Soviet Science Fiction Research Articles

“The Struggle of the Worlds”: the Representation of the Future War in the Soviet Science Fiction of the 1930s

In pre-revolutionary fiction, the struggle of the worlds was perceived mainly as a clash between earthlings and an extraterrestrial civilization. After the emergence of the Soviet state, the struggle between the Bolshevik and antiBolshevik worlds became one of the key themes in fiction. By the early 1930s, the formula “struggle of the worlds” existed in Russian literature both as fantastic and non-fantastic, reflecting a real social confrontation. However, the idea of a world revolution as the goal and result of the struggle of the worlds is actually eliminated from science fiction. The social struggle, which can transform into an interstate conflict, by the end of the 1930s turns into a war of the worlds, where the military clash between the USSR and a hostile state is the decisive factor. The changes taking place in the international arena led to the fact that in science fiction, too, England and France are replaced by Germany, Italy and Japan as the main opponents. In the war of the future the victory is determined not by heroism and national unity, but also by military and technical superiority. Along with the apparently fantastic weapons possessed by both the USSR and the enemies in the future, the writers described technical achievements, whose fantastic nature is not always noticeable even to a non-specialist contemporary, since some weapons that were fantastic in the late 1930s already became a reality during the Great Patriotic War. One of the distinctive features of the works of 1938–1939 about the future war is the minimal differentiation between the fantastic and non-fantastic. On the one hand, there is no war yet, on the other hand, the distance between the future and the present is practically absent, and the “effect of the future” is leveled due to image of reality that maximally corresponds to the present. This artistic technique helps to convey to the reader the confidence that victory is the logical conclusion of the present, and not a fantasy.

Belief and Prediction Narratives in Rethinking Discourse: The Experience of Soviet Science Fiction and Ad in the 1950s

In the USSR of 1950s, the sociocultural foundations for the functioning of social practices and institutions were the opposite to those in subsequent periods of the USSR history and modern Russia. In addition, they are opposite to the currently dominant trends in world’s development, depicted in “Retrotopia” of Zygmunt Bauman. In the culture of that time, people poorly expressed mass nostalgia as they searched for an emotional community with collective memory. Rationality was the main defining feature of the 1950s. From this point of view, the author examines narratives aimed at correcting the “Soviet” discourse, discredited during the Second World War and political changes in Soviet society in the late 1940s — early 1950s. There are two types of narrative: the belief and prediction, which were broadcast through commercial advertising and science fiction literature. The prediction narrative remained a specific attribute of the1950s culture and did not receive further promotion.

Семантика антропонимов в романе C. Снегова «Люди как боги»

The article analyzes the central work of fiction by the famous Soviet science fiction writer of the second half of the 20th century, whose work was almost not considered in scientific works, and the problem of anthroponymy was not considered at all. The science fiction novel by S. Snegov “People as gods” served as the material for the study. Using contextual, mythological, structural-semantic and intertextual methods, an analysis was made of the proper names of the key characters in this work in order to better understand the author's intention. The protagonist's name, Eli, has an obvious connection with the biblical name El, which is found as a common and generic designation for God in various languages ​​and dialects of the Middle East. In addition, it is a direct reference to the title of the work, which contains the central question in the artistic system of the novel about man as a god-like being. The name of the protagonist's wife – Mary – is the English form of the Russian name Maria, which contains a high meaning, well understood by the Christian consciousness. In the complete absence of any external or internal similarity between the heroine of Snegov and the Virgin Mary, there is an associative connection between them: as a biologist, Mary is looking for ways to spread life on uninhabited planets. In addition, she is the mother of a boy named Astre, who in the novel is associated with the Person of the Gospel Savior. The semantics of the names of other characters also connects the ideological space of the work with the foundations of the Christian worldview. Thus, consideration of the names of the central characters gives the author the opportunity to show that the onomastic field in terms of anthroponyms is semantically connected with biblical motifs and plots. System analysis leads the author to the conclusion that anthroponyms in the novel create a special semantic space that contributes to a deep understanding of the author's intentions.

