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Reading Soviet Sci-Fi at the End of the World

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Re: Reading Soviet Sci-Fi at the End of the World

#3

Post by chucksmash »

omega3 wrote: post #2

Lem wasn't Soviet, he was Polish. It's strange he also considers Victor Pelevin to be a Soviet writer as all his novels were released after 1991.

Well, he did it on purpose at any rate:

> 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?”

Re: Reading Soviet Sci-Fi at the End of the World

#4

Post by defrost »

omega3 wrote: post #2

Lem wasn't Soviet, he was Polish. It's strange he also considers Victor Pelevin to be a Soviet writer as all his novels were released after 1991.

Polish in birth and in spirit, a Soviet writer by location duing his more productive years:

> 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.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanis%C5%82aw_Lem

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krak%C3%B3w

Re: Reading Soviet Sci-Fi at the End of the World

#6

Post by omega3 »

defrost wrote: post #4
omega3 wrote: post #2

Lem wasn't Soviet, he was Polish. It's strange he also considers Victor Pelevin to be a Soviet writer as all his novels were released after 1991.

Polish in birth and in spirit, a Soviet writer by location duing his more productive years: > 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 Polis…

Poland was never part of Soviet union.

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

Re: Reading Soviet Sci-Fi at the End of the World

#7

Post by saiya-jin »

defrost wrote: post #4
omega3 wrote: post #2

Lem wasn't Soviet, he was Polish. It's strange he also considers Victor Pelevin to be a Soviet writer as all his novels were released after 1991.

Polish in birth and in spirit, a Soviet writer by location duing his more productive years: > 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 Polis…

That's a mighty stretch you try to construct. Born in Poland, lived in Poland, just had the bad luck for being there during times when soviets cough cough russians were taking whatever want, and terrorizing the rest.

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.

Re: Reading Soviet Sci-Fi at the End of the World

#8

Post by omega3 »

chucksmash wrote: post #3
omega3 wrote: post #2

Lem wasn't Soviet, he was Polish. It's strange he also considers Victor Pelevin to be a Soviet writer as all his novels were released after 1991.

Well, he did it on purpose at any rate: > 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?”

I think he's either intellectually lazy or dishonest vis a vis my other comments. Even the publishing date in this case is suspect, every single source I could find it lists it as 1992 and not 1991. Either way I'd expect better from someone who is an University teacher.

> PATRICK MCGINTY (...) teaches in the Department of Languages, Literatures, Cultures, and Writing at Slippery Rock University

Re: Reading Soviet Sci-Fi at the End of the World

#9

Post by yaky »

I originally read Roadside Picnic as a teen, which, at the time, impressed me as an exciting sci-fi adventure. When I re-read it as a young adult, i saw it as a rather depressing tale asking the questions of sacrifice and duty.

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)

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