Every story in this collection merits re-reading

Uncertainty Principle
Dimitri Bilenkin
Macmillan Publishing Company, 1979

I have to agree with fellow Amazon reviewer "foolsguinea" regarding this book. It definitely needs to be returned to print (with, perhaps, many of the other volumes in Macmillan's "Best of Soviet SF" series from the late 1970s). Based on the quality of the short stories contained in this volume, the late Dimitri Bilenkin had an SF voice that merits being heard by a much wider audience. As Theodore Sturgeon notes in his introduction, Bilenkin excels at tackling the question "if this goes on...", perhaps because he has (quoting Sturgeon), "a profound respect for the potentialities of science and its ability to open doors to achievement and to understanding both outer space and that far more vast inner space of the mind and heart, the fact---forgotten by so many science-worshippers---that respected and orthodox science gave us leeches and cups to draw blood from the desperately ill, malformed babies, filthy air, denuded hillsides, dead lakes, and industrial disasters" (p. xi). This recognition and respect for the limitations of science, as well as for the intersections of science with society and ideology, does not prevent his stories from being infused with a magical, lyrical quality evoking at once the wonder of a child and the wisdom of the aged. Every story in this collection merits re-reading, because with each reading subtler shades of meaning and humor are revealed, in the best tradition of Russian literature.

(This review was originally written on May 4, 2007.)

A so-so read

World Soul
Mikhail Emtsev
Simon & Schuster

This novel, published in English in 1978, is a translation of a Soviet novel originally published in the late 1960s. It is one of the Collier Books "Best of Soviet SF" series from the late '70s, which alone makes it pretty fascinating (i.e., the only Russian fiction with which I am familiar is solidly anti-Soviet, like Pasternak or Solzhenitsyn). Alas, I don't think that it lived up to Theodore Sturgeon's praise in the introduction that it was "an extraordinary novel." Rather, I found it to be fairly typical science fiction.

Basically, two Soviet scientists working for the Institute of Telepathy (only in the USSR!) bioengineer a plant that can synthesize polymers. This plant, called the "biotosis," somehow manages to grow to enormous size overnight and to link all of human kind in some kind of telepathic network. The story, although relatively interesting, was also rather confusing and difficult to follow. It involved the biotosis containing within its mass copies of the minds of all of humanity, with the resulting telepathic network arising from interactions of these simulacra within the biotosis. Some find the biotosis amazing, others see it as a threat, and both have evidence to support their views. Eventually, when some seek to destroy it, the biotosis protects itself. At this point, the novel's plot became even more confusing, and the ending did not resolve all of this confusion. While not being a bad book by any means, this novel was definitely not one that I would revisit. Perhaps those who are more involved in Soviet literature and history would get more out of it (e.g., its exploration of collectivist themes, etc.) but for the layperson I feel it is passable.

(This review was originally written on September 25, 2006.)

Generous and much needed "experiment in literary investigation"

The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956 : An Experiment in Literary Investigation I-II
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Harper Collins, 1974

Gulag--a Russian acronym for the network of camps where prisoners languish without recourse to law or justice, where women are gang-raped by thieves, and where innocent people are starved, beaten, tortured, killed, disappeared. Though Solzhenitsyn's experience of the Gulag took place under Soviet rule, the phenomenon does not seem to be uniquely Communist but is symptomatic of totalitarianism in general. This is why this "experiment in literary investigation" is so relevant right here, right now. The potential for something like Gulag in the age of the eternal "war on terror" is terrifying. (And as the author notes, many of the evils committed in Gulag depended upon the perpetrator believing that what he did was not only necessary, but actually moral.)

Yet Solzhenitsyn's indefatigable sense of humor and generosity of spirit keep this book (at 615 pages, the first volume of three) from being a work of torture in itself. Instead, he mocks the pretensions of the Soviet penal code and revels in the small joys (i.e., sleep, reading, comradery) he experienced in Gulag. In fact, at times, Solzhenitsyn conveys the sense that Gulag was a potentially redemptive experienced for those who made it through, since it winnowed away the chaff of life from the wheat and revealed the nobility we may find in our darkest, deepest hour.

(This review was originally written April 26, 2006 and it refers to the first of the three volume series. Subsequent volumes await my attention.)