Merchants

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

If you’re into hard SF I recommend The House of Styx, and The House of Saints by Derek Künsken.

another sf story by cordwainer smith:

https://gutenberg.ca/ebooks/smithcordwainer-whenthepeoplefel...

Not the OP, but Tekhnika Molodezhi (Technology for the Youth) was quite popular in the Soviet Union. https://www.itsnicethat.com/features/tekinkia-molodezhi-russ...

Življenje in tehnika[1] – popular science magazine in Slovenia that's been running since 1950. Grandparents used to have my uncle's collection from I guess his high school years. Spanned from the mid 70's and into the 80's.

I used to read random issues when I'd go visit. My favorite were the 70's stories about "We are imminently going to have AI cars. Experiments are underway and trucks can now autonomously drive long distances on the highway! Humanoid robots are coming soon look at this super dextrous hand!!".

[1] https://www.tzs.si/zivljenje-in-tehnika/revija

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