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Path into the Unknown: the Best of Soviet Science Fiction
The Conflict - shortstory by Ilya Varshavsky
Robbie - shortstory by Ilya Varshavsky
Meeting My Brother - novelette by Vladislav Krapivin
A Day of Wrath - novelette by Sever Gansovsky
An Emergency Case - shortstory by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
Wanderers and Travellers - shortstory by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
The Boy - shortstory by Gennady Gor
The Purple Mummy - shortstory by Anatoly Dnieprov
Robbie - shortstory by Ilya Varshavsky
Meeting My Brother - novelette by Vladislav Krapivin
A Day of Wrath - novelette by Sever Gansovsky
An Emergency Case - shortstory by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
Wanderers and Travellers - shortstory by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
The Boy - shortstory by Gennady Gor
The Purple Mummy - shortstory by Anatoly Dnieprov
Hardcover
First published January 1, 1966
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211 people want to read
About the author
Judith Merril
162 books46 followersJosephine Juliet Grossman
aka Cyril Judd (with C.M. Kornbluth)
Judith Josephine Grossman (Boston, Massachusetts, January 21, 1923 - Toronto, Ontario, September 12, 1997), who took the pen-name Judith Merril about 1945, was an American and then Canadian science fiction writer, editor and political activist.
Although Judith Merril's first paid writing was in other genres, in her first few years of writing published science fiction she wrote her three novels (all but the first in collaboration with C.M. Kornbluth) and some stories. Her roughly four decades in that genre also included writing 26 published short stories, and editing a similar number of anthologies.
aka Cyril Judd (with C.M. Kornbluth)
Judith Josephine Grossman (Boston, Massachusetts, January 21, 1923 - Toronto, Ontario, September 12, 1997), who took the pen-name Judith Merril about 1945, was an American and then Canadian science fiction writer, editor and political activist.
Although Judith Merril's first paid writing was in other genres, in her first few years of writing published science fiction she wrote her three novels (all but the first in collaboration with C.M. Kornbluth) and some stories. Her roughly four decades in that genre also included writing 26 published short stories, and editing a similar number of anthologies.
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
June 20, 2012
I'm slowly tracking down every anthology that Judith Merril ever edited. I'd seen her name mentioned several times while researching the life of Alice Sheldon (aka the amazing SF author, James Tiptree Jr., Jr.). Ten years ago when living in Seattle, Pat Cadigan was in town to teach at Clarion West and she graciously agreed to an interview re Alice Sheldon. During that conversation, she told me how much she loved Judith's anthologies as she would draw from so many different sources outside of the usual SF publishers that she managed to find some real gems. Being an avid short story reader, how could I resist? This collection of Soviet SF is particularly interesting as a snapshot in time but after learning how she almost single handedly convinced the big NY publishers to take a chance with SF, I've just about found the last few straggling anthologies that have been long out of print. So even if you don't read this particular rare book, it'd be well worth your time to track down anything else she's edited. I've also read a handful of her own stories but really ought to give them more focus some day. Either way, you can find a definitive list of her writing and editing here; http://www.judithmerril.com/biblio.html. Happy hunting!
August 27, 2020
Chairman: You read in several languages, you are familiar with higher mathematics and can perform all manner of work. Do you think that this makes you human?
Otark: Yes, of course. Do humans know how to do anything else?
From “A Day of Wrath" by Sever Gansovsky
‘Path into the Unknown: The Best of Soviet SF’ is a small anthology which is best described as a sliver of time. It is a historical artefact from the ‘Thaw’ period of the post WW2 Soviet Union, which roughly coincided with the Premiership of Nikita Khrushchev, during which Soviet writers and other artists were given licence to explore themes and take up issues that would have been impossible under Stalin. By the time this anthology was published in the West however (1966), the Thaw period was definitely over. Khrushchev had lost power to Leonid Brezhnev in 1964, and in 1965 the notorious trial of the writers Yuli Daniel and Andrei Sinyavsky began. Sinyavsky–Daniel was the first Soviet show trial in which writers were charged and convicted solely for their literary work, and was intended as a signal to other artists that a period of relative freedom was at an end. For the writers in this collection the Trial would have been particularly significant because Sinyavsky and Daniel were targeted for having been published abroad. ‘Path into the Unknown’ was published by Pan, and edited by the US/Canadian SF writer Judith Merril (although on this edition the editor is not named).
