The book is amazingly multifaceted, full of a lot of non-trivial ideas, closely linked to one another. Just briefly mentioning these ideas is already material for a long article.
One of the main distinguishing features of the novel is fundamentally different social relations. Efremov, in deed, and not in words, was a convinced communist, for which he was persecuted by ordinary people, some colleagues of the Academy of Sciences, and many party officials. Now there is the term “noosphere communism”, which, of course, more accurately reflects what Ivan Antonovich wrote about. Some people prefer to simply say “the highest form of society.” But let us remember: the word “communism” was decisive for the writer. At the same time, even under strong pressure, he did not go so far as to mention the monuments to Marx and Lenin in the book. So it's not a matter of conjuncture.
The writer’s invention is amazing: the Academy of Sorrow and Joy.
The ability to lead is the most vital thing in such a society, because power in it is based not on fear or blind faith, but solely on competence and rational trust in a proven leader. Therefore, in Efremov’s future there are no convinced conservatives or supporters of reckless progress. The principles of decision-making themselves are different here. Each specific proposal is analyzed from the point of view of the increase in human happiness and the general ascent of humanity. As a rule, more or less averaged solution options are chosen. At the Astronomy Council, Grom Orm utters a well-known phrase: “The wisdom of a leader is to promptly recognize the highest level for the present moment, stop and wait, or change the path.”
That's what they do. They deliberately delay the development of the parapsychic sphere, because psychophysiological perfection has not been fully honed and there is a dangerous risk of losing control over the psyche. They refuse to populate planets with higher thinking life, even if it has not reached a high level, because then misunderstanding and violence are inevitable. Gift Veter, who personifies the wisdom of earthly leadership, does not give the go-ahead for the Tibetan experiment, because several decades of preparation by the standards of all humanity do not matter. But still: the heroes of the Tibetan experience are justified and their enormous significance for science is recognized. They send an expedition of amazing audacity to Achernar - to found the first colony in deep space. They proclaim the romance of scientific research as the spiritual basis of the excess power of society.
Naturally, such a society can only be formed by people who are ready to make well-thought-out decisions and implement them, sensitively reacting to what is happening. People who have the greatest possible breadth of views and that excess of understanding and generosity that does not allow them to ignore the interests of other people and the entire society, or narrowly limit themselves to personal desires and inevitably related personal problems.
The trust of the people of the future in each other is really great. This is a rule, not random insight in a world of errors, whims and hasty decisions. Therefore, the will of the other person is respected. It goes without saying that the person made a deliberate decision, and persuading him to change this decision is disrespectful. So Grom Orm leaves his responsible post.
The most complete, capacious expression of a deep understanding of life has always been called wisdom. Efremov's characters define wisdom as a combination of knowledge and feelings. This combination does not apply to all knowledge and not to all feelings. Feeling knowledge about true human nature is an understanding of the necessity of certain actions. Efremov's people have knowledge of their nature, therefore their altruism is balanced and natural.
Happiness in the novel is defined as a constant change of creative work and rest in the struggle for something new, in the exploration of the unknown.
Efremov's people are taciturn and sensitive, busy with hard work, understanding the need and importance of romance. These are people saturated, as if with electricity, with a joyful readiness for unexpected challenges and impressions. Their conversations are full of meaning, they learn to understand each other without words. These are people who have been trained in dialectical philosophy since childhood and therefore deeply feel such a concept as measure. Therefore, they are wary of euphoric delight and, on the contrary, emotional tightness, constraint of certain manifestations. Friendly, physically strong and beautiful people who know how to enjoy art and know how to work hard.
Of course, the foundations of relationships in society are laid from an early age. School in Efremov’s society plays a huge role in the development of a person. Huge also because there is no family in the modern sense of the word in his society. Schools are scattered in small towns all over the planet, and students and their mentors live there permanently. The role of the teacher in such a situation increases many times over.
Young people are by no means left to their own devices. The enormous energy that has long given rise to conflicts between “fathers and sons” must necessarily be directed in a positive direction. This is possible only if young people are fully engaged in creative, socially useful work and adults comply with the proclaimed ideals. Only then will young people not form a closed subculture aggressive towards strangers. Informal youth movements have always been a form of protest against the world of adults, against their lies and hypocrisy. In Efremov’s society, such a protest is meaningless, because living conditions meet the most basic human needs and cannot be completely rejected by a mentally healthy individual.
The saturation of the novel with pedagogical ideas is extremely great; it is not for nothing that the wonderful teacher V. A. Sukhomlinsky re-read it several times and wrote to the author in one of his letters: “I am a long-time admirer of your work. I read The Andromeda Nebula four times. This is not an addiction to fiction, but a desire to relive again and again, to feel the depth of thoughts that you have in abundance both in the lines and between the lines... Your fiction delights in its truthfulness. I am in love with your people of the future."
The school space is open and nonlinear. This is clearly expressed even in small details: classes, it turns out, usually take place in the garden under the trees, and the classrooms are unusual if only because they have no doors.
Education is divided into four cycles of four years, and each cycle the school moves to a different place to maintain the sharpness and freshness of perception, the cycles are taught in isolation from each other, so as not to irritate the children by the clash of too different ages. However, at the same time, older children always have a younger ward to facilitate the work of teachers and develop a sense of responsibility.
Classes in each school cycle alternate with labor lessons. What are these lessons? – we read about two activities – grinding optical glasses (can you imagine what it’s like to participate in the construction of a telescope!) and building a wooden ship using old technologies with a subsequent expedition to Carthage.
Efremov believes that the main thing is the study of history - not as our school subject, which essentially represents the history of wars and economic reforms, but global history, in the sense of studying the cause-and-effect relationships that led to the current situation.
Rhea talks to her mother. How does she talk to her? - free and open. It has formed a basic trust in the world. The world accepts her, she has nothing to fear in the world, she does not know what stupid misunderstanding or deliberate resentment is. Efremov, grasping and understanding the importance of such nuances, anticipates the development in our time of humane pedagogy, which is advocated by the best teacher of our time, Shalva Aleksandrovich Amonashvili.
In addition to direct mentors, boys and girls also have a mentor - one of the respected adults who helps determine their preferences and solve difficult issues of self-realization.
Seventeen-year-old young people who graduate from school do not immediately begin to receive higher education; for three years they go through a testing period called the Labors of Hercules. Some feats are assigned by elders, some are chosen independently. These feats are serious and responsible work, initiation.
An adult is a knowledgeable person interested in the fruits of his work. Absolute physical health leads to increased energy of existence, as a result of which the life of such a person cannot be limited to the narrow framework of personal existence. Any person can put forward any proposal, even on a global scale, and it will be discussed if it is really well thought out.
Love for nature has enormous psychological significance. Efremov writes: “Veda Kong thought about the moving peace of nature and how well places to build schools are always chosen. The most important aspect of education is the development of a keen perception of nature and subtle communication with it. A dulling of attention to nature is, in fact, a stop in human development, since, having forgotten how to observe, a person loses the ability to generalize.”
Attitude to things. To go through the complexity of material culture in order to arrive at its simplicity... Again we can see dialectical logic in action. The conclusions reflect not a private opinion, but the full force of an objective law. The shallowness of experiences and their artificiality, surrounded by a mass of small unnecessary things, obscures the manifestations of the most important thing in a person - what makes him different from an animal - the creative spiritual principle.
“Raising a new person is a delicate job with individual analysis and a very careful approach.”
The artist Kart San is concerned with creating images of beauty that correspond to the main racial types. His search leads to the deepest study of anthropological and ethnocultural material. In fact, he is trying to recreate in its pure form those peaks of beauty that were created in a series of hundreds of generations of natural life in different geographical conditions of the planet. In his work, he is as much a scientist as Ren Bose, only the area of his work is more difficult to verbalize (verbal description), acting directly on the senses.
We are not talking about private tastes and preferences of a particular era; beauty - as the highest measure of expediency - is objective, and it is necessary and necessary to understand its laws. But each individual system has its own intermediate ideals, which, in turn, will merge in the future into a shining crown of supreme harmony.
The famous dancer Chara Nandi, who inspired Kart Sana to create the Daughter of Tethys, demonstrates outstanding skill at the Festival of the Flaming Bowls, far from mere technical perfection. It is the spirituality of the body, “capable of expressing with its movements, subtle changes in beautiful forms the deepest shades of feelings, fantasy, passion, pleas for joy,” that is defined in the novel as a sign of truly great mastery.
The ability to understand and appreciate the beautiful, the constant readiness to admire genuine art - all this is united in the characters by a clear understanding of the nature of such art. Intuition coupled with clear thought; a combination of knowledge and feelings - we involuntarily return to the definition of wisdom as the basis of a harmonious life and the correct attitude towards it.
Efremov did not seek to amaze the readers’ imagination with the scale of mankind’s cosmic conquests. Every stellar expedition is a huge event. There are no fabulous spaceports with hundreds of spaceships flying to the stars like modern airplanes.
People's everyday life cannot be called high-tech. On the other hand, its simplicity and secondary importance compared to the social component of life do not imply complex technical devices for personal use. Transport is publicly available, but the writer’s logic is also reflected here: “the building cannot rise endlessly.” The speed of trains on the Spiral Road is limited to 200 km/h, and this has its own special meaning: there is no nervous desire to reach your destination as quickly as possible, and at high speed it is not easy to admire the surrounding landscapes. Thus, the Spiral Road indirectly serves the contemplative meditation of people who love nature and know how to admire it, distracting themselves from performing complex and responsible work.
