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diff --git a/content-org/reviews.org b/content-org/reviews.org index 5183920..3c16bc4 100644 --- a/content-org/reviews.org +++ b/content-org/reviews.org @@ -21,7 +21,7 @@ My reviews of fun things! -* Books [0/0] :@reviews: +* Books [14/14] :@reviews: :PROPERTIES: :EXPORT_HUGO_SECTION: reviews/books :EXPORT_HUGO_CUSTOM_FRONT_MATTER+: :reviewSection '(Books) @@ -809,6 +809,61 @@ All that we got was [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Dts0rjp5V8][trailer]] whi In it, a shot of people saluting the stalker is shown, which is a complete antithesis of what the Stugatsky brothers are telling us. +** DONE Moscow 2042 (Vladimir Voinovich, 1986) +CLOSED: [2024-12-01 Sun 21:28] +:PROPERTIES: +:EXPORT_FILE_NAME: moscow-2042-1986 +:EXPORT_HUGO_CUSTOM_FRONT_MATTER+: :abstract A short review of an absolute marvel of a book +:EXPORT_HUGO_CUSTOM_FRONT_MATTER+: :image reviews/covers/moscow-2042.jpg +:EXPORT_HUGO_CUSTOM_FRONT_MATTER+: :rating 5 +:END: + +Up till recently, I have not heard of Vladimir Voinovich. +As you may have noticed, my knowledge of Russian SF literature is quite shallow. +Everyone has read at leat a few novels from Strugatsky brothers, and I am only now doing it. +But as it turns out (thanks Mastodon!), Voinovich was a prolific writer. +At least enough prolific and critical to be forced into exile from Russia! +Somehow, it seems that only a few years Russian literature was considered to be up there, right among the final bosses of literature! +But I'm too shallow for that. +I will finish Solzhenitsyn's /Gulag Archipelago/ one day (the third book is wainting for me for some 15 years), but right now I NEED some fantastic elements in my critique of Communists regime. +Luckily, Voinovich has me covered. + +/Moscow 2042/ is satirical novel where the author describes his fantastical time travel into the future, where he is sent to learn about and report on the Communism to come. +You may have already guessed, that the painted picture is not pretty at all. + +It doesn't start like that. +At first, Voinovich gets enticed with what he is presented with. +It seem that the Communists of 2042 have learned from the past. +They removed all the evil parts that /we/ have seem (and there were lots of them), but kept the spirit of communism: brothership, unity, and happiness. + +I will not spoil anything for the Curious Reader, but we spend the rest of the novel destroying that picture. +Now, I am a bit too young to fully appreciate that (being born only 4 years before Poland regained it's independence from USSR), and I am sure to have missed a lot nuances, but I laughed and I cried. +Author dissects all the horrors of communism then exaggerates them to absurd. +It's kept light in tone, the atrocities seem distant and therefore funny. +No chance in hell a system like that could ever be conceived. +No one is cynical enough to establish it (but they did!) +Fictionalized Voinoich is not a /member/ of this society. +He is a VIP guest. +He is able to get all the benefits it can give to the chosen few. +And boy, if he doesn't! +He takes all he can, not caring where it came from - as he starts to see behind the cracks. +It's very hard to feel any sympathy for him. +But then the bill comes... and I'll stop here. +The story is masterfully crafted. + +I was, however, surprised by the SF elements. +For most of the text, they are reduced to a MacGuffin, a non important tool to tell the story. +If it stayed like this, /Moscow 2042/ (I keep writing it as 2024...) would be an excellent story. +However, this changes significantly. +Again, I won't go into spoiler territory (it came as a huge surprise!) but it is a time travel story with all of it's possibilities and paradoxes. +Up till it is revealed, the time travel story make the book make very little sense (still great), but as a complete package it does. +It may not go as hard into it like, let's say /All You Zombies/, but it goes hard enough to go into my personal "top time travel stories", together with the aforementioned short story, /Time Crimes/, /Looper/ and /Primer/. +I have a type it seems. + +/Moscow 2024/ is one of the greatest SF books I've ever read. +It's fantastical in it's nature, but the story is humanist. +A true marvel you owe yourself to experience. + * Movies [15/15] :@reviews: :PROPERTIES: :EXPORT_HUGO_SECTION: reviews/movies |