Russian speculative fiction

Russian science fiction arguably had its Golden age in the 1960s^[1], when also majority of English translations were made.

History

Early period

Though secular literature was forming gradually in Russia since XVII century, it was not until the late XVIII century that European rhetoric genres were transplanted to native ground, with narrative fiction techniques open to complex interaction with new scientific and social ideas.

The first work which is indisputably proto science fiction is Fedor Dmitriev-Mamonov's A Philosopher Nobleman («Dvoryanin-filosof», 1769).^[2] It's a voltairean conte philosophique influenced heavily by Micromégas.

Two early examples of utopias in form of imaginary voyage are Vasily Levshin's Newest Voyage (1784, which is also the first Russian flight to the Moon) and Mikhail Shcherbatov's Journey to the Land of Ophir (written the same year but published in 1896).

Some of Faddei Bulgarin's tales are set in a more or less distant future, others exploit themes of hollow earth and space flight. In the same entertaining vein Osip Senkovsky's enormously popular Fantastic Voyages of Baron Brambeus are written.

Closer to mid-XIX century a genre of imaginary voyage into outer space became trivialised enough to be used in popular chapbooks (Voyage to the Sun and Planet Mercury and All the Visivle and Invisible Worlds (1832) by Dmitry Sigov, Voyage to the Moon in a Wonderful Machine (1844) by Semyon Dyachkov, Voyage in the Sun (1846) by Demokrit Terpinovich).

The central figure of the early 19th century is Vladimir Odoevsky, a romantic writer influenced by E.T.A. Hoffmann, who combines his vision of the future with faith in scientific and technological progress.^[3] He was also an author of many Gothic tales.

Another fantasist par excellence was Alexander Veltman whose best works are pseudo-historical romances set in Old Russia and heavily peopled by fairy-tale characters (Koschei the Immortal, 1833) and modern day hoffmanesque tales blended with satiric moralising (New Yemelya or, Metamorphoses, 1845). His Ancestors of Kalimeros (1836) borders on science fiction when the author describes his flight on a hippogryph through the ages to Alexander the Great's court and spending some time there till receiving a creditor's note from Saint-Petersburg. Year 3448 (1833), a Heliodoric love romance set in the far future, is his worst work.

Late XIX-early XX centuries

The second half of the century, particularly the 1860-80s are marked by dominance of open hostility to fantastic in literature. Literary fantasies with scientific rationale by Nikolai Akhsharumov and Nikolai Vagner stand out amid mundane fiction of that period, as well as Vera Zhelikhovsky's occult fiction.

Mikhail Mikhailov's story "Beyond History" (published posthumously in 1869), a pre-Darwinian fantasy on the descent of man, is the second work of prehistoric fiction in the world literature.

Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin's satires tend to fantastic grotesque.

Some Fyodor Dostoevsky's shorter works also use fantastic: The Dream of a Ridiculous Man (a story about the corruption of the utopian society on another planet), a doppelgänger novella The Double: A Petersburg Poem, mesmeric The Landlady, a comic horror story Bobok. Two dreams in his masterpieces are marked with science fictional imagination: an axe orbiting Earth in The Brothers Karamazov, and an intelligent species of microbes turning all of mankind into raging zombies in Crime and Punishment. Dostoevsky's magazine Vremya was first to publish Russian translation of Edgar Allan Poe's The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket in 1861; three other stories by Poe were published with Dostoevsky's own foreword (defining Poe's method as "material fantastic").

Many prose works of Valery Bryusov, one of the leading Symbolist writers, may be classified as science fiction.

Utopias

Nikolai Chernyshevsky's immensely influential What Is to Be Done? (1863) included an utopian dream of the far future, which became a prototype for many socialist utopias. Perhaps, the most noted example of them is a duology by Marxist philosopher and Lenin's adversary Alexander Bogdanov, Red Star and Engineer Menni. Some plays of another eminent Marxist, Anatoly Lunacharsky, propone his philosophical ideas in fantastic disguise (collection of his plays was called Ideas in Masques). Other examples of socialist utopias include Spring Feast (1910) by Nikolay Oliger.

Earthly Paradise (1903) by Konstantin Mereschkowski is an anthropological utopia which pays no attention to technical progress or social justice.

Women Uprisen and Defeated (1914) by Polish writer Ferdynand Antoni Ossendowski (written and published in Russian) tells a story of a feminist revolution.

Genre fiction

Entertainment fiction adopts international popular themes like resurrecting an ancient Roman (Extraordinary Story of a Resurrected Pompeian by Vasily Avenarius), global disaster (Under the Comet, 1910, by Simon Belsky), mindreading devices (a recurring theme in works by Andrey Zarin).

Spaceflight remained a central science fiction topic since the 1890s in In the Ocean of Stars (1892) by Ananii Lyakide, "In Space" (1908) by Nikolay Morozov, Sailing Ether (1913) by Boris Krasnogorsky with its sequel, Islands of Ethereal Ocean (1914, co-authored by prominent astronomer Daniil Svyatsky).