The Great Ring is Efremov’s dream and providence. There are no other authors who would so forcefully affirm the enormous importance of the cosmic brotherhood of intelligent beings and describe it so completely. The writer himself well understood the conventions of depicting the Ring, defining himself as a person taking the first step in this direction. But with what inspiration and burning passion he does it. You have to be a completely callous person so that, after reading the scene of receiving the message from Epsilon Tucan, you would not begin to hear the melody of delight, participation in the cosmos and thirst for knowledge!
Efremov emphasized the difference between the people of the future and you and me. Their joys and sorrows will not be like ours, he argued. Now that history is taking its first steps towards a true understanding of the peculiarities of historical psychology, we can confidently say that this is how it should be. At the same time, the cardinal difference between the people of the future and the people of all previous eras is that they will be as close as possible to true reality - as opposed to the changeable ideologies and aesthetics of the past. Even now, despite the sharp increase in technical excellence over the past decades, which has informationally united the entire planet, we are immersed in myths, which is well understood by the creators of films such as “The Terminator” or “The Matrix.”
Many truths are simple and clear, but they are rejected or hushed up, because open recognition of the fragility of our life would mean a mandatory restructuring of consciousness. Such a restructuring when people will not hide their true feelings for fear of ridicule. On the contrary, friendly help will always be ready, because great nervous sensitivity on the basis of general goodwill will lead to the ability of instant recognition, and in a person’s life there will be no moments of weak-willed inactivity, apathy or, on the contrary, hysterical impressionability that destroys the interests of the matter.
Self-understanding is necessarily interconnected with general insight. The smallest nuances of behavior do not go unnoticed. But Efremov’s people are not only insightful, they are also tactful.
In the future, Efremov’s life is built in accordance with the constantly evolving laws of social and psychological development. Corresponding are the relationships between people, created on the basis of universal balance, the desire for beauty and knowledge. It is not easy for us, living in the most difficult era, to achieve the perfection of people like Darr Veter and Veda Kong. But to have before your inner gaze an example of the purity and sincerity of relations between people of this distant future means to bring its triumph closer here and now.
A lot could be said about the relationships of all the characters - they are written out exactly with a diamond cutter, and accusations of being “poster-like” are anecdotal when you understand the deepest truth of these relationships. I will cite just one striking episode:
“Grom Orm noticed a red light near Evda Nal’s seat.
Attention of the Council! Evda Nahl wants to add to the post about Ren Bose.
I ask you to speak in his place.
For what reasons?
I love him!
You will speak out after Mven Mas.
Evda Nal turned off the red light and sat down.”
How to rate this episode? Has the great Evda lost her nerve, and is she ready to babble incoherently at the Astronomical Council about her personal experiences? No! – and this is a very significant moment. Her argument is taken into account primarily because the people of Efremov’s future love the person himself, and not a fictitious image. Then love is the highest degree of understanding and penetration into the inner world of a person. Empathy, as psychologists say. Declaring her love, Evda Nal declared her special involvement in the motives of Ren Bose, on which no one else could shed light except her. Evda Nal's love is a sufficient basis for the conclusion that these motives were noble.
People of the future know firmly: serious relationships must have deep foundations. Love “in spite of” is a fairy tale in which either a powerful “for” is hidden and not understood by ignorant people, or a romantic dream that brings nothing but grave disappointments. A true life partner can only be one who is ready to walk the path of life together, being a comrade-in-arms; share with your soul all the difficulties of the path and understand them with your mind. True love is not when two people look at each other, but when two people look in the same direction. Ivan Efremov could subscribe to this idea of the wise Saint-Exupery without hesitation.
Love, stars and knowledge!
Rating: 10
4. The physics of space flights are not realistic. This is something that plagues many fantastic works. No launch time window, no gravitational corridor: if you wanted to land on some planet, you rushed to it directly and sat down, why bother? This is still forgivable.
But why waste fuel just to maintain flight? A spaceship is not a car. It does not experience aerodynamic resistance, its movement is not resisted by friction in the wheels and all mechanical components. Fuel in space is needed only to accelerate or slow down. Once it starts moving, the ship will not stop on its own.
5. A huge space satellite 57 in Earth orbit, performing only the functions of an information relay for Great Ring transmissions. Why him? And even with the people on duty on it? Is it really impossible to get by with miniature specialized repeaters that work almost autonomously?
6. The whole novel is about a small group of people. These people are known and respected by the entire planet. The novel, in fact, does not describe the people of the future, it describes only the best people of the future. What the rest of humanity is doing is not clear. It seems to exist only for the background. Well, someone has to herd whales for meat, grow algae for greens, clean roads (or are there none?), repair buildings, design toilets. The heroes of the work live in some incomprehensible world, divorced from everyday life. This, in my opinion, is perhaps the most significant disadvantage of the entire work.
7. Spiral road with a maximum speed limit of 200 kilometers per hour. Moreover, the author himself cannot withstand the invented restrictions and sends his heroes on long trips by plane without much need. Well, what is it? This means that all people are equal, but who is more equal? Let either all people fly by plane if they are in a hurry, or travel by train at a maximum speed of 200 kilometers per hour.
8. A short, chaotic story about Mven Mas on the island. The chapter does not describe island life. The island here is not a destination, but some kind of station, past which the train passes without stopping. The entire island chapter was made for the sake of a meeting with the mathematician Beth Lon, whose person does not play a significant role in the further development of the narrative. What was this chapter for? To show that there is still a place left on Earth where those who fail to live up to public trust are exiled? A kind of analogue of a prison, an analogue of Australia, where Britain sent its criminals.
9. General dryness of presentation - people of the future are deprived of spiritual feelings that we understand; they look like pretentious robots, whose inner experiences are very simple. Excessive attention in a novel is often paid to things that have little impact on the development of the plot. Lengthy descriptions of dances and settings often create melancholy, which makes you put the book aside.
Rating: 6
Actually, I was supposed to leave my first review about this book, but I succumbed to momentary moods... Even when I was in the second or third grade, I ran to school past a poster with the announcement of the film, and my main desire was to see the cosmic man as soon as possible like on the poster. Alas, there was still no film, the poster disappeared (later they said that the film burned), and I was terribly worried that life would pass, but I would never be able to read this book (neither in the library nor in the store - no... ). The mood with which I picked up the first volume of the BSF a few years later is understandable. I savored every page, every word... I gave the book to a friend and classmate - and he returned it to me a few days later in a shocked state of mind... for us it was a revelation that determined our view of the world. Not human-animals snatching each other's piece of daily bread, but human-creators, striving with every movement to comprehend the world - this is the ideal of the future society. Frozen world? But why is it frozen if every inhabitant is in search? I don't know, there's some kind of logical inconsistency here. The opportunity to do what you love, to do work that is useful to others and interesting to yourself, while having an almost unlimited set of tools, and not to suffer from boredom - isn’t this an approach to the ideal, an endlessly upward arc of function? Or is the beating the highlight that you can’t live without?
Rating: 10
This is where its main drawback (or rather, its feature) comes from - the difficulty of reading. The novel is written in heavy language that requires thoughtfulness and slowness. Don't expect to read it in one sitting. But in fact, the difficulty is not even in the language or style. The essence of the novel is the philosophical idea of the development of society not through the improvement of the means of production, but through the development of the human personality, its aspirations and motivations. If you are not interested in this topic, then it is better not to take on “The Andromeda Nebula” at all.
Personally, I believe that this novel is truly epoch-making, since the idea contained in it carries philosophical power comparable to the works of the classics of philosophy.
This is my personal opinion, but I am convinced that humanity will need to develop new forms of development and ultimately abandon the prevailing philosophy of consumption today. Otherwise, our species will simply die. What this form will be called - communism, noosphere, meritocracy or something else - is not important. Its essence is important - the improvement of the human personality, and not human life. If people form correct ideas about goals in life, then society itself will determine the required level of production of material goods and comfort in everyday life and will achieve its achievement. And, in my opinion, Efremov brilliantly formulates these goals with one single phrase: “a person is born for achievement, love and knowledge.” Having filled his life with achievements in these great beginnings, a person will be truly happy.
It is significant that Efremov’s heroes think in categories that are generally similar to the thinking of modern man. They are also looking for themselves, striving for excellence in the business that interests them, loving, fighting. And they experience similar problems - disappointment, unhappiness in love, inability to achieve their goals for one reason or another. They are just like us - they just organized their time rationally, freed themselves from false motivations and became a little kinder to each other. That's all.
I completely disagree with those who call the Andromeda Nebula a utopia. The heroes of the novel are constantly faced with various problems that they are unable to resolve and suffer severely from this. Let me remind you that in the world of “nebula” there is even an Academy of Sorrow and Joy, which analyzes how happiness and unhappiness correlate in people’s lives. Efremov directly writes that there are also misfortunes that no society can overcome, no matter how perfect it is - unrequited love, lack of talent for art, and others.
In general, the novel paints a large-scale and exciting picture of a world in which a person is completely free. Free not only from some external pressure, but first of all from his own dark qualities. And, most importantly, in Nietzsche’s words, free not so much from something as FOR something. Namely - for achievement, love and knowledge. What could be better and higher?
Rating: 10
It’s amazing how many laudatory reviews there are for a frankly gray work!
Well, let’s present our impressions one by one. Efremov’s novel is social fiction, so let’s evaluate the society that Efremov depicts.
1. It is not stated directly anywhere, but there is birth control in society. One hero tells the other that he was born on a spaceship back in the days when they didn’t give pills that suppressed this matter. And in fact: flights last 20-30 years, why should astronauts engage in this obscenity? It’s better to let them sit and carry out complex calculations on how they managed to get to the iron star and how to get out of its iron embrace!
