'Mountaineer' Is a Must-Read of Soviet Sci-Fi | Hacker News Reader

'Mountaineer' Is a Must-Read of Soviet Sci-Fi

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136 pointsrfreytag61 comments

This is an interesting book to translate to English. Glebsky is trying to determine the gender of Brune for the half of the book and this involves trying to make him/her to talk about oneself in the past. In Russian verbs are inflected with gender only in the past tense so somebody speaking about oneself in the past will have to inflect verbs with one's own gender but there is no gender specific grammar for the present and future. Did they do something clever in the translation or just dropped this plot line?

I'm wondering about the translator too. Name: Josh Billings, who is a famous (sort of ) American jokester. Is this a real translation? Or someone pretending to be a pair of Russian brother writers?

How do you mean "pretending"?

Translator name is an alias; maybe that's a clue that they're not real. So what could they be? An author pretending to be a translator...

If by 'they' you mean Strugatsky brothers, then let me assure you that they are more than real.

(I'm russian and I've grown up reading their books.)

They were...

In some sense — they still are, maybe more then both of us.

That kind of immortality is one of the perks of being a great artist.

The Strugatzkis are among the most famous russian science fiction writers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josh_Billings

The article mentions, by photo, two others of a trio of 19th century American humorists - Mark Twain and Petroleum V. Nasby. All three are pen names ...

I just finished reading the book. Although it does appear, the linguistic subtlety you mention is lost in translation and I'd have found that particular passage confusing if I hadn't read your comment first. In short, at one point Glebsky figures he can definitively discover Brun's gender by asking him/her a question such that the answer would be something like "I had a nibble" or "I wolfed down two sandwiches". In the text, it's left unclear how one could infer gender from such answers.

I see, thanks. The translator probably tried to replace this with the differences in male/female vocabulary.

In the original it is all through the book as, without knowing the gender, Glebsky is pretty limited in the ways he can speak to or about Brune and he reflects on this quite a lot.

The only Russian Sci-Fi I have read was Roadside Picnic. I REALLY enjoyed it in multiple of different layers. Was nice to read a book fromt he cold war on the "other side" from where I grew up. I need toadd this title to my list.

Roadside Picnic was really chilling. I'll definitely add this to my list as well. Do you know of any recommended reading lists for Soviet/Eastern Bloc scifi?

I would recommend to read almost all of Strugatsky brothers books (which were translated to your language). They are all very interesting in different aspects. E.g. "Monday starts at Saturday" is a humorous story about programmer.

Though they dreamed of communistic future, keep that in mind. Their worlds probably will look foreign to the western reader. And there are some references to the russian culture. But translations probably should take that in mind.

>Though they dreamed of communistic future, keep that in mind. Their worlds probably will look foreign to the western reader.

except for may be the earliest works, their communist future isn't that different from for example the "self-betterment" world of StarTrek, and serves basically as just a setting.

Stanislaw Lem

Lem is excellent. GP, start with "Tales of Pirx the Pilot". Short stories with a great mix of interesting story lines, pragmatic view of the world and dry humor.

Or with "The Star Diaries". A bit more silly, but also a great read. (Also a collection of short stories)

I like Lem's more serious books way more. "The Astronauts", his first SciFi is one of my favorites, because it starts out with a completely naive description of a happy communist world and gradually turns darker. It's an old book (and was probably written for adolescents), so the narrative style is pretty conventional, but I like how it causes chills in the second half.

Also "Solaris", although the descriptions of the various phenomenons on Solaris get a bit tedious over time.

And finally "The Invincible" if you like dystopian tales of artificial intelligence swarms going bad.

Of the serious ones "Fiasco" made a deep impression on me. The alien contact mystery is not bad, but the main theme is certainly human behavior and decision making.

As a Russian myself, I recommend Strugatsky brothers "The Doomed City", because firstly: it's a damn good book. Secondly, I think it gives great, subtle and wild representation of soviet people minds. Also, this book is full of awesome philosophical ideas, for which it was hidden from general public for a lot of years.

Too bad there is no English translation, it's a gem that is often overlooked over more mainstream sci-fi like "Roadside picnic"

Some recent works:

"Metro 2033" by Dmitry Glukhovsky - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metro_2033

"Night Watch" by Sergei Lukyanenko - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_Watch_%28Lukyanenko_nove...

Lukyanenko is hardly "Soviet/Eastern Bloc". He's more of a "present-day Russia" author.

Both of them are pulp-fiction and a pale reflection of works of modern US and UK authors.

I can recommend them only if you need to compare queality of mass-produced fiction across several countries.

