There is a phenomenon that is prevalent in a lot of science fiction media: whenever the aliens crash land, visit or invade Earth, they always seem to end up in the United States. From Star Trek’s “First Contact” showing Vulcans landing in Montana to “Independence Day’s” undeniably evocative movie poster of the White House being destroyed by a flying saucer, it seems a disproportionate amount of extra-terrestrial interaction happens Stateside. I’ve seen it called the “White House effect,” “All Aliens Speak English” or just “that’s Hollywood for you.”
The puzzle behind this phenomenon has a simple answer: a majority of the mainstream science fiction that is written, filmed or drawn is done so by American artists for an (ostensibly) American audience. As many of the major producers of film and publishers of books are also American, those are the stories that end up making it big. And, given one of the United States’ biggest exports is our media, it is no surprise that the sci-fi genre is inundated with American cultural touchstones, Stateside scenery, and good ol’ US of A values.
While the oversaturation of American cultural media is a whole conversation for another time, this type of overrepresentation is not limited to just American sci-fi. If you’re a watcher of Doctor Who, you’ll notice the aliens tend to have a preference for landing in London. Jules Verne’s novels, while a bit more international in setting, often feature French scientists, inventors and adventurers as their main cast. Turns out, people will write what (and who) they know!
As with my previous post, I’ve been ever looking to expand my science fiction horizons. This time around, my scope of expansion is an international one. All of the books in this post (and in my most recent booklist) are science fiction originally published in another language. In a similar vein to my previous writing for the blog, here is a short survey of a book I’ve read, a book I’m reading, and an author I’ve yet to read.
Научная фантастика: “Roadside Picnic”
If you had a sphere, spun it rapidly, and then fired six bullets at the moving target, the bullet holes would make a line across its surface, scattered by the centripetal motion. Such is the way that the sites that extraterrestrials visiting Earth are aligned. After appearing suddenly one day, the visitors are gone the next. Those two days, merely two heartbeats of history, changed the six Zones, and humanity, irrevocably.
This novel follows the life of one Red Schuhart, a man who makes his living infiltrating the Zone that he lives near in order to scrounge the alien detritus for leftover technologies: power cells that supply nearly infinite energy to machines connected to them, “empties,” sets of copper discs that float a set distance apart and cannot be moved closer or further away, and other devices left behind that confound any attempt at human explanation. However, to pilfer these alien treasures away, Red must both avoid the government’s attempts to stop the smuggling out of the artifacts, as well as the anomalous effects and entities within the Zone that defy the laws of physics. Red, and others who brave the Zone, are known as “stalkers.”
This novel does an excellent job of capturing the idea of technology so far advanced from our own as to be incomprehensible. From anomalous technologies like those above to areas that defy or exaggerate gravity, the Zone is truly alien in both senses of the word. The authors also offer cutting words to those who would exploit that which we don’t understand, and a sympathetic gaze at those whose desperation drives them to risk.
Originally published in the Soviet Union in 1971, this Russian-language sci-fi book was the product of Arkady and Boris Strugastsky, who wrote an overwhelming amount of their literary work together. Due to efforts by Boris, the most recent English translation from 2012 actually restores “Roadside Picnic” to the original manuscript’s state from before it went through the Soviet censorship board. This novel was my first foray into Russian sci-fi, which as a subgenre I had never really been exposed to, perhaps due to lingering Cold War sentiments keeping these novels from being popularized in the West when they first were published.
However, this novel has inspired other works that have become popular in the years since; notably, Andrei Tarkovsky’s film “Stalker,” for which the Brothers Strugatsky wrote the screenplay, is considered one of the greatest films of all time. The film, in turn, inspired the popular video game “S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl.” in which the player takes on the role of a stalker in a nuclear, rather than extraterrestrial, anomalous Zone.
공상과학소설: “Counterweight”
Thought by many to be humanity’s key to affordable space travel, the idea of a space elevator, a megastructure firmly attached to the Earth on one end while the other lassoes a counterweight in orbit to create a stable tensile pillar, has held captive the imaginations of sci-fi readers and scientists for nearly a century. This South Korean novel, by the anonymous and mononymous author Djuna, explores the construction of such a device, as well as the tension (no pun intended) and intrigue behind the scenes with the megacorporation building it.
Originally pitched as a “mid-budget sci-fi movie” according to this interview with the author at “Wired” which I only found after picking it up, this novel is a lot more fast-paced and action-filled than I expected to be, making it a really rousing cyberpunk romp rather than the more philosophical or political slant I originally imagined upon reading the blurb. Of course, there still is a decent amount of corporate intrigue as the disparate factions race against each other to claim the legacy of the mysteriously dead head of the chaebol, the Korean term for megacorporation, that built the elevator. It’s a rather short novel, but I’ve been taking my time with it as I occasionally find the plot a bit muddled and need to reread some sections, but I am still really enjoying it!
Fantastyka Naukowa: The Works of Stanisław Lem
Stanisław Lem, with 45 million copies of his work translated into more than 50 languages, is quite possibly one of the most widely-read science fiction authors in history. An interesting statistic, given his work’s reliance on wordplay and neologism, which has been described as anywhere from “complex” to “frustrating” by his translators. Lem’s science fiction stories were as much futurist imaginings and predictions as they were cutting satire of both Soviet and Western governments and philosophies. His collection “Star Diaries,” when first published in the USSR, was lauded as a critique of capitalist thought, apparently missing the similar scathing satires towards the Soviet governments as well.
But again, as with “Contact” in my last blog, I haven’t read a single scrivened word of his, and I should correct this as soon as possible. While I track down a copy of his most lauded work, “Solaris,” which is unfortunately not in our collection (thank the stars for Interlibrary Loan!), I’ve been told his short story collections “Tales of Pirx the Pilot” and “Memoirs of a Space Traveler,” which we do have copies of here at DBRL, can tide one over and introduce the reader to Lem’s satirical style and humorous tones.
In the end, it is evident there is a whole world out there of science fiction stories that, in turn, contain within many fantastical worlds to explore. Reading stories from beyond your life’s horizons exposes you to other ways of thinking, and other ways of dreaming of what might come next for us all, not just for the Americans or the E.T.s that really want to visit the US. For even more science fiction in translation, check out my booklist here!