Merril was a long standing Anti-Vietnam War, and later Anti-nuclear activist, so she would have been keen on building bridges to Soviet writers. This is not a ‘best of … ever’ anthology, rather it is a selection of the most recently written (at the time) Soviet SF. Therefore the qualities of the stories are a bit uneven, and possibly suffering a little in translation. Nevertheless familiar themes of Western SF are covered: robotics, space travel, genetics, extraterrestrial life, etc. There are two stories by the brothers Arkady and Boris Strugatsky (‘An Emergency Case’, and ‘Wanderers and Travellers’) who are probably the most well known writers in the West - their novel ‘Roadside Picnic’ was made into the film ‘Stalker’ by director Andrei Tarkovsky in 1979. Others such as Sever Ganovsky (‘A Day of Wrath’) I had not heard of before.
The Soviet era was the ‘golden age’ of science fiction in Russia at least, as the genre experienced an precedented growth in popularity. In the 1920s major theme was social reconstruction, befitting the immediate revolutionary times. As Stalin secured power the options for SF writers (as with others) became far more constrained, although the scientific and technological optimism within science fiction did chime with the USSR’s ‘world-building’ priorities of industrial development. However in the post-Stalin ‘Thaw’, the possibilities of the genre as an artistic laboratory for different ideas about society and history began to be taken up. You can see them being played out in this collection, even though the writers are careful to avoid direct political references.
One example is Gansovsky’s story ‘Day of Wrath’, in which a biological experiment has created human-like creatures (the ‘Otarks’) who have superior intellectual abilities in areas such as mathematics, but nevertheless terrorize the countryside, killing and eating not only humans but also each other. Gansovsky’s human characters spend much of the story speculating about what makes us ‘human’ at all. The Otarks menacingly tease humans with the argument that they should also be considered human as well, because they can perform all the higher intellectual functions that humanity claims to prize. Gansovsky (who ‘capitulated’ to the Soviet state later in life) may be satirising the assumptions behind the USSR’s ostensible goal of ‘building Soviet Man’. The USSR put huge resources into educational outcomes - particularly technical and scientific ones. However it also expected the Soviet citizens to be ruthless in their ‘defence of the revolution’ - turning on comrades, friends, and family whenever the need arose. Given that the Stalinist purges of the 1930s were still a living memory in the 1960s, the Otarks can be seen as ‘Soviet Man’ fully realised - and no longer human at all.
Otark: Yes, of course. Do humans know how to do anything else?
From “A Day of Wrath" by Sever Gansovsky
‘Path into the Unknown: The Best of Soviet SF’ is a small anthology which is best described as a sliver of time. It is a historical artefact from the ‘Thaw’ period of the post WW2 Soviet Union, which roughly coincided with the Premiership of Nikita Khrushchev, during which Soviet writers and other artists were given licence to explore themes and take up issues that would have been impossible under Stalin. By the time this anthology was published in the West however (1966), the Thaw period was definitely over. Khrushchev had lost power to Leonid Brezhnev in 1964, and in 1965 the notorious trial of the writers Yuli Daniel and Andrei Sinyavsky began. Sinyavsky–Daniel was the first Soviet show trial in which writers were charged and convicted solely for their literary work, and was intended as a signal to other artists that a period of relative freedom was at an end. For the writers in this collection the Trial would have been particularly significant because Sinyavsky and Daniel were targeted for having been published abroad. ‘Path into the Unknown’ was published by Pan, and edited by the US/Canadian SF writer Judith Merril (although on this edition the editor is not named).
Merril was a long standing Anti-Vietnam War, and later Anti-nuclear activist, so she would have been keen on building bridges to Soviet writers. This is not a ‘best of … ever’ anthology, rather it is a selection of the most recently written (at the time) Soviet SF. Therefore the qualities of the stories are a bit uneven, and possibly suffering a little in translation. Nevertheless familiar themes of Western SF are covered: robotics, space travel, genetics, extraterrestrial life, etc. There are two stories by the brothers Arkady and Boris Strugatsky (‘An Emergency Case’, and ‘Wanderers and Travellers’) who are probably the most well known writers in the West - their novel ‘Roadside Picnic’ was made into the film ‘Stalker’ by director Andrei Tarkovsky in 1979. Others such as Sever Ganovsky (‘A Day of Wrath’) I had not heard of before.
