Future perfect? Communist science fiction in the Cold War

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Notes

1. For the best recent overview: David Seed, American Science Fiction and the Cold War: Literature and Film (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999). See also H. Bruce Franklin, Vietnam and Other American Fantasies (Amherst: Massachusetts University Press, 2000), ch. 8.

2. Olesja Turkina, ‘Das Innen und das Außen: Raumfahrtdenkmäler und Rekonstruktion des kulturellen Gedächtnisses in der postsowjetischen Gesellschaft’, in Akademie der Künste (ed.), Denkmale und kulturelles Gedächtnis nach dem Ende der Ost-West-Konfrontation (Berlin: Jovis, 2000), pp.125–36.

3. Rosalind J. Marsh, Soviet Fiction since Stalin: Science Politics and Literature (London: Croom Helm, 1986), p.5.

4. Catriona Kelly, ‘The Retreat from Dogmatism: Populism under Khrushchev and Brezhnev’, in Catriona Kelly and David Shepherd (eds.), Russian Cultural Studies: An Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp.256–7.

5. Yuri Ryurikov, ‘Notes on Literature about the Future’, Soviet Literature 4 (1960), p.129.

6. Darko Suvin, Metamorphoses of Science Fiction: On the Poetics and History of a Literary Genre (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1979), ch.11.

7. Frank H. Tucker, ‘Soviet Science Fiction: Recent Development and Outlook’, Russian Review 33 (1974), p.189. For an anthology: Leland Fetzer (ed.), Pre-Revolutionary Russian Science Fiction: An Anthology (Seven Utopias and a Dream), (Ann Arbor, MI: Ardis, 1982).

8. Michael Holquist, ‘Konstantin Tsiolkovsky: Science Fiction and Philosophy in the History of Soviet Space Exploration’, in George E. Slusser and Eric S. Rabkin (eds.), Intersections: Fantasy and Science Fiction (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1987), pp.74–86.

9. Paul Brians, Nuclear Holocausts: Atomic War in Fiction, 1895–1984 (Kent State University Press, 1987); Spencer R. Weart, Nuclear Fear: A History of Images (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988); Martha A. Bartter, The Way to Ground Zero: The Atomic Bomb in American Science Fiction (New York: Greenwood, 1988).

10. Richard Stites, ‘Fantasy and Revolution: Alexander Bogdanov and the Origins of Bolshevik Science Fiction’, in Alexander Bogdanov, Red Star: The First Bolshevik Utopia, ed. Loren R. Graham and Richard Stites (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, [1908] 1984), p.5.

11. Orlando Figes, Natasha's Dance: A Cultural History of Russia (London: Allen Lane, 2002), pp.513–14.

12. My term ‘communist science fiction’ merely refers to SF written within the Eastern bloc, not to the views of its authors.

13. Rafail Nudelman, ‘Soviet Science Fiction and the Ideology of Soviet Society’, ‘Science-Fiction Studies’ 16 (1989), p.49.

14. Marsh, ‘Soviet Fiction’, p.138.

15. Ariadne Gromova, ‘At the Frontier of the Present’, in C.G. Bearne (ed.), ‘Vortex: New Soviet Science Fiction’ (London: MacGibbon and Kee, 1970), p.10.

16. John Fekete, ‘Science Fiction in Hungary’, ‘Science-Fiction Studies’ 16 (1989), pp.191–200: p.197.

17. Patrick L. McGuire, Red Stars: Political Aspects of Soviet Science Fiction (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1985), pp.85–92.

18. Wolfgang Both et al., Berichte aus der Parallelwelt: Die Geschichte des Science Fiction-Fandoms in der DDR (Passau: EDFC, 1998), p.47. A number of student members were expelled in 1973.

19. Sohar cited in Carl Tighe, ‘Stanislaw Lem: Socio-Political Sci-Fi’, Modern Language Review 84 (1999), pp.773–4.

20. Bogdanov, Red Star.

21. Ibid., p.47.

22. McGuire, Red Stars, p.16.

23. Heinz Vieweg, Ultrasymet bleibt geheim (Berlin: Verlag Neues Leben, 1956).

24. Bokhovitinov and Zakhartchenko, ‘The World of Nightmare Fantasies’, Literaturnaya Gazyeta (March 1948), in Brians, Nuclear Holocausts, p.8.