Memories of the Future by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky

"Written in Soviet Moscow in the 1920s—but considered too subversive even to show to a publisher—the seven tales included here attest to Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky’s boundless imagination, black humor, and breathtaking irony: a man loses his way in the vast black waste of his own small room; the Eiffel Tower runs amok; a kind soul dreams of selling “everything you need for suicide”; an absentminded passenger boards the wrong train, winding up in a place where night is day, nightmares are the reality, and the backs of all facts have been broken; a man out looking for work comes across a line for logic but doesn’t join it as there’s no guarantee the logic will last; a sociable corpse misses his own funeral; an inventor gets a glimpse of the far-from-radiant communist future."

http://www.amazon.com/Memories-Future-Review-Books-Classics/...

Early Strugatskies, "Noon, 21st century". A look into how communism would like.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noon_Universe

Efremov: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Yefremov

Golovachev: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasili_Golovachov Especially early works - how clash of civilizations would look and live like.

Alexander Belyaev: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Belyaev A classic sci-fi writer, very grounded though.

And for pure aesthetic pleasure - Vadim Shefner: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vadim_Shefner His writings are so poetic, kind, ironic and alive. I still reread some of his works, despite not reading much those days.

Definitely check out the Andrei Tarkovsky film adaptation of "Roadside Picnic", called "Stalker." He also adapted Stanislaw Lem's "Solaris," which was mentioned below.

I very much loved the book but wish I hadn't watched the film. It was only tangentially related to the book.

There is also a Finnish indie movie based on (or inspired by) it, called Vyöhyke (the zone) [1]. Nowhere near as good as Stalker, but it was published on Youtube [2], so it's easy&free to watch if you have the time to spare.

[1] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2627842/

[2] http://youtube.com/watch?v=EwkIaJX3hmg

The S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series of video games are supposedly based or (or at least heavily influenced) by this book. It's an interesting setting.

my understanding that basic setting of Stalker was influenced by the massive WWII Japan Army fortifications in the Far East where Arcady Strugatsky served right after WWII.

"Stalker" is free on Youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYEfJhkPK7o and will likely leave you speechless.

I had a chance to see this in all of its 35mm glory a couple of years ago. It is an absolutely stunning film.

Worst book adaptation ever. They butchered it.

If by "they" you mean Tarkovsky, sure; Stalker doesn't have much to do with the book, and hardly any plot elements survive. However, there is an explanation for it.

Tarkovsky originally shot the film based on a screenplay by the Strugatsky, an adaptation which was, I believe, quite faithful to the novel (this is not inconceivable, considering that Solaris was fairly faithful to Lem's story). But during post-production, the negatives were handled by an inexperienced lab worker who managed to damage the negatives beyond repair.

Tarkovsky fought to find funding to re-shoot the whole film, but at this point he was bored with the material, and essentially improvised the whole shoot based on his own ideas. The Strugatskys were not happy with the final film.

The man just had a thing for annoying sci-fi authors :) Lem hated his "Solaris" as well.

The actual name of the book is 'The Dead Mountaineer's Inn.' What is it with American journalists that they feel it's OK to just change the titles of things to make a snappy headline? I've never seen this behavior in any other country's media. I find it incredibly disrespectful.

It's like a nickname, you refer to a long title with the most descriptive word in it. However, when a book is obscure, this practice does it a disservice.

I've seen this more commonly when a writer has already written the full title earlier in the article. It does seem strange and unhelpful to do it in a headline about an obscure (to the audience) book.

> I've never seen this behavior in any other country's media.

Since Russia was already mentioned here, you can take a look at Russian media, it's a common practice there.

The definitive collection of Soviet SF was Macmillan's 'Best of Soviet Science Fiction', published in the early 1980s.

It comprised a mix of novels (by the Strugatskys, among others), and short story collections. I count a significant number of these as being among the finest SF I've yet come across. Many envelope the reader in an air of melancholy; very Bradburyesque.

Here's a description of one of the notable authors, from "World's Spring", edited by Vladimir Gakov:

"Genrikh Altov is one of the most interesting portraits in the gallery of Soviet science fiction writers. An engineer and inventor who holds several dozen patents; the creator of a new science on which special courses are now being given in educational institutions in the USSR, 'The Theory of Invention,' and the author of several monographs in this field; an SF fan and the author of the unparalleled (I vote for a special Hugo Award!) Altov's Register - a catalog of themes, plots, hypotheses, ideas, situations, etc., containing hundreds of thousands of processed bits of information. (The dream of the SF writer: an idea comes to you, so you check it out in the Register to see if it has been used before; if the idea has been 'copyrighted' by another writer, it's no great problem, because the Register contains open cells, the descriptions of still-unused sf ideas and situations.) A theoretician of the sf genre; the author of profound articles tracing the sf predictions of Wells, Verne, Alexander Beliaev... A teacher at a scientific research institute teaching young inventors to develop their imaginations, their ability not to be afraid of 'crazy' ideas..."