The Soviet era was the ‘golden age’ of science fiction in Russia at least, as the genre experienced an precedented growth in popularity. In the 1920s major theme was social reconstruction, befitting the immediate revolutionary times. As Stalin secured power the options for SF writers (as with others) became far more constrained, although the scientific and technological optimism within science fiction did chime with the USSR’s ‘world-building’ priorities of industrial development. However in the post-Stalin ‘Thaw’, the possibilities of the genre as an artistic laboratory for different ideas about society and history began to be taken up. You can see them being played out in this collection, even though the writers are careful to avoid direct political references.
One example is Gansovsky’s story ‘Day of Wrath’, in which a biological experiment has created human-like creatures (the ‘Otarks’) who have superior intellectual abilities in areas such as mathematics, but nevertheless terrorize the countryside, killing and eating not only humans but also each other. Gansovsky’s human characters spend much of the story speculating about what makes us ‘human’ at all. The Otarks menacingly tease humans with the argument that they should also be considered human as well, because they can perform all the higher intellectual functions that humanity claims to prize. Gansovsky (who ‘capitulated’ to the Soviet state later in life) may be satirising the assumptions behind the USSR’s ostensible goal of ‘building Soviet Man’. The USSR put huge resources into educational outcomes - particularly technical and scientific ones. However it also expected the Soviet citizens to be ruthless in their ‘defence of the revolution’ - turning on comrades, friends, and family whenever the need arose. Given that the Stalinist purges of the 1930s were still a living memory in the 1960s, the Otarks can be seen as ‘Soviet Man’ fully realised - and no longer human at all.
December 25, 2017
These short stories are fascinating, and some very emotional. I enjoyed this collection because the stories are, I think, a little out of the ordinary. This edition is from 1968 and a translation, so sometimes the feel and flow is a little clunky, but the ideas are interesting. I don't think anybody would recognize the authors' names, at least, I'm not so into Russian scifi that I recognize them, but the stories are:
The Conflict, Ilya Varshavsky
Robby, Ilya Varshavsky
Meeting my Brother, Vladislav Krapivin
A Day of Wrath, Sever Gansovsky
An Emergency Case, Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
Wanders and Travellers, Arkady Strugatsky
The Boy, G. Gor
The Purple Mummy, Anatoly Dneprov
The Conflict, Ilya Varshavsky
Robby, Ilya Varshavsky
Meeting my Brother, Vladislav Krapivin
A Day of Wrath, Sever Gansovsky
An Emergency Case, Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
Wanders and Travellers, Arkady Strugatsky
The Boy, G. Gor
The Purple Mummy, Anatoly Dneprov
June 13, 2014
Good early collection of Soviet SF translated into English. Some of the translation is a bit rough, and there's some variation in story quality. Still, recommended, especially for the revelation that personal human concerns lie at the heart of most of these tales.
Also of note: While it is NOT the job of an SF writer to accurately predict the future, neither should it be downplayed when someone does a good job of it. The story "The Purple Mummy" (written in 1961) contains a pretty much dead-on description of how a 3-D Printer operates.
Also of note: While it is NOT the job of an SF writer to accurately predict the future, neither should it be downplayed when someone does a good job of it. The story "The Purple Mummy" (written in 1961) contains a pretty much dead-on description of how a 3-D Printer operates.
October 18, 2011
This is a great collection of short stories from the Soviet Union.
March 29, 2018
The first story in this collection, The Conflict by Ilya Varshavsky is dedicated, To Stanislav Lemm (sic) “in memory of our argument which will never be resolved”. It focuses on a mother distraught at the affection in which her child holds the robot household help, an extremely intelligent machine but not without its own emotions.
A household robot also features in Robby again by Ilya Varshavsky. This one becomes increasingly cantankerous as it tries to apply logic to everything.
In Meeting my Brother by Vladislav Krapivin a young boy sees himself as the brother of a cosmonaut on a mission from long ago. When the mission returns his wish is fulfilled in a roundabout way. This story is less focused on the SF set-up than Varshavsky’s two, and more on human relationships.
