Russian science fiction and fantasy - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Russian science fiction (sf) and fantasy are genres of speculative and fantastic fiction that have been part of mainstream Russian literature since the 19th century, though SF did not emerge as a coherent genre until the early 20th century through the influence of translated works by authors such as H.G. Wells and Jules Verne. Fantasy, on the other hand, originated with older traditions of folklore and mythology.

Early period

Though secular literature was forming gradually in Russia since the 17th century, it was not until the late 18th century that European rhetoric genres were transplanted to native ground, with narrative fiction techniques open to complex interactions with new scientific and social ideas. While sf did not emerge as a coherent genre until the early 20th century, many aspects of sf (utopia, the fantastic voyage, etc) can be observed in earlier works.

The first work which is indisputably "proto" science fiction is Fedor Dmitriev-Mamonov's A Philosopher Nobleman («Dvoryanin-filosof», 1769). It is a voltaire

Voltaire

François-Marie Arouet , better known by the pen name Voltaire , was a French Enlightenment writer, historian and philosopher famous for his wit and for his advocacy of civil liberties, including freedom of religion, free trade and separation of church and state...

an conte philosophique influenced by Micromégas
Micromégas
"Micromégas" is a short story by the French philosopher and satirist Voltaire. It is a significant development in the history of literature because it originates ideas which helped create the genre of science fiction....

.

Utopia

Utopia

Utopia is an ideal community or society possessing a perfect socio-politico-legal system. The word was imported from Greek by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book Utopia, describing a fictional island in the Atlantic Ocean. The term has been used to describe both intentional communities that attempt...

is also recognised as a form of speculative fiction; the first generic utopia in Russia represented by a short prose piece by Alexander Sumarokov

Alexander Sumarokov

Alexander Petrovich Sumarokov was a Russian poet and playwright who single-handedly created classical theatre in Russia, thus assisting Mikhail Lomonosov to inaugurate the reign of classicism in Russian literature....

, "A Dream of Happy Society" (1759). Two early examples of utopia

Utopia

s in form of imaginary voyage

Imaginary voyage

Imaginary voyage is a kind of narrative in which utopian or satirical representation is put into a fictional frame of travel account.- History :...

are Vasily Levshin

Vasily Levshin

Vasily Levshin was a Russian writer on various subjects close to Nikolay Novikov's circle.Levshin's utopian novel "Newest Voyage" contains the first Russian flight to the Moon....

's Newest Voyage (1784, which is also the first Russian "flight" to the Moon) and Mikhail Shcherbatov

Mikhail Shcherbatov

Prince Mikhailo Mikhailovich Shcherbatov was a leading ideologue and exponent of the Russian Enlightenment, on the par with Mikhail Lomonosov and Nikolay Novikov. His view of human nature and social progress is kindred to Swift's pessimism. He was known as a statesman, historian, writer and...

's Journey to the Land of Ophir (written the same year but published in 1896).

Pseudo-historical heroic romances in classical settings (modeled on Fenelon's Telemaque) also have a strong utopian element: Misfortunes of Miramond (1763), Adventures of Themistocles (1763), and Letters of Ernest and Doravra (1766) by Fyodor Emin, Numa (1768), Cadmus and Harmony (1789), and Polydorus, Son of Cadmus and Harmony (1794) by Mikhail Kheraskov

Mikhail Kheraskov

Mikhail Matveyevich Kheraskov was regarded as the most important Russian poet by Catherine the Great and her contemporaries.Kheraskov's father was a Romanian boyar who settled in the Ukraine...

, Russian Pamela (1789) by Pavel Lvov, Arphaxad (1793) by Pyotr Zakharyin. Are all representative of this trend.

Ancient Night of the Universe (1807), an epic poem by Semyon Bobrov, is the first work of Russian Cosmism

Russian cosmism

Russian cosmism was a philosophical and cultural movement that emerged in Russia in the early 20th century. It entailed a broad theory of natural philosophy combining elements of religion and ethics with a history and philosophy of the origin, evolution and future existence of the cosmos and...

.

Some of Faddei Bulgarin

Faddei Bulgarin

Faddey Venediktovich Bulgarin , was a Polish-born Russian writer and journalist whose self-imposed mission was to popularize the authoritarian policies of Alexander I and Nicholas I.-Life and career:...

's tales are set in a more or less distant future, others exploit themes of hollow earth

Hollow Earth

The Hollow Earth hypothesis proposes that the planet Earth is either entirely hollow or otherwise contains a substantial interior space. The hypothesis has been shown to be wrong by observational evidence, as well as by the modern understanding of planet formation; the scientific community has...

and space flight. In the same entertaining vein Osip Senkovsky

Osip Senkovsky

Józef Julian Sękowski was a Polish-Russian orientalist, journalist, and entertainer.Józef Sękowski was born into an old family of Polish szlachta. During his study in the University of Vilno he became fascinated with all things oriental...

's enormously popular Fantastic Voyages of Baron Brambeus are written. Aleksandr Bestuzhev

Aleksandr Bestuzhev

Alexander Alexandrovich Bestuzhev , , was a Russian writer and Decembrist. After the Decembrist revolt he was sent into exile to Caucasus where Russian Empire was waging the war against the Circassians. There writing under the pseudonym Marlinsky he became known as a romantic poet, short story...

with his Gothic stories

Gothic fiction

Gothic fiction, sometimes referred to as Gothic horror, is a genre or mode of literature that combines elements of both horror and romance. Gothicism's origin is attributed to English author Horace Walpole, with his 1764 novel The Castle of Otranto, subtitled "A Gothic Story"...

with German couleur locale also was a bestselling author. Other writers to acquire a Gothic mode were Sergey Lyubetsky, Vladimir Olin, Aleksey Tolstoy

Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy

Count Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy, often referred to as A. K. Tolstoy , was a Russian poet, novelist and playwright, considered to be the most important nineteenth-century Russian historical dramatist...

