Loading…
Français
Yellow Blue Tibia
Add a Comment
Add Tags
Add More
Add to my Collection
Mark for Later
Save to a List
PrintItem Details
Russia, 1946. With the Nazis recently defeated, Stalin gathers half a dozen of the top Soviet science fiction authors in a dacha in the countryside. Convinced that the defeat of America is only a few years away — and equally convinced that the Soviet Union needs a massive external threat
… More »Russia, 1946. With the Nazis recently defeated, Stalin gathers half a dozen of the top Soviet science fiction authors in a dacha in the countryside. Convinced that the defeat of America is only a few years away — and equally convinced that the Soviet Union needs a massive external threat to hold it together — Stalin orders the writers to compose a massively detailed and highly believable story about an alien race poised to invade the earth. The little group of writers gets down to the task and spends months working until new orders come from Moscow to immediately halt the project. The scientists obey and live their lives until, in the aftermath of Chernobyl, the survivors gather again, because something strange has happened: the story they invented in 1946 is starting to come true.
« LessLibrary Journal
At the end of World War II, translator and would-be sf writer Konstantin Andreiovich Skvorecky, along with several colleagues, meets secretly with Soviet leader Josef Stalin to create a fictional "alien attack" in the hopes of uniting the disparate groups within the Communist Party against a common foe. Forty years later, the attack seems to be coming true. British sf author Roberts (Gradisil) demonstrates his knack for quirkily speculative fiction, with elegant plot twists, seriocomic passages, and a suitably gullible protagonist whose instincts see him through to the end. Verdict Wildly imaginative yet delivering the absurdist punch associated with Kafka and Orwell, this novel of high spirits disguised as fact provides a field day for the literary enthusiast as well as the UFO fan. Copyright 2009 Reed Business Information.
Booklist
Along with a number of his peers, sf writer Konstantin Skvorecky, whose autobiography is this novel, was summoned to a dacha and told by Stalin himself to come up with a plausible alien-attack scenario. Just as suddenly, they were told to leave and forget everything that had happened. Konstantin spent the next years drinking and smoking himself to death, until he became one of the two Russians who don't drink. In 1986 he encounters Jan, who was also at the dacha and now works for a government ministry. Jan believes that everything they imagined is now coming true, which means they have a pressing need to get to Ukraine. If Jan is right, someone is going to blow it up and must be stopped. Disaster awaits, for Konstantin is blown to bits at Chernobyl. Then his story gets really interesting, and the laws of reality get bent to nearly the breaking point. Roberts conjures the atmosphere of Konstantin's era perfectly, makes his journey fascinating, and even makes him a pretty likable crotchety old man.--Schroeder, Regina Copyright 2009 Booklist
Find it at OPL
Connect With Others
Other users with this title in their collections
Comments
This book may become fantastic at some point after page 275. But I didn't get that far.
The story promises to be interesting, but fails on execution. The writing is good, as is the dialog, but the story is lacking. There's no story arc. There's no tension between the possibility of alien attack and reality that the main character is experiencing.
As much as I wanted to like this book, I was bored into submission and opted to stop reading.
If you're looking for Cold War sci fi, check out Charlie Stross's "Atrocity Archives" or something by Tim Powers.