A Day of Wrath by Sever Ganovsky sees a journalist go seeking a group of artificially produced reasoning creatures called Otarks who may be more intelligent than humans but uncompassionate.
In An Emergency Case by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky a spaceship returning from Titan to Earth is plagued by an infestation of eight-legged flies.
Arkady Strugatsky’s Wanderers and Travellers features a scientist investigating a new type of cephalopod who meets a spacefarer who in turn has become the source of radio signals.
The Boyby G Gor is the tale of an unusual school classmate whose father claims to have found evidence of aliens on Earth in the Jurassic period, one of whom may have survived to the present day.
In The Purple Mummy by Anatoly Dneprov, said mummy is an artefact convolved (printed) from radio signals emanating from across the universe - its colour a manifestation of the Doppler Effect - and (barring a reversal of internal organs,) an exact replica of the narrator’s wife. This is taken to be proof of the existence of anti-matter worlds.
Reading this was a strange experience. Whether any infelicities are due to the nature of Soviet SF, to the translation(s) or to the times in which the stories were written is difficult to discern. It was interesting though.
A household robot also features in Robby again by Ilya Varshavsky. This one becomes increasingly cantankerous as it tries to apply logic to everything.
In Meeting my Brother by Vladislav Krapivin a young boy sees himself as the brother of a cosmonaut on a mission from long ago. When the mission returns his wish is fulfilled in a roundabout way. This story is less focused on the SF set-up than Varshavsky’s two, and more on human relationships.
A Day of Wrath by Sever Ganovsky sees a journalist go seeking a group of artificially produced reasoning creatures called Otarks who may be more intelligent than humans but uncompassionate.
In An Emergency Case by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky a spaceship returning from Titan to Earth is plagued by an infestation of eight-legged flies.
Arkady Strugatsky’s Wanderers and Travellers features a scientist investigating a new type of cephalopod who meets a spacefarer who in turn has become the source of radio signals.
The Boyby G Gor is the tale of an unusual school classmate whose father claims to have found evidence of aliens on Earth in the Jurassic period, one of whom may have survived to the present day.
In The Purple Mummy by Anatoly Dneprov, said mummy is an artefact convolved (printed) from radio signals emanating from across the universe - its colour a manifestation of the Doppler Effect - and (barring a reversal of internal organs,) an exact replica of the narrator’s wife. This is taken to be proof of the existence of anti-matter worlds.
Reading this was a strange experience. Whether any infelicities are due to the nature of Soviet SF, to the translation(s) or to the times in which the stories were written is difficult to discern. It was interesting though.
April 29, 2020
"You see, they take the talented people and put them in secluded surroundings. They pet and pamper them. And of course they have no idea of what real life is like. That's why they have no feelings for people." He sighed deeply. "You've got to be a human being first . . . and then you can be a scientist."
September 6, 2020
3.5, rounded down for translation issues. Like all anthologies story quality was mixed. Standouts for me include Meeting My Brother, A Day of Wrath, Wanderers and Travelers, and The Boy. Other than the first two robot stories it was surprisingly not dated. The Purple Mummy even anticipated 3d printers.
January 3, 2019
Great book!
March 2, 2017
In many ways, this anthology is typical of any number of anthologies of late golden age science fiction. There is, however, an air of otherness, no doubt caused by the separation of Soviet science fiction from the mainstream of American and European writing. As with much Russian and Soviet fiction, there is a slow inevitability to some of the stories - the build up is gradual and brooding, whilst never feeling laboured. Though - with the exception of the Strugatsky brothers - none of the authors is widely known in the west, they all deserve to be better known. Not all the stories hit the right note, but those that did were very effective.
February 25, 2018
Path into the unknown:
Robby (p.19): A robot is a gift for a 50th birthday. It has no programming, but will learn by input from its environment. It becomes precocious but the suegra likes Robby, so there's no getting rid of it.
Meeting my Brother (p.55): An astronaut sacrifices his life to ignite a rocket that will melt the ice-bound Planet that HUmans will be able to inhabit. Another crew member sacrifices his identity so that an orphan boy can have his dream of having an astronaut for a brother be brought to life.