, Elizaveta Kologrivova, Mikhail Lermontov

Mikhail Lermontov

Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov , a Russian Romantic writer, poet and painter, sometimes called "the poet of the Caucasus", became the most important Russian poet after Alexander Pushkin's death in 1837. Lermontov is considered the supreme poet of Russian literature alongside Pushkin and the greatest...

("Stoss").

Closer to mid-19th century a notion of imaginary voyage

Imaginary voyage

Imaginary voyage is a kind of narrative in which utopian or satirical representation is put into a fictional frame of travel account.- History :...

into outer space became trivialised enough to be used in popular chapbook

Chapbook

A chapbook is a pocket-sized booklet. The term chap-book was formalized by bibliophiles of the 19th century, as a variety of ephemera , popular or folk literature. It includes many kinds of printed material such as pamphlets, political and religious tracts, nursery rhymes, poetry, folk tales,...

s (Voyage to the Sun and Planet Mercury and All the Visible and Invisible Worlds (1832) by Dmitry Sigov, Correspondence of a Moonman with an Earthman (1842) by Pyotr Mashkov, Voyage to the Moon in a Wonderful Machine (1844) by Semyon Dyachkov, Voyage in the Sun (1846) by Demokrit Terpinovich).

Authors of popular ("commercial") literature often used fantastic motifs like magic demons (Rafail Zotov's Qin-Kiu-Tong), invisibility

Invisibility

Invisibility is the state of an object that cannot be seen. An object in this state is said to be invisible . The term is usually used as a fantasy/science fiction term, where objects are literally made unseeable by magical or technological means; however, its effects can also be seen in the real...

(Ivan Shteven's Magic Spectacles), shrinking men (Vasily Alferyev's Picture).

Hoffmann's fantastic tales caused great impact upon many Russian writers including Nikolay Gogol, Antony Pogorelsky

Antony Pogorelsky

Antony Pogorelsky is a penname of Alexey Alexeyevich Perovsky , a Russian prose writer.He was a natural son of A.K...

, Nikolay Melgunov, Vladimir Karlgof, Nikolai Polevoy

Nikolai Polevoy

Nikolai Alekseevich Polevoy was a controversial Russian editor, writer, translator, and historian; his brother was the critic and journalist Ksenofont Polevoy and his sister the writer and publisher of folktales Ekaterina Avdeeva.Polevoy was from an old merchant family from Kursk but was born in...

, Aleksey Tomofeev, Konstantin Aksakov

Konstantin Aksakov

Konstantin Sergeyevich Aksakov was a Russian critic and writer, one of the earliest and most notable Slavophiles. He wrote plays, social criticism, and histories of the ancient Russian social order...

, Vasily Ushakov.

Folklore supernatural tall-tales are stylized by Orest Somov

Orest Somov

Orest Mikhailovich Somov was a Ukrainian romantic writer who wrote in the Russian language. He was a writer, journalist, literary critic, and translator. Somov was born in Vovchansk, Kharkiv Oblast. He studied in the Kharkiv University, then moved to Saint Petersburg.Much of his writing deals...

, Vladimir Olin, Mikhail Zagoskin

Mikhail Zagoskin

Mikhail Nikolayevich Zagoskin , , was a Russian writer. Author of social comedies, historical novels.Zagoskin was born in the village of Ramzay in Penza Oblast...

, Nikolay Bilevich.

Alexander Pushkin's The Queen of Spades

The Queen of Spades (story)

"The Queen of Spades" is a short story by Alexander Pushkin about human avarice. Pushkin wrote the story in autumn 1833 in Boldino and it was first published in the literary magazine Biblioteka dlya chteniya in March 1834...

(1834) was called "a masterpiece of fantastic art" by Dostoyevsky.

A central figure of the early 19th century is Vladimir Odoevsky

Vladimir Odoevsky

Prince Vladimir Fyodorovich Odoevsky was a prominent Russian philosopher, writer, music critic, philanthropist and pedagogue. He became known as the "Russian Hoffmann" on account of his keen interest in fantasmagoric tales and musical criticism.-Life:...

, a romantic writer influenced by E.T.A. Hoffmann

E.T.A. Hoffmann

Ernst Theodor Wilhelm Hoffmann , better known by his pen name E.T.A. Hoffmann , was a German Romantic author of fantasy and horror, a jurist, composer, music critic, draftsman and caricaturist...

, who combined his vision of the future with faith in scientific and technological progress. He was also an author of many Gothic

Gothic fiction

tales.

Perhaps the first true science fiction author in Russia was Alexander Veltman

Alexander Veltman

Alexander Fomich Veltman was one of the most successful Russian prose writers of the 1830s and 1840s, "popular for various modes of Romantic fiction—historical, Gothic, fantastic, and folkloristic." He was one of the pioneers of Russian science fiction....

. Along with pseudo-historical romances set in Old Russia and heavily peopled by fairy-tale characters (Koschei
Koschei
In Slavic folklore, Koschei is an archetypal male antagonist, described mainly as abducting the hero's wife. None of the existing tales actually describes his appearance, though in book illustrations, cartoons and cinema he has been most frequently represented as a very old and ugly-looking man...

the Immortal, 1833) and modern day hoffmanesque tales blended with satiric moralising (New Yemelya or, Metamorphoses, 1845), in 1836 he published Predki Kalimerosa: Aleksandr Filippovich Makedonskii (The forebears of Kalimeros: Alexander, son of Philip of Macedon), which has been called the first original Russian science fiction novel and the first novel to use time travel

Time travel

Time travel is the concept of moving between different points in time in a manner analogous to moving between different points in space. Time travel could hypothetically involve moving backward in time to a moment earlier than the starting point, or forward to the future of that point without the...