GOSPEL REMINISCENCES IN S. SNEGOV’S SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL “PEOPLE AS GODS”

The article analyses the novel by S. Snegov, a famous Soviet science fiction writer of the second half of the 20th century, whose work has hardly been studied, and the problem of the evangelical intertext has not been regarded at all. The current study of a fragment of the narrative about the relationship between the protagonist and the “snake girl” allows showing that it is reminiscent of the biblical story about the Fall of the first people. At the same time, Snegov completely modifies the well-known narrative: the plot about the insidious serpent (in the form of which the devil penetrated Eden), which tempted a woman pure as the driven snow, is radically transformed, acquiring a paradoxically inverted form — here a man tempts a naïve and uncorrupt snake girl with his mad infatuation and, parting with her, realizes that he is leaving her soul in a turbulent state. It is determined that in the ideological structure of the novel, the minor “Eli — snake girl” storyline plays an extremely important role: the love of the main character actually equates the star-dwellers with earthlings, completely refuting the idea that man is the highest form of intelligent life in the Universe and can perceive aliens only as inferior beings. The analysis of the epigraph shows that the biblical event described in it becomes a key to understanding the dispute that occurred between the central characters and formed the core of the artistic conflict of the first part of the novel. A clear associative connection is established between Snegov’s hero and the Apostle Paul, and by extrapolating the gospel plot reflected in the epigraph to the situation in question, one can clearly see a parallel with the spread of Christianity among pagans. The incorporation of the gospel text into the artistic structure of a science fiction novel allowed the writer to recall the enduring moral values that do not lose their significance for people of the distant future.

Идея рая и ее воплощение в романе С. Снегова «Люди как боги»

The novel “Humans as Gods” by the Soviet science fiction writer S. Snegov is analyzed. In particular, the study is devoted to identifying the characteristic features of the world of the future of human civilization, which is depicted in the work at the stage of its maturity. The new order of human life is compared with the description of the lives of people from the mythical past, which is reflected in ancient and biblical sources. The similarities and distinctive features of ideas about a happy life are indicated. The importance of labor activity for a person of the future is noted as a necessary element for creating a unified society with equal rights and opportunities, despite the carelessness of representatives of the Golden Age era. The conclusion is made about the influence of ancient myths on the formation of the creative idea of the author of the novel, modeling a picture of a bright future based on the achievements of scientific and technological progress and a highly developed moral sense of a person.

Семантика абионимов в романе С. Снегова «Люди как боги»

The article studies the onomastic space of the science fiction trilogy “People as Gods” by the Soviet science fiction writer of the second half of the 20th century. Literary abionyms related to the habitats of the heroes of the work are in the focus of the research. It is noted that the space objects of the solar system in the novel retain all real names, on the contrary, the forces hostile to humanity are distinguished by invented names that reflect the specifics of their life philosophy and destructive activity in space. The significance of another literary abionyms in the novel is determined. The author comes to the conclusion that the onomastic space of the work is connected with the writer’s picture of the world, who models the possible path of development of human civilization, based on the priority of the moral law. Literary abionyms perform an ideological and aesthetic function and at the same time endow the novel with additional deep meanings that contribute to a more holistic perception of artistic reality.

Research on the Transformation of Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction

Research on the Transformation of Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction

Early Soviet Science Fiction and the Unevenness of Modernism: An Aerial View

In envisioning alternative futures—utopian, dystopian, cataclysmic—we historicize the present. Marxist critics like Fredric Jameson read science fiction as the new Lukácsian historical novel.[1] Others, turning to a further distant future, elaborate on the new perceptions of time and space offered in SF as visions that push toward cosmic and nonhuman scales.[2] As such, SF

Through the Thorns to Where? The Politics of Alternative Appropriations of Soviet Space Culture in Contemporary Russia

