1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
|
+++
title = "Moscow 2042 (Vladimir Voinovich, 1986)"
author = ["Michał Sapka"]
date = 2024-12-01T21:28:00+01:00
categories = ["reviews"]
draft = false
weight = 2015
reviewSection = ["Books"]
abstract = "A short review of an absolute marvel of a book"
image = "reviews/covers/moscow-2042.jpg"
rating = 5
+++
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.
|