. In it the narrator rides to ancient Greece on a hippogriff

Hippogriff

A Hippogriff is a legendary creature, supposedly the offspring of a griffin and a mare.- Early references :...

, meets Aristotle

Aristotle

Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...

, and goes on a voyage with Alexander the Great before returning to the 19th century. Year 3448 (1833), a Heliodor

Heliodorus of Emesa

Heliodorus of Emesa, from Emesa, Syria, was a Greek writer generally dated to the third century AD who is known for the ancient Greek novel or romance called the Aethiopica or sometimes "Theagenes and Chariclea"....

ic love romance set in the far future, is also science-fictional; in it a traveler visits the imaginary Balkan country of Bosphorania, ruled by the righteous Ioann, who devotes all his time and effort to the good of his people. There are descriptions of the social and technological advances of the 35th century, including popular festivals and expeditions to the South Pole.

Late 19th - early 20th century

The second half of the century, particularly the 1860-80s are defined by a growing interest in realism

Realism

Realism, Realist or Realistic are terms that describe any manifestation of philosophical realism, the belief that reality exists independently of observers, whether in philosophy itself or in the applied arts and sciences. In this broad sense it is frequently contrasted with Idealism.Realism in the...

, as the observational treatment of everyday life and character. However, literary fantasies with a scientific rationale by Nikolai Akhsharumov and Nikolai Vagner stand out during this period, as well as Ivan Turgenev

Ivan Turgenev

Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev was a Russian novelist, short story writer, and playwright. His first major publication, a short story collection entitled A Sportsman's Sketches, is a milestone of Russian Realism, and his novel Fathers and Sons is regarded as one of the major works of 19th-century...

's "mysterious tales" ("Specters", "Strange Story", "Dream", "Song of Triumphant Love", "Klara Milich") and Vera Zhelikhovsky

Vera Zhelikhovsky

Vera Zhelikhovsky, was a Russian writer, mostly of children's stories. She is Madame Blavatsky's sister.Vera Zhelikhovsky wrote also fantastic stories with heroes having secret knowledge like Cornelius Agrippa, shamans, and Oriental magicians.-English Translations:*The General's Will, , from...

's occult fiction.

Mikhail Mikhailov's story "Beyond History" (published posthumously in 1869), a pre-Darwinian

Darwinism

Darwinism is a set of movements and concepts related to ideas of transmutation of species or of evolution, including some ideas with no connection to the work of Charles Darwin....

fantasy on the descent of man, is the second work of prehistoric fiction

Prehistoric fiction

Prehistoric fiction is a literary genre in which the story is set in the period of time prior to the existence of written record, known as prehistory. As a fictional genre, the realistic description of the subject varies, not there being necessarily a commitment to develop an objective...

in the world literature. Later fictional accounts of prehistoric men were often written by anthropologists and popular science writers ("Prehistoric Man", 1890, by Wilhelm Bitner, The First Artist, 1907, by Dmitry Pakhomov, Tale of a Mammoth and an Ice-Man, 1909, by Pyotr Dravert, Dragon's Victims, 1910, by Vladimir Bogoraz

Vladimir Bogoraz

Vladimir Germanovich Bogoraz , best known under literary pseudonym N.A. Tan was a Russian revolutionary, writer and anthropologist, especially known for his studies of the Chukchi people in Siberia....

). Equally, Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin

Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin

Mikhail Yevgrafovich Saltykov-Shchedrin , better known by his pseudonym Shchedrin , was a major Russian satirist of the 19th century. At one time, after the death of the poet Nikolai Nekrasov, he acted as editor of the well-known Russian magazine, the Otechestvenniye Zapiski, until it was banned by...

's satires use a fantastic and grotesque

Grotesque

The word grotesque comes from the same Latin root as "Grotto", meaning a small cave or hollow. The original meaning was restricted to an extravagant style of Ancient Roman decorative art rediscovered and then copied in Rome at the end of the 15th century...

element (The History of a Town and prose fables).

The plot of Animal Mutiny (published 1917) by historian Nikolay Kostomarov

Nikolay Kostomarov

Nikolay Ivanovich Kostomarov , of mixed Russian and Ukrainian origin, is one of the most distinguished Russian and Ukrainian historians, a Professor of History at the Kiev University and later at the St...

is built on the same assumption as Orwell

George Orwell

Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...

's Animal Farm
Animal Farm
Animal Farm is an allegorical novella by George Orwell published in England on 17 August 1945. According to Orwell, the book reflects events leading up to and during the Stalin era before World War II...

.

Some of Fyodor Dostoevsky

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky was a Russian writer of novels, short stories and essays. He is best known for his novels Crime and Punishment, The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov....

's shorter works also use fantasy: The Dream of a Ridiculous Man
The Dream of a Ridiculous Man
"The Dream of a Ridiculous Man" is a short story by Fyodor Dostoyevsky written in 1877. It chronicles the experiences of a man who decides that there is nothing to live for in the world, and is therefore determined to commit suicide...

(a story about the corruption of the utopia

Utopia

n society on another planet), a doppelgänger

Doppelgänger

In fiction and folklore, a doppelgänger is a paranormal double of a living person, typically representing evil or misfortune...

novella The Double: A Petersburg Poem
The Double: A Petersburg Poem
The Double: A Petersburg Poem is a novella written by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. The novella was first published on January 30, 1846 in Fatherland Notes....