This article investigates the political implications of contemporary Russian cultural artifacts that appropriate Soviet space culture. Scholarship on Soviet and post-Soviet space history, increasingly interested in cultural production, highlights the transformation of Soviet space into usable history for the Russian regime. Nostalgia for Soviet space facilitates nation-building, allows political and economic capitalization on behalf of many state-affiliated actors, and lubricates the commodification of Soviet space heroism. In this article, such appropriations are discussed in terms of a neo-heroic Soviet space narrative characteristic of Russian space culture. This narrative, which principally performs a function of legitimation, has significantly progressed in recent years. This becomes clear from the recent release of Russian historical space blockbusters. However, other attempts to use Soviet space are also present. This article suggests two other narratives that attempt to appropriate Soviet space culture: the globalized Soviet science fiction (SF) narrative, and the “futuristic realist” narrative of constructing a new USSR. In both cases, there seems to be an attempt to change a nostalgic orientation of post-Soviet space culture, offering futuristic visions instead. While such attempts are not unproblematic, this article argues that they also deserve attention, especially if we want to better understand Russia's present stance and future alternatives in the new space race. Places such as Russian space museums are especially interesting in how they appropriate Soviet space culture and history, given that they seem to integrate narratives and maneuver between them. Performing both legitimizing and futuristic functions, Russian space museums are places where a new master narrative of Russian space, connected to the Soviet one, might appear.

“Martian” Novels in Russian Science Fiction in the Early 20th Century

This article presents an attempt to consider the formation of the “Martian” text in Russian literature during the Silver Age. The author studies three novels about trips to Mars (On Another Planet by P. Infantiev, On a Neighboring Planet by V. Kryzhanovskaya, Red Star by A. Bogdanov) published in Russia from 1901 to 1908. The aim of the study is to identify the main stable elements of the structure that appeared in all the three novels. The author employs methods of comparative historical analysis. All the three novels are compared with each other and placed into the context of the mystical, utopian, and scientific searches of the epoch. The author identifies common elements of the structure of the narrative in the three texts (the composition consists of three parts: description of life on Earth — flight to Mars — return) and plot (interaction between earthlings and Martians, the idea of Martians as older comrades, a love story of a Martian and an earthling). It was also possible to trace the correlation of the three novels with the utopias of place and time and find out the influence of life-creating strategies that were popular in the Silver Age. The article examines the influence of the “Martian” text which emerged at the beginning of the century on Soviet science fiction starting with A. Tolstoy’s Aelita and ending with the novels of 1960s–1980s. As a result, the author concludes that the “Martian” text of the early twentieth century laid down the main questions about interaction with the inhabitants of other planets, the possibility of colonization, and the price that one must pay for the contact with other worlds. Soviet science fiction searched for answers to them.

The Moon as an Object of Exploration in the Perception of Russian Science Fiction

Purpose: to trace how the representative Russian science fiction texts reflect the process of the exploration of the Earths satellite, both in scientific/technical and socio-philosophical aspects.
 Methods: comparative-historical, mythopoetic, socio-historical, hermeneutical, structural analysis.
 Results: Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, the outstanding rocket scientist and pioneer of the astronautic theory, in his story On the Moon conjectured in detail the impression of an observer on its surface. The Soviet science fiction writer Alexander Belyaev developed Tsiolkovskys hypotheses in the story The Star KETs in which the Moon becomes accessible due to the construction of a space station in Earths orbit, named after the scientist: Star K(onstantin) E(duardovich) Ts(iolkovsky). In the Soviet Union, which was actively engaged in the research of the Moon, the interest in it was so great that it was reflected even in childrens literature. Simultaneously with the deployment of the Soviet lunar program, a fairy-tale novel by Nikolai Nosov Dunno on the Moon appeared. The novel shows the atmosphere of rivalry between the USSR and the United States in the exploration of the Moon. The science fiction vector is unfolded in the picaresque genre. In Victor Pelevins novel Omon Ra the question is raised not only of the research prospects of lunar landings, but also of the spiritual price of scientific search which implies the active participation of the state: is a free intellectual and technical search possible for astrophysicists, engineers, and cosmonauts under the pressure of acute political necessities?

Soviet Science Fiction in the Mirror of Film Criticism and Viewers’ Opinions: A 21st Century View

Soviet Science Fiction in the Mirror of Film Criticism and Viewers’ Opinions: A 21st Century View

