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Враг неведом
Новеллизация известной компьютерной игры фирмы «Microprose» — «X-COM: UFO Defense» (UFO: Enemy Unknow).
Защита планеты Земля от массированного вторжения инопланетян. В силу специфичности жанра этот роман вряд ли заинтересует литературных гурманов, но если вы не одну ночь провели в сражениях с мутонами и сектоидами — прочтите. И вряд ли будете жалеть.
Трудно поверить, что с самого начала их было только восемь. Восемь крепких бесшабашных парней, которым было все равно, с кем воевать — с террористами, с мафией или... с инопланетянами. А потом — военный ад, корабли военного класса, боевые роботы, секретные лаборатории и ангары. И — безжалостные завоеватели из космоса, которые за тысячи лет уже покорили тысячи обитаемых миров. Все ходы давно просчитаны, любое ответное действие противника предусмотрено. Еще немного — и новая планета вольется в звездную империю. Но человек, как известно, дьявольски легко учится сражаться...
Враг неизвестен?! Ну и что?!
Защита планеты Земля от массированного вторжения инопланетян. В силу специфичности жанра этот роман вряд ли заинтересует литературных гурманов, но если вы не одну ночь провели в сражениях с мутонами и сектоидами — прочтите. И вряд ли будете жалеть.
Трудно поверить, что с самого начала их было только восемь. Восемь крепких бесшабашных парней, которым было все равно, с кем воевать — с террористами, с мафией или... с инопланетянами. А потом — военный ад, корабли военного класса, боевые роботы, секретные лаборатории и ангары. И — безжалостные завоеватели из космоса, которые за тысячи лет уже покорили тысячи обитаемых миров. Все ходы давно просчитаны, любое ответное действие противника предусмотрено. Еще немного — и новая планета вольется в звездную империю. Но человек, как известно, дьявольски легко учится сражаться...
Враг неизвестен?! Ну и что?!
- GenresRussia
496 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1997
2 people want to read
About the author
Vladimir Vasilev
81 books6 followersAlternate spelling: Vladimir Vasiljev
Vladimir Nikolaevich Vasilyev (Russian: Влади́мир Никола́евич Васи́льев, Ukrainian: Володи́мир Микола́йович Васи́льєв) (born on August 8, 1967) is a Russian science fiction writer and musician. His first book was published in 1991. Professional writer since 1997. He currently lives in Moscow during the winter and in Mykolaiv over the summer.
Vladimir Nikolaevich Vasilyev (Russian: Влади́мир Никола́евич Васи́льев, Ukrainian: Володи́мир Микола́йович Васи́льєв) (born on August 8, 1967) is a Russian science fiction writer and musician. His first book was published in 1991. Professional writer since 1997. He currently lives in Moscow during the winter and in Mykolaiv over the summer.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
March 17, 2015
Second novelisation of the extremely popular video game X-COM: UFO Defense (known as UFO: Enemy Unknown in Europe). This time unofficial one. But that requires some explanation. Unlike the official novelization of X-COM: UFO Defense by American author Diane Duane, this one is written by Russian author Vladimir Vasilev (Владимир Васильев). And, unlike Diane Duane, he didn’t have the official authorization for such work. The thing is, after the Soviet Union fell apart in early 90s and became Russia again, the whole country was in chaos and nobody cared about such minor things as copyrights there. In 90s revived Russia started to get what was missed before. Popular imported snacks, popular foreign movies, all kinds of books, and, of course, personal computers and video games. Of course, video games quickly became extremely popular. There was nothing like that before, after all (Soviet Union had its own alternatives for arcade machines, but those were really poor in comparison with those that Japan used to produce). There was almost no official releases of video games in Russia back then, but thanks to very active piracy, video games weren’t hard to find, so, people of all ages quickly became addicted and even those, who considered themselves as writers, found themselves working on some sorts of fanfiction. For example, popular writer Sergei Lukyanenko used parts of Master of Orion game in his works. Vladimir Vasilev (who’ll later work with Lukyanenko on one of the novels from Night Watch series and even write his own novel for Lukyanenko’s series) went much further than that. He made a proper novelization of X-COM: UFO Defense game. He used the whole setting, names, terms, story… In other words, he used everything from the original game, so, no matter how you look at it, there can’t be another opinion - this novel is an adaptation of X-COM: UFO Defense. Author even used the official European title of the game as the name for his work. But, as I already said, there was no official authorization for such novel. It didn’t prevent Russian publisher AST (АСТ) from selling this novel in Russia, of course, since, as I already said, the whole entertainment market in Russia was full of piracy (pirated games, so-called “cloned” video games consoles that were able to play pirated cartridges, and so on) and nobody cared about copyrights at all, but thanks to that novel didn’t make it to the other countries, where “copyrights” weren’t just a mere word.