In the 1910s Russian audience grew interested in horror fiction: Fire-Blossom, a supernatural thriller by prolific writer Alexander Amfiteatrov, passed unnoticed in 1895, but it became an immediate success after being republished in 1910. Vera Kryzhanovsky's occult romances combining science fiction and reactionary elitist utopia enjoyed enourmous popularity at the time. Early Alexander Grin's stories are mostly psychological horror (he borrowed much from Ambrose Bierce), though later on his writing drifted to less conventional and more literary kinds of fantasy.

Possible miracles of technical progress were regularly described in form of fiction by scientists: "Billionaire's Testament" (1904) by biology professor Porfiry Bakhmetyev.

Future war stories (indistinguishable from their English, German, and French analogues) were produced mostly by the military (Cruiser "Russian Hope", 1887, and Fatal War of 18.., 1889, by retired navy officer Alexander Belomor; The End of the War, 1915, by Lev Zhdanov).

Soviet science fiction

The first specimen of alternate history in Russian is Napoleon's Second Life (1917) by Mikhail Pervukhin.

Post-Soviet period

Among the best known authors of the Post-Soviet Russia are: Sergey Lukyanenko, Alexander Gromov, Kirill Eskov, Nokolay Perumov, Andrey Lasarchuk, Roman Zlotnikov, Vasiliy Golovachev.

References

^ Daniel Gerould. On Soviet Science Fiction, in: Science Fiction Studies #31 = Volume 10, Part 3 = November 1983
^ Darko Suvin. Russian Science Fiction and Its Utopian Tradition, in: Darko Suvin, Metamorphoses of Science Fiction (Yale UP, 1979).
^ The Icon and the Axe: An Interpretive History of Russian Culture by James Billington. Vintage Books (Random House), 1970.

External links

Anthologies

Soviet Science Fiction, Collier Books, 1962, 189pp.
More Soviet Science Fiction, Collier Books, 1962, 190pp.
Russian Science Fiction, ed. Robert Magidoff, New York University Press, 1964.
Russian Science Fiction, 1968, ed. Robert Magidoff, New York University Press, 1968.
Russian Science Fiction, 1969, ed. Robert Magidoff, New York University Press, 1969.
New Soviet Science Fiction, Macmillan, 1979 , ISBN 0-02-578220-7, xi+297pp.
Pre-Revolutionary Russian Science Fiction: An Anthology (Seven Utopias and a Dream), ed. Leland Fetzer, Ardis, 1982, ISBN 0-88233-595-2, 253pp.
Worlds Apart : An Anthology of Russian Science Fiction and Fantasy, ed. Alexander Levitsky, Overlook, 2006, ISBN 1-58567-819-8, 740pp.

Literature

Darko Suvin. Russian Science Fiction, 1956-1974: A Bibliography. Elizabethtown, NY: Dragon Press, 1976.
J. P. Glad, Extrapolations from Dystopia: A Critical Study of Soviet Science Fiction Princeton: Kingston Press, 1982. 223 p.
Scott R. Samuel, Soviet Science Fiction: New Critical Approaches. Ph. D. Dissertation, Stanford University, 1982. 134 p.
Nadezhda L. Petreson, Fantasy and Utopia in the Contemporary Soviet Novel, 1976-1981. Ph. D. Dissertation, Indiana University, 1986. 260 p.
Karla A. Cruise. Soviet Science Fiction, 1909-1926: Symbols, Archetypes and Myths. Master's Thesis, Princeton University, 1988. 71 p.
Matthew D. B. Rose, Russian and Soviet Science Fiction: The Neglected Genre. Master's Thesis, The University of Alberta (Canada), 1988.
Richard Stites, Revolutionary Dreams: Utopian Vision and Experimental Life in the Russian Revolution. Oxford UP, 1989.
Richard P. Terra and Robert M. Philmus. Russian and Soviet Science Fiction in English Translation: A Bibliography, in: Science Fiction Studies #54 = Volume 18, Part 2 = July 1991
Anindita Banerjee. The Genesis and Evolution of Science Fiction in fin de siecle Russia, 1880-1921. Ph.D. Dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles, 2000. 324 p.
Vitalii Kaplan. A Look Behind the Wall: A Topography of Contemporary Russian Science Fiction, Russian Studies in Literature 38(3): 62-84. Summer 2002. Also in: Russian Social Science Review 44(2): 82-104. March/April 2003.
Science Fiction Studies #94 = Volume 31, Part 3 = November 2004. SPECIAL ISSUE: SOVIET SCIENCE FICTION: THE THAW AND AFTER.
Park Joon-Sung. Literary Reflections of the Future War: A Study of Interwar Soviet Literature of Military Anticipation. Ph. D. Dissertation, University of Michigan, 2004. 198 p.