H. G. Wells and All Things Russian by Diment Galya (review)

REVIEWS 341 Diment, Galya (ed.). H. G. Wells and All Things Russian. Anthem Press, London and New York,2019. xv + 238 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Appendices. Bibliography. Indexes. £80.00: $125.00. Russian writers’ interest in the work of H. G. Wells, as well as Wells’s own interest in Russia itself, seem so logical, obvious and ubiquitous that it comes as some surprise that, as Galya Diment claims, ‘this book is the first one to devote itself entirely to this theme’ (p. 1). Building, nonetheless, on a substantial bibliography of existing scholarship, H. G. Wells and All Things Russian is subdivided into three sections, exploring first his reception in Russia before World War Two, then his post-war afterlife, and finally traces of Russia in Wells’s own oeuvre. Throughout, there is a refreshing variety of heterogeneous models of influence and intertextuality. Thus, Maxim Shadurski revisits the largely familiar topic of Wells and Evgenii Zamiatin in order to interrogate each author’s attitude to utopia and social progress. The utopian theme is picked up by Muireann Maguire in a comparison of the satirical fictions of Mikhail Bulgakov and Sigizmund Krzhizhanovskii, in which a number of Wellsian echoes are identified. Zoran Kuzmanovich offers an elegant, playful, even sceptical reading of Vladimir Nabokov, a writer who claimed to ‘loathe science fiction’ (p. 54). Kuzmanovich’s essay also offers welcome reflections on how we might define and interpret literary influence. Richard Boyechko’s chapter maps the field of Soviet science fiction writing, focusing in particular on the work of Arkadii and Boris Strugatskii, and exposing the ways in which ‘Soviet authors freely interpreted Wells’s many barbs directed toward the uneducated and uncultured masses as referencing the meshchanstvo, their own “un-intelligentsia”’ (p. 93). Patrick Parrinder’s pithy contribution usefully widens the parameters of the volume; taking Iulii Kagarlitskii’s 1963 study of Wells as its central text, it exposes ambiguities both in Wells’s attitude to Marxism, and in Marxist understandings of Wells’s world-view. This theme is picked up by Olga Sobolev and Angus Wrenn in their examination of a number of theatrical and cinematic representations of Wells. Here, Wells appears as the archetypical ‘fellow traveller’, often depicted in conversation with Lenin, who invites him to ‘come and visit us in ten years’ time!’ in order to admire the Soviet Union’s future social, economic and scientific achievements. If these six chapters chart a variegated chronology of Wells’s Russian reception, the next three focus more specifically on Wells’s own interest in Russia. David Rampton offers a compendious reading of Babes in the Darkling Wood, a 1940 novel of ideas, analysing it as a heuristic commentary on Wells’s own ambivalent attempt to come to terms with what the Soviet experiment had become under Stalin. Ira Nadel traces the personal, aesthetic and ideological affinities characterizing the friendship between Wells and Maksim Gor´kii, SEER, 99, 2, APRIL 2021 342 whilst also narrating details of Wells’s three visits to Russia and the Soviet Union. Nadel’s rather reverential attitude is offset by the edgier tone adopted by Galya Diment in her account of the relationship between Wells and his lover Odette Keun, whose first-hand experience of many of the horrors of life in the Soviet Union is juxtaposed with Wells’s more sympathetic stance. If the nine chapters making up the main part of this volume concentrate primarily on Wells’s works, then a welcome appendix of six translations of memoiristic and observational writing by V. D. Nabokov (father of the novelist), Aleksandr Amfiteatrov, Aleksandr Beliaev, Karl Radek and Solomon Lozovsky, Iurii Olesha and Iulii Kagarlitskii contains some evocative pen portraits of the author and his entourage. Reflecting Russian interest in the man, as much as the author, these set the artistic and political influence of Wells’s work into a very human context and remind us of the contingency of the personal passions and antipathies which shape cultural exchange. H. G. Wells and All Things Russian takes its place in the burgeoning field of recent scholarship on Anglo-Russian relations, a field to which its editor has already made so many significant contributions. Wadham College, University of...

Entre la ciencia ficción y la ciencia de la historia: El corazón de la serpiente.

This article deals with the science fiction novel The Heart of the Serpent, by the Soviet Ivan Efremov, and shows what we identify as an ideological vindication of the Marxist theory of history or historical materialism; and the influence that said ideological content has on the conception of science fiction that Efremov adopts and, in a meta novel exercise, he exposes in his mentioned work is studied. For this, some characteristics of Soviet science fiction in general, and the particularities of Efremov's work will be exposed. In the same way, he realizes the essential aspects of Marxist theory of history, a theoretical aspect on which Efremov bases the difference of science fiction produced in the "capitalist world", and his fiction of the future world and the extraterrestrial contact that It must be based on scientific aspects, since history as a science that manages to delineate aspects of the future society.