, mesmeric The Landlady, a comic horror

Horror fiction

Horror fiction also Horror fantasy is a philosophy of literature, which is intended to, or has the capacity to frighten its readers, inducing feelings of horror and terror. It creates an eerie atmosphere. Horror can be either supernatural or non-supernatural...

story Bobok
Bobok
Bobok is a short story by Fyodor Dostoyevsky that first appeared in 1873. The title can be translated from the Russian as meaning "little bean," and in the context of the story is taken to be synonymous with "nonsense."-Synopsis:...

. Dostoevsky's magazine Vremya was first to publish Russian translation of Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...

's The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket

The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket

The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket is the only complete novel written by American writer Edgar Allan Poe. The work relates the tale of the young Arthur Gordon Pym, who stows away aboard a whaling ship called the Grampus...

in 1861; three other stories by Poe were published with Dostoevsky's own foreword (defining Poe's method as "material fantastic").

Many prose works of Valery Bryusov

Valery Bryusov

Valery Yakovlevich Bryusov was a Russian poet, prose writer, dramatist, translator, critic and historian. He was one of the principal members of the Russian Symbolist movement.-Biography:...

, one of the leading Symbolist

Russian Symbolism

Russian symbolism was an intellectual and artistic movement predominant at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. It represented the Russian branch of the symbolist movement in European art, and was mostly known for its contributions to Russian poetry.-Russian symbolism in...

writers, may be classified as science fiction.

Voluminous A Created Legend (1914) by another Symbolist Fyodor Sologub

Fyodor Sologub

Fyodor Sologub was a Russian Symbolist poet, novelist, playwright and essayist. He was the first writer to introduce the morbid, pessimistic elements characteristic of European fin de siècle literature and philosophy into Russian prose.-Early life:...

is a freaky utopia full of science fictional wonders close to magic.

Andrei Bely

Andrei Bely

Andrei Bely was the pseudonym of Boris Nikolaevich Bugaev , a Russian novelist, poet, theorist, and literary critic. His novel Petersburg was regarded by Vladimir Nabokov as one of the four greatest novels of the 20th century.-Biography:...

's Petersburg

Petersburg (novel)

Petersburg or St. Petersburg is the title of Andrei Bely's masterpiece, a Symbolist work that foreshadows Joyce's Modernist ambitions. For various reasons the novel never received much attention and was not translated into English until 1959 by John Cournos, over 45 years after it was written,...

(1914) depicts a fantastic atmosphere of imperial city full of mists, dreams and illusions. In his The Moscow Eccentric (1926) Professor Korobkin theoretically deduces a method of nuclear fission. In his short prose piece "Argonauts" an expedition to the Sun takes place in the 23rd century.

Prose of Alexander Kondratyev who was close to Symbolism included "mythological novel" Satyress (1907) and collection of "mythological stories" White Goat (1908), both based on Greek myths. Journeys and Adventures of Nicodemus the Elder (1917) by another minor Symbolist Aleksey Skaldin is a Gnostic fantasy.

Utopias

Nikolai Chernyshevsky

Nikolay Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky was a Russian revolutionary democrat, materialist philosopher, critic, and socialist...

's immensely influential What Is to Be Done?
What is to be Done?
What to do? Burning Questions of Our Movement is a political pamphlet written by the Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin in 1901 and published in 1902...

(1863) included an utopian dream of the far future, which became a prototype for many socialist utopias. Perhaps, the most noted example of them is a duology by Marxist philosopher and Lenin's adversary Alexander Bogdanov

Alexander Bogdanov

Alexander Aleksandrovich Bogdanov –7 April 1928, Moscow) was a Russian physician, philosopher, science fiction writer, and revolutionary of Belarusian ethnicity....

, Red Star
Red Star (novel)
Red Star is Alexander Bogdanov's 1908 science fiction novel about a communist utopia on Mars. Set in early Russia during the Revolution of 1905 and on socialist Mars, the novel tells the story of Leonid, a scientist-revolutionary who travels to Mars to learn and experience their socialist system...

and Engineer Menni. Some plays of another eminent Marxist, Anatoly Lunacharsky, propone his philosophical ideas in fantastic disguise (collection of his plays was called Ideas in Masques). Other examples of socialist utopias include Diary of André (1897) by pseudonymous A. Va-sky, On Another Planet (1901) by Porfiry Infantyev, Spring Feast (1910) by Nikolay Oliger. Alexander Kuprin's pathetic short story of the same kind, "Toast" (1907), became very well known.

Other utopias:

Vladimir Solovyov
Vladimir Solovyov (philosopher)
Vladimir Sergeyevich Solovyov was a Russian philosopher, poet, pamphleteer, literary critic, who played a significant role in the development of Russian philosophy and poetry at the end of the 19th century...

's "Tale of the Anti-Christ" (1900) is an ecumenical utopia.
Earthly Paradise (1903) by Konstantin Mereschkowski
Konstantin Mereschkowski
Konstantin Mereschcowsky was a prominent Russian biologist, botanist and advocate of eugenics active mainly around Kazan, whose research on lichens led him to propose the theory of symbiogenesis - that larger, more complex cells evolved from the symbiotic relationship between less complex ones...

is an anthropological utopia which pays no attention to technical progress or social justice.
Great War Between Men and Women (1913) by Sergey Solomin and Women Uprisen and Defeated (1914) by Polish writer Ferdynand Antoni Ossendowski
Ferdynand Antoni Ossendowski
Antoni Ferdynand Ossendowski was a Polish writer, journalist, traveler, globetrotter, explorer and university professor...