Birth control on Earth is carried out not so much by medication as by education. Let people do complex mathematical calculations rather than the process of making children - it’s more useful to society. The main character of the novel is a direct confirmation of this. As the novel progresses, it turns out that this frivolous girl is only thinking about having children (one child, apparently), but even for this, until the last pages, she does not have enough courage. And this despite the fact that children are taken away immediately after birth and suffer with diapers during sleepless nights does not threaten.
The obvious primacy, if not of gerontocracy, then of the attitude towards young people as consumables. Young people are actually being pushed into life-threatening experiments and experiments. Well, if all these Soviet-communist praises in the novel, that everything is for the sake of young people, are true, send the old people to a dangerous experiment! No, no and no: upbringing is such that young people THEMSELVES strive to risk their lives, not to defend their Motherland, but to test a dangerous experiment of a physicist with a morbid self-conceit.
It is indicative how painfully Efremov wants that children, raised throughout their childhood away from their parents by strangers, felt feelings of deep respect, devotion and obedience for their parents! One heroine visits her over-aged daughter in a pretentious boarding school, and the daughter, in the best traditions of the “girls” of the 60s, modestly takes her mother’s hand! Are you going to take the hand of a person you don’t know well? What about the other way around? Do you need, if you are a parent, for a child whom you have not actually seen to be drawn to you? Here's the question!
In general, the strict subordination of the young to the mature (not the old, but the mature; Efremov prudently does not show old people in his novel) is one of the most important achievements of the society that Efremov describes.
2. The main achievement of this society is space exploration. There are two points here. Firstly, the technical side of the issue, and secondly, communication along the Great Ring.
I will not evaluate how much the TA technique complies with the laws of physics. Let it be, at least 100 percent. It is important that people service the machines, and not vice versa. It would be impossible for the machine to take over the functions of a person, and the astronaut to relax! No, where to go! We came out of suspended animation, spun around in a dance - and did manual calculations for several hours! It's the same in a mine on Earth. Well, what the hell is Daru Vetru doing to get into this dangerous hole! If you care so much about people, build robots, let the machine do the work, not the person! But in TA the way the Soviet leaders needed it in the 60-70s. 20th century.
The second is communication along the Great Ring. Efremov cowardly did not show the society of those other star systems. The data is very fragmentary and vague. This is the most important nebula in TA. Is there really communism everywhere, identical to earthly? And if not, does this mean that the main achievement of communism - going into space - is also possible with other social projects?
3. Relationship between man and woman. Situation: two people, in the romantic steppe, evening. All night they talk about science, about physics, about the stars. Even thoughts - no, no. And this novel is permeated entirely. This is not chastity, but banal frigidity, social impotence.
Looking at their atrophied gender feelings, it becomes extremely clear why in 2000 years from the 20th century humanity has made such poor progress in Space: there is no healthy attitude towards the love of a man and a woman - there is no technical progress.
4. Emptiness and wretchedness of life. There are a minimum of personal things: people, they say, have overcome all this. A whole page (or even several) is highlighted about personal cars, on which it is written that this is a dead-end branch of development, and the future lies with buses (they are named differently there, I don’t remember exactly how). I would like to say: well, this is fantastic! What's stopping you (if personal cars are disgusting to you) to come up with another means of transportation - as in "Guest from the Future", for example, by air!
There is a separate story here about gold. As the novel progresses, explorers find an ancient horse statue made entirely of gold. But although gold, as Efremov assures us, and as the heroes of the novel laugh, has long since meant nothing and has lost its monetary function, the statue is sent to be melted down so that the gold can serve in very complex and very important spacecraft.
There are two important things here: first, if gold is as insignificant as we are told, then why melt the statue? You wouldn't melt a statue of this horse if it were made of copper or aluminum, would you? Secondly, why send him to serve humanity inside instruments and machines? Has humanity really not come up with a replacement for gold over the past 2000 years? An expensive replacement, a cheap one - it doesn’t matter, but if gold doesn’t mean anything, why put it in the hearts of machines?
This proves that, in fact, although the social functions of gold have changed, they remain the same: gold is still an extremely important value.
5. At every step, the greatest achievements of culture, art and literature are mentioned like an incantatory mantra, but nowhere, not once, is it indicated what they consist of and what is so special about them that they are truly “the greatest.” Makes us assume that there is some art, some literature and some culture that are simply named, declared as the greatest, but in reality they are just dull.
However, no: one art is described in great detail and with such parameters that it is clearly clear that it has really gone much farther. This is a dance. Everyone dances - both on the spaceship after suspended animation, and on Earth during the holiday. Dance fused with artistic gymnastics is truly an achievement. But is it - alone - worth 2000 years of development from the 20th century?
Dance, as the only one of the “greatest achievements of sciences, arts and literature” described by Efremov, is very revealing. In societies of primitive communism, where even personal belongings are absent (in “Nebula” it is said that humanity has overcome this addiction, but this is like in the Soviet joke: Communism has arrived. They announced on the radio that the people will not need oil today), So, in such Spartan-type societies, the only type of art that flourishes is actually dance. In this regard, Efremov is very precise: besides dance, there cannot be any other arts in such a fertile society.
Enjoying the visual part of the attractiveness of the human body (in dance) without the act itself is voyeurism, right?
For a long time I was angry with myself that I spent money (Exmo, Giants of Science Fiction) on this city, until I said that it was my own fault: I saw that all the heroes had monosyllabic, simple, like chopped off names. EVERYONE HAS! And a society in which proper names are primitive simply cannot be a complex, diverse society, since proper names are a reflection of the beauty of the language and the development in which society is actually based, and not a declaration from above. I should have been smarter.
IMHO: a primitive presentation of the social ideas of Plato’s Republic, but placed in the distant future and equipped with space technology.
I put “1” because it’s simply impossible to put “0”.
Rating: 1
Reading The Andromeda Nebula, for me, is not really reading a book. It's better to visit a museum filled with monumental paintings and sculptures. Here in one picture, a crew of brave people gets out of a spaceship under the rays of searchlights into the vastness of the “planet of darkness.” Here are the interchanges of transport roads encircling the entire earth. Here is a group of engineers, deep in thought, discussing preparations for an unprecedented experiment in Tibet. And here a majestic and beautiful woman is captured dancing. In the next picture, a woman and a man dive from a high ledge into a transparent sea at the bottom of which lies a monument to antiquity. Next to it is a picture of a man in a spacesuit working in outer space on the construction of a space station. And here is a large picture in the center of the hall, where a group of people in a large room are looking at an image of a distant planet obtained from the Great Ring. And the people in all the paintings are completely individual, carved from granite. What is not a man is flint, what is not flint is a diamond, what is not a diamond is an emerald, etc. Everyone is unique and valuable. It is not for nothing that this museum contains sculptures of the majestic Dar Veter and Erg Nora. And everything is subject to the depicted people, and they can handle everything, and they evoke complete admiration.
However, this museum must be visited with maximum attention and concentration. In other words, it was not easy for me to read a book somewhere on the subway, because... The author's language is cold, yet rich in details, if you miss them you instantly lose the thread of the story or lose interest in reading. There is no incredible action or intrigue in the novel, but there is a monumental description of the possible greatness of human civilization. Well, for me, after reading it, the World of the Great Ring became almost a guiding star, an unattainable horizon, when moving towards which I don’t want to stop.
Rating: 9
"We are all different. Tall, short, thick, thin. Unclean, unclean..." (Babylon 5)
There was one episode in a wonderful science fiction series, from which I took the epigraph for this review, which tells about the vicissitudes of inflated ideals. A certain race of biorobots created them for their own protection and laid in them the parameters of an ideal citizen, whom these defenders should never have touched. The biomachines killed first their enemies, and then their own. Because no one fit the idealized parameters. At all. Everyone turned out to be “unclean”. Sometimes it seems to me that such biorobots inhabited the utopias of some Soviet writers and behind the scenes cut out from them all those who did not meet the high standards of demiurges.
When I read this book at school, the world drawn by Efremov seemed boring to me. Now that I think about it, he scares the crap out of me.
The ideal society in the author's understanding seems to me to be a nightmare of a victorious technocracy. It’s hard to believe that the absolute majority of people came to this voluntarily. This is some kind of “Mechanical Piano” by Vonnegut, where the techies killed off all those who disagreed and were completely different, eradicating them at the genetic level. Children here are immediately taken from their parents and begin to be brainwashed from the cradle. Almost identical young people grow up from them, equally beautiful and athletic, obsessed only with work, science and dancing, who have long ago made everything they touch boring and sterile. Even on dates, they only talk about physics and mathematics. For all those who disagree, who will still remain, no matter how you erase all human vices and quirks from them, they left a couple of tiny reservations. And at the same time, those who stand at the head of society as true technocrats have apparently laid down for the younger generation the attitude “normal cars are expensive, people are cheap,” so boys and girls are ready to commit suicide where theoretically they could well be replaced by robots, in a world like this something in the distant future. Some even board ships and fly off on hundred-year expeditions without a chance to return. Maybe this is another way to get rid of those who have even begun to doubt? Out of sight, out of mind…
In general, if I lived in such a “utopia,” they would probably take me, an old retrograde and obscurantist, under their white hands, pack me on a boat and moor on the road without returning to any Alpha Centauri. To benefit society and not morally corrupt the youth of a bright future. It's better for everyone that way. I still don’t want to live in such a sterile and boiled-over world.
Rating: 3
Excellent work! So light, bright and ennobling that you involuntarily, almost physically feel how the author believed in his dream of such a future... Of course, “The Andromeda Nebula”, in comparison with Efremov’s later works, such as “The Razor’s Edge” and “The Hour” bull”, carries a more pronounced flavor of that era, and the time of writing the work is clearly felt... However, I did not see in the characters of the novel that inanimate “poster-like quality” that was talked about so much. On the contrary, Efremov, as if between the lines, made it clear to readers that even in the distant future, in a perfect and organized society, having gotten rid of many prejudices and remnants of the past, people will always remain people! And in the main characters you can see these invisible threads.