Magazines of science fiction and adventure “Ural Pathfinderˮ and “Seekerˮ as sources on the history of the Soviet intelligentsia

The article examines the source value of the Soviet popular magazines “Ural Pathfinder” and “Seeker”. First of all, the author considers the social and moral-political conditions in which these magazines were created. It is emphasized that both publications appeared at about the same time, at the turn of the 1950s and 1960s, at the beginning of the so-called “Golden age” of Soviet science fiction, when a galaxy of young and active science fiction writers entered the arena of literary life. The appearance of magazines was a response to the request of Soviet readers, first of all, the intelligentsia, who needed new publications of science fiction and adventure themes. The content of these publications was also analyzed. There were differences between the magazines. The “Ural Pathfinder” was not only a literary and artistic publication, but also a popular scientific, historical, geographical, and local history publication. “Seeker” was a literary supplement to “Around the world”. Also, over time, by the 1980s, magazines acquired different ideological colors in the eyes of the Soviet intelligentsia, which, however, did not affect their popularity. At the end, the research results are summarized. In relation to the history of the intelligentsia, the source potential of magazines is limited by a number of factors. Among them, censorship restrictions and ideological divisions among the Soviet intelligentsia occupy an important place. However, the analyzed publications can serve as sources on the following aspects: the history of the Soviet press, primarily popular publications; the development of regional journalism; coverage of local history and environmental issues, issues of youth education (based on the materials of the “Ural Pathfinder”); the composition of the authors of fantasy and adventure works, their plot component.

Soviet science fiction as a hypostasis of communist utopia

Soviet science fiction as a hypostasis of communist utopia

Soviet Atlantis: Between Science Fiction and Esoteric Communities

The paper concentrates on the history of the myth of Atlantis in twentieth-century Russian culture. It traces the transmission of Atlantis narratives starting from artistic and esoteric circles of the early twentieth century, through Soviet science fiction, to the esoteric revival of the 1980s. Contemporary fictional literature is understood as a modern, secularized form of mythology, intrinsically connected to traditional mythological narratives. The story of Atlantis, as one of these narratives, played an important role in Russian esoteric and fictional literature. The transmission of the Atlantean narrative through the Soviet period is analyzed herein and can benefit scholars in several ways. It shows how esoteric narratives can change and assume a fictional nature to survive in hostile and highly secularized environments. It also contributes to the understanding of particular aspects of contemporary Russian spiritual life related to the revival of Russian esoteric communities, which began during the Perestroika and continued after the collapse of the Soviet Union. It also contributes to the study of twentieth-century Russian cultural history, as well as to the academic study of esotericism.

The Zone as a pregnant space

The present article results from research around the concept of Zone in what refers to a boundary, symbolic and urban space that activates multiple networks of meaning according to its use in social history, literature, cinema, urbanism and theory of art. Secondly, the text deals with the stalker as a character who traces the paths of the Zone. The article analyzes its emergence in Soviet science fiction, in modern cinema, and its unfolding in theoretical discussions, relating both to cyberspace and to a number of contemporary pedestrian practices. Key-Words: cyberspace; misery belt; science fiction; urbanism.

The Forced Happiness of Space Colonisation: The Soviet Project in Science Fiction

Connected with ideas of innovation, Soviet science fiction explored the topic of space and contacts with extra-terrestrials. Starting in the 1960s, this literature was concerned with the idea of earthlings helping other civilizations to achieve a new level of life. Soviet science fiction thus put forward the idea of forced happiness, which fitted very well with the utopian foundations of Soviet culture. This article focuses on I Will Be Back in a Thousand Years (1969), a once-popular but little-studied novel by Isai Davydov, a Ural writer. The idea of forced happiness is verified two times in the novel: through the construction of an ideal society of young people on Earth and the functioning of a similar society on another planet, and through an attempt to contact savages. In the end, it transpires that building an ideal society is troublesome and that the savages do not need any help from earthlings. Davydov’s novel is studied in the context of Soviet science fiction novels about contacts with other civilizations, from Aelita by A. Tolstoy to the ‘progressor’ cycle by the Strugatsky brothers. The utopian character of ‘progressorism’ in the works of the Strugatsky brothers is extolled and logically completed in the sequel of Davydov’s novel (2013), where progressors manage to ‘civilise’ savages. The author concludes that the idea of progressorism is important for Soviet science fiction beyond the works of the Strugatsky brothers, although it is most frequently considered in the context of their oeuvre. In Davydov’s novel, the characters regard themselves as gods for the savages, but, unlike the characters of the Strugatsky brothers, they do not consider this mission a burden. This is one of the distinctive features of Soviet science fiction: ‘average’ characters become equal to gods and struggle with time itself in order to secure a happy future for the entire galaxy.

