[HN Gopher] Reading Soviet Sci-Fi at the End of the World
___________________________________________________________________
Reading Soviet Sci-Fi at the End of the World
Author : wawayanda
Score : 114 points
Date : 2022-09-26 11:38 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (themillions.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (themillions.com)
| baybal2 wrote:
| SirLJ wrote:
| I had the privilege to read most of those books long time ago,
| but the best and pretty much the only one I reread every few
| years is "The Master and Margarita" by Mikhail Bulgakov...
|
| Even now as an adult, sometimes I would dream that I can fly in
| the same way as Margot flew on top of the streets in Moscow...
|
| It is just one of the greatest books ever, but I am not sure it
| can be fully understood and appreciated by people that did not
| spent some time behind the iron curtain...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Master_and_Margarita
| bootsup wrote:
| It isn't scifi, but it's certainly one of the best fantasy
| novels ever written.
| metadaemon wrote:
| 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.
| kwyjibo1230 wrote:
| 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
| ainar-g wrote:
| You can add "The Doomed City" to the list as well. It's an
| interesting take on the "aliens pull people from different
| places and times to conduct a social experiment" trope.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Doomed_City
| bootsup wrote:
| My favorite Soviet/Eastern Bloc scifi novel is The Day Lasts
| More Than A Hundred Years (1981) by Chingiz Aitmatov.
|
| "Ethnic" writers were accorded more freedom of topic than white
| Russians, confined to village prose in the Breznev era.
| Aitmatov's book sweeps the vast steppes of Central Asia and
| interstellar space, begins from the perspective of a fox,
| considers traumas of the Great Patriotic War and Stalin's
| resettlement, thousand-year-old traditions, the quest to give a
| dead railroad switchman a proper Muslim burial, and an
| international incident caused in space.
|
| Aitmatov was ethnically Kyrgyz. The book's mostly set on Kazakh
| steppes.
|
| OP was looking for context on the meat-grinder in Ukraine. He
| won't find it in the meat-grinder near the end of Roadsite
| Picnic.
|
| Sienkiewicz (1884), With Fire and Sword, set in 1640s-1650s
| Khmelnytsky Uprising (Cossacks of Zaporozhian Sich vs Polish-
| Lithuanian empire) is remarkably good, and geographically
| contiguous with the current meat grinder in Ukraine. A pre-
| Soviet book from outside what became USSR (Polish), not scifi,
| but which clearly inspired Frank Herbert and possibly Tolkein.
| Scifi and fantasy continued the adventure genre, after all. If
| you read it, be prepared for Iliad or The Bridge on the Drina-
| level violence at times.
|
| For more non-scifi lit grounded in war in previous iterations
| of Ukrainian statehood, see especially Bulgakov's (1925) The
| White Guard. A love song to Kiev, loving and complex critique
| of its bourgeoisie that could only have been written by a
| physician.
|
| Roadside Picnic's a fast-paced philosophical read. Solaris (yes
| it's Polish, but Tarkovsky painted it in film) has the dreamy,
| encyclopedic quality of something like Moby-Dick. (Post-Soviet)
| Metro 2033 is lower quality, more pulpy, feels like it was
| written to be turned into a series, video game, etc. (it was),
| but it's an interesting page-turner.
| kej wrote:
| >Whenever a reading list gets to the front page of HN, I always
| find the most interesting books to add from the comments!
|
| Do you maintain this list publicly anywhere? "Books that have
| been recommended in HN comments" would be an interesting list
| to see.
| yaky wrote:
| 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)
| thriftwy wrote:
| 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).
| przefur wrote:
| 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.
| rurban wrote:
| Indeed, Monday starts on Saturday is better. Only Hungarian
| or Czech authors are similarily funny
| golergka wrote:
| > It's about a soviet scientist
|
| It's actually about a soviet software engineer, and A LOT of
| the things in this book is still very relevant to our trade
| today.
| monista wrote:
| Rather programmer than software engineer, I think that that
| time, his work was mainly just calculate something, not to
| write software products and such.
|
| Incidentally, the spirit of the book fits both communistic,
| and hacker's views: work overtime, because you like it, not
| for an extra reward.
| metadaemon wrote:
| You've got to love Roadside Picnic as it can be seen as the
| predecessor to other stories and games, like S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and
| Escape from Tarkov. It's core trope is unique enough to have
| spawned an entire generation of content.
|
| I'd say the same about Blindsight, but it hasn't spawned much.
| Although, it's core trope is arguably the most unique I've ever
| read before.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| > I'd say the same about Blindsight, but it hasn't spawned
| much. Although, it's core trope is arguably the most unique
| I've ever read before.
