Тег: Strugatsky Brothers

The Doomed City

Long ago, I was commissioned and paid to review three books by the Strugatsky brothers. Roadside Picnic I looked at in April, Snail in May, but I only got around to The City in August. Traditionally, I am not going to recount the plot; you can check the wiki, or better yet, read the book itself.

It is clear that after reading, many want to immediately start figuring out the physics of the strange place described. Here, space is rolled into a tube, there are folds here, some potent grass is packed here, and it’s scorching over there. But if you view the book at such a level, it’s no longer the Strugatskys, but Pelevin.

The book was written for the drawer, so it cannot complain that its content is the product of compromises with Soviet censorship—there was no attempt to publish it as long as censorship existed. Boris Strugatsky asserted that this was their favorite book, and its main character, accordingly, their favorite character. However, for some reason, I am not particularly interested in the characters of the Strugatskys; it is far more intriguing to see what is going on regarding society.

And the society there is quite modern; you wouldn’t say it was described in 1972. Globalism, with a single language and the collision of atomized representatives of various cultures. The triumph of equality and inclusivity (but for all the inclusivity, women in the City, as everywhere with the Strugatskys, are completely flat characters serving a purely decorative purpose—except, perhaps, for the entirely episodic Madame Matilda Gusakova—she is not flat, but also rather decorative). Constant sudden calamities—global warming, the sun switching off, COVID, water turning into bile, BLM, an invasion of baboons. The reaction of the people and the reaction of the authorities to these calamities.

And, you know, for some reason I get the feeling that the Strugatskys are convinced: humanity cannot be handled any other way. It must absolutely be put into a state of artificial stress and deficiency; otherwise, some people turn into Doctors Opirov, and others begin to organize some mysterious “sated riots.” The Strugatskys like to frighten people with sated riots. The idea is that when a person is gastrically satisfied, they aren’t very concerned about further self-development, and they unite with others like them for the sake of self-destruction (Fight Club was probably also inspired by the Strugatskys).

Unlike the Strugatskys, I have been fortunate enough to live in a relatively sated time, and I have seen sated riots in practice, not just in theory. Well-dressed, polite people go out to get hit on the head with batons, and then sigh that it seems they won’t be able to obtain political rights here, and emigrate to peaceful Montenegro, which is practically the model for the city from The Predatory Things of the Century (only this morning returned from a drozhka, that was a strong touch). In short, sated riots are quite inspiring for a very short time, and then, of course, there are abysses of frustration. The Strugatskys clearly imagined something far more disgusting.

It is presumed that through all these endless experiments on humans, some “new man” is being forged, who is the only one capable of building a new world. However, through the example of the novella’s protagonist, we see that the only thing the experiment succeeds in is knocking the ground from under a person’s feet, destroying any ideological supports, and ultimately driving them to suicide, instead of building anything at all. Although, of course, there is hope that after returning to Leningrad in 1951, Voronin will start writing interesting science fiction and become an idol for the entire Soviet intelligentsia.

A Snail on the Slope

As I expected, on the way I read “The Snail on the Slope” by the Strugatskys, which I had promised to review for a long time.

I’ll be banal: the book is exceptionally strange and almost incoherent, which is probably why so many people want to find deep meanings in it. The plot is available on Wiki, so I won’t retell it.

Trying to understand what the authors meant, I made a few assumptions, then decided to check them and looked at the transcript of Boris Strugatsky’s presentation from 1987, shortly before the book was published in full (before that, it had been published in parts). I was surprised. The style of the book is so different from what I had read previously that I was certain it was something written by the later Strugatskys sometime in the eighties, amid the general fascination with “chernukha” (dark realism). But no, it turned out that although this work was written later than everything else of theirs I had read so far, it wasn’t by much; it was still the same sixties.