There's also a stunning novel in the series: "Self Discovery", by Vladimir Savchenko. It has a completely convincing description of a biological computer AI. And then, this: "I would like to study the question of the untapped resources of man's organism. For example, the obsolescent functions, like our common ancestor's ability to leap from tree to tree or to sleep in the branches. Now that is no longer necessary, but the cells are still there. Or take the 'goosebump' phenomenon - it happens on skin that has almost no hair now. It is created by a vast nervous network. Perhaps these old reflexes can be restructured, re-programmed to meet new needs?" (In Theodore Sturgeon's words: "What an astonishing, what an exciting concept!")

Best of all, that book is freely available online: http://www.lib.ru/RUFANT/SAWCHENKO/savchenko_selfdiscovery_o...

Seems that "first-ever English translation" is not quite exact, there was a 1988 version titled Inspector Glebsky's Puzzle: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1053108.Inspector_Glebsky...

P.S.: also, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Mountaineer's_Hotel

Don't forget Ivan Efremov's works. E.g. "Andromeda Nebula".

From the post-Soviet selection, Labyrinth of Reflections is a superb cyberpunk novel. Not sure if there's an official English translation though (but there is a German one).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labyrinth_of_Reflections

There's an Estonian movie about it. I haven't seen it but the music is very haunting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTlISg0Oyv8

Can't mention Science Fiction without mentioning Stanslaw Lem - who was clever enough to write around and past the censors.

They basically all had to do this. In a bunch of my German Strugatzki books there are a few snippets about the history of the works where they talk about how they worked around it (and sometimes rather didn't publish stuff than to kill it).

The techniques are the same as "always" (you find exactly the same if you look at old movies in the US): Don't say the important things explicitly and provide explicit decoys for the censors to latch onto. And have good editors that are willing to fight for you.

Tangentially related, soviet-era sci-fi illustrations (mostly of the space race and the era the brothers departed from) is really great! There are lots of articles at http://www.darkroastedblend.com

Most of their novels are good read. Especially "Hard to Be a God", "Snail on the Slope", "The Ugly Swans", "The Inhabited Island", and, of course, "The Roadside Picnic".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkady_and_Boris_Strugatsky

Actually, it was very interesting phenomena, how in age of strict Soviet censure these seemingly Sci Fi books were filled with philosophical, humanitarian and political ideas. Lots of Soviet people grew up on these texts, within these imaginary worlds, which are so much better than harsh Soviet reality.

Nowadays, btw, authors of the next generation implant big ideas into what seems to be stories about vampires.)

Could you point to a few examples (of the latter)?

By "stories about vampires" GP probably means Lukyanenko's "* Watch" series: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Lukyanenko#Series

"Night Watch" the movie made some splashes even in the West, IIRC. Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMHQsjgQDrA

I also really like the Maxim Kammerer books about the Wanderers, the mysterious, incomprehensibly intelligent alien race that seems to be manipulating the human race from some unseen vantage point. The first novel in this sequence is "Beetle in the Anthill", and continues with "The Time Wanderers". A connection to Roadside Picnic is never made, but it's certainly possible to speculate.

(One of the novels you mention, "The Inhabited Islans", is also about Max, and was also published in English as "Prisoners of Power". There is a recent Russian movie adaptation of it that's apparently not bad -- anyone seen it?)

There is also a great short story, "Wanderers and Travellers", set within this same continuum. It can be found in the anthology "Paths Into the Unknown". It's a wonderful little gem for anyone who loves Roadside Picnic or the Wanderer novels, or just scifi in general.

I liked Kin-Dza-Dza http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2659374/ and the remake.

It, and a bunch of other Soviet movies are available on the Mosfilm channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/mosfilm

Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I47CNxwlt9U

Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eti9Qn4bZDg

I saw the original, but I wasn't impressed. It was too plain and gloomy for me.

You (and others) might enjoy Alex Andreev's work - very clearly inspired by the Kin Dza Dza aesthetic. He also has a lot of stuff that's pretty clearly inspired by Picnic/Stalker.

http://www.alexandreev.com/

two versions of "It's hard to be a God" (in Russian) one from 1989, another from 2013:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJ_D_eI6KMQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBoyjleXFz0

The final scene in 1989 movie is clearly influenced by Dune (1984).

Likeiwse it's clear that this movie influenced modern American/Canadian Sci-Fi series like Stargate Atlantis [1] and Defiance [2]. I.e. both Wraith and Votan look like noblemen from "It's hard to be a God" (1989).

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wraith_%28Stargate%29

[2] http://en.defiance-wiki.com/wiki/Votan

Title is missing a word which makes it a bit cryptic.

Is A Must-Read Of

In Soviet SciFi, headline titles Must-Rewrite By You! :)

Thanks, we updated the title.

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