Splash of star seas

From time to time, being in Moscow, each time I will certainly come to visit my teacher - Evgeny Lvovich Troops. The ritual does not change for a quarter of a century (by rooting in Soviet times): a glass of cognac, strong black coffee, sandwiches, but most importantly - conversations, leisurely conversations about the main thing. About literature, about science fiction, about life, events in Moscow, Russia, Israel and the world. About how we walked along a wide road to communism, and ended up in the swamp of the current of low -predictable reality.

On April 9, 2018, Yevgeny Lvovich turned 96 years old. Recently, the Prestige-Book publishing house was published by the well-published four-volume fiction four-volume of E. L. Vobraskunsky and I. B. Lukodyanov: “The crew of Mekong”, “Forbidden Planet”, “Splash of Star Seas”, “Very Distant Tartess”, “Ur, Son of the Sham” ...

We considered wonderful illustrations - old, Soviet times, and new ones, drawn specifically for this publication. And, of course, they remembered. Glory to the sixties for Soviet science fiction, the peak of popularity, many new works, ideas, hopes ... I remember the “crew of Mekong” ”I got“ with my hands ”on the Baku book collapse and impressed Efremov and the“ country of crimson clouds ”of Strugatsky.

It was an ideal fantasy-a great science fiction idea, remarkably described by our city of Baku and adventures, from which it is impossible to tear ourselves without reading the book to the end. In the sixties, Baku was one of the capitals of Soviet science fiction, along with Moscow and Leningrad. Baku of that time is Evgeny Voyskunsky, Isai Lukudyanov, Henry Altov, Valentina Zhuravlev, Rafail Bakhtamov ... The Commission on Scientific and Fantastic Literature under SP Azerb. SSR. With them, already by the luminaries, we also met youth: Roma Leonidov, Borya Ostrovsky and your humble servant.

“Agree,” said Yevgeny Lvovich many years later, “these were the happiest and most fruitful years!” How did we argue, huh? Remember how they discussed the permanent crisis in our science fiction?

I remember, what about it! In those, as it is now clear, the most “fat” years we sadly noted that in Soviet science fiction stagnation, there are few new works, new ideas are even less, publishers do not like science fiction, and the Damocles sword of party censorship hangs over science fiction. Evgeny Lvovich, the chairman of our commission, managed to “break through” through the Writers Union the release of three science fiction collections in Baku, who did not inferior (if not talking about the quality of printing) to the famous annuals of fiction of the young Guard Publishing House.

We talked about the crisis in science fiction with Evgeny Lvovich and my current visit. About the "Tom Crisis" - with a nostalgic smile, about the present - with sadness. It is enough to compare the cosmic science fiction of those and present. “Splash of the Star Seas” is a novel about a communist society where united humanity solves the problem: to fly to the stars, or will it be more correct to remain in the solar system, where there are also enough deeds and mysteries of nature? The novel, remembered for me for life. I wanted to write the same way.

Now, reading the current cosmic operas, not finding any new ideas in modern cosmic science fiction, without finding literary finds, most often I want to get to the end as soon as possible-not because reading is capturing, but to close the book faster. You read not for pleasure, but out of a professional habit - you have to know what and how they write now, in the 21st century, about which they dreamed about then, in the sixties, discussing at the meetings of the Twilight on the planet of the Buret of Voyskovsky and Lukodyanov, the “eaglet” Zhuravleva, the “port of the stone storms” of Altova ...

They say that now it is impossible to write science fiction, especially cosmic, as they wrote half a century ago. They say that science fiction has become obsolete, its era ended. Then, in the sixties, there were romantic performances about the development of space, the expectation of imminent flights to Mars. Flights to the stars, according to the forecasts of the then NF, should have occurred just at our current time: Taimyr starship in the book of Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. XXII century ”returned from the first star expedition precisely in 2017, in the year of the century of the October Revolution, which was then called the Great.

Yes, now it is no longer possible to write as the Soviet science fiction writers of the Gagarin era wrote. In those Gagarinsky times, we understood this, and Evgeny Lvovich, I remember, said that when people fly to the stars, our science fiction will become obsolete, science fiction writers will write differently, readers would read otherwise, and in fifty years, and through a hundred readers, “spokes of stellar seas”, “legends about star captains” and “heroic symphony” would be interesting.

