The Evolution of Science Fiction discussion

Seems like science fiction was and is very popular in the former Soviet Union and now in Russia. My guess for the 1950s period during the golden age of sf it had to do with the space race between the US and the Soviet Union.

So far I've read Heart of A Dog by Mikhail Bulgakov and I didn't know this earlier but he wrote a couple other works that were sf another novella The Fatal Eggs and a play Ivan Vasilievich.

Other than that I've read Roadside Picnic and Escape Attempt by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky.

I'm tempted to include Solaris by Stanislaw Lem although he was born in what was Poland but now part of Ukraine. His book Solaris was made into a film by Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky who also directed a film adaptation of Roadside Picnic.

Interesting reading SF with another culture's twist on it.

I hope to read a few Russian novels in the group reads. Stanislaw Lem is one that I particularly wanted to check out.

We by Yevgeny Zamyatin is another classic that can be looked at...

You mentioned this one before. The synopsis sounds amazing I hope we vote on it. Sounds like it was quite ahead of it's time.

Yes, and it was rare for its time not to be projecting socialist/communist utopias as was the norm back then in Soviet SF - it is radical in that sense. Most Soviet SF was stuck with the rhetoric of "capitalism is evil, communism is utopian" - in that sense, it provides not only a different culture, but a different political ideology as well, both within the spectrum of contemporary Soviet SF and in general terms.

Metro 2033 is a more recent book and is also worth a read (sorry don't know how to do add the link). The thing I have enjoyed most from the Soviet books I have read is they just don't follow the usual conventions. I like not knowing where the book is leading and being surprised by the endings.

Jo wrote: "Metro 2033 is a more recent book and is also worth a read (sorry don't know how to do add the link). "

Jo - above the comment box there is a link to click on: add book/author

Metro 2033

as mentioned - Thanks Buck!
Metro 2033

I've been meaning to read Metro 2033 for a while now. The video game adaptation is one of my favorite games of recent times. The world and characters are immensely interesting especially Khan.

I recently read Memories of the Future by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky.

This is a collection of some of his best fiction. Whether it is exactly Science Fiction is debatable, but it is definitely speculative fiction of some sort. The title story involves time travel and directly references H.G. Wells. Other stories are closer to Borges, Calvino, and the Surrealists.

Whatever category they are, they are high quality fiction, which unfortunately was not publishable in the Soviet Union when he wrote them, and were not published in any language until long after his death. So, they never had the chance to influence other writers. Sad.

I can't describe him very well, so I'll just point you to this article on biblioklept.org.

I just read The Snail on the Slope in a 2018 translation. It isn't what I expected. It feels a lot like Annihilation, with bizarre things happening in a strange forest. Interesting, but it was a bit of a slog for me to get through.