Description
Book SynopsisSince the dawn of the Space Age, when the Soviet Union launched the first artificial satellite and sent the first human into the cosmos, science fiction literature and cinema from Russia has fascinated fans, critics, and scholars from around the world. Informed perspectives on the surprisingly long and incredibly rich tradition of Russian science fiction, however, are hard to come by in accessible form. This critical reader aims to provide precisely such a resource for students, scholars, and the merely curious who wish to delve deeper into landmarks of the genre, discover innumerable lesser-known gems in the process, and understand why science fiction came to play such a crucial role in Russian society, politics, technology, and culture for more than a century.
Contributors include: Mark B. Adams, Anindita Banerjee, Lynn Barker, Eliot Borenstein, Aleksandr Chantsev, Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, Stephen Dalton, Dominic Esler, Elana Gomel, Andrew Horton, Yvonne Howell, Asif A. Siddiqi, Robert Skotak, Michael G. Smith, Vlad Strukov, Darko Suvin.
Trade Review"It’s a comprehensive, and even exhaustive, read featuring a host of contributors and which, to varying extents, likely will appeal not just to those wanting a handle on the Sci-Fi/Cinema connection, but perhaps to Russophiles across-the-board, too." - Screentrade Magazine"This collection of scholarly articles related to the chronological history and development of Russian science fiction in film and literature is a valuable contribution to a little-studied genre." - International Journal of Russian Studies (2018)Table of ContentsINTRODUCTION
- Anindita Banerjee: A Possible Strangeness: Reading Russian Science Fiction on the Page and the ScreenI
I. FROM UTOPIAN TRADITIONS TO REVOLUTIONARY DREAMS
- Darko Suvin: The Utopian Tradition of Russian Science Fiction
- Mark B Adams: Red Star: Another Look at Aleksandr Bogdanov
- Anindita Banerjee: Generating Power
- Asif A Siddiqi: Imagining the Cosmos: Utopians, Mystics, and the Popular Culture of Spaceflight in Revolutionary Russia
II. RUSSIA’S ROARING TWENTIES
- Dominic Esler: Soviet Science Fiction of the 1920s: Explaining a Literary Genre in its Political and Social Context
- Eliot Borenstein: The Plural Self: Zamjatin’s We and the Logic of Synecdoche
- Andrew J Horton: Science Fiction of the Domestic: Iakov Protazanov’s Aelita
- Yvonne Howell: Eugenics, Rejuvenation, and Bulgakov’s Journey into the Heart of Dogness
III. FROM STALIN TO SPUTNIK AND BEYOND
- Michael G Smith: Stalinism and the Genesis of Cosmonautics
- Lynn Barker and Robert Skotak: Klushantsev: Russia’s Wizard of Fantastika
- Istvan Csicsery-Ronay Jr: Towards the Last Fairy Tale: The Fairy-Tale Paradigm in the Strugatskys’ Science Fiction, 1963–72
- Stephen Dalton: Tarkovsky, Solaris, and Stalker
IV. FUTURES AT THE END OF UTOPIA
- Elana Gomel: Viktor Pelevin and Literary Postmodernism in Soviet Russia
- Vlad Strukov: The Forces of Kinship: Timur Bekmambetov’s Night Watch Cinematic Trilogy
- Aleksandr Chantsev: The Antiuopia Factory: The Dystopian Discourse in Russian Literature in the Mid-2000s
