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"A SIGNIFICANT EVENT. . . . THE FIRST SOVIET SCIENCE FICTION ANTHOLOGY WE HAVE HAD WHICH SUITS CURRENT AMERICAN SF TASTES''
Judith Merril,
perhaps the world's greatest
science fiction authority.
During recent years, in Russia as in the West, a gigantic scientific-technological revolution has taken place.
In science fiction, a similar great leap forward has been achieved. Here are the finest stories by the greatest of Russian SF masters—stories that will amaze, intrigue and delight as they take you into the strange, fantastic, all too real worlds of tomorrow. HERE IS THE MOST FASCINATING SCIENCE FICTION COLLECTION OF THE YEAR.
PATH INTO THE UNKNOWN
»»»>>■»»■>>■>»»»>>>>»>>>>»-»>■»»■
The Best of Soviet Science Fiction
Introduction by Judith Merril
A Dell Book
Published by
DELL PUBLISHING CO., INC.
750 Third Avenue New York, N.Y. 10017
Copyright © 1968 by Judith Merril Copyright © 1966 by MacGibbon & Kee Ltd.
All rights reserved
The publisher wishes to acknowledge the assistance of the Novosti Publishing House (APN), without whose help this collection would not have been possible.
Dell ® TM 681510, Dell Publishing Co., Inc.
Originally published in England by MacGibbon & Kee Ltd.
Reprinted by arrangement with Delacorte Press New York, N.Y.
Printed in U.S.A.
First Dell printing—November 1968
Contents
Judith Merril: Introduction 7
Ilya Varshavsky: The Conflict 13
Ilya Varshavsky: Robby 16
Vladislav Krapivin: Meeting my Brother 25
Sever Gansovsky: A Day of Wrath 60 Arkady and Boris Strugatsky: An Emergency Case 91
Arkady Strugatsky: Wanderers and Travellers 110
G. Gor: The Boy 123
Anatoly Dneprov: The Purple Mummy 161
Judith Merril
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>■>»>>>>>>> INTRODUCTION
This book is a significant event in the development of East-West communications. It is the first Soviet science-fiction anthology we have had which suits current American tastes. It contains some startling insights into the philosophical premises of the contemporary imaginative outlook in the U.S.S.R. And it provides a rather shocking reminder of how uneven the exchange has been so far.
Science fiction has been steadily growing in popularity in both countries since the early Fifties. Yet the first volume of Soviet s-f was not published in the U.S. until about five years ago, and I believe this book is only the fifth to appear here. In 1961 there were already that many American s-f titles in print in the U.S.S.R., and since then at least 100 more have appeared—about half of them as full-length books.
There were good reasons for the Translation Gap, and the main one I am sure was simply that the first samplings proved uncommercial: they did not interest American readers.
This collection should mark a change in the pattern.
One thing is important to understand in approaching the science fiction of an even slightly alien culture: the genre is by nature subversive. I do not mean just in its special uses as a vehicle of political analysis and social criticism, but in its essential character. A literature dealing in possible-futures and alternative-presents, concerned with how things might be
PATH INTO THE UNKNOWN 8
rather than how they are, is inevitably (in any state short of Utopia) going to stir up some degree of dissatisfaction with the world-as-it-is. And just as certainly it will attract writers with vigorous opinions on how things ought to be.
"Things" are not necessarily political. S-f in this country began as a sort of educational evangelism, preaching Space Flight, Technology, Progress, and the Rule of Reason; the only political overtone, if it could be called that, was a vague Technocratic optimism. I am told that Soviet science fiction in the Twenties was much the same.
Today, the mood in both countries is very different. The speculative focus has shifted from the physical sciences to the psychological, from engineering to biochemistry, from rocketry to communications. The "things" most in question, here and there, are the underlying assumptions of our (respective, and different) academic, scientific, and philosophic establishments.