Overall, the book slightly reminded me of Marquez’s “No One Writes to the Colonel”: the same sluggish and useless fussing while waiting for long-promised things that the protagonist has no power to influence. Naturally, one wants to draw parallels with the Soviet reality, where the Administration is Soviet bureaucracy, the Forest is the Soviet people, the main character Perts is the Soviet intelligentsia striving to be closer to the people but unable to understand them, and the main character Candid is the same Soviet intelligentsia, only exiled, say, to the depths of the Siberian mines. This analogy would be no worse and no less plausible than the one intended by the authors, where the Administration is the present and the Forest is the future.

In the previous Strugatsky books I encountered, there was practically no sex, if one doesn’t count the completely filler episode between Don Rumata and Dona Okana in “Hard to Be a God.” Here, they expanded significantly, but continue to push the same line as they did when depicting medieval society: sex is crude, it is philistinism, such baseness is unbecoming of a human, who should be satisfied with spiritual closeness alone. This is exactly what happens with all the positive characters in the Strugatskys’ works: they enter purely platonic relationships and certainly do not reproduce. I don’t know what this says more about: the Soviet censors or the position of the Strugatskys themselves, but it is a quite characteristic detail.

At the same time, it seems to me that they generally understood that something was wrong with this position of theirs—and by depicting a single-sex parthenogenetic society as the Future, they made it no less repulsive than the straightforward philistine obscenity of the Present. I don’t know where they picked up such misanthropic ideas; it seems their senior comrade Ivan Efremov by no means demonized the sexual question (I’ve only read “Tais Athena” by him, but I believe that in his sci-fi he did not deviate from his ideology on this matter). So far, the best picture of a bright future with a healthy attitude toward sex I’ve seen was by Alexander Rozov in the Meganesian cycle.

Tyan, could I also get a review of Grad, Snail, and Picnic?

I used the search and found a review of Rainbow. I’ve never seen it from such an angle! It turned out to be an unexpectedly pleasant, intellectually stimulating stereoscopic effect

Semarg (Question accompanied by a donation of 0.1 dash)

At this rate, sooner or later I will become acquainted with practically the entire legacy of the Strugatsky brothers. To start with, I read “Roadside Picnic,” and now I will share my thoughts on it, and in time I will get to the other two commissioned novellas.

What invariably pleases me about the Strugatskys is that their world is quite psychologically authentic, and since economics largely continues psychology, it turns out to be economically consistent as well. For example, it is quite accurately noted that no matter how much you lower the iron curtain, you cannot completely isolate any Zone; it will inevitably become part of world trade, bringing prosperity to both itself and the outside world, while the paranoiacs from the secret services will have to accept it.

But, of course, the Zone is not only a metaphor for a frightening and incomprehensible foreign land, but simultaneously a metaphor, let’s say, for the sphere of scientific knowledge. In “Hard to Be a God,” the Strugatskys showed science as a box. A scientist puts his hand in and pulls out some random thing. He thinks he will use it this way, but it turns out that others start using it that way. It is similar in “Picnic.” A stalker drags some mysterious loot out of the zone, which is then adapted for use in unpredictable ways. The fact that the result will be unpredictable is no reason not to haul it, because the risk pays off.

And since we’ve started talking about science, I cannot fail to note that the only representative of the USSR in the book is engaged, conventionally speaking, in studying the influence of the philological characteristics of the word “concrete” on the drilling properties of a gaze. All the conversion of the Zone’s wonders into technological wonders is left to greedy capitalists. The stalkers act as sorts of startups that skim the cream off new markets, but gradually give way to fat corporations that rely not on courage and art, but on capital investments and methodicalness. As usual, the vast majority of startups go bust.

In conclusion, I will note that in the world of “Roadside Picnic,” humanity was terribly lucky. The most important thing about the aliens’ visit to Earth was the very fact of the visit. After this, humanity simply had no choice but to stop closing its eyes and pretending that it was alone in the universe. Our humanity also most likely encountered an alien probe in 2017, but preferred to pretend that nothing special happened, because acknowledging the very fact of contact with an extraterrestrial civilization is psychologically unbearable. I am talking about the visit to the Solar System by an object named ‘Oumuamua and its performance of non-gravitational maneuvers in the system. So we live as if nothing happened, as if there had been no Visit.