Veda Kong knows that she is beautiful, and, as befits a real woman, she skillfully uses her charms, the “victim” of which (with a plus sign) is Darr Veter. The head of external stations, to whom nothing human is alien, whose inner world and experiences are very widely revealed in the novel (right up to the stunning, absolutely “down-to-earth” and “humane” episode, when in a conversation with Mven Mas and Ren Boz he says that he understands people , cheering themselves up with alcohol, smoking and drugs in difficult times of uncertainty, anxiety and loneliness), alone with Veda, he feels like a strong man, a defender with almost youthful prowess!
Fragile and boyishly dreamy Nisa Krit, sincerely, selflessly in love with Erg Noor, a fearless but very vulnerable man, much older (as the author makes us understand) than herself. A very modern and relevant theme of true love with a significant age difference!
Ren Boz, modest and shy, being confident in his rightness, transforms before his eyes into a real fan of his business, whose eyes sparkle, who is not afraid to seem ridiculous and demonstrates considerable wit in conversations! This is precisely what wins the heart of Evda Nal.
Of course, Mven Mas... Probably my favorite character. Educated and intelligent, a little more sophisticated than Darr Veter, but at the same time an ardent and passionate nature, thirsty for knowledge, a storm of feelings and emotions! And he, like many great “rebels” of spirit, art and thought from all past eras on our planet, was inspired to take a desperate step... of course, the power of female beauty! The first impulse is a message from the star system Epsilon Tucana, after which the image of a beautiful red-skinned woman from a distant planet appears before Mven Mas as a guiding star, and the second is the sincere, inviting and passionate dance of Chara Nandi at the festival of the Flaming Bowls! After this, he no longer has any doubts about the need to conduct the fatal Tibetan Experience! Even on the Island of Oblivion, the power of female beauty and compassion awakens in Mven Mas a lost sense of his own rightness...
And, finally, the immensely sad scene of the departure of the starship “Swan”... where all the words in the world were unable to convey the melancholy of eternal separation from friends and loved ones... And pride in their desperate feat!
Rating: 10
Quite tired of Sapkowski's fantasy saga and other modern and not so modern crafts, I wanted to read something serious, smart and exciting, and was drawn to the stars :). The choice fell on TA, the name itself is already inspiring, especially since it is one of the pillars of Soviet science fiction (this, by the way, was alarming), which at one time did not reach me (and maybe it’s good that it didn’t…).
In evaluating this work, one can consider two equal components: artistic and ideological.
From an artistic point of view, I did not find anything impressive or extraordinary in the novel that could be noted in a positive way. One-sided descriptions that are similar to one another, be it people, nature or space. The author tries to impress the reader with the gigantism and scale of what is described, with the superlatives of everything he describes. Dialogues are flat, lifeless, boring; the characters' reflections are long and spatial, often abstracted from the problems of modern man, rudely imposed by the author on his reader in an attempt to ideologically indoctrinate a man of the present, not the future. The storyline is also completely and completely sacrificed in order to make room for the ideological component - I think it would be difficult to argue that such a literary device often does not make the book look good in a literary sense, and so it is here. The only splash of the plot - a space expedition and landing on a dark planet - takes up barely a third of the book and it is this one that is mentioned in almost half of the reviews as having aroused interest and justifying the high score of the book. It's funny, but some of the reviews honestly admit that the remaining chapters were simply skipped or read sideways :). The listed artistic characteristics led to the fact that it was difficult and boring to read (well, minus the repeatedly mentioned beacon and breakthrough in Soviet science fiction - the episode with the landing at a dark star, which, as is known even in the absence of fish, cancer is a fish, and from a modern point of view - too already looks pale and with ragged plot possibilities - the alien ship remains to hide its secrets). And how this could be read in elementary grades, as some admit, I sincerely sympathize. There were clearly not enough fairy tales in the USSR: I remember how a fairy tale about the Emerald City or about Moss Beard and company fell into my hands, and how everything else paled in comparison...
But we must give the author his due: from a technical point of view, the author prepared thoroughly, and although he could not foresee the computer era, the technical nuances he described mostly still look modern and do not cause condescending smiles. So I cannot accept the call of other laboratory technicians to take into account the year of writing and not judge strictly. Moreover, having before me examples of successful authors of the “era of decayed capitalism”, the same Heinlein or even Wells - who worked another 50 years earlier (!), and, excuse me, I cannot help but conclude that here (I have not yet read anything else from Efremov ) the author is far from them, precisely from an artistic point of view.
Many laboratory assistants say in their reviews, “so what, whether utopia or communism, the author still described a worthy future, whatever you call it, but it is bright and they say we must strive for it and I want to live in such a future!” This point of view, honestly, causes me sincere surprise and in order not to enter into a direct argument, I will simply give a few quotes from the future author:
- “But who will stop working for the sake of extra years of life?” (by the way, about half) - the author sincerely asks, and really, who? - where to find such an idiot :)), because work is eternal, and then you can get life again;
- “All workers went deep into the island to destroy ticks found on forest rodents” - this quote well illustrates the scale of the problems being solved in the century of victorious communism; I just see how people who have spent more than 20 years on education, scientists, astronauts, doctors of the future, having changed many professions in their multifaceted and eventful lives, people who have fixed their gaze on the stars, armed with blasters, lasers, hung with electromagnetic mines and infrared traps, on modern with powerful technology they go into the depths of the NOT virgin forest to exterminate bedbugs! :)))) Here for some reason I remember Lem with his artificial companion made of steak and a ladle for stirring in a nuclear boiler...
- “One of the *greatest* tasks of humanity is the victory over the blind maternal instinct...” - I don’t even know what else I can add here :)
As for communism itself, despite several common features (for example, unjustified gigantism or joyful sacrifice of oneself for the sake of some incomprehensible ideas, and always at the first call) and this word being mentioned several times, I think that this is not the era of victorious communism . The author honestly admits in one of his interviews that he had read a lot of gloomy prophecies of Western literature and wanted to create his own version of the future, only bright and kind, it turns out that there is a lot of intelligence in the universe, all intelligence is only humanoid and with development it becomes only sublime and peaceful. Even if the author, to please the current situation at that time, wanted to call it communism, I still cannot agree with him, he also ended up with a utopia, but a different one. And the era of victorious communism is very convincingly depicted by Ouerel in his novel “1984”, whoever is interested should take a look.
Nevertheless, the resulting result (our response to the author’s Chamberlain, namely to create a picture of a wonderful and bright future) also somewhat frightens and repels me. Despite the good intentions, whatever the author’s idea is, if not the idea itself, then its result, basically, how to put it mildly... in general, I hope they will never happen. For example:
Unity with nature is declared, in return the author falls into communist gigantism and seeks to destroy a good part of the species of flora and fauna in a separate commission, deciding which of them are considered harmful and which are useful. Instead of unity, he rushes into a fight with nature and, not satisfied with the classic reversal of rivers, shifts the axis of the planet, drowns ice caps, moves climatic zones, encircles the planet with a giant network of roads.
The institution of the family is being completely destroyed, with the establishment of a planetary orphanage and who knows what else. Gender equality is declared, but every woman must fulfill her duty (to whom?) and give birth to at least two children. I wonder, is a man also obliged to take part in this twice, or can some be heroic fathers (inseminators?), while others simply enjoy themselves without hope of offspring? How then are moral standards regulated? The family is trampled upon, religion is abandoned, what keeps the people of the future within limits? (I mean, so that it doesn’t turn out to be an all-planetary brothel, instead of all-planetary communism :)).
The text constantly shows the author’s admiration for female beauty (I don’t blame him here :)), the author strives to undress the women of the future somewhat: short dresses, barely covered breasts... and the like. At the same time, men walk around and talk about the stars, philosophy and similar crap, waiting for years until they are noted and favored. In a multi-year stellar expedition of 6 years, the commander steadfastly resists the young astronavigator literally hanging on his neck and provoking him, among other things, to make physical contact. He does not even steadfastly resist this, but waits until he returns and receives a blessing from Evda Nal, who remains on Earth, who herself has been playing tricks all this time and cannot wait to receive a similar blessing from him. At the same time, their entire relationship boils down to just numerous squeezing of her hands in hers and putting them to her cheek, or she will once again accidentally rub her nose against his cheek. Nonsense. These are mannequins, not some kind of people.
Equality is declared, no one is in a hurry, everyone travels on the same road, but our heroes repeatedly, if they feel like it, break this structure, become more equal than others and get there not in a common carriage, but an order of magnitude faster than others, using the necessary connections.
What we can agree with is the idea of overcoming humanity’s passion for acquisitiveness, destroying the power of the material in favor of the spiritual. But even here people turn out to be some kind of puppets, robots. They have nothing, no home, no family, their only goals are to reach for the stars. For what? For what? The main happiness is in work for the sake of work; the more complex the work, the more popular it is. Instead of having narrow but powerful specialists in their field, humanity wastes time and money on their repeated and multi-purpose retraining. And each individual repeatedly and radically changes his profession. Here, instead of Lem, the Strugatskys with their grotesque “Doomed City” come to mind, but they didn’t try to present a change of professions as a blessing :). Or maybe the author should have thrown Love on the same altar (where personal, family, motherhood, etc.) are, because if in the author’s future, the entire population of the planet joyfully agrees to give up what I see as meager pleasures for a year, for the sake of In order to send another stellar expedition a couple of years earlier, but already 80 years later, with no hope of returning, then the refusal to spend on love and saving or generating energy on this basis on a planetary scale would probably allow us to launch not such expeditions yet !!!:)).