25. Larin in Tucker, ‘Soviet Science Fiction’, p.199.

26. Voiskunsky in Soviet Literature 1 (1982), p.170.

27. Angela and Karlheinz Steinmüller, Literatur als Prognostik: Das Zukunftsbild der utopischen Literatur der DDR in den fünfziger Jahren (Gelsenkirchen: Sekretariat für Zukunftsforschung, 1994), p.23.

28. Vladimir Gakov and Paul Brians, ‘Nuclear War Themes in Soviet Science Fiction: An Annotated Bibliography’, Science-Fiction Studies 16 (1989), p.68.

29. Leon Gouré, Civil Defense in the Soviet Union (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1962), p.8.

30. The Last Pastorale translated in Soviet Literature (1987/88), pp.7–90. Significantly, the story was attacked by military figures in the Soviet media for being pacifist.

31. See, for instance, Karl Böhm and Rolf Dörge, Gigant Atom (Berlin: Verlag Neues Leben, 1957).

32. Günther Krupkat, Die Unsichtbaren (Berlin: Verlag Das Neue Berlin, 1958), p.12.

33. Heinz Vieweg, Die zweite Sonne: Wissenschaftlich-phantastischer Roman (Halle: Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 1958), p.219.

34. Tucker, ‘Soviet Science Fiction’, p.199; Mikhail Kovalchuk, ‘English and American Science Fiction in Russian Translations’, Soviet Literature 1 (1982), pp.162–8.

35. Lawrence Sutin, Divine Invasions: A Life of Philip K. Dick (London: Paladin, 1991), p.200.

36. For an overview: Richard E. Ziegfeld, Stanislaw Lem (New York: Ungar, 1985).

37. ‘Science Fiction: A Hopeless Case - With Exceptions’, reprinted in Stanislaw Lem, Microworlds: Writings on Science Fiction and Fantasy (San Diego, CA: Harvest, 1984), pp.45–105: p.69.

38. ‘About the Strugatskys' Roadside Picnic’, in ibid., pp.243–78: pp.246–7.

39. ‘The Demons of Philip K. Dick’, The Guardian, 23 June 2001. Dick, a paranoiac, mailed many of his stamped, addressed letters to the FBI via the dustbin, on the rationale that if he really were under surveillance, they would find their destination. Many did not, surviving only as carbon copies.

40. Ivan Efremov, Andromeda: A Space-Age Tale, trans. George Hanna ([1957]; Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1959).

41. Much of Eastern-bloc SF was consciously aimed at children. See, for instance, Sabine Vollprecht, Science-Fiction für Kinder in der DDR (Stuttgart: Heinz, 1994).

42. David Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy, 1939–1956 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1994), pp.358–63.

43. Paul Dickson, Sputnik: The Shock of the Century (New York: Walker, 2001), p.104.

44. William E. Burrows, This New Ocean: The Story of the First Space Age (New York: Random House, 1998), p.176.

45. Efremov, Andromeda, jacket text.

46. ibid., p.76.

47. ibid., p.81.

48. ‘Cor Serpentis’ translated in Soviet Literature 5 (1968), pp.3–54.

49. Reprinted in Ben Bova (ed.), Aliens (London: Futura, 1977), pp.13–49: pp.26–7.

50. Efremov, Andromeda, p.25.

51. ibid., p.31.

52. Jamie Doran and Piers Bizony, Starman: The Truth behind the Legend of Yuri Gagarin (London: Bloomsbury, 1998), pp.128–40.

53. Erik Simon and Olaf R. Spittel, Die Science-Fiction der DDR: Autoren und Werke: Ein Lexikon (East Berlin: Das Neue Berlin, 1988).

54. Der schweigende Stern (Maetzig, 1960).

55. Efremov, Andromeda, p.61.

56. Chingiz Aitmatov, The Day Lasts More than a Hundred Years, trans. John French (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, [1980] 1983).