A rare analysis of Soviet s-f, published in England in 1963,* explained: "Towards the end of the nineteen-twenties the place of literature in a socialist society became more clearly defined. The world revolution dropped out of sight and with the emergence of the doctrine of socialism in one country, science-fiction novels tended more and more to be set within the boundaries of the Soviet Union. . . . 'Why,' asked the press, 'do our science-fiction writers go so far afield in search of exotic backgrounds for their stories? Here in the U.S.S.R. are themes enough for any science-fiction writer's imagination: the expanding economy of our country and the staggering achievements of Soviet science. A writer of science fiction can find his heroes in the ranks of our scientists and technologists working for the completion of the five-year plan.' . . . Since Stalin's death, however, a renaissance of science fiction has taken place [but] to the western reader the range of theme must still seem extremely limited. . . ."
* "Soviet Science Fiction," Alan Townsend, The Listener, Oct. 24, 1963.
INTRODUCTION 9
Townsend lists, as subjects never, or very rarely, touched on: time-travel, mutants, supernormal powers (such as ESP), mechanization, automation, robots, leisure problems— "problems like these are glossed over or treated with superficial optimism." And: "Natural or man-made catastrophes, followed by the rebuilding of society, are never hinted at. . . . Problems of social integration are all soluble and, in any case, pessimism will not help."
That was 1963, less than five years ago; and as it happens, virtually everything we have seen in this country—before this collection—was originally published prior to that time. Only two of the stories here pre-date Townsend's analysis ("The Purple Mummy" and "An Emergency Case"), and they offer a vivid contrast to the more recent work. The development of only two years (the latest publication date here is 1965) is so startling, one wonders what is appearing now— two years later.
Varshavsky's two short openers—unfortunately weak translations—are gently satiric treatments of human-robot emotional involvements. "Meeting my Brother" is a sensitively written romance, in the classic and all-too-rare sense, about a star-struck boy and an astronaut hero. The central emotional problem involves elements which did more to shake my own preconceptions (specifically about the regimentation of private life in the U.S.S.R.) than anything I have read in a long time.
"A Day of Wrath" is not so badly translated as the Var-shavsky stories, but the language failures are more irritating here, because one cannot help but perceive the work of a powerful and effective writer. It is a mutant story, and I will be frank to say it infuriated me—and to admit, further, that my anger turned out on rereading to be pure frustration at being convinced, by the author's narrative strength, of an attitude I violently dislike.
Primitive xenophobia! I snorted, and laid it all at the door of Marxist teleological thinking—and went on to read
PATH INTO THE UNKNOWN 10
"An Emergency Case," which is a typical mid-Forties As-tounding-type puzzle story and a "pamphleteering" message against unthinking xenophobia.
The same theme, essentially, informs the second Strugat-sky story, "Wanderers and Travellers," but nowhere is the contrast between the Soviet work of the Fifties and that of the last few years more apparent than in these two stories. "Wanderers" is an evocative, mood-making piece which leaves all ideological anthropocentricity (Eastern or Western) far behind.
"The Boy" is an absorbing, and subjectively convincing, ESP story—thinly disguised with a gobbledegook term, "information double." In this one, again, you may prepare to have your magazine-article notions of daily life in the U.S.S.R. severely shaken up.
The opportunity to write this introduction was especially welcome to me because, as I finish this, it is twenty years to the week (and possibly to the day) since I wrote my own first impassioned science-fiction story. The story derived from a short article in the back pages of the (then) New York Herald Tribune, reporting that the rise in the infanticide rate in Japan had no (repeat, no) connection with fallout mutations; my piece was about the reactions of the parents to the birth of a legless, armless, high-I.Q. baby.
In short, I was one of the large number of writers drawn into s-f in the United States in the first intensely political phase of the genre just after the end of World War II. My first novel, three years later, described the three-days* duration of World War III. I like to think, since these works are still reprinted, and apparently remembered, that they—together with all that was done by many other and better writers in those years—actually played some small part in the direction things have gone since.
By the time this book is published, half the world will be celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the October revolu-
INTRODUCTION 11
tion. The possibility of a world-destroying war with the Soviet Union, which seemed so terrifyingly imminent in 1947, is now remote. We find ourselves able to communicate with the once-inevitable enemy: the Aliens are Human after all.
Happy Anniversary to them and to me. Happy reading to you.
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