In the end, I don’t want such a future and I feel sorry for these people - the heroes of the book - they are zombies! And the author, having not yet built his communism on a single planet, is already striving and dreaming of spreading it throughout the universe in the future...
And the last feature is more literary. All heroes are equal to the rest of the people on the planet, but for some reason they are endowed with special influence, children in schools admire them, they achieve achievements that are superior to others, and the like. For many years, the expedition commander has been an active member of one of the highest planetary councils, and the entire council is waiting for him to return to consult with him. I have one question: what are the rest of the declared equivalent billions of the planet’s population doing at this time - the people of the future? Something in the process of reading them was completely unnoticeable.
Finally, the last page is turned and I turn inward in search of an aftertaste: I feel a desire to read something from a similar era as a counterweight, for example the Strugatskys, and in my ears, for some reason, by analogy with color music, Asmolov and especially hauntingly from Trofimov “There, There” sound , there, the Lord will give everyone candy... and lead them into his communism...” And what are these ragulous, inert, monosyllabic names of the future worth? Deprived of connection with the past, deprived of poetry and individuality... It was just right for the author to take a pseudonym like Van Frem himself.
All the main ideas of this “utopia” contradict the entire modern society. Is everyone afraid of global warming and other environmental impacts? Efremov detonated atomic bombs at the poles, twisted the Earth's axis and caused his own global warming. Is everyone trying to preserve cultural heritage and monuments? Efremov flooded half of Europe with water, and he didn’t care. Maybe someone is complaining about excessive industrialization? Efremov built a cyclopean railway, an orbital bridge, a radio dish in the Himalayas, the size of the Himalayas, and other cyclopean garbage. If someone thinks that the institution of the family is in crisis and this has a bad effect on society? Efremov banned family altogether, dotted the planet with orphanages, and communication between parents and children is considered strange, to say the least.
Oh yes, Efremov’s people are simply ideal: beautiful, athletic, healthy and smart. But the thought torments me that Nazi eugenics could not have happened without it, and I would not be surprised that ugly, frail, sick and stupid children, somewhere on the site of flooded Greece and Sparta, are thrown off a cliff or straight into the sea. If someone is dissatisfied, go to the reservation, all the “Huxley Islands” are flooded, so the reservation is a whole continent, full of Australia of the dissatisfied, I’m sure the Jews settled there, Israel was flooded and Moses did not help.
From the point of view of psychoanalysis, the entire active population of the Earth simply hates itself. Everyone is straining for the common good, contrary to the principle of pleasure, and the hardest work is the most in demand, and it can only be obtained through connections. In the absence of marriage and the concept of jealousy, it would seem that there should be orgies or open polygamy on every corner, but earthlings have no time for this, here the common good is at stake, they need to work, and those who have such an idea as falling in love must overcome the call of public duty , and stubbornly suppress feelings of guilt. Even in the future of the USSR, sex is not expected, you have to sublimate and go to work in a vicious circle. And of course, children are taught from childhood to hate, despise and ridicule their historical past, even all achievements are perceived with a slight irony of significance.
I do not and cannot believe that a man of science, an archaeologist and historian, Efremov, believed in all this nonsense. And I would like to think that Soviet culture, blinded by ideology, mistakenly called this novel a utopia. I want to think that Efremov wrote “The Andromeda Nebula” as a warning about the obsession with ideas of communism-just around the corner.
Http://anlazz.livejournal.com/60570.html
I was, if I'm not mistaken, 13 years old. Friends of my parents gave me the Library of Contemporary Fiction for my birthday. These 24 volumes settled on the bookshelves in the hallway. My parents repeatedly explained to me in a low voice what a great event had happened. I went to thank generous friends, but I didn’t read these books.
At that time I read and re-read Dumas mainly.
Antipathy towards these volumes arose from persistent advice to read what was given to me.
I hadn’t read anything from science fiction before, although I read a lot.
The Andromeda Nebula was the first volume. About a year later I decided to read it. Did not work out. On the third attempt, after another six months, I finally got the hang of it. Well what can I say? There were no special emotions other than complete acceptance. Acceptance of the genre - forever, acceptance of His concept of the future - unconditionally.
At that time I was at that age about which they say that if you are not a communist in it, then you have no heart.
The variety of styles and depth of thought of Efremov, as well as his ability to create a work that amazes with its power, impresses me. I'm not ready to pick up and re-read this book again. Maybe because I don’t want to destroy something crystal, which is part of my dream about the future and was formed exactly then.
I read a lot of interesting reviews here. It was among the Strugatskys that I always found echoes of Efremov’s work. They know how to think big and, when designing reality and the future, they are unbridledly bold.
Efremov, it seems to me, wanted to visualize where we were all going then.
The dream of the bright and lofty had to be realized, this is how most idealists of that time thought. Efremov did not describe a utopian future, I think so. He wrote a science fiction novel, and his characters were supposed to act in the distant future, which we saw through his eyes.
Why shouldn't there be a world like this? It is fantastic. This world is incredibly interesting and not only has the right to life - it has already existed on these pages for a long time and in a certain coordinate system of the ideal future it also exists.
The characters are interesting, they are unusual, as if people threw away everything unnecessary and became different, the way they would be then.
The name seems very symbolic to me. And the word Nebula plays with glares of ambiguity.
"Andromeda's nebula"- social and philosophical science fiction novel by Ivan Antonovich Efremov. Written in 1955-1956. The first publication was in the magazine “Technology for Youth” in 1957. It was first published in book form by the publishing house of the Komsomol Central Committee “Young Guard” in 1958 (165,000 copies). It has been reprinted many times and translated into dozens of languages around the world.
The quintessence of Efremov’s social and philosophical reflections on the distant future was the large-scale and unprecedented novel in Soviet literature “The Andromeda Nebula.” (Book abstract)
Plot
The novel takes place in the distant future, at a time when the Earth is a single world, with a highly developed and intellectual, communist form of society. This time is characterized by the extraordinary development of science and art, the conquest of space, the artificial improvement of the earth's landscape and climate, and changes in human psychology.
The novel consists of several storylines designed to show the man of the future in all the diversity of his interests.
The first line tells about the flight of the spaceship "Tantra" and about its crew members. Having completed all the tasks of its expedition, the spaceship flies towards Earth, but accidentally finds itself in dangerous gravitational proximity to a previously unknown dark star, shining only with infrared radiation (for the heroes of the novel, such stars are known as iron stars, which does not quite coincide with the modern understanding of this term). The crew is trying to prevent a disaster. The spaceship commander Erg Noor lands on a planet in the system of this dark star. A surface scan reveals two more starships there. The first of them is the terrestrial starship Parus, which disappeared many years ago, the second is the spiral disk of an unknown civilization. The Tantra crew also faces a mysterious enemy - a local hostile life form. An attempt to study the spiral disk ends dramatically - the astronavigator Nisa Crete is seriously injured while saving the life of Erg Noor, who was attacked by another representative of the local fauna.
Other storylines take place on Earth. Dara Veter, the head of the External Stations, is diagnosed with a serious psychological illness - indifference to work and life (depression). Unable to cope with his responsibilities, he accepts the invitation of his friend, historian Veda Kong (Erg Noor's lover), to participate in archaeological excavations. Hard physical labor relieves Dara Veter from illness, and friendly feelings for Veda develop into love. Finding no way out of this situation (his beloved woman is awaiting the return of Erg Noor), Darr Veter goes to the titanium mines in South America.
Physicist Ren Bose has made an outstanding discovery, and to test it, it is necessary to conduct a dangerous and energy-consuming experiment on a planetary scale. Due to the high degree of risk in implementing the experiment, it was officially refused. Despite the ban, Mven Mas, who replaced Dara Veter as head of the External Stations, helps Ren Boz, thus committing a malfeasance. The experiment ends in disaster: Ren Bose is seriously injured, the orbital installation is destroyed, and the volunteers who participated in the experiment are killed. Mven Mas repents of his actions and voluntarily goes into exile on the Island of Oblivion - a refuge for those who want to hide from society or live as in former times.
Plot
The novel takes place in the distant future, at a time when the Earth is a single world, with a highly developed and intellectual, communist form of society. This time is characterized by the extraordinary development of science and art, the conquest of space, the artificial improvement of the earth's landscape and climate, and changes in human psychology.
The novel consists of several storylines designed to show the man of the future in all the diversity of his interests.
The first line tells about the flight of the spaceship "Tantra" and about the members of its crew. Having completed all the tasks of its expedition, the spaceship flies towards Earth, but accidentally finds itself in dangerous gravitational proximity to a previously unknown dark star, shining only with infrared radiation (for the heroes of the novel, such stars are known as iron stars, which does not quite coincide with the modern understanding of this term). The crew is trying to prevent a disaster. The spaceship commander Erg Noor lands on a planet in the system of this dark star. A surface scan reveals two more starships there. The first of them is the terrestrial starship Parus, which disappeared many years ago, the second is the spiral disk of an unknown civilization. The Tantra crew also faces a mysterious enemy - a local hostile life form. An attempt to study the spiral disk ends dramatically - the astronavigator Nisa Crete is seriously injured while saving the life of Erg Noor, who was attacked by another representative of the local fauna.
Other storylines take place on Earth. Dara Veter, the head of the External Stations, is diagnosed with a serious psychological illness - indifference to work and life (depression). Unable to cope with his responsibilities, he accepts the invitation of his friend, historian Veda Kong (Erg Noor's lover), to participate in archaeological excavations. Hard physical labor relieves Dara Veter from illness, and friendly feelings for Veda develop into love. Finding no way out of this situation (his beloved woman is awaiting the return of Erg Noor), Darr Veter goes to the titanium mines in South America.
