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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent sci-fi from the former CCCP,
This review is from: Half a Life (Paperback)
Possibly the only time that Sci-Fi made me cry, "Half a Life" is a collection of stories and a novella about normal sounding people experiencing the viscitudes that seemed reserved (in convetional sci-fi) for steely-eyed heroes or hyper-intelligent engineers who blather in incomprehensible technobabble. The heroin of "Half a Life", a human taken prisoner by alien robots, wanted nothing more, than a quiet life on some Oblast (I guess a town or collective or something) when she finds herself the latest addition to a menagerie of creatures from different planets. Instead of adjusting to prison life, she humanizes her fellow prisoners and seizes control of the means of freedom. The zoo ship is discovered by human cosmonauts years later, apparently a floating derelict in space. Surprised to find fragments of a diary among the remains of alien specimens (luckily the author and the cosmonaust are both Russian), the explorers piece together the story of the zoo ship's final days and the fate of the human author. The heroic explorers of "Red Deer, White Deer" look past their prejudices against the brutal ape creatures of a newly discovered planet, to find the common kernel of humanity - with all of its qualities and failings. The protagonist of "Can I Speak to Nina" is something of a child frozen in the body of an adult - emotionally paralyzed by his clumsy loss of a ration card during WWII. Not entirely willing to forgive himself the mistake which made life much less pleasant in an unpleasant time (the rest of the family had to give up some of their rations), he never comes alive until accidentally calling a young girl who's literally more backward than he - eerily convinced that the year is not 1972, but 1943! A group of interplanetary explorers learn the risks of interstellar travel at lightspeed in "I was the First to Find You." Without giving away too much of the plot, if you know that during your 10 year trip, 200 years will pass on Earth (thank you, Mr. Einstein), you've got to face the possibility that mankind will make some technological strides in the mean - the chief among them being a spaceship that take a ten year trip that only takes ten years of Earth time. Lovers are separated by the vastness of space and by incompatible biology, while intergalactic athletic competition tries to conform the species of many worlds to a single standard and the subject of an experiment in human memory transfer finds his cynical shell under assault from a dying optimist. The oddities of the universe, which cover up the unoriginality of plots or flatness of characters in other sc-fi, cause Bulychev's characters to unfold here like a flower. His prose only seem spare but mask an inner humanity. when futuristic cosmonauts stumble on the derelict zoo-ship of "Half a Life", they argue on seemingly petty history - like whether Natasha, the human abductee, made it into space before Sputnik, or had to follow Gagarin. When other interplanetary explorers are welcomed home after a seemingly meaningless mission, you'll want to shout along "I was the first to find you!" Don't lose this one.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Soviet Sci Fi at its best,
By Bill Bowler (NY) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Half a Life (Paperback)
A tale of alien abduction and first contact, Soviet style. Full of sentiment and morality. The title story is the author's masterpiece. With an introduction by the great Theodore Sturgeon and complete with pulp cover art. A bibliographical gem and a real find. The translations by Helen Saltz Jacobson are superb. She's right up there with Constance Garnett, and Jacobson was translating Bulychev and the Strugatskys in the 1970's when these great works were coming out. Highly recommended.
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