And how we argued on the commissions about what in science fiction primary: a new idea or good literature! They always converged on the fact that not “or”, but preferably - “and”. So, in fact, the “very distant Tartess”, “second path”, “landfill“ star river ”” were written ... What ideas! What literature!

In 1982, Isai Borisovich Lukudyanov passed away, and since then Evgeny Lvovich has been extremely rare to science fiction. In their tandem, “Separation of Labor” was quite clear: the erudite and who knew everything was responsible for all Isai Borisovich, and literature was Evgeny Lvovich, who knew how to come up with heroes, to build a plot, to fill the novel with a literary spirit, the essence of which no one can say anything definite, according to the first pages and even on the first lines.

Here is from the "Tale of the Ocean and the Royal Kukhara." Now this story has entered as a kind of preface to the new edition of the “splash of star seas”, and then, in the sixties, it went out separately, and the ship floating in the ocean to the far unknown shore was like a starship that set off, from which, most likely, there would be no return:

“If there weren’t those who are uncontrollably attracted to the unknown unknown, those who sees not today, but mysterious tomorrow, the world would have remained within the oikumen of the ancient Greeks ... The foam is whitewashed behind the stern, the sails filled the wind, and the caravel is rushing under the wind, then diving between the waves, then rising towards new streams and plants, people and plants, people and plants, people and plants, people and plants, people and plants, people and plants, people and plants, people and plants, people and plants, people and plants, people and plants. The world is huge, unfamiliar, along the paths of distant wanderings, to the vastness of the ocean ... "

What is it about, about whom? About Caravel or about a starship? Greenovskoye unfulfilled, the future of Soviet science fiction writers - it called, I wanted to live in it. I wanted to live for such a future, which, in particular, was opened from the pages of fantastic works of Vobraskunsky and Lukudyanov.

For many years - after the death of the co -author - Evgeny Lvovich writes about the war. He knows what it is, he participated in the defense of Hanko, worked in the front -line newspaper. War is the past that is always with him. Fantastic is the future that he and Lukudyanov wanted to bring so closer!

The novels of Vobraskunsky “Kronstadt”, “The World is Clean”, “Girlfriends”, “Alexander Garden” - realistic works, where there is not a grain of mysticism, without which practically no work of “Big Literature” is costly. Nobody - at my, naturally, look - today writes realistic novels as E. L. Voysskunsky. Last year, he graduated from the new big novel “Baltic Saga”. This is the story of several families and the entire Soviet state, starting with the 1921 Kronstadt uprising - and to the stagnant seventies. The heroes of the novel (and their dozens!) Remained, paraphrasing Akhmatov, with the people where the people, unfortunately, were ...

The novel has been written, but for a year now the publisher has been ongoing. "Informat", as they say today. The science fiction of the Vobro-Lukodyanov for his time was also an “non-format”, although it seems that they, like many Soviet science fiction writers, wrote about flights to the stars, communist society, about scientists and “ordinary people of the future”. Yes, they wrote, but not like everyone else.

The best Soviet science fiction writers had a “face of an improper expressing”. Opening the book and not looking at the author’s name, the first paragraph could be said: “Oh, of course, the Strugatsky”, “Yeah, this is Voyskunsky and Lukodyanov”, “This is Zhuravlev, what kind of doubts can be” ... Altov, Savchenko, Gansovsky, Warsaw ... recognizable immediately. Your style, your own manner. Their ideas.

And now ...

I wrote about the death of science fiction in Russia more than once. And about the reasons - too. More recently, after traveling to Moscow and talking with Evgeny Lvovich about science fiction, he wrote a sad note (as they say, “post”) on Facebook. The conversation turned out to be strange. The interlocutors were clearly divided into two groups. The first is those who responded something like this: “Yes, NF died, there is a road there. We are not necromancers to love the dead. Next we have to move! "

Further? Where? In the post -apocalypse, the invasion of zombies, vampires and fellow people?

Another group of interlocutors (smaller, I must admit) was offended. “What are you! - they said. - How did it die? Science fiction is alive, just the central publishers do not want to publish it (“Informat”!). And we just write science fiction! ”

He did not argue with the first group of interlocutors, and the second “went” to read, rejoicing in advance with the meeting with the modern NF.

Disappointment turned out to be bitter. New ideas? No. Good literature? Absent. The average language, simple (often just stamped) phrases. To distinguish one author from another, how could Savchenko be distinguished from Warsaw? No, unfortunately.