Physicist Ren Bose has made an outstanding discovery, and to test it, it is necessary to conduct a dangerous and energy-consuming experiment on a planetary scale. Due to the high degree of risk in implementing the experiment, it was officially refused. Despite the ban, Mven Mas, who replaced Dara Veter as head of the External Stations, helps Ren Boz, thus committing a malfeasance. The experiment ends in disaster: Ren Bose is seriously injured, the orbital installation is destroyed, and the volunteers who participated in the experiment are killed. Mven Mas repents of his actions and voluntarily goes into exile on the Island of Oblivion - a refuge for those who want to hide from society or live as in former times.
Veda Kong and her friend, psychiatrist Evda Nal, visit Evda's daughter at school, and along the way talk about the successes of future pedagogy.
The artist Kart San paints portraits of the best representatives of different racial types. It should be noted that in the world of “Nebula...” the differences between races have almost disappeared (although the author explains that Dar Veter retained the phenotype of his Slavic ancestors, and Mven Mas is a Negro-African), that is, the artist wants to capture what is passing away.
At a meeting of the Council of Astronautics, almost all the main characters who are on Earth meet, including Darr Veter, Mven Mas (who was persuaded to return from the Island of Oblivion), Evda Nal. It discusses Ren Bose's experiment from both a scientific and a moral point of view, and makes important suggestions. As a result, Ren Boz is completely acquitted, and Mven Mas is deprived of the right to hold responsible positions, but is not exiled to the Island of Oblivion.
Veda Kong discovers an underground storage of ancient cultural objects: machine samples, technical documentation. There she finds a locked steel door, but does not have time to open it - a collapse begins.
In the finale, the characters accompany Erg Noor and Nisa Krit to a new space expedition, from which, due to the very large distance to the planetary system they were supposed to explore, they were no longer destined to return. Before this, the previously outlined love contradictions are finally resolved: Darr Veter remains with Veda Kong, and Erg Noor remains with Nisa Crete. After the expedition's departure on Earth, they receive a message from the Andromeda nebula from a civilization not included in the Great Ring: most likely, the starship of an unknown civilization, found by Erg Noor, took off from there.
The World of the Future in the novel
History of the Earth
In the preface to the second edition of the novel (1958, subsequent editions copied it), Efremov explains that, according to his initial calculations, humanity will reach the level of technological and social development described in the novel no earlier than in 3000 years, but in the process of working on the book the time interval has been shortened to 2000 years from now. However, the events that followed the publication of the novel - the beginning of active space exploration, the flights of the first satellites - showed that predicting the time of occurrence of certain specific events is too risky, therefore, in the second and subsequent editions of “The Andromeda Nebula”, as well as in its continuation - “The Hour” Bull,” all specific dates and chronological references were replaced with conditional ones, “into which, according to Efremov, the reader himself will put his understanding and presentiment of the time.”
Instead of dates, events are tied to the periodization of human history invented by the author, used in the historical science of the future. In The Andromeda Nebula, Veda Kong introduces this system when talking about the history of the Earth. It resembles the system of dating the geological and biological history of the Earth, now accepted in geology and paleontology. The whole story is divided into large sections - era and shorter ones - century, having their own names and reflecting the events taking place at these times.
- The era of a divided world (EDW) - from the emergence of the first states to the establishment of communism throughout the world. Century:
- Antique - corresponds to antiquity. At the same time, the novel mentions one of the ancient eras, called the Age of Eros.
- Capitalism - from the Renaissance to the first communist states.
- Splits - the emergence of the first communist states, the disintegration of humanity into warring blocs, wars between communist and capitalist states and, finally, the victory of the communist idea in all states of the planet. Judging by some statements, there was a global war with the use of nuclear weapons (the book mentions ancient weapons depots, as well as the “Arizona radioactive desert" (through the mouth of Grom Orm in the chapter "Council of Astronomy")).
- The Era of World Reunification (EWR) is a transition from many communist states to a single planetary state. Centuries (the names sound quite expressive; more detailed information about the events of these centuries was not given):
- Union of Countries
- Different languages
- Fight for Energy
- Common language
- The era of shared labor (ECW) - united humanity is carrying out global transformations aimed at optimizing production and consumption, designed to radically improve the quality of life. Century:
- Simplification of Things - two counter processes are taking place: the emergence of technologies that have made it possible to significantly support a person, in almost all areas of his activity, with powerful, compact and fairly intelligent mechanisms, and, at the same time, the eradication of such psychological characteristics of a person as attachment to things, passion for immoderate consumption . Standardization leads to maximum optimization of production. All this makes it possible to satisfy the majority of reasonable needs of all people. Automation of production makes it meaningless to create settlements near production - large industrial cities disappear, life becomes less crowded and more active in terms of moving around the planet.
- Reorganizations - the creation of artificial suns that heat the polar regions, grandiose canals, cutting through mountain ranges, changing the circulation of water and the atmosphere, which turned almost the entire planet into a blooming garden. Creation of the Spiral Road - a planetary highway that allows you to get to any corner of the planet. Refusal of the mass use of high-speed transport, as a consequence of changes in the lifestyle of the majority of the population.
- First Abundance - fundamental changes in the food production system, the transition to the industrial synthesis of sugars, hormones, vitamins (later, in GSE - and fats), mainly from coal, cultivation of perennial agricultural plants only for the production of proteins, use as a food base ocean algae. At the same time, there is a change in the traditions of food consumption - people have significantly simplified nutrition and made it less redundant. At the same time, humanity is supplied with nutritious food in volumes capable of fully satisfying all its needs.
- Space - the planets of the Solar System have been explored. The near-Earth space is filled with automatic satellites and laboratory stations. The space component has become part of the earth's economy.
- The Great Ring Era (GRE) is the time of the novel. The era began when, relying on the latest achievements in the field of communications and information processing, it was possible to decipher radio transmissions of alien highly developed civilizations, united in Great Ring- a galactic-scale communication network organized for the mutually beneficial exchange of information between populated star systems. The information obtained through the Great Ring made it possible to create interstellar spaceships - the exploration of deep space began. Apparently, the only specific date remaining in the novel - the action is dated 408 of the Great Ring Era, based on which the lower limit for dating the events is unlikely to be closer than 3000 according to our chronology.
- The Age of Meeting Hands (EMR) - in relation to the action of the Andromeda Nebula - the future. At the beginning of this era, the action of another novel by Efremov, “The Hour of the Bull,” takes place. In EVR, research into the properties of space and the structure of the Universe led to the creation of superluminal starships capable of moving through the curvatures of space-time; a flight over a distance of many light years takes about several Earth months, and most of this period is spent on navigation calculations; the transition itself takes several minutes. It becomes possible to directly contact residents of distant star systems and exchange information that exceeds the speed of conventional methods of communication.
Great Ring
In the novel, Efremov described an organization for the exchange of scientific and technical experience and maintaining cultural ties, uniting earthly civilization with other civilizations of our Galaxy, called the “Great Ring”. It is important to note the absence of superluminal communications, which seriously complicates communication both through radio traffic across the Great Ring and through starships. At the same time, transmissions along the Great Ring waste the energy of the entire Earth and therefore do not happen often. One of the book's chapters describes a history lecture for the planet star Ross 614 in the constellation Monoceros, a candidate for entry into the Great Ring.
The structure of society
Governance of the Earth is not centralized, and the governing bodies of society resemble the reflex arc of the human brain. The most important governing body is the Economic Council. It is supplied with information by advisory bodies: the Academy of Sorrow and Joy, the Academy of Productive Forces, the Academy of Stochastics and Future Predictions, the Academy of Labor Psychophysiology. The Astronautics Council is an independent body, equal to the Economic Council, but related only to Space.
Decisions on global issues are made by universal suffrage (see Direct Democracy). The level of education and responsibility of earthlings is high enough that each of them can be considered an expert on general issues of life on the planet. The voting itself is carried out using electronic means of communication and takes a minimum of time. When resolving private issues, the Academies and Councils limit themselves to internal discussion and decision-making.
Pedagogical system
Efremov included the best ideas of practitioners and theorists of pedagogy (Thomas More, Jan Amos Comenius, Pestalozzi, Helvetius, Jean-Jacques Rousseau) into the system of educating the world of the future.
Students in the world of “Nebula...” are divided into four age cycles, the schools of which are located in different places, since the joint life of different age groups interferes with education. Most of the classes at school are conducted outdoors, theoretical classes are constantly interspersed with training in various work skills and physical exercises. In general, a lot of attention is paid to physical education. School education is at the forefront of science - the school gives students only the latest, what will be advanced or at least widely used by the time they complete their studies. However, the study of any subject begins with a historical excursion, the main place of which is the study of mistakes made in the past.
At the age of 17, the student graduates from school and enters a three-year period of “Labours of Hercules” - he must, either alone or together with other graduates, complete twelve works (in two stages of six), relating to various areas of activity. “Feats” are assigned by teachers, in accordance with the identified inclinations and abilities of the students; these are not “educational tasks”, but quite serious, real work. Erg Noor says that he was counted among the exploits of Hercules by the fact that, having been born on a ship, by the time the expedition returned to Earth, he had mastered the profession of an astronavigator.
“To clear and make the lower level of the Kon-i-Gut cave in Central Asia convenient for visiting,” Tor An began.
“To lead the road to Lake Mental through the sharp ridge of the ridge,” Dis Ken picked up, “to restore the grove of old breadfruit trees in Argentina, to find out the reasons for the appearance of large octopuses in the area of the recent rise near Trinidad ...
