Science Fiktion

by Franz Fühmann, Claire van den Broek (Translator), Franz Fühmann

When a young reader once asked Franz Fühmann if he considered his work to be science fiction, he was quick to deny it: he wanted nothing to do with the genre. As he began writing the stories that make up this volume, however, he found himself coming around to the idea of a hybrid genre—what he calls in German Saiäns-Fiktschen, ‘science fiktion’ with a k.
 
In seven interlocking stories, Science Fiktion offers a steampunk takedown of the logic of the Cold War. In this imagined future, two nations compete for global dominance: Uniterr, an exaggeration of the Eastern Bloc, in which personal freedom is curtailed and life regulated with cartoonish strictness; and Libroterr, in which the decadence of the West has been pushed beyond all reason. The stories follow three young citizens of Uniterr: Jirro, a young neutrinologist whose life is forever changed by a year spent abroad in Libroterr; Janno, a causologist condemned to a life of mediocrity in Uniterr’s bureacracy for the briefest of impure thoughts; and Pavlo, an inventor and a drunkard, whose mind pushes against the limits of what his world allows. Through these three lives, Fühmann gradually unfolds the contours of their bizarre world in a master class of understated world making.
 
As the reader is swept up in the madness of Libroterr’s predator ads (which grab you on the street) and Uniterr’s mandatory mind readings, Fühmann’s dark comedy from the last century comes to seem all the more prescient in ours. A German twist on an Anglophone tradition, Science Fiktion provides a disturbing vision of the future from the other side of the Berlin Wall.
 

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction

280 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1987

About the author

Franz Fühmann (15 January 1922 – 8 July 1984) was a German writer who lived and worked in East Germany. He wrote in a variety of formats, including short stories, essays, screenplays and children's books.
Notable awards
Heinrich Mann Prize 1956
National Prize of East Germany 1957 and 1974
Deutscher Kritikerpreis 1977
Geschwister-Scholl-Preis 1982

Reviews

[Marcin · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book is brilliant, but it is very important to read it in the given order: from beginning to end. Because only then does the reader realize that all the stories create one, indivisible, coherent and perfectly constructed whole. Only then will the writer's excellent wit and, at the same time, the bitter truth about life in the GDR become visible. Because the supposedly futuristic world inhabited by the three main characters (friendly scientists) is in fact nothing other than the GDR with all its advantages and disadvantages. Even Marx and Engels appear in the background as authors of books with answers to each problem - with hilarious results. It is a real dystopia, stronger than Huxley, more logical than Zamiatin and easier to digest than Orwell's boredom - because it is funny and unpredictable. Note to SF fans: this is not SF.

[Adriana Chen · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author wrote the first story (Helplessness) in an attept to overcome his own existential crisis. And that is what I love so much about this book. It grapples the hardest questions that come to all of us some time or other, the questions that can't be answered. After Helplessness, however, Fühmann leaves us room for hope. He laughs at us, for we are the ones who decide how to think, how to feel, what to believe. In the end, only beliefs exist for humans, that cannot be changed by the future nor the past, it is the only constant. And Fühmann tricks us into thinking otherwise. ACtions matter, but are they free?

The Heap is my favourite story in the book.
How many makes a heap? As Janno takes out screws, one at a time, from a heap, and taking a picture of the heap every single time so he could capture the moment it wasn't a heap anymore, he realizes that he wants the "truth", and Jirro reminds him what truth is for them (and us). It might be partly a thought experiment on power (權力) posing as a discussion on solutions and paradoxes, but it is at the same time so relatable!

"That which had seemed incomprehensible or, rather, that which had seemed imaginable but never realistic (and thus all the more overwhelming)."

"Each of us must challenge the norm at some point, but you haven't learnt how to renounce that
desire yet. That's the next which you must take, since you can no longer stay as you are."

And I also loved The Street of Perversions, The Duel, Pavlo's Paper Book, and everything about this book. 告白 Fühmann.

[Vasha7 · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is certainly an honorable tradition of political dystopias written in the Communist countries; this one is from East Germany about 1980. Despite its formal, wordy style, I found it interesting. The protagonists have professions as scientists and philosophers, but in "Uniterr" neither profession is practiced in a way I'm familiar with -- Fühmann takes the idea of ideology-driven work to lengths of absurdity. His intention is evidently to draw out the paradoxes created by the ideology, and the effects on the philosophers and scientists who certainly take it seriously, as a religious faith (a materialist religion? yes, indeed) but find themselves in some strange confusions.

[Rhett Gentile · Rating 3 out of 5]

Combined the incomprehensibility of the past with the incomprehensibility of the foreign. One of those books in which the prose just sort of rattles on and the characters shudder and gasp and say things and you have no real idea why, and in the end it all signifies… something?