Pilman’s Radiant

Monday begins on Saturday

There was a lot of commentary about the Strugatsky brothers, especially on Facebook, so I think I’ll write about one more of their books that I’ve managed to read since my first review. I am talking about the novella “Monday Begins on Saturday,” which is cult status for junior school-age research fellows.

The book uses a simple allegory of magic as a science. This livens up the plot, allows the inclusion of various folkloric elements, and simultaneously gives the authors an opportunity to safely offer mild criticism of the Soviet system of research institutes (NII). And some things in this criticism seemed quite curious and even symptomatic to me.

Who are the negative characters in the book? Almost exclusively those wizards who try to implement the achievements of magic into the national economy. They do it clumsily because they are all untalented cynics with hairy ears, intent on riding and endlessly milking a single topic, and so on. And who are the positive characters? Those who investigate deep fundamental questions, such as the connection between the piercing properties of a gaze and the philological characteristics of the word “concrete,” but categorically refuse to defile themselves by introducing advanced concrete-drilling techniques into production. And this is the whole essence of Soviet science, which does not know the word “startup” and believes that science is a way to satisfy a scientist’s personal curiosity at the expense of the state—a phrase I have heard repeatedly from scientists, though I don’t know who the author was.

As a result, there is nothing surprising about the fact that in the world of “Monday,” magic is completely absent from the daily lives of ordinary people. It is something that sages in ivory tower research institutes engage in. They might practice it a little at home, but ordinary citizens receive nothing from magic except costs, resulting from accidents during tests and the sheer sloppiness of the wizards.

Furthermore, wizards absolutely loathe the press. And why wouldn’t they? The press tries to inform people of at least some benefit that magic brings, and as a result, deals mainly with opportunistic implementers while neglecting the philological characteristics of the word “concrete.” Naturally, such feedback cannot help but offend a true wizard.

What, under ancap, will there be only applied magic? No fundamental magic at all? Of course there will be, and plenty of it. Those wishing to satisfy their personal curiosity will receive grants for satisfying personal curiosity from funds established by admirers of others’ curiosity, or directly. That is more honest. That means less meaningless bureaucracy, which all self-respecting sorcerers dislike so much. And that way, there will be less fussing over ear depilation.

This post was conceived on Saturday and published on Monday, all according to the canon.

The positive hero flew in to steal a valuable device—a constant leitmotif for the Strugatskys, which I already mentioned in my review of Distant Rainbow

Predatory Things of the Century and Their Digital Immortality

Once, depending on my mood, I wrote a short review of three books by the Strugatsky brothers, among which was Predatory Things of the Century. In that book, among other things, there was a description of a certain secret order of patrons who found pleasure in stealing masterpieces from museums and then secretly destroying them in a solemn atmosphere. In the sixties of the last century, the Strugatskys managed to predict modern society quite well. And yesterday, on the MyGap channel, I stumbled upon an almost literal embodiment in our world of that very order of patrons.

A blockchain company burns a painting worth 95 thousand dollars on a live stream. What is the difference from what the Soviet sci-fi writers predicted? The difference, naturally, is that the company bought the painting honestly, and there was no need to burn it in secret; on the contrary, it became a public action. What can you do—while having an amazing intuition for social trends, the Strugatskys happened to be quite out of their depth in economics.

Burning a painting followed by the issuance of a unique token containing its digital copy and denoting ownership of it demonstrates how value arises from rarity. If the token were linked to an undestroyed painting, it could be thrown away, and one could simply settle for factual ownership of the painting without any certificate. It is precisely the fact that the token is left all alone that gives it value; otherwise, it would be an unnecessary tag.

I can easily understand how all of this blows the minds of the adepts of material production, who are convinced that humanity has fallen victim to digital delusions. But there is nothing to be done: the substance of value is not contained within things themselves. Value is in the consciousness. And consciousness is fickle, quickly loses interest in routine, and clings to everything fresh, rare, and unusual. The more sophisticated the consciousness, the harder it is to find such rarity. The more abundant the society, the harder it is to lure consciousness with the ghost of scarcity to suggest that this particular entity is rare and valuable. And so we have lived to see these patrons. What’s next on the Strugatskys’ plan? Sleg?