(written and published in Russian) tell stories of a feminist revolution. Other "feminist utopias" are short farce
Farce
In theatre, a farce is a comedy which aims at entertaining the audience by means of unlikely, extravagant, and improbable situations, disguise and mistaken identity, verbal humour of varying degrees of sophistication, which may include word play, and a fast-paced plot whose speed usually increases,...

s "Women on Mars" (1906) by Victor Bilibin and "Women Problem" (1913) by Nadezhda Teffi
Nadezhda Teffi
Nadezhda Teffi, known simply as Teffi, was a Russian humorist writer. Teffi is a pseudonym. Her real name was Nadezhda Aleksandrovna Lokhvitskaya after her marriage Nadezhda Alexandrovna Buchinskaya...

.
In Half a Century (1902) by Sergey Sharapov is a patriarchal Slavophile
Slavophile
Slavophilia was an intellectual movement originating from 19th century that wanted the Russian Empire to be developed upon values and institutions derived from its early history. Slavophiles were especially opposed to the influences of Western Europe in Russia. There were also similar movements in...

utopia.
Land of Bliss (1891) by Crimean Tatar
Crimean Tatars
Crimean Tatars or Crimeans are a Turkic ethnic group that originally resided in Crimea. They speak the Crimean Tatar language...

educator Ismail Gasprinski is a Muslim
Muslim
A Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Quran, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "submitter" .Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable...

utopia.

Genre fiction

Entertainment fiction adopts international popular themes like resurrecting an ancient Roman (Extraordinary Story of a Resurrected Pompeian by Vasily Avenarius), global disaster (Struggle of the Worlds, 1900, by N. Kholodny; Under the Comet, 1910, by Simon Belsky), mindreading devices (a recurring theme in works by Andrey Zarin), Antarctic city-states (Under the Glass Dome, 1914, by Sergey Solomin), elixir of longevity (Brothers of the Saint Cross, 1898, by Nikolay Shelonsky), Atlantis

Atlantis

Atlantis is a legendary island first mentioned in Plato's dialogues Timaeus and Critias, written about 360 BC....

("Atlantis", 1913, by Larisa Reisner).

Spaceflight

Spaceflight

Spaceflight is the act of travelling into or through outer space. Spaceflight can occur with spacecraft which may, or may not, have humans on board. Examples of human spaceflight include the Russian Soyuz program, the U.S. Space shuttle program, as well as the ongoing International Space Station...

remained a central science fiction topic since the 1890s in In the Ocean of Stars (1892) by Anany Lyakide, In the Moon (1893) and Dreams of Earth and Skies (1895) by Konstantin Tsiolkovsky

Konstantin Tsiolkovsky

Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky was an Imperial Russian and Soviet rocket scientist and pioneer of the astronautic theory. Along with his followers the German Hermann Oberth and the American Robert H. Goddard, he is considered to be one of the founding fathers of rocketry and astronautics...

, Voyage to Mars (1901) by Leonid Bogoyavlensky, "In Space" (1908) by Nikolay Morozov

Nikolai Alexandrovich Morozov

Nikolai Alexandrovich Morozov was a known Russian revolutionary who spent about 25 years in prison before turning his attention to various fields of science.- Revolutionary activities :...

, Sailing Ether (1913) by Boris Krasnogorsky with its sequel, Islands of Ethereal Ocean (1914, co-authored by prominent astronomer Daniil Svyatsky).

In the 1910s Russian audience grew interested in horror fiction

Horror fiction

: Fire-Blossom, a supernatural thriller by prolific writer Alexander Amfiteatrov, passed unnoticed in 1895, but it became an immediate success after being republished in 1910. Vera Kryzhanovsky's occult romances combining science fiction and reactionary elitist utopia enjoyed enormous popularity at the time. Bram Stoker

Bram Stoker

Abraham "Bram" Stoker was an Irish novelist and short story writer, best known today for his 1897 Gothic novel Dracula...

's Dracula

Dracula

Dracula is an 1897 novel by Irish author Bram Stoker.Famous for introducing the character of the vampire Count Dracula, the novel tells the story of Dracula's attempt to relocate from Transylvania to England, and the battle between Dracula and a small group of men and women led by Professor...

was imitated (by pseudonymous "b. Olshevri" (= "more lies" in Russian) in Vampires, 1912) even earlier than translated into Russian (1913). Early Alexander Grin

Alexander Grin

Alexander Grin was a Russian writer, notable for his romantic novels and short stories, mostly set in an unnamed fantasy land with a European or Latin American flavor...

's stories are mostly psychological horror (he borrowed much from Ambrose Bierce

Ambrose Bierce

Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce was an American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist and satirist...

), though later on his writing drifted to less conventional and more literary kinds of fantasy.

Possible miracles of technical progress were regularly described in form of fiction by scientists (very close to Hugo Gernsback

Hugo Gernsback

Hugo Gernsback , born Hugo Gernsbacher, was a Luxembourgian American inventor, writer, editor, and magazine publisher, best remembered for publications that included the first science fiction magazine. His contributions to the genre as publisher were so significant that, along with H. G...

's concept of scientifiction): "Wonders of Electricity" (1884) by electric engineer Vladimir Chikolev, Automatic Underground Railway (1902) by Alexander Rodnykh, "Billionaire's Testament" (1904) by biology professor Porfiry Bakhmetyev.

Future war stories (indistinguishable from their English, German, and French analogues) were produced mostly by the military (Cruiser "Russian Hope", 1887, and Fatal War of 18.., 1889, by retired navy officer Alexander Belomor; Big Fist or Chinese-European War, 1900, by K. Golokhvastov, Queen of the World (1908) and Kings of the Air (1909) by another retired navy officer Vladimir Semyonov; "War of Nations 1921-1923" (1912) by Ix, War of the "Ring" with the "Union" (1913) by P. R-tsky, The End of the War, 1915, by Lev Zhdanov).