- And destroy them!
- That's five, what's the sixth?
Both boys hesitated slightly.
“We both have a talent for music,” said Dis Ken, blushing. - And we are tasked with collecting materials on the ancient dances of the island of Bali, restoring them musically and choreographically.
- That is, select performers and create an ensemble? - Darr Veter laughed.
“Yes,” Tor An looked down.
To help with “exploits”, a mentor is usually invited - one of the adult specialists who can provide assistance, advise, and help in identifying and correcting mistakes.
“The Labors of Hercules” not only introduces the graduate to the world of adults, working people, but also, thanks to its versatility, allows him to try himself in various fields, to test in practice his preferences, inclinations, and the correctness of the direction of future activity chosen during training. Then follows a two-year higher education, which gives the right to independent work in the chosen specialty. During his life, a person manages to obtain five or six higher educations.
Characteristic external attributes of life
The people of Earth, without exception, are physically healthy, strong, and beautiful. In terms of physical fitness and health, there has been a return, on a new level, to the cult of naturalness and beauty of Ancient Greece. Racial features still remain, but are becoming more and more smoothed out and mixed. For some this is manifested by a mixture of external features of different races, for others - by the manifestation of signs of a single racial type. People know their ancestry well - in the recent past, the study of ancestors was a tool of medicine, although by the time being described, direct analysis of the genotype made it possible to obtain the necessary medical information without genealogical research. People are given names based on any consonance they like; they often try to choose consonances or words from the languages of the peoples from which they come. Dar Veter explains that his name comes from the roots of the Russian language: “One is a gift, the second is a wind, a whirlwind...”.
The average life expectancy of an earthling is about 170 years, recent research promises to increase it to 300 years or more, but they have not yet reached practical implementation. Representatives of especially difficult professions associated with prolonged excessive loads, in particular, star pilots, live much shorter - within 100 years; medicine does not yet know how to ensure their overall life expectancy. But this is not considered something tragic - a short life is perceived as a natural payment for the fullness of life, the most interesting and responsible work.
People are active, friendly, open, independent and responsible. Communication has been simplified - complex speech patterns intended to decorate speech and demonstrate education have fallen out of use, meaningless wit has died out, speech serves its main task - transmitting information. On any issue it is customary to speak directly, specifically, to the point. The person did not become less emotional, rather, on the contrary, moreover, in some cases, the expression of emotions became more obvious. For example, in a love relationship, an open expression of sympathy for the chosen one or chosen one is the norm. It is suggested that a third signaling system will be actively developed in EVC, ensuring mutual understanding between people without the use of speech.
The common language of the planet is simple in structure, regular, cleared of archaisms. Writing is a “linear alphabet” (letter signs are chosen to be as simple as possible in style). Despite the progress of electronics, traditional books and manual writing are preserved - another project to transfer all writing to an electronic basis is being considered, but, according to the heroes of the book, will be rejected - the complexity of reading devices is considered excessive.
There are no large cities on the planet; people live in small settlements concentrated in the most favorable areas for life, mainly in the subtropical zone. Those who are busy working in areas far from residential zones (various observers on duty monitoring automatic production, as well as people in “field” professions, for example, archaeologists) live close to their places of work. Moves usually involve a change in a person's job or preferences. All housing is public; for permanent residence, a person receives several rooms with standard furnishings. Maintaining cleanliness and order in the home is the resident’s concern, which, however, does not take much effort, thanks to the cultivated habit of order and the presence of technical systems that make cleaning easier. Personal items that make sense to carry with you when moving fit into a small suitcase - everything else will be provided anywhere as needed. For work, creativity, and entertainment, public spaces are used, appropriately equipped, even luxurious, providing everything necessary.
Earth arts include music, dancing, singing, sculpture and painting. Music uses electronic instruments, supplemented by a system for displaying light of different shades (a kind of color music, but the displayed colors are not uniquely related to sounds, but form a separate fragment of a work of art, perceived simultaneously with the music). Periodically, mass festivals are held where the best musicians and dancers demonstrate or compete in their skills. Holidays are dedicated to something, such as the "Feast of the Flaming Bowls" - a dance competition dedicated to women.
Issues
Utopianism
Andromeda is a classic communist utopia set in the distant future. Throughout the novel, the author focuses on the social and cultural aspects of society; the main characters have the professions of historian, archaeologist, and spaceship commander. The author proposes to consider the society described in the novel ideal, but at the same time there is an attempt to show the conflict between society and a scientist who voluntarily accepted punishment for his risky scientific experiment, which caused significant destruction. The novel contains several episodes describing the battle of the starship crew with alien predatory creatures and, at the same time, with the increased gravity of their planet.
A different assessment of Efremov’s utopia was given by Vsevolod Revich, who accused Efremov of beginning to defend communism in the post-Stalin years. Revich wrote:
He continued to believe that it was impossible to come up with anything better for the future of the Earth, and set himself the task of convincing those around him that communism is not a dull phalanstery, not a coercion, but a happy, beautiful and creatively fulfilling life for everyone.
Discussion with other writers
There is an opinion that, to a certain extent, the novel “The Andromeda Nebula” was a kind of response to the novel “Star Kings (Clash of Empires)” by Edmond Hamilton. In “Star Kings,” the story takes place in the very distant future, where the Milky Way galaxy has long been populated and, moreover, divided into states in the manner of the structure of the Earth during the Second World War. Hamilton's novel was a space opera adventure novel that was nonetheless loosely based on the events of World War II. A small but very aggressive state of the cloudmen, their leader similar to Adolf Hitler, a campaign to capture the entire galaxy and divide it with wavering and cowardly allies - and opposing this is a huge kingdom with a long history and powerful weapons capable of destroying space itself. Efremov decided to write his vision of the future, where there will be no place for kingdoms, wars and other remnants of our time.
It is curious that the names of the heroes according to Efremov strongly resemble the names of the future according to Hamilton: Jal Arn, Shorr Kan, Vel Quen, Sat Shamar, etc. But there are also differences - Hamilton also had a kind of patronymic - the first part of the father’s name became the second part of the name son (for example, Zart Arn and Jal Arn were sons Arn Abbas), and women's names consisted of one word - Lianna, Mern. (It is logical that after many centuries Dmitry and John will not be preserved, but in this case the consonance of the names of the two authors does not look like a coincidence; however, in the second book - “Return to the Stars” - Hamilton gives one of the minor negative characters the completely modern name John Ollen).
Scientific foresight
Efremov wrote that while working on the novel, he communicated with scientists of various specialties and tried to collect qualified opinions about the most distant, but also the most tempting prospects of scientific and technological progress, about the problems that will face humanity and its science in the future, about possible ways to solve them. At least some of Andromeda's assumptions about future discoveries and problems have aged slightly, and some of its predictions are only now beginning to be realized.
The novel was written in 1956, when worldwide successes in nuclear physics, reflected in the creation of nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons, gave rise to a kind of euphoria - projects for global transformations of nature were being developed with the help of “peaceful nuclear explosions”, a complete transition to nuclear energy was predicted, which seemed , promised only enormous benefits. The fundamental danger, especially in the long term, of nuclear energy has only recently become the subject of attention of scientists. In the novel, the first thing the reader encounters is the dead planet Zirda, which died not from a nuclear war (“a staple” of science fiction in subsequent decades, both Western and Soviet), but from the inhabitants’ unreasonable addiction to using the energy of nuclear decay, inevitably accompanied by environmental pollution. environment with long-lived radionuclides and an increase in the level of background ionizing radiation. Several generations - and the population of the entire planet completely died. Later, from Veda Kong’s lecture addressed to the new member of the Great Ring, the reader learns that people realized in time the danger of nuclear energy, built on fission and fusion reactions, and were wise enough to start finding a safer source of energy. The nuclear fission energy is not used on Earth; all the remnants of the old “dirty” radioactive fuel are removed from the atmosphere and used to power the circumpolar “artificial suns”, which provide additional heating of the planet’s poles.
Only recently, in connection with the spread of mobile communications, has the question of the possible negative consequences of constant exposure to fairly strong electromagnetic waves begun to be raised. On the future Earth of Efremov, the harmlessness of EMR has long been known to man, and he has long abandoned the use of powerful omnidirectional radio transmitters. Individual electromagnetic communication devices are rarely used. Information messages go through other communication channels, in particular, directional radio channels are used, mainly via satellites.
Since the 1970s, stress has been declared one of the main enemies of the modern city dweller. Chronic fatigue, self-dissatisfaction, various somatic diseases caused by nervous exhaustion, loss of interest in work and life. Efremov’s entire system of life and work for mankind is built precisely in such a way as to prevent stress from occurring, so that a person works with full dedication, but receives joy and pleasure from it. Efremov’s worst, most dangerous mental symptom is loss of interest in work. Indifference, according to Efremov, is not a personality trait, but a symptom of a disease.
In the novel, one of the leading roles in food production is played by the artificial cultivation of chlorella in the oceans to produce protein from it for the production of synthetic food. Currently, there are projects of this kind that have a very serious justification. In general, the very idea expressed by the author, that without a global transformation of the food production system, the Earth will not be able to provide the entire population with sufficient nutrition, has not yet been fully realized, although the problem of providing the Earth’s population with food is, on a global scale, very acute.