A Day of Wrath (p.87): The Otarks (too close to the Ozarks) are supreme at learning higher mathematics, but they also like to eat HUmans and each other. I never really got a clear image of what these extraterrestrials look like. A journalist goes on a tour of the forest where they have settled. The ranger assigned to escort him tries to get him to understand the severity of the situation but the journalist takes the tour as something of a vacation... to his detriment.
Emergency Case (p.107): A crew of astronauts is returning from a planet's exploration. One of them has brought a slug from the planet. Suddenly, a fly begins buzzing in the ear of a sleeping crew member. Impossible that a fly stows away on a spaceship. He catches it in his hand and goes to show his fellow crew members, but more flies begin to show up. When one is killed, the astronaut observes that new flies are crawling out of every cell of the dead fly. Soon, the air is black with these "flies." Something must be done; to think of these creatures multiplying on the Earth is frightening. But only one of the crew members realizes the utility of these creatures--too late!
Wanderers and Travelers (p.121): I may be wrong, but the septopods that the scientist and his daughter are marking...one of them takes a human shape and is talking to Masha and her father...but when the father figures it out, he tries to convince himself that he is unimpressed, and that the obviously superior race is too "superior" to bother with annihilating humans. Another unfinished-feeling story. (Is it a language issue?)
The Boy (p.161): a puzzling story...a boy in school knows way more about science and space than he has any reason to. A classmate of his tries to puzzle out the answer to this conundrum but the boy, who is a double of a boy born on a spaceflight, moves away before he can get the answers he craves. This feels unfinished.
The Purple Mummy (p.191): At a museum in Moscow, a purple mummy materializes that is the spit-and-image of a Leninsk' museum curator's wife. Moreover, a bust shows up that is the equivalent of another curator. Well, long story short, this alien society can make 3D printed copies of HUmans they've scanned, but they send them with tumors.
Robby (p.19): A robot is a gift for a 50th birthday. It has no programming, but will learn by input from its environment. It becomes precocious but the suegra likes Robby, so there's no getting rid of it.
Meeting my Brother (p.55): An astronaut sacrifices his life to ignite a rocket that will melt the ice-bound Planet that HUmans will be able to inhabit. Another crew member sacrifices his identity so that an orphan boy can have his dream of having an astronaut for a brother be brought to life.
A Day of Wrath (p.87): The Otarks (too close to the Ozarks) are supreme at learning higher mathematics, but they also like to eat HUmans and each other. I never really got a clear image of what these extraterrestrials look like. A journalist goes on a tour of the forest where they have settled. The ranger assigned to escort him tries to get him to understand the severity of the situation but the journalist takes the tour as something of a vacation... to his detriment.
Emergency Case (p.107): A crew of astronauts is returning from a planet's exploration. One of them has brought a slug from the planet. Suddenly, a fly begins buzzing in the ear of a sleeping crew member. Impossible that a fly stows away on a spaceship. He catches it in his hand and goes to show his fellow crew members, but more flies begin to show up. When one is killed, the astronaut observes that new flies are crawling out of every cell of the dead fly. Soon, the air is black with these "flies." Something must be done; to think of these creatures multiplying on the Earth is frightening. But only one of the crew members realizes the utility of these creatures--too late!
Wanderers and Travelers (p.121): I may be wrong, but the septopods that the scientist and his daughter are marking...one of them takes a human shape and is talking to Masha and her father...but when the father figures it out, he tries to convince himself that he is unimpressed, and that the obviously superior race is too "superior" to bother with annihilating humans. Another unfinished-feeling story. (Is it a language issue?)
The Boy (p.161): a puzzling story...a boy in school knows way more about science and space than he has any reason to. A classmate of his tries to puzzle out the answer to this conundrum but the boy, who is a double of a boy born on a spaceflight, moves away before he can get the answers he craves. This feels unfinished.
The Purple Mummy (p.191): At a museum in Moscow, a purple mummy materializes that is the spit-and-image of a Leninsk' museum curator's wife. Moreover, a bust shows up that is the equivalent of another curator. Well, long story short, this alien society can make 3D printed copies of HUmans they've scanned, but they send them with tumors.
