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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

#81

Post by abruzzi »

UncleOxidant wrote: post #49
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…

Haven't read Roadside Picnic, but I've seen Tarkovsky's Stalker several times. How do they compare? Stalker on it's own is an amazing piece of art. The Stalker in the monologue at the end laments that no one believes anymore (this seems to be Tarkovksy's critique of materialism and probably got him in trouble with the Soviet censors) - it can also be seen as depressing, but there's that bit at the very end when Stalk…

they are similar yet very different. Stalker focuses on a single journey into the Zone, Rodaside picnic focuses on the life and world surrounding the zone. I've always said that Roadside Picnic is dark realist SciFi that dabbles in Philosophy, while Stalker is Philosopy that dabbles in dark realist SciFi.

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

#82

Post by livindub »

metadaemon wrote: post #11

I just picked up a recently translated Stanslaw Lem collection of short stories, The Truth and Other Stories. I love Soviet era Sci-Fi, a lot of it is actually written by scientists of the time. I've also heard that We by Yevgeny Zamyatin is good.

"We" was so ahead of its time, it's absolutely mind-blowing.

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

#83

Post by unity1001 »

bootsup wrote: post #71
unity1001 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. We are all products of our culture. Our parents, our upbringing, education in school. Our friends. Our first experiences, and of course, the ideology that we have obtained during the process. The ideology mostly comes built into the society's culture, education and work life. So there is no such thing as 'ideologically neutral' or "I don't have an ideology". Its just that people think that the ideology that the…

Yes, although sometimes people feel their country is not normal. "In a normal country, this would not happen," many Russian people said, especially in the '90s between Yeltsin's US-backed coup and the 1998 collapse.

Definitely, that is the case. Sometimes societies start going down a route that is totally in contrast with what ideology that people have been conditioned to. And this is not even about USSR - at the moment, many people in places like US are experiencing the same thing, with a Randian dystopia taking over from the former center-right capitalism as capitalism in those countries finally goes back to its late 19th century roots. So the new state of the society is way too different from the state of the society that shaped these people's ideologies. And they are totally appalled.

Soviet Union's case is an exception to this: The Soviets were literally brainwashed by Hollywood movies and bootleg CIA video tapes to believe that everybody in the capitalist west lived like how the rich lived in Manhattan. They thought that they would keep all the good stuff from socialism (guaranteed jobs, reasonable pay, housing, free education, higher education, healthcare, reasonable retirement etc) but would also get the consumerism and the glamor depicted in Hollywood movies. They learned that things don't work that way.

Even until recently, there were Russians who still didn't know that there were homeless in the US. The Internet has likely changed that though...

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

#84

Post by CobaltFire »

flanbiscuit wrote: post #64
grufkork wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of the RP editions have an afterword about publishing in Soviet and evading censorship thorough Sci-fi, pretty interesting. Soviet was a strange place. Roadside Picnic is a lovely perspective on the genre, in that it isn't at all about the zone or any supposed aliens. The zone makes for a fascinating backdrop for the story, but in the end it is about the people just trying to carve out a life while exposed to an…

Had no idea there was a TV-series in the works. Would love to see that pilot. Found this video about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoGkB5yvDDk its imdb page: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5024734/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0 There was an NBC TV series in 2021 called Debris, canceled after 1 season, that must have taken some inspiration from Roadside Picnic (at least from what I see in this failed series trailer). It's abo…

Offhand this immediately reminds me of Warehouse 13. I wonder if it was similarly inspired?

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

#85

Post by thriftwy »

omega3 wrote: post #31
thriftwy wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

Even if he was a communist it still wouldn't make him soviet.

The issue here is "Soviet" is not a given name but (supposedly) a mode of government.

One like Democracy and Republic and the literal translation is "Council".

So, you can surely be democratic outside of (hypothetical) Democratic Union, much like you may be soviet outside of USSR.

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

#87

Post by animal531 »

UncleOxidant wrote: post #49
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…

Haven't read Roadside Picnic, but I've seen Tarkovsky's Stalker several times. How do they compare? Stalker on it's own is an amazing piece of art. The Stalker in the monologue at the end laments that no one believes anymore (this seems to be Tarkovksy's critique of materialism and probably got him in trouble with the Soviet censors) - it can also be seen as depressing, but there's that bit at the very end when Stalk…

I always thought that Stalker is pretty much the Soviet version of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Both are really good, but by modern standards extremely slow.

Stalker is only very loosely based on the Roadside Picnic universe, since you like you movie you should definitely give the book a go.

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

#88

Post by timonoko »

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.

"Soviet Block" maybe the correct expression. I (somehow) enjoyed subtle nuances they injected in opposition of Soviet Rule.

But it did not go unnoticed. I remember very particular Russian TV-series about Arctic Explorers on Finnish TV, which censored scenes where the crew ignored stupid and repulsive Communist Party official.

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

#89

Post by p_l »

bootsup wrote: post #72
p_l wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lwów was probably most Polish city in the region, and generally what's now Western Ukraine had skewed towards polish in cities and ukrainian in rural areas. In reality, for as late as 1939 the main differences were language and religion, and considerable chunk of rural population considered themselves "locals" not linking with nation-state idea. This reflects on Commonwealth being rather multi-ethnic and Austro-Hunga…

Eastern and Central European history has less stable borders/states than Western/Northern Europeans and Americans often assume. Nationalities existed under various empires without much state-aspirational nationalism until the 19th century. People practicing various religions, speaking various languages lived under changing lords or free in the wild fields, then fled en masse in times of conflict and lived somewhere e…

That's why I mentioned the idea of "locals" - apparently during census in interwar Poland, some rural regions especially in modern West Ukraine had as much as over 20% declaring their nationality as just "locals".

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

#90

Post by daniel-cussen »

Sin2x wrote: post #20
pjc50 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"We" is remarkable in that it describes lots of failure modes of the Bolshevik revolution before they happened.

Well, it was actually written after the revolution and the so-called "War communism" phase of the 1918-1921 Russia. To me it's more of a study on how the collectivist "paradise" would work after it works out its growing pains.

Things got ironed out quite a bit, the fifties and sixties were really good. Cuban Revolution, suddenly there was sugar in the kitchen. Big sugar rations! Increased rations! Then later increased even more! And while yes basically they were poor they were at least all equally poor, that is a much better outcome. They had privacy from Capitalism (weren't getting big data analytics extracted from them), and plus, Russians never made the big bucks off their expansion, never cashed in on it. Unlike everybody else ever.
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