The Strugatskys

The Strugatsky brothers were Soviet sci-fi writers who, due to the distortions typical of a planned economy, were published by the Soviet state in much smaller print runs than the actual demand. Consequently, during the transition to a market economy, this deferred demand began to be actively satisfied, and my parents had a complete collection of their works on their shelf. I assume that the current generation of fifty-year-olds knows these books much better than those who are now twenty-five. As for me, I somehow jumped straight from childhood history encyclopedias to fantasy, then to popular science, while the Strugatskys’ collected works just gathered dust on my parents’ shelf.

Actually, I was prompted to write this post by a mention from Mikhail Svetov in a stream about how, as a child, he read authors in their entire collected works. I am not that tedious, and in the case of the Strugatskys, I ended up reading three books at different times.

The first was “Hard to Be a God”, a story about a communist “popadanets” (time-traveler/portal-jumper) in the Middle Ages. It was impossible not to read it because it is memetic, and I wanted to understand the origins of all those tales about how the “greys” are replaced by the “blacks,” and why a noble don should not see the reasons for not doing something. At the time, there was no mass literature about “popadantsy,” so the writers used another planet as a setting, but all the problematic themes perfectly align with the popadanets genre. What gives the work its originality is that the traveler failed miserably at imposing his values on a medieval society, and the mission ended in failure. Modern writers churn out more optimistic things, but here they managed to make a bestseller without a happy end; I respect that.

The second turned out to be the novella “The Predators”; here I owe thanks to Alexander Rozov, who wrote an interesting review of it. The book is about a communist who ends up in a prosperous capitalist consumer society, is horrified, and begins to make plans about what can be done with these unfortunate lost people who want to live happily and do not want to storm Mars in tight ranks. The communists faced a dilemma: either bring assault columns into the country and drive the population into the gulag, or start a multi-year brainwashing campaign. The protagonist humanely adhered to the second strategy, considering the first a failure, and for that, we can be grateful.

Finally, the third novella is “The Distant Rainbow”, which I read quite recently at the dacha when I had a free evening—a book from that very collected works happened to be next to my chair. The story tells of a planetary catastrophe that occurred due to the peculiarities of the communist system of organizing fundamental research, as well as the fact that in a planned economy there are no prices, and therefore economic calculation is impossible. The latter is illustrated with rich material. Rare instruments were brought from the metropolis, and the scientists resort to various tricks to try to obtain them out of turn, through connections (“blat”), or simply by stealing them. The option to “buy” simply does not exist for the poor souls. Energy is needed for experiments, and the scientists steal it from the local power system because the energy issued by coupons has already been spent. The option to “buy” simply does not exist for the poor souls. Another experiment ends in catastrophe (I don’t rule out that it was also caused by a competing laboratory stealing some rare controller right from the test rig, but the reasons for the tragedy remain off-screen), and it turns out that no evacuation means were provided on the planet (what safety regulations, it’s communism). To top it all off, the question of who exactly and what values should be saved first is also solved completely arbitrarily, and not by a legitimate governing body, but by the captain of the only spaceship, who decided for himself who lives and who dies, as if the ship were his private property. And it is exactly this approach, where the “Red Director” is king and god at his enterprise, that is positioned as the most morally justified. And so, back in the distant sixties, the sci-fi writers were already describing the outlines of the “Red Belt” of the nineties.

I once had to answer a question about which books are worth reading. I suggested first ensuring a frame of perception for oneself, and then you can read anything, and the result will invariably please you. Here you go: a libertarian reading of communist propaganda. Try reading all sorts of things; it’s interesting. And yes, the Strugatskys are stylistically simply wonderful, and I perfectly understand the nature of their popularity. If I have more time, I’ll read something else by them.

this very edition