|
| I don't want to go into too much for fear of spoilers, but
| the video game Prey is at least playing in the same ballpark
| as Blindsight.
| thesz wrote:
| I think you are talking about second Prey game, not the
| first. First Prey game was unusual first person shooter,
| very interesting one. I haven't played second game.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| Right, the basically entirely-unrelated game under the
| exact same name, from 2017, not the one from 2006.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prey_(2017_video_game)
|
| (tons of spoilers there, I'm sure)
|
| [EDIT] It'd also have been pretty weird if the '06 Prey
| had seemed like it had some Blindsight DNA, since that
| novel was released a few months after the '06 Prey. And I
| don't want to overstate the connection, but it's enough
| that I'm _reasonably sure_ that _someone_ involved in
| writing '17 Prey had read Blindsight.
|
| [EDIT AGAIN] In fact, I'd literally bet money someone
| involved had also read a certain Watts short story in
| addition to Blindsight, which story I hesitate to even
| name for super-spoilery reasons.
| thriftwy wrote:
| I'm not sure how Blindsight is different in its essense from
| Arthur Clarke's Rama I. Even the social commentary layer in
| both books is very similar.
| ThaDood wrote:
| 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. Soviet writer for science fiction are some of
| my favorites.
| trobertson wrote:
| > I still think it could have the potential be a really
| interesting TV show.
|
| It's already a movie.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalker_(1979_film)
| wishfish wrote:
| Roadside Picnic is probably my favorite version of alien
| visitation. I'm partial to stories where the aliens are
| largely incomprehensible. Especially the ones who can manage
| the high tech requirements of FTL. Felt very realistic having
| the aliens visit Earth as tourists and not invaders, ignore
| the locals, and throw their trash around.
|
| I am also a little surprised it hasn't been made into modern
| show. It would perfectly fit the paradigm of the modern story
| arc-based show that's centered around a big mystery. But,
| there's some consolation when one can see the influence of
| Roadside Picnic on other shows. Seems like it was a big
| influence on Lost.
| grufkork wrote:
| 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 extraordinary, incomprehensible
| situation grown mundane. The zone could be swapped out for a
| disaster area or a hostile jungle or whatever, but by being
| _the zone_ it becomes very alien to the reader as well. It
| contributes to what I really like about the book, simply
| being very atmospheric and immersive. It 's all show-
| don't-tell, the reader experiences everything through what
| the characters see or hear, and the reader's picture of the
| world is as clouded and uncertain as those living in it. I
| found a bit of the same feeling in Metro 2033, where anything
| happening outside of a couple kilometers range is just
| rumours. Nobody really knows anything for sure and neither
| does the reader!
|
| Also there was actually a RP TV-series in production with a
| really cool trailer, but I think the pilot didn't take off so
| it shut down.
| flanbiscuit wrote:
| 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 about 2 federal agents searching for
| parts of an exploded alien spacecraft. It was your typical
| "monster of the week" while building up an overarching
| story. Each piece of the ship would have some unique and
| crazy affect on the area and/or people around it.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debris_(TV_series)
|
| https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11640020/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0
|
| edit:
|
| ah, looks like I'm not the first to notice this connection:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/Debris/comments/nz6pkl/debris_and_
| r...
| petre wrote:
| 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.
| yaky wrote:
| I read somewhere that Strugatskys were once asked whether
| Inhabited Island was a satire of the Soviet Union, to which
| they responded with something like "it was not supposed to
| be the Soviet Union or any country specifically, but
| because we lived there, that is what we inadvertently ended
| up writing about"
| monista wrote:
| I agree about Definitely Maybe, or, rather, I disagree that it
| can be read as humorous, but can't agree more that it's great,
| considering its philosophical or psychological depth.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| 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 Stalker's
| daughter does that telekinesis thing which can be seen as being
| a bit hopeful for the future.
| abruzzi wrote:
| 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.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| FYI, another of their works, _The Doomed City_ was finally
| translated into English a few years ago. It is now my
| favourite, among their works.
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35133627-the-doomed-city
|
| https://www.chicagoreviewpress.com/doomed-city--the-products...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Doomed_City
| protomolecule wrote:
| Interesting, I read 'A Billion Years Before The End Of The
| World' as a book about facing hard choices in life.
| monista wrote:
| That's what constitute a great book: many meanings can
| coexist there, and one isn't not right reading it this or
| that way.
| omega3 wrote:
| 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.
| przefur wrote:
| 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.
| thriftwy wrote:
| 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?
| watwut wrote:
| I think that Eastern European would be nuch better term
| then Soviet. Or post-communist if you limit yourself to
| after 1989.
| omega3 wrote:
| Even if he was a communist it still wouldn't make him
| soviet.