I don't want to repeat myself. NF does not tolerate repetitions, discussion - too. I already wrote in the TRV that the NF disappears when the state has problems with science. If the achievements of science are not written in newspapers and do not report television in the information programs of television, if scientists from the country leave, if the wonderful call “Cosmos is ours!” So it remains a call, and not by setting to action, then science fiction loses the soil under it. New ideas do not arise, and without new ideas there are no new plots, heroes, stories. The reader does not want to read “chewed science fiction”, the publisher does not want to publish NF, for “non -format” ... and there is no way out?

There is always a way out. Science fiction and science are communicating vessels. And the feedback between them is positive. NF (NNF, if you use the definition of Anton Pervushin)) draws new ideas from science, processes them into its literary way, creates scientific and fantastic ideas from scientific ideas. But science absorbs new ideas of fantasy and processes them in its scientific way.

Sovetskaya NF of the sixties - the answer of literature to the challenges of science. On the first satellites, on the flight of Gagarin, on the occurrence of cybernetics, discovery in astrophysicist, biology. Take off science - take -off NF. But science answered the challenges of science fiction. Let us recall the famous in Soviet times: “Let science fiction writers come up with, scientists will still overtake them!” Recall Dmitry Ivanovich Blokhintsev: “A few words about the role of fantasy writers. As far as I can judge, most of their predictions are simply erroneous. However, they create models that can actually have an influence on people engaged in science and technology. I am sure, for example, in this influence of the Aelita and Hyperboloid engineer Garin A. N. Tolstoy, who have fascinated many with the ideas of space flights and laser ... ” Let us recall Yuri Nikolayevich Denisyuk, one of the creators of the optical holography. Here is what he wrote about the influence of Ivan Efremov’s fantastic story “The Shadow of the Past” : “I not only do not deny the peculiar participation of the science writer in my work, but I confirm him with pleasure. I was always amazed by some supernatural ability of artists of the word to foresee the future so figuratively. "

Maybe the NF on science should think about this influence of the publishers? Scientists, you know, read science fiction! And they even write, trying to fill the lacuna. Read, for example, “Ark 47 Libra” and “Ice Shell” by Boris Stern.

However, it is useless, apparently, to handle calls to the publishers. Fiction - commercial literature. As a result - a “enchanted” circle. Publishers do not want to publish a serious NF, because you can’t sell these books in a month or two. These are books-Longseller, meanwhile, the publisher wants to return the money spent on the publication now, and not in a year or two or three. Publishers do not publish - which means that readers wean from serious reading. The authors, respectively, do not write. Writing a serious NF is a lot of work. Read many scientific and popular science books and articles. To come up with a new idea, a new plot, new heroes. A year or two of the work-to the table? There are always enthusiasts, but an enthusiast can, for example, move a stone lying on the road. You can only build the road together.

However, nothing is new under the moon. The Milky Way magazine published recently translated into Russian the letters of Stanislav Lem to Rafail Nudelman, known to the Soviet, subsequently Israeli literary critic, writer, translator and popularizer of science. In 1965, Lem wrote: “American fiction systematically lowers its level, and this happens on both sides: firstly, from the side of literary criticism, that is, from the outside, and secondly, due to the fact that the creators of this species themselves completely succumbed to the onslaught of commercialization.” And further: “Are the publishers to blame? In the end, the environment itself is to blame ... ".

Doesn't it remind you? The American fantastic literature as a whole did not get out of the “onslaught of commercialization”, but the NF as a squeal of science fiction overcame the crisis (which, of course, the scientific revolutions of the late twentieth century played a significant role). NFs are written by serious scientists (Peter Watts, for example), in the NF there are enough new ideas (read at least the works of Greg Igana, Neil Stevenson, Robert Wilson, Paul Melly, Kim Stanley Robinson ...). And this is real literature.

We talked about literature with Evgeny Lvovich Troilus in February over a cup of coffee. And, of course, about Russian science fiction, which has beautiful roots, but a dried trunk. We heard a splash of the star seas and drank cognac on the glass of cognac to ensure that the Russian NF subsorbed to the bottom of the Caravel and heads “towards new countries, people and plants, a huge, unfamiliar, unfamiliar to the paths of distant wanderings, to the expanses of the ocean ...”.

Pavel Amnuel