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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

#21

Post by thriftwy »

yaky wrote: post #9

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, o…

A Billion Years Before The End Of The World is neither humorous nor it can be dumbed down and framed as "a critique of the state suppressing unwanted research". It's one of their later and more complex works.

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).

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

#22

Post by przefur »

yaky wrote: post #9

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, o…

I've had similar thoughts regarding the roadside picnic, the older I am, the more depressing it feels. I would highly recommend another Strugatskys book - 'Monday starts on Saturday', it is pure humor, as opposed to other works of theirs. It's about a soviet scientist that joins government's study on magic. Bureaucracy never been funnier, of course outside of 'The Twelve Tasks of Asterix', 1976.

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

#23

Post by przefur »

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.

Yeah, it felt so wrong to see Lem up there. The fact that he was renowned in Soviet Union does not make him any Soviet. From what I've read of his works + his biography, he reminds me more of early US science-fiction writers than any of soviet ones.

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

#24

Post by przefur »

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…

Implying that Lem was a Soviet writer feels just wrong.

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

#25

Post by thriftwy »

przefur wrote: post #23
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.

Yeah, it felt so wrong to see Lem up there. The fact that he was renowned in Soviet Union does not make him any Soviet. From what I've read of his works + his biography, he reminds me more of early US science-fiction writers than any of soviet ones.

This is only if you discount his early works such as The Magellanic Cloud, where he is a world communism adept wearing rose-coloured glasses, through which many of his readers, including ones in core Soviet Union, would perceive reality and future prospects.

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?

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

#26

Post by omega3 »

myth_drannon wrote: post #18
saiya-jin wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But wasn't Poland occupying the city from 1918-1939? It was Austro-Hungarian city beforehand? Also I wouldn't characterize Soviet occupation as bad luck and Polish as a heaven on earth. Yes, he was born in 1921, 3 years after Polish army invaded the city and terrorized it. I don't know enough history about the period until 1939, but just extrapolating 1918 events to the whole period of Polish occupation.

> I don't know enough history

Clearly.

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

#27

Post by kwyjibo1230 »

Whenever a reading list gets to the front page of HN, I always find the most interesting books to add from the comments!

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

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

#28

Post by BrainVirus »

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.

This is a great comment to illustrate how ideology (especially various brands of nationalism) destroys genuine dialog. Instead of talking about the writers and their works people are now talking about which pigeonhole each writer belongs to. Not because those pigeonholes improve anyone's understanding of the books, mind you. It's a matter of taking credit for their works and applying those credits to the current meta-narrative.

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

#29

Post by petre »

ThaDood wrote: post #15
yaky wrote: post #9

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, o…

I agree. I enjoyed Roadside Picnic as its such a unique take on the ET visitation genre but my god is it depressing. 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.…

It possibly reflects on daily life in the Soviet Union. Beetle in the Anthill is even more depressing. Still, the Strugatsky brothers are two of my favourite authors.

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.

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

#30

Post by trasz »

omega3 wrote: post #6
defrost wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It was a part of Soviet Bloc though.
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