January 2, 2020
Meeting My Brother - by Vladislav Krapivin is a masterpiece. It uses the implications of relativistic space travel as a key element which I strongly prefer to FTL, the characters are well done, and there are various interesting aspects to consider. It's absolutely worth finding a copy of this to read that story alone in my opinion.
"A Day of Wrath" I also found very enjoyable - a well-done horror story.
The rest was interesting only when considered in the context of being from the Soviet Union in the late 60s - a time period I know essentially nothing about but which I was surprised would produce work like this. It's fairly typical sci fi, hampered a bit by awkward translation at times.
If you're interested in seeing a glimpse of what this period was like for Soviet SF, it's definitely worth reading the whole collection. Otherwise, personally I think the two stories I mention are great and the rest could be skipped without loss. I'd rate those two a solid 5 and the rest about a 3, thus my conflicted 4 overall.
"A Day of Wrath" I also found very enjoyable - a well-done horror story.
The rest was interesting only when considered in the context of being from the Soviet Union in the late 60s - a time period I know essentially nothing about but which I was surprised would produce work like this. It's fairly typical sci fi, hampered a bit by awkward translation at times.
If you're interested in seeing a glimpse of what this period was like for Soviet SF, it's definitely worth reading the whole collection. Otherwise, personally I think the two stories I mention are great and the rest could be skipped without loss. I'd rate those two a solid 5 and the rest about a 3, thus my conflicted 4 overall.
October 17, 2013
Some stories seemed to go nowhere, most were fairly elliptical or enigmatic, with a deep mystery or gap of knowledge at the story's core. Uncertainty and melancholy are found in almost every story.
Meeting My Brother is probably the most moving, An Emergency Case the least interesting, Robby is basically a joke (I won't spoil the punchline but it's pretty funny).
Some of them involve concepts I found hard to grasp and demanded leaps of logic I couldn't or wouldn't follow. But there's something memorable in each one; a feeling, an image.
And The Purple Mummy describes, with remarkable accuracy, the use of 3D printing 50 years before it actually happened.
Meeting My Brother is probably the most moving, An Emergency Case the least interesting, Robby is basically a joke (I won't spoil the punchline but it's pretty funny).
Some of them involve concepts I found hard to grasp and demanded leaps of logic I couldn't or wouldn't follow. But there's something memorable in each one; a feeling, an image.
And The Purple Mummy describes, with remarkable accuracy, the use of 3D printing 50 years before it actually happened.
October 5, 2014
Quite enjoyable but not as impressive as I'd hoped. I'm not sure there are any real lost or obscure classics here. The usual sci-fi themes are covered (robotics, interstellar space travel, genetics, extraterrestrial life) but I was surprised by the lack of Soviet inflection. There's a bit but it's not overwhelming.
May 4, 2015
If this is the best, it doesn't bode well for the rest.
April 9, 2017
Fantastic mixture of short stories.
The Conflict is a fairly poor opener but was definitely well placed at the beginning, if just to get it out of the way. As for the others, it's difficult to pick a favourite. Meeting my Brother and A Day of Wrath were both excellent. An Emergency Case by the Bros. Strugatsky was - as expected - thoroughly enjoyable although might stir nightmares in me for the coming weeks.
The Boy probably tops the list for the imagery it conjures up. There's something very familiar about it all.
I expected I wouldn't enjoy The Purple Mummy: it conjures up bad memories of a "Whizzer and Chips" or "Topper" annual that contained some horror stories which I read when I was too young to be reading such things. Once involved though, it was a real page-turner.
Will definitely be coming back for a re-read or two, in future.
The Conflict is a fairly poor opener but was definitely well placed at the beginning, if just to get it out of the way. As for the others, it's difficult to pick a favourite. Meeting my Brother and A Day of Wrath were both excellent. An Emergency Case by the Bros. Strugatsky was - as expected - thoroughly enjoyable although might stir nightmares in me for the coming weeks.
The Boy probably tops the list for the imagery it conjures up. There's something very familiar about it all.
I expected I wouldn't enjoy The Purple Mummy: it conjures up bad memories of a "Whizzer and Chips" or "Topper" annual that contained some horror stories which I read when I was too young to be reading such things. Once involved though, it was a real page-turner.
Will definitely be coming back for a re-read or two, in future.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews