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Exploring The World Of Russian Science Fiction Online
jimharris writes: "There is a vast heritage of science fiction in Russian that is as large and diverse as SF in English. This Russian site has several complete science fiction novels in English. If you go to their home page you will feel the language barrier. Most of these are out of print in the English speaking world, but many were translated and published in the seventies, and can be found through AddAll.Com. I have found one Russian Science Fiction club that tries to help the English speaking world understand Russian SF, and also gives their view on Heinlein and Philip K. Dick. Only Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky appear on the Classics of Science Fiction list. I have to wonder what far-out concepts I might be missing because I only understand English -- maybe the Internet will help break down this barrier."
Like languages, environment define the terms you associate with life.
... Snow, SnowFall, Blizzard... whiteout...
:(
300 words for snow? Yup, if you are from the north. I think I have 5 or 6
What's this have to do with SF? Even if there is a perfect, idiom-perfect translation, we Americans may simply not have the cultural background to understand it. Or even do it the justice it deserves.
This is by no means a reason to stop trying- I frankly love SF and have a library rapidly approaching 1000 books... but until I bone up on my russian history, I am afraid these wonderful texts will fall short
Of course, a 'monologue' like the put down at the bottom of those ancient texts you studied in Latin class (you DID read the Aeneid, didn't you?) was more than enough to get the underlying meaning, giving you the cultural explanations of the references provided. Maybe thats what their SF needs to be complete.
There is a lot of Russian books that are getting
published(OCR?) on the net, one thing I stubled on were real stories from Afganistan and Chechen Wars, they are incredible, told by real soldiers not writers. I only found one translated to English, but they're maybe more available.(I read them in Russian).
http://lib.ru/MEMUARY/CHECHNYA/chechen_war.txt
P.S. from SciFi I recomend brothers Strugatsky books, specificaly Roadside Picnic.
I think Yevgeny Zamyatin's We is the best Russian SF I've ever read (and maybe the only Russian SF I've ever read, now that I think about it). Anyway, his metaphors are very mathematical (revolutions are like numbers, infinite; love is like the square root of -1; maybe he was a mathematician). Anyway, I highly recommend it.
IMNSHO the best current Russian fantasy writer is Nik Perumov. His books are not an average fantasy of Good vs Evil. But rather Dark Side vs Light Forces, with author siding with the Dark. It's either an exiled mage rising a rebellion against good benevolent Gods to save his imprisoned friend. Or a necromancer on a quest against the rest of the world. Noone is always good and noone is pure evil. Very good solid high paced reading. Very enjoyable. I don't know if he is translated to English though. He had one book in English with Alan Cole. Unfortunately that sorry piece of a crap is not worth the paper it's published on.
Another decent Russian writer is Sviatoslav Loginov - http://rusf.ru/english/loginov/ (in English). _Multiarm God of Dalayn_ is VERY original. I have not read anything like that either in English or Russian. It might be too original though. _Black Blood_ with Nik Perumov is very good. He also writes "village fantasy" which might be too thick with Russian culture and closer to common fiction than to fantasy.
One of the older writers is Kir Bulychev. Some of his writing is space sci fi, some is social sci fi set in a fictional Russian town "Veliky Gusliar". Mostly targeted to younger readers.
Brothers Strugatski are classics of Russian sci fi. Their earlier books are mostly space sci fi. Like _It's Hard to Be a God_ is about human outpost on a medieval planet. _Beetle in an Anthill_ is very original alien planet fiction. _Stalker_ is good reading. The _Monday Starts on Saturday_ is about government research facility studying magic (fun reading - government bureaucracy + magic). The later books tend to be more philosophical and are thick with Russian historical and cultural references.
A lot of people like Sergey Lukyanenko. He is probably the best selling contemporary Russian sci fi writer. Another popular writer is Vladimir Vasil'ev - sci fi, fantasy, cyber, alternative history. I did not read a lot of them, so I won't comment.
_Master and Margarita_ was written in the first half on 20th century. Classic translated to many languages including English. Satan come to Moscow. Very philosophical - love, responsibility, genius. Very very philosophical, but fun to read. Particularly if you took a course in Russian history.