57. Günther Krupkat, Als die Götter starben (Berlin: Verlag Das Neue Berlin, 1963), p.76.

58. See Thomas Kramer, ‘Die DDR der fünfziger Jahre im Comic MOSAIK: Einschienenbahn, Agenten, Chemieprogramm’, in Alf Lüdtke and Peter Becker (eds.), Akten, Eingaben, Schaufenster: Die DDR und ihre Texte (Berlin: Akademie, 1997), pp.167–88.

59. Hannes Hegen, Die Reise ins All (Berlin: Verlag Junge Welt, [1959] reprint 1999).

60. Krupkat, Die Unsichtbaren, pp.117–18.

61. Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands-Zentralkomitee (Abt. Parteiorganisation), ‘Information’ Nr. 65, 26 May 1961, Stiftung Archiv der Parteien und Massenorganisationen der DDR im Bundesarchiv, DY 30/IV 2/5/295, fos.53–61.

62. James Harford, Korolev: How One Man Masterminded the Soviet Drive to Beat America to the Moon (New York: Wiley, 1997), pp.272 ff.

63. Paul R. Josephson, Red Atom: Russia's Nuclear Power Program from Stalin to Today (New York: Freeman, 1999), pp.279–80.

64. Paul R. Josephson, New Atlantis Revisited: Akademogorodok, the Siberian City of Science (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997), p.108.

65. Ivan Adamovic, ‘Czech SF in the Last Forty Years’, Science-Fiction Studies 17 (1990), p.52.

66. Stephen W. Potts, The Second Marxian Invasion: The Fiction of the Strugatsky Brothers (San Bernardino, CA: Borgo, 1991); Yvonne Howell, Apocalyptic Realism: The Science Fiction of Arkady and Boris Strugatsky (New York: Peter Lang, 1994).

67. Nudelman, ‘Soviet Science Fiction’, p.60.

68. Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, Hard to be a God, trans. Wendayne Ackerman (London: Eyre Methuen, [1964] 1975), p.218.

69. Halina Stephan, ‘The Changing Protagonist in Soviet Science Fiction’, in Henrik Birnbaum and Thomas Eekman (eds.), Fiction and Drama in Eastern and Southeastern Europe (Columbus: Slavica, 1980), pp.361–78.

70. Alice Stone Nakhimovsky, ‘Soviet Anti-Utopias in the Works of Arkady and Boris Strugatsky’, in Charles E. Gribble (ed.), Alexander Lipson: In Memoriam (Columbus: Slavica, 1994), pp.143–53.

71. Nudelman, ‘Soviet Science Fiction’, p.51.

72. Angela und Karlheinz Steinmüller, ‘Die befohlene Zukunft: DDR-Science Fiction zwischen Wunschtraum und (Selbst-)Zensur’, Das Science Fiction Jahr 1994 (Munich, 1994).

73. Elaine Kleiner, ‘Romanian “Science Fantasy” in the Cold War Era’, Science Fiction Studies 19 (1992), p.64.

74. Stanislaw Lem, Return from the Stars, trans. Barbara Marszal and Frank Simpson (San Diego, CA: Harvest, [1961] 1980), p.50.

75. Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, The Final Circle of Paradise, trans. Leonid Renen (New York: DAW, [1965] 1976), p.54.

76. Adamovic, ‘Czech SF’, p.57.

77. Lem, Microworlds, pp.92–3.

78. Stanislaw Lem, Solaris, trans. Joanna Kilmartin and Steve Cox (London: Arrow, [1961] 1973), pp.22–3.

79. Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, Roadside Picnic, trans. Antonina W. Bouis (London: Gollancz, [1972] 2000).

80. Ben Hellman, ‘Paradise Lost: The Literary Development of Arkadii and Boris Strugatskii’, Russian History 11 (1984), pp.311–19: p.319.

81. Stanislaw Lem, Peace on Earth, trans. Elinor Ford (San Diego, CA: Harvest, [1987] 1994).