| BrainVirus wrote:
| 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.
| Tade0 wrote:
| Tends to happen when you apply the eastern European
| equivalent of an N-word to someone.
|
| It's a touchy subject, and the recent Russian invasion
| explains why.
| unity1001 wrote:
| > which pigeonhole each writer belongs to
|
| That strongly influences, actually directly shapes, what
| works does the writer or the artist produces.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > That strongly influences, actually directly shapes, what
| works does the writer or the artist produces.
|
| You're putting the cart before the horse.
| unity1001 wrote:
| 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 they have is
| 'normal', and they don't identify it as an ideology
| unless it conflicts with the incumbent ideology in the
| society.
| bootsup wrote:
| 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.
| watwut wrote:
| Difference between Polish and Soviet is not tiny pidgeon hole
| difference. It is giving proper attribution. Not everything
| was done by Soviet. And for that matter, Soviet does not mean
| Russian automatically either.
|
| And specifically, Poland was occupied by Soviet long enough
| to deserve not tonhave own art attributes to them.
|
| Also, literature before revolutions and after them is much
| different. Topics, style of writing, who could get published
| or become famous are all much different. You can't attribute
| to Soviet what was done after Soviet broke up.
| chucksmash wrote:
| 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?"
| omega3 wrote:
| 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
| defrost wrote:
| Polish in birth and in spirit, a Soviet writer by location
| duing his more productive years:
|
| > Lem was born in 1921 in Lwow, 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
| Krakow, 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
| Krakow 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 Krakow'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
| omega3 wrote:
| Poland was never part of Soviet union.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Union
| trasz wrote:
| It was a part of Soviet Bloc though.
| omega3 wrote:
| By the same logic a writer from Turkey which was part of
| Western Bloc should be called a western writer? What
| about a writer from Japan?
| ogurechny wrote:
| All I can say is that if you could tell an average Soviet
| citizen that Lem was a Soviet writer, you would see a _very_
| surprised face.
| watwut wrote:
| That does not make his art not Polish or Soviet.
| przefur wrote:
| Implying that Lem was a Soviet writer feels just wrong.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| 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.
| myth_drannon wrote:
| 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.
| omega3 wrote:
| > I don't know enough history
|
| Clearly.
| z3c0 wrote:
| Weird to see you accuse someone of intellectual
| dishonesty, and then turn around and take a quote out of
| context to throw a dig at somebody else, purely because
| you don't agree. Very shameful behavior, honestly.
| omega3 wrote:
| I'm sorry if the response was blunt, nevertheless people
| really have to take a responsibility for their education
| and not make inflammatory comments about history of the
| parts of the world they don't understand or are unwilling
| to understand.
|
| There is plenty of information regarding history of Lviv
| and this region in general. It's long and sad, tragic and
| sometimes beautiful but never simple.
|
| Besides, I found that most people who feign ignorance
| know history very well and use it for their own agenda.
| If you know what to search in someone post history it
| becomes more or less obvious.
| p_l wrote:
| Lwow 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-Hungarian occupation and repression changing
| little on the areas they took.
| bootsup wrote:
| 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 else.
| Forced mass-conversions and massacres changed
| demographics a number of times over the last thousand
| years. Bureaucracies remained largely intact through
| their posession by empires, soviets, then
| nation(ish)-states.
|
| Modern states in the region are real, but contingent, and
| shouldn't falsely be projected backwards through history.
| jeejay wrote:
| Also Pelevin is a postmodernist rather than a sci-fi writer
| monista wrote:
| The genre he works in is often described as hyper-realism.
| fractallyte wrote:
| Macmillan publisher's Best of Soviet Science Fiction series was a
| fantastic set of translations, which included novels and short
| stories: https://isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pubseries.cgi?1107
|
| Highly recommended!
| EugeneOZ wrote:
| Reading Pelevin without knowing the cultural context is
| absolutely pointless. His books consist of references to movies,
| books, historical events, anecdotes, fairy tales, folklore songs,
| and many other elements of cultural heritage. I emphasize: his
| books _consist_ of references, not just _have_ them. Stories are
| based on intersections of meanings of different references.
|
| Pelevin is not a sci-fi writer, and Pelevin is anything but a
| "soviet" writer. Pelevin is a 100% anti-soviet writer.
| thriftwy wrote:
| The protestors in Russia (the small number which is still on the
| streets) likely did not read any Soviet Sci-Fi at all. What they
| read is Harry Potter.
|
| The parable from Soviet Sci-Fi to the current events is quite
| confusing. It's an attempt to create a narrative where there
| isn't.
| cf141q5325 wrote:
| >What they read is Harry Potter.