So, that’s the story behind this work. Now let’s talk a little about how the work itself turned out. As I already said, like Diane Duane’s work (Vladimir Vasilev’s work was published two years after it), this one is 100% X-COM: UFO Defense novelization, full of the original names and terms. But unlike Diane Duane’s novel, in this one main character is Russian ex-FSB (Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation) officer. Well, there’s nothing strange about it. And not only because the novel was made for Russian audience, so, it’s only natural to have Russian person as the main character, but also because in the original game X-COM used to include agents from all over the world and there were a lot of Russians among the troops too. So, no problem here. Quite the opposite, the idea of reading about X-COM: UFO Defense events from Russian point of view sounds pretty interesting. Unfortunately, the “Russian” part leasts only the few pages, where main character describes his past. And right after that it becomes typical X-COM routine. Poorly written and extremely shallow.
Unlike Diane Duane, Vladimir Vasilev decided not to waste too many time on describing the base management and started with action right away. Well, Russians love action and their “bubblegum” Sci-Fi novels (those that you read and forget about them right after you’re done with them) are often revolve around action, so, it was predictable, but the problem here is - there’s nothing but action. You can say that in his own way Vladimir Vasilev repeated Diane Duane’s mistake, because like in the official X-COM: Ufo Defense novelization, in this one there’s literally no plot. We won’t read much about how the bases work (even though Vladimir Vasilev covered all aspects of the game), but I’ll tell you what, reading about the same repetitive tactical operations isn’t much more fun than reading about base management. Especially since Vladimir Vasilev’s novel is almost 2x longer than Diane Duane’s one and almost all of it is made of the tactical operations. You can easily predict what will happen next, because the whole novel works like this - X-COM troops hear the alarm, get into one of their flying vehicles, travel to the place and then shoot and die, die and shoot. Repeat.
All that feels so poor that it’s amazing that something like that was allowed to be published. We’re talking about 90s in Russia here, of course, the period, where everything was possible there, but still, the text is way too poor. You can even say that the whole narrative structure was totally ignored here (I really wonder if Mr. Vasilev even knew about such thing, since this one was his only second novel). Author just added a lot of shallow characters and made them shoot aliens and die one after another for almost 500 pages. In Diane Duane’s work most of the characters were shallow too, but in this one you won’t even need to remember the names. Just because the character that will appear on one page will die right on the next one. Of course, thanks to that, you won’t feel anything about all that. Names appear, names disappear… Who cares? Especially since almost all of the characters weren’t described at all. You can jump from early pages to the last ones and you won’t miss much aside from names. Even though cheap Russian Sci-Fi usually is the cheapest one out there, this one is extremely dull even for such reading.
Setting isn’t described at all and in this case it’s totally same thing with Diane Duane’s novel. You didn’t play the original game - there’s nothing for you here. Unlike Diane Duane, though, Vladimir Vasilev described the whole thing. From the very first interception to Cydonia operation. Unfortunately, as I already said, there’s no difference. Early missions, Cydonia mission and everything in the middle feel exactly the same. X-COM came, X-COM shot, X-COM won in one way, or another. Diane Duane’s work had no story. In this one there’s less than nothing. There’s not only no purpose in all that, there’s no even proper structure, or even small twists. Just never-ending shooting. A mess made from meaningless words.