Threat to the World (1914) by Ivan Ryapasov (who styled himself "Ural Jules Verne") is very much alike Jules Verne

Jules Verne

Jules Gabriel Verne was a French author who pioneered the science fiction genre. He is best known for his novels Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea , A Journey to the Center of the Earth , and Around the World in Eighty Days...

's The Begum's Fortune, but the arch-enemy is an Englishman. Jules Verne was so widely read that Anton Chekhov

Anton Chekhov

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was a Russian physician, dramatist and author who is considered to be among the greatest writers of short stories in history. His career as a dramatist produced four classics and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics...

has written a very witty parody on him, and Konstantin Sluchevsky

Konstantin Sluchevsky

Konstantin Konstantinovich Sluchevsky , was a Russian poet.-Biography:Sluchevsky was born in St. Peterburg into a Russian noble family. He graduated from the First Cadet Corps, served in the Imperial Russian Guard, then entered the Academy of the General Staff, but in 1861 he quit the military...

produced a sequel - "Captain Nemo

Captain Nemo

Captain Nemo, also known as Prince Dakkar, is a fictional character featured in Jules Verne's novels Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and The Mysterious Island ....

in Russia" (1898).

Soviet science fiction

The Soviet Union produced an especially large amount of Science fiction

Science fiction

Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...

literature, inspired by the country's space pioneering

Soviet space program

The Soviet space program is the rocketry and space exploration programs conducted by the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics from the 1930s until its dissolution in 1991...

. Early science fiction authors, such as Alexander Belayev, Grigory Adamov, Vladimir Obruchev

Vladimir Obruchev

Vladimir Afanasyevich Obruchev was a Russian and Soviet geologist who specialized in the study of Siberia and Central Asia. He was also one of the first Russian science fiction authors.- Scientific research :...

, Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy

Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy

Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy , nicknamed the Comrade Count, was a Russian and Soviet writer who wrote in many genres but specialized in science fiction and historical novels...

, Alexander Kazantsev

Alexander Kazantsev

Alexander Petrovitch Kazantsev was a popular Soviet science fiction writer and ufologist.-Biography:Born in Akmolinsk, Imperial Russia . He graduated from Tomsk Polytechnic University, and worked in Soviet Research institute of Electromechanics. Kazantsev was a member of Soviet delegation at the...

, stick to hard science fiction

Hard science fiction

Hard science fiction is a category of science fiction characterized by an emphasis on scientific or technical detail, or on scientific accuracy, or on both. The term was first used in print in 1957 by P. Schuyler Miller in a review of John W. Campbell, Jr.'s Islands of Space in Astounding Science...

, being influenced by H. G. Wells

H. G. Wells

Herbert George Wells was an English author, now best known for his work in the science fiction genre. He was also a prolific writer in many other genres, including contemporary novels, history, politics and social commentary, even writing text books and rules for war games...

and Jules Verne

Jules Verne

. Their novels included science predictions, adventure, space travel, often with hues of communist utopia or satire against capitalism. Similarly, Aleksey Tolstoi's Aelita depicts the spread of Bolshevism to a totalitarian society on Mars. The struggle of Martian workers against an entrenched and self interested elite is given a catalyst through Alexei Gusev, a "Red Army man" who has travelled to the planet alongside Engineer Los. The rhetoric, themes and imagery of the Martian revolution bear strong similarities to contemporary Soviet art and writing, as demonstrated by Vladimir Mayakovsky's pamphlet On Futurism, writing:

The October Revolution marked a departure of our group from the numerous Futuro-imagists who had moved away from revolutionary Russia. It turned us into a group of "Communist-Futurists"

Tolstoi's depiction combines this artistic futurism with a stricter tone of delivery influenced by H.G. Wells. However, the revolutionary scenes could be considered literary 'tropes', stylistic and generic devices employed to convey particular meanings and effects. The seizure of power under the Bolsheviks in October 1917 is mirrored in a descriptive passage from page 174:

The rebels seized all the important points in the city indicated by Gor. It was a cool night and the Martians froze at their posts. Gusev ordered bonfires to be lit. This was unheard of - no fires had been burned in the city for a thousand years, and the Martians only knew about the dancing flames from the songs of Old. / Gusev lit the first fire, using broken furniture for firewood, in front of the Supreme Council building.

Notable exceptions to this literal 'revolutionary' theme were Yevgeny Zamyatin

Yevgeny Zamyatin

Yevgeny Ivanovich Zamyatin was a Russian author of science fiction and political satire. Despite having been a prominent Old Bolshevik, Zamyatin was deeply disturbed by the policies pursued by the CPSU following the October Revolution...

with his dystopian satire We
We (novel)
We is a dystopian novel by Yevgeny Zamyatin completed in 1921. It was written in response to the author's personal experiences during the Russian revolution of 1905, the Russian revolution of 1917, his life in the Newcastle suburb of Jesmond, and his work in the Tyne shipyards during the First...

; and Mikhail Bulgakov

Mikhail Bulgakov

Mikhaíl Afanásyevich Bulgákov was a Soviet Russian writer and playwright active in the first half of the 20th century. He is best known for his novel The Master and Margarita, which The Times of London has called one of the masterpieces of the 20th century.-Biography:Mikhail Bulgakov was born on...

, who, although contributed to science fiction as well (Heart of a Dog
Heart of a Dog
Heart of a Dog , a novel by Mikhail Bulgakov, is a biting satire of the New Soviet man written in 1925 at the height of the NEP period, when Communism appeared to be weakening in the Soviet Union....

, Fatal Eggs), is better known for his mystical tale The Master and Margarita
The Master and Margarita
The Master and Margarita is a novel by Mikhail Bulgakov, woven around the premise of a visit by the Devil to the fervently atheistic Soviet Union. Many critics consider the book to be one of the greatest novels of the 20th century, and one of the foremost Soviet satires, directed against a...

. Russian fantasy fiction of the period was represented only by children tales and stage plays, such as plays by Evgeny Shvarts

Evgeny Shvarts

Evgeny Lvovich Shvarts was a Soviet writer and playwright whose works include twenty-five plays and screenplays for three films .- Life :...

.

Since the thaw in the 1960s Soviet science fiction began to form its own style. Philosophy, ethics

Ethics

Ethics, also known as moral philosophy, is a branch of philosophy that addresses questions about morality—that is, concepts such as good and evil, right and wrong, virtue and vice, justice and crime, etc.Major branches of ethics include:...

, utopia

Utopia

n and dystopia

Dystopia

A dystopia is the idea of a society in a repressive and controlled state, often under the guise of being utopian, as characterized in books like Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four...

n ideas became its core, and Social science fiction

Social science fiction

Social science fiction is a term used to describe a subgenre of science fiction concerned less with technology and space opera and more with sociological speculation about human society...

was the most popular subgenre. Books of brothers Arkady and Boris Strugatsky

Arkady and Boris Strugatsky

The brothers Arkady and Boris Strugatsky are Soviet Jewish-Russian science fiction authors who collaborated on their fiction.-Life and work:...

, and Kir Bulychov, among others, are reminiscent of social problems and often include satire

Satire

Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...

on contemporary Soviet society. Ivan Yefremov, on the contrary, arose to fame with his utopia

Utopia

n views on future as well as on Ancient Greece

Ancient Greece

Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...

in his historical novels. Strugatskies are also credited for the Soviet's first science fantasy

Science fantasy

Science fantasy is a mixed genre within speculative fiction drawing elements from both science fiction and fantasy. Although in some terms of its portrayal in recent media products it can be defined as instead of being a mixed genre of science fiction and fantasy it is instead a mixing of the...

, the Monday Begins on Saturday
Monday Begins on Saturday
Monday Begins on Saturday is a 1964 science fiction / science fantasy novel by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky. Set in a fictional town in northern Russia, where highly classified research in magic occurs, the novel is a satire of Soviet scientific research institutes, complete with an inept...

trilogy.

Most of soviet writers viewed the future world optimistically - some frankly, some to please publishers and avoid censors' edition. Postapocalyptic and dystopia

Dystopia

A dystopia is the idea of a society in a repressive and controlled state, often under the guise of being utopian, as characterized in books like Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four...

n plots were usually placed outside Earth - on underdeveloped planets, distant past, parallel world

Parallel universe (fiction)

A parallel universe or alternative reality is a hypothetical self-contained separate reality coexisting with one's own. A specific group of parallel universes is called a "multiverse", although this term can also be used to describe the possible parallel universes that constitute reality...

s. Nevertheless, the settings occasionally bore allusion of the real world, sometimes as a satire of contemporary society.

Space opera

Space opera

Space opera is a subgenre of science fiction that emphasizes romantic, often melodramatic adventure, set mainly or entirely in outer space, generally involving conflict between opponents possessing advanced technologies and abilities. The term has no relation to music and it is analogous to "soap...

subgenre was less developed, since both state censors and "serious" writers watched it unfavorably. Nevertheless, there were moderately successful attempts to adapt space westerns to Soviet soil. The first was Alexander Kolpakov with "Griada", after came Sergey Snegov with People Like Gods, among others. Bulychov, along with his adult books, created children's space adventure series about Alice Selezneva, a teenage girl from the future.

Post-Soviet period

Fantasy

Fantasy is a genre of fiction that commonly uses magic and other supernatural phenomena as a primary element of plot, theme, or setting. Many works within the genre take place in imaginary worlds where magic is common...

and science fiction are still among the best-selling literature in Russia; representative authors include Sergey Lukyanenko

Sergey Lukyanenko

Sergei Vasilievich Lukyanenko is a science fiction and fantasy author, writing in Russian, and is arguably the most popular contemporary Russian sci-fi writer...

, Nick Perumov

Nick Perumov

Nick Perumov is the pen name of Nikolay Daniilovich Perumov , a Russian fantasy and science fiction writer.- Biography :Perumov was born November 21, 1963 in Leningrad, USSR. He began writing short stories since he was a teenager, and after reading The Lord of the Rings in the early 1980s, he...

and Maria Semenova. The popularity of hard SF has gradually faded, as fantasy fiction, with the distinctive influences of Western authors such as J. R. R. Tolkien

J. R. R. Tolkien

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, CBE was an English writer, poet, philologist, and university professor, best known as the author of the classic high fantasy works The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion.Tolkien was Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Pembroke College,...

and Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard

Robert Ervin Howard was an American author who wrote pulp fiction in a diverse range of genres. Best known for his character Conan the Barbarian, he is regarded as the father of the sword and sorcery subgenre....

, has come to predominate the scene. While the majority of fantasy writers follow the Western tradition with its archetypal Norse or Anglo-Saxon settings (e.g. Perumov, Kamsha, Pekhov), some authors, for example Maria Semenova and Yuri Nikitin, prefer Russian mythology as inspiration.

In the post-soviet popular literature, the extensive serializing of successful formulas has become the norm, in forms like that of a women's «humorous detective story», military and special forces action novels and others. Sci-fi recently began following suit, most notably in the wake of the enormous success of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl is a first-person shooter video game by the Ukrainian developer GSC Game World, published in 2007.It features an alternate reality theme, where a second nuclear disaster occurs at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant Exclusion Zone in the near future and causes...

computer game and Metro 2033
Metro 2033 (book)
Metro 2033 is a novel written by Russian author Dmitry Glukhovsky.-History:Some twenty years after a nuclear war, only a few thousands of people survive in the metro...

postapocalyptic novel (both of which featured a well-developed universe). S.T.A.L.K.E.R. book series' features are heavy branding and almost negligible influence of the actual writer's name on individual novels (also, a TV show is in development). And though Metro 2033 raised its creator to national fame and spawned a sequel, it quickly become a franchise, with over 15 books published by various authors and a rather well-received tie-in videogame released.

Nearly half of modern Russian science fiction is actually produced in Ukraine

Ukraine

Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...

, especially in Kharkov, home to H. L. Oldie

H. L. Oldie

Henry Lion Oldie, or H. L. Oldie is the pen name of Ukrainian science/fantasy fiction writers Dmitry Gromov and Oleg Ladyzhensky. Both authors reside in Kharkiv, Ukraine, and write in Russian. On Eurocon 2006 in Kiev, the European Science Fiction Society named them the Europe's best writers of...

, Alexander Zorich

Alexander Zorich

Alexander Zorich is the collective pen name of two Russian writers; Yana Botsman and Dmitry Gordevsky. The two write in Russian, in genres such as science fiction, fantasy and alternate history, as well as PC game scenarios.- Yana Botsman :...

, Marina and Sergey Dyachenko

Marina and Sergey Dyachenko

Maryna and Serhiy Dyachenko — Maryna Y. Dyachenko and Serhiy S. Dyachenko are spouses and Ukrainian co-authors of novels and plays. They write in Russian and Ukrainian languages. The primary genres of their books are modern science fiction, fantasy, and fairy tales...

, Yuri Nikitin and Andrey Valentinov. Most Ukrainian fantasy authors write in Russian, which gives them access to a much larger audience, and usually publish their books via Russian publishers such as Eksmo

Eksmo

Eksmo is one of the largest publishing houses in Russia. Eksmo and its rival AST together publish approximately 30% of all Russian books.Established in 1991 as a small book-selling company, they gradually developed into a major player on the Russian market, discovering and developing detective...

, Azbuka and AST

AST (publisher)

AST is one of the largest book publishing companies in Russia. AST and its rival Eksmo together publish approximately 30% of all Russian books. The company is headed by Oleg Bartenev...

External links

Anthologies

Soviet Science Fiction, Collier Books, 1962, 189pp.
More Soviet Science Fiction, Collier Books, 1962, 190pp.
Russian Science Fiction, ed. Robert Magidoff, New York University Press, 1964.
Russian Science Fiction, 1968, ed. Robert Magidoff, New York University Press, 1968.
Russian Science Fiction, 1969, ed. Robert Magidoff, New York University Press, 1969.
New Soviet Science Fiction, Macmillan, 1979 , ISBN 0-02-578220-7, xi+297pp.
Pre-Revolutionary Russian Science Fiction: An Anthology (Seven Utopias and a Dream), ed. Leland Fetzer, Ardis, 1982, ISBN 0-88233-595-2, 253pp.
Worlds Apart : An Anthology of Russian Science Fiction and Fantasy, ed. Alexander Levitsky, Overlook, 2006, ISBN 1-58567-819-8, 740pp.

Literature

Darko Suvin
Darko Suvin
Darko Ronald Suvin, FRSC is a Yugoslav-born academic and critic of Jewish descendance, who became a Professor at McGill University in Montreal — now emeritus...

. Russian Science Fiction, 1956-1974: A Bibliography. Elizabethtown, NY: Dragon Press, 1976.
J. P. Glad, Extrapolations from Dystopia: A Critical Study of Soviet Science Fiction Princeton: Kingston Press, 1982. 223 p.
Scott R. Samuel, Soviet Science Fiction: New Critical Approaches. Ph. D. Dissertation, Stanford University, 1982. 134 p.
Nadezhda L. Petreson, Fantasy and Utopia in the Contemporary Soviet Novel, 1976-1981. Ph. D. Dissertation, Indiana University, 1986. 260 p.
Karla A. Cruise. Soviet Science Fiction, 1909-1926: Symbols, Archetypes and Myths. Master's Thesis, Princeton University, 1988. 71 p.
Matthew D. B. Rose, Russian and Soviet Science Fiction: The Neglected Genre. Master's Thesis, The University of Alberta (Canada), 1988.
Richard Stites, Revolutionary Dreams: Utopian Vision and Experimental Life in the Russian Revolution. Oxford UP, 1989.
Richard P. Terra and Robert M. Philmus. Russian and Soviet Science Fiction in English Translation: A Bibliography, in: Science Fiction Studies #54 = Volume 18, Part 2 = July 1991
Anindita Banerjee. The Genesis and Evolution of Science Fiction in fin de siecle Russia, 1880-1921. Ph.D. Dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles, 2000. 324 p.
Vitalii Kaplan. A Look Behind the Wall: A Topography of Contemporary Russian Science Fiction, Russian Studies in Literature 38(3): 62-84. Summer 2002. Also in: Russian Social Science Review 44(2): 82-104. March/April 2003.
Science Fiction Studies #94 = Volume 31, Part 3 = November 2004. SPECIAL ISSUE: SOVIET SCIENCE FICTION: THE THAW AND AFTER.
Park Joon-Sung. Literary Reflections of the Future War: A Study of Interwar Soviet Literature of Military Anticipation. Ph. D. Dissertation, University of Michigan, 2004. 198 p.

Early period

Late 19th - early 20th century

Utopias

Genre fiction

Soviet science fiction

Post-Soviet period

External links

Anthologies

Literature

See also