|
| Russia has some truly great fantasy series of their own. I
| never tire of recommending Lukyanenkos Night Watch series.
| Especially in contrast to trope heavy feel good stuff like
| Harry Potter that falls back to the heroic fight against
| ultimate villains. In contrast even the magic system of Night
| Watch throws the difficulty of the shades of grey in your face.
| Its especially nice that the whole thing starts as black and
| white as you can get with the protagonist developing throughout
| the whole series.
|
| edit: Only read it in German, so not sure about the English
| translation
| thriftwy wrote:
| I get it, but people calling themself Russian opposition
| today are oblivious to any shades of grey. For them,
| Lukyanenko is a _vatnik_ (a popular ethno-political slur not
| unlike "redneck") and nazi, case closed. Same with his
| comrade SF writer Oleg Divov. There are no shades of grey in
| political twitter. If Lukyanenko dies tomorrow, it would be a
| loud celebration for Russian opposition, whatever is left of
| it - another Putin's rag quacked. Like they celebrated the
| death of Darya Dugina and posted ironic memes about that.
|
| I could recommend them a Russian (or Ukrainian) writer or two
| who are likely sharing their world views today, but they just
| aren't the booky type in general. Why read more books when
| you get the knowledge of the _current thing_ from Twitter.
| And the general life framework from Harry Potter. I don 't
| even think you have to read that one to the end. Most of the
| memes like the magic hat are in the book one.
|
| I would say that the low quality and race to the bottom in
| Russian opposition is one of the pillars that lets Putin
| remain in his chair uncontested. And they keep digging. They
| reproduce by managing to recruit a new generation of even
| worse youth.
| FpUser wrote:
| "The protestors in Russia (the small number which is still on
| the streets) likely did not read any Soviet Sci-Fi at all. What
| they read is Harry Potter."
|
| Likely why? You got any real info?
| thriftwy wrote:
| That's Twitter crowd in Russia. Russian culture is not on
| Twitter hence it never existed as far as they are concerned.
| trhway wrote:
| >The protestors in Russia (the small number which is still on
| the streets) likely did not read any Soviet Sci-Fi at all.
|
| They are living in it. Right now they moved from the chapters
| in the "Inhabited Island/Prisoners of Power" describing
| totalitarian state covered with propaganda broadcasting towers
| and dissent suppression into the chapter where the main
| characters are loaded into tanks and sent into [tactical] nukes
| battlefield.
|
| The power of Dostoyevsky/Strugatskis/Pelevin (to me they are
| parts of the same axis, though it is hard to describe why in
| short post) is whatever happens (or yet to happen) in Russia
| you still feel like you're inside one of their novel.
| thriftwy wrote:
| This is an ample comparsion but may I remind you that
| Inhabited Island's plot did not resolve by the means of
| street protests, nor did it resolve at all even after the
| regime fell?
| trhway wrote:
| That is the point. Post Putin Russia isn't going to
| magically change and become a happy place. Society can't
| change overnight and humans can't significantly, if any,
| expand their mental horizon fast (even when it is
| supposedly advanced humans and society of the the future
| and when presented with tremendously wonderful new aspects
| of reality) - that goes through several Strugatskis works
| (Hard to be a God, Roadside Picnic, Anthill, The Waves
| Extinguish the Wind)
| thriftwy wrote:
| I can't say that Putin's Russia is a particularly unhappy
| place, especially taking into account the bad things one
| carries inside and will surely transplant wherever they
| land. And compared to the thing the world now wants to
| build here, which is also described in post-soviet social
| fiction.
|
| In Inhabited Island, Maxim takes some time to ponder
| whether the society he appeared in is actually unhappy
| and needs any help, considering its level of develoment.
| golergka wrote:
| > The protestors in Russia (the small number which is still on
| the streets) likely did not read any Soviet Sci-Fi at all
|
| Yeah, that's completely false. As someone who has been on these
| streets and it these political circles for a LONG time, I can
| with confidence tell you that vast majority were familiar with
| at least most (if not all) writers in that list.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| Soviet fiction I know:
|
| Alexander Bogdanov, the Red Star
|
| Interesting person and interesting book, considering it is from
| 1905
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Bogdanov
| Sin2x wrote:
| Not exactly Soviet but "We" fits well here:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_(novel)
| pjc50 wrote:
| "We" is remarkable in that it describes lots of failure modes
| of the Bolshevik revolution _before_ they happened.
| notahacker wrote:
| And also remarkable in that Orwell described its plot as
| "rather weak and episodic" before cheerfully ripping it off
| in his most famous work...
| Sin2x wrote:
| That quote is _very much_ taken out of the context...
|
| https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-
| foundation/orwel...
| Sin2x wrote:
| 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.
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