And that’s it about this novel. Almost 500 pages of exactly nothing. Vladimir Vasilev thoroughly described almost each and every tactical mission you can encounter in the original game, even when there was totally no need to, but didn’t add anything else. This book is like the biggest waste of time you can ever imagine. It wasn’t translated to your language? Don’t bother, because you missed nothing.
So, that’s the story behind this work. Now let’s talk a little about how the work itself turned out. As I already said, like Diane Duane’s work (Vladimir Vasilev’s work was published two years after it), this one is 100% X-COM: UFO Defense novelization, full of the original names and terms. But unlike Diane Duane’s novel, in this one main character is Russian ex-FSB (Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation) officer. Well, there’s nothing strange about it. And not only because the novel was made for Russian audience, so, it’s only natural to have Russian person as the main character, but also because in the original game X-COM used to include agents from all over the world and there were a lot of Russians among the troops too. So, no problem here. Quite the opposite, the idea of reading about X-COM: UFO Defense events from Russian point of view sounds pretty interesting. Unfortunately, the “Russian” part leasts only the few pages, where main character describes his past. And right after that it becomes typical X-COM routine. Poorly written and extremely shallow.
Unlike Diane Duane, Vladimir Vasilev decided not to waste too many time on describing the base management and started with action right away. Well, Russians love action and their “bubblegum” Sci-Fi novels (those that you read and forget about them right after you’re done with them) are often revolve around action, so, it was predictable, but the problem here is - there’s nothing but action. You can say that in his own way Vladimir Vasilev repeated Diane Duane’s mistake, because like in the official X-COM: Ufo Defense novelization, in this one there’s literally no plot. We won’t read much about how the bases work (even though Vladimir Vasilev covered all aspects of the game), but I’ll tell you what, reading about the same repetitive tactical operations isn’t much more fun than reading about base management. Especially since Vladimir Vasilev’s novel is almost 2x longer than Diane Duane’s one and almost all of it is made of the tactical operations. You can easily predict what will happen next, because the whole novel works like this - X-COM troops hear the alarm, get into one of their flying vehicles, travel to the place and then shoot and die, die and shoot. Repeat.
All that feels so poor that it’s amazing that something like that was allowed to be published. We’re talking about 90s in Russia here, of course, the period, where everything was possible there, but still, the text is way too poor. You can even say that the whole narrative structure was totally ignored here (I really wonder if Mr. Vasilev even knew about such thing, since this one was his only second novel). Author just added a lot of shallow characters and made them shoot aliens and die one after another for almost 500 pages. In Diane Duane’s work most of the characters were shallow too, but in this one you won’t even need to remember the names. Just because the character that will appear on one page will die right on the next one. Of course, thanks to that, you won’t feel anything about all that. Names appear, names disappear… Who cares? Especially since almost all of the characters weren’t described at all. You can jump from early pages to the last ones and you won’t miss much aside from names. Even though cheap Russian Sci-Fi usually is the cheapest one out there, this one is extremely dull even for such reading.
Setting isn’t described at all and in this case it’s totally same thing with Diane Duane’s novel. You didn’t play the original game - there’s nothing for you here. Unlike Diane Duane, though, Vladimir Vasilev described the whole thing. From the very first interception to Cydonia operation. Unfortunately, as I already said, there’s no difference. Early missions, Cydonia mission and everything in the middle feel exactly the same. X-COM came, X-COM shot, X-COM won in one way, or another. Diane Duane’s work had no story. In this one there’s less than nothing. There’s not only no purpose in all that, there’s no even proper structure, or even small twists. Just never-ending shooting. A mess made from meaningless words.
And that’s it about this novel. Almost 500 pages of exactly nothing. Vladimir Vasilev thoroughly described almost each and every tactical mission you can encounter in the original game, even when there was totally no need to, but didn’t add anything else. This book is like the biggest waste of time you can ever imagine. It wasn’t translated to your language? Don’t bother, because you missed nothing.
Displaying 1 of 1 review