I. A. Efremov about working on the novel
I. A. Efremov claimed that working on “The Andromeda Nebula” was very difficult for him due to the fact that the novel was created in the science fiction genre. According to Efremov, the thought of space and intergalactic travel attracted him long before the first Soviet satellite was launched into orbit. Acquaintance with several dozen foreign science fiction novels (mostly American), which described the death of humanity and space wars of interplanetary civilizations, aroused a polemical desire to propose my own humanistic concept of space exploration. Thus, the idea of the "Great Ring" arose. This is exactly what the novel was originally supposed to be called. While working on the manuscript, the image of the man of the future came first.
Accordingly, the title of the work changed to “Andromeda Nebula.” Although, the idea of the “Great Ring” still remained the main one.
According to I. Efremov, when preparing the novel, he wrote down sketches and notes in special notebooks. He himself called these notebooks “wise notebooks.”
After collecting the material, work on the novel did not move for a long time, until, according to the testimony of I. Efremov, he saw in his mind’s eye a fragment of the brave astronauts’ visit to the planet of Darkness.
During the creation of the novel, I. Efremov lived at his dacha near Moscow and communicated with almost no one; he wrote almost every day. Contemplation of the starry sky and observation through binoculars helped him get ready for work.
The first publication of this novel in the magazine had not yet been completed, and artificial satellites had already begun their rapid flight around our planet.
In the face of this irrefutable fact, you are glad to know that the ideas underlying the novel are correct.
The scope of fantasy about the technological progress of mankind, the belief in continuous improvement and the bright future of a rationally organized society - all this is so powerfully and visibly confirmed by the signals of the small moons. The miraculously swift fulfillment of one dream from “The Andromeda Nebula” poses a question to me: how correctly is the historical perspective of the future deployed in the novel? Even in the process of writing, I changed the time of action in the direction of bringing it closer to our era. At first it seemed to me that the gigantic transformations of the planet and life described in the novel could not be carried out earlier than three thousand years later. I based my calculations on the general history of mankind, but did not take into account the rate of acceleration of technological progress.
When finalizing the novel, I shortened the intended period by a thousand years. But the launch of artificial Earth satellites tells me that the events of the novel could have happened even earlier. Therefore, all specific dates in “The Andromeda Nebula” have been changed to those in which the reader himself will invest his understanding and premonition of the time.
A feature of the novel, perhaps not immediately clear to the reader, is its saturation with scientific information, concepts and terms. This is not an oversight or a failure to clarify complex language. This is the only way it seemed to me possible to give a flavor of the future to the conversations and actions of people of a time in which science must deeply penetrate all concepts, ideas and language.
I. Efremov
Chapter first
Iron Star
In the dim light reflected from the ceiling, the instrument dials seemed like a gallery of portraits. The round ones were cunning, the transverse oval ones blurred in arrogant complacency, the square ones froze in dull confidence. The blue, cyan, orange, and green lights flickering inside them emphasized the impression.
In the center of the curved remote control, a wide and crimson dial stood out. The girl bent in front of him in an awkward position. She forgot about the chair next to her and brought her head closer to the glass. The red glow made the young face look older and more stern, outlined sharp shadows around the protruding full lips, and sharpened the slightly upturned nose. The wide, frowning eyebrows turned deep black, giving the eyes a gloomy, doomed expression.
The subtle singing of the counters was interrupted by a soft metallic clang. The girl shuddered, straightened up and wrung her thin arms, arching her tired back.
A door clicked behind me, a large shadow appeared and turned into a man with jerky and precise movements. A golden light flashed, and the girl’s thick dark red hair seemed to sparkle. Her eyes also lit up, turning to the newcomer with concern and love.
- Aren't you asleep? One hundred hours without sleep!..
- Bad example? – the newcomer asked without smiling, but cheerfully. High metallic notes slipped through his voice, as if they were riveting his speech.
“All the others are asleep,” the girl said timidly, “and... they don’t know anything,” she added in a low voice.
- Don't be afraid to talk. The comrades are sleeping, and now there are only two of us awake in space, and the Earth is fifty billion kilometers away - only one and a half parsecs!
– And the namezone is only for one acceleration! – Horror and delight sounded in the girl’s exclamation.
With two swift steps, the head of the thirty-seventh stellar expedition, Erg Noop, reached the crimson dial.
- Fifth circle!
- Yes, we entered the fifth. And nothing. – The girl cast an eloquent glance at the sound horn of the automatic receiver.
- You see, you can’t sleep. We need to think through all the options, all the possibilities. By the end of the fifth circle there should be a solution.
- But that’s another hundred and ten hours...
“Okay, I’ll sleep here in the chair when the effect of the sporamin wears off.” I took it a day ago.
The girl was thinking intently about something and finally decided:
– Maybe we should reduce the radius of the circle? What if they have a transmitter failure?
- It is forbidden! Reducing the radius without slowing down means instant destruction of the ship. Reduce speed and... then without anameson... one and a half parsecs at the speed of the most ancient lunar rockets? In a hundred thousand years we will approach our solar system.
- I understand... But they couldn’t...
- Could not. Since time immemorial, people have been able to be careless or deceive each other and themselves. But not now!
“That’s not what I mean,” the girl’s sharp answer sounded offended. “I wanted to say that the Algrab may also be looking for us, having deviated from its course.
“He couldn’t evade that much.” I could not help but go at the calculated and appointed time. If the incredible happened and both transmitters failed, then the spaceship, without a doubt, would begin to cross the circle diametrically, and we would hear it on the planetary reception. You can’t make a mistake – here it is, a conventional planet!
Erg Noop pointed to the mirrored screens in the deep recesses on all four sides of the control room. Countless stars burned in the deepest darkness. On the left front screen, a small gray disk quickly flew by, barely illuminated by its star, very distant from here, from the edge of the B-7336-C+87-A system.
“Our bomb beacons are working clearly, even though we dropped them four independent years ago.” – Erg Noop pointed to a clear strip of light along the long glass in the left wall. “Algrab should have been here three months ago.” This means,” Noop hesitated, as if not daring to pronounce a sentence, “Algrab” died!
“What if he didn’t die, but was damaged by a meteorite and cannot develop speed?” the red-haired girl objected.
– Can’t develop speed! – Erg Noop repeated. – Isn’t it the same thing if thousands of years of travel stand between the ship and the goal? Only worse - death will not come immediately, years of doomed hopelessness will pass. Maybe they will call - then we will find out... in six years... on Earth.
With a swift movement, Erg Noor pulled out a folding chair from under the table of the electronic computing machine. It was a small model MNU-11. Until now, due to the large weight, size and fragility, it was impossible to install an electronic machine-brain such as an ITU on starships for comprehensive operations and completely entrust it with controlling the starship. The presence of a navigator on duty was required at the control post, especially since precise orientation of the ship's course over such long distances was impossible.
The hands of the head of the expedition flashed with the speed of a pianist over the handles and buttons of the calculation machine. The pale, sharp-featured face was frozen in stone immobility, the high forehead, stubbornly tilted over the remote control, seemed to challenge the forces of elemental fate that threatened the living little world that had climbed into the forbidden depths of space.
Nisa Krit, a young astronavigator who was on a stellar expedition for the first time, fell silent, not breathing, watching Noor, who had withdrawn into himself. What a calm, full of energy and intelligence he is, a beloved person!.. Beloved for a long time, all five years. There is no point in hiding from him... And he knows, Nisa feels it... Now that this misfortune happened, she had the joy of being on duty with him. Three months alone, while the rest of the starship crew is immersed in a sweet hypnotic sleep. There are still thirteen days left, then they will fall asleep - for six months, until two more shifts of duty officers have passed: navigators, astronomers and mechanics. Others - biologists, geologists, whose work begins only at the place of arrival - can sleep longer, while the astronomer... oh, they have the most intense work!
Erg Noop rose, and Nisa's thoughts were cut short.
– I’ll go to the star maps cabin. Your rest in…” he glanced at the dial of the dependent clock, “nine hours.” I'll have time to sleep before I relieve you.
“I’m not tired, I’ll be here as long as needed, just so you can rest!”
The future always seems so far away that it is simply impossible to imagine what will happen next. But when it comes, it still seems like nothing has changed.
This is exactly the future many people imagine. Earth - our planet Earth is in calm and peace, therefore everything is good and harmonious. Spaceships fly into space itself - distant and mysterious. Although in the future he is no longer as mysterious as when he seemed to us as children. One time, the unexpected happened. The spaceship disappeared, did not return in time, and even lost contact with the world on Earth.
That is why scientists and professors, as well as pilots, became worried. That is why a new ship is sent into Space to a hitherto unknown planet, which is delayed for some time to find the missing ships there. Everything is mysterious and foggy until the ship lands on the ground of that planet. It is there that everything becomes clear. The history of the unknown planet turns out to be very interesting and mysterious.
And on Earth lives an ordinary, but not ordinary, person. He is an archaeologist by profession. His character suits his profession. So this young man likes to delve into the past.
Picture or drawing of the Andromeda Nebula
Other retellings for the reader's diary
- Summary of Bulgakov Zoykina apartment
There was no devilry in this play. What the characters themselves do is enough.
- Summary of Andersen's Snow Queen
Kai and Gerda became fast friends. But the Snow Queen snuck into their cloudless world, kidnapped the boy and left him to live in the kingdom of cold and ice. Kai is bewitched
- Summary of Leskov Odnodum
The main character of Leskov's story "Odnodum", Alexander Afanasyevich Ryzhov, was born into a poor middle-class family. The boy's father died almost immediately after the birth of his son.
- Summary of Gorky Konovalov
Maxim, on whose behalf the story is told, once read a newspaper article about a man who committed suicide in a prison cell. Maxim talks about meeting this man.
- Summary of Leskov Cadet Monastery
The narrator writes that he intends to prove the existence of righteous people in Rus'. Moreover, in his opinion, such people are found even in places that are not conducive to honesty and integrity.