Étoiles rouges. La littérature de la science-fiction soviétique by Viktoriya and Patrice Lajoye

185 BOOKS IN REVIEW discourses to show how genre cuts across fields and media. Jerng reconfigures what are often called “tropes” as “genres”—a seemingly subtle distinction but a powerful one. Genres create worlds that operate according to certain rules, customs, and variations on a theme. Genres create affordances, which allow some possibilities and not others, allow certain histories, futures, and interpretations to be salient and not others. Dragons are affordances of fantasy; cyborgs are affordances of sf. It is not that those figures cannot be found in other genres, but they are more salient in some generic locations than others. So too with racial genres and the figures, tropes, and interpretations they afford. This book is an important contribution to critical race studies within sf and I recommend it to any reader of SFS interested in race. Just as I suspect we as a group all accept it when Philip K. Dick turns the world inside out, I similarly predict we will easily grasp and accede to Jerng’s arguments about the power of worldbuilding and the connections between genre fiction and the “real” world. It is in his careful analysis of the mechanisms of that worldbuilding as they pertain to race that Jerng truly offers us something novel. And as is so often the case, I find myself wanting to recommend this book to people other than sf scholars. It is probably those who do not spend as much time thinking about worldbuilding who will find Jerng’s study most revelatory. We make these worlds. We could make them differently. —Elizabeth Lundberg, The University of Iowa Distant Constellations: Looking Backward at Soviet Science Fiction. Viktoriya and Patrice Lajoye. Étoiles rouges. La littérature de la sciencefiction soviétique [Red Stars: Soviet Science Fiction Literature]. Paris: Piranha, 2017. 316 pp. $49.95 pbk. Viktoriya and Patrice Lajoye are well known to French-speaking readers as the foremost specialists in Russian sf in France. From 2009 to 2014 they maintained the only serious blog on the subject, Russkaya Fantastika, articles from which were edited into book form in 2013 under the same title. Together they translate and publish Slav legends and fantasy tales, as well as works of such writers as the Symbolist poet Valery Bryusov. They have published a number of articles, together and separately. Patrice Lajoye edited an excellent sf anthology, Dimension URSS (2009), and Viktoriya Lajoye edited a collection of essays entitled Aspects des littératures de l’imaginaire post-soviétiques [Aspects of post-Soviet imaginative literatures] in a special issue of La Revue russe (#43, 2014). In their new book, after a gap of decades since the end of the 1970s when a series of their essays and publications made the French public familiar with then-still-lively Soviet (and anti-Soviet) sf, utopian fiction, and fantasy, they now undertake to revisit this literature from a contemporary perspective. The title of the book, Red Stars, obvious as it seems, brings to mind not only the revolutionary emblem and the Soviet drive for cosmic exploration, but also the 1985 essay of the same name in which Patrick McGuire investigated the political aspects of Soviet sf and, last but not least, Alexander Bogdanov’s 186 SCIENCE FICTION STUDIES, VOLUME 46 (2019) famous utopia The Red Star (1908), which depicts a Communist society on Mars, the red planet. The Lajoyes’ title announces the subject and at the same time suggests its intricate intertextual and intercultural problematics. Right from the start, the authors cut the Gordian knot of labyrinthine developments. They declare in their foreword that their intention is not to present the results of academic research but, rather, to offer a subjective study based on their personal opinions, an accessible introduction to this particular body of a past literary production. That is precisely what the book is, an introduction aimed at sf fans as well as mainstream readers, teenagers as well as adults. It is written in a very articulate and lively manner. Without insisting too much on the literary analysis of the texts they examine, the authors are interested in whether the sf ideas they convey are sound or dilettantish, original or clichéd, close to Communist...