4 Soviet science fiction books that would make cool blockbusters

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Retro fiction has become fashionable. Thousands of pictures have been posted on the Internet, depicting our century through the prism of the fantastic ideas of the writers of the twentieth century - Soviet or American. Remakes of science fiction films are warmly received by the public. Many people believe that now is the time to film, albeit naive, but still in many ways cool fantastic stories by Soviet authors. There are enough candidates.

Alexander Belyaev: revenge of a too handsome actor

It cannot be said that the world of cinema remained indifferent to the work of Belyaev, the legendary science fiction writer who worked almost paralyzed in the period between the two world wars. Many people love the film "Amphibian Man" about an Indian youth who was implanted with gills and raised away from human society in an idealistic spirit. He published stories about experiments on humans in an attempt to raise a superman long before the boom in interest in mutant superheroes. And "The Amphibian Man" is not his only successful work of this kind.

Belyaev was filmed more than once. Such books as "Ariel" (about another young man - the victim of an experiment, not floating, but flying), "The Head of Professor Dowell", "The Island of Dead Ships" and "Air Seller" got into the cinema - some of them not even once … For example, "Ariel" was filmed both in Uzbekistan and in Ukraine (together with Russia). But in most cases, the films left a wide audience indifferent, and above all, apparently, because they were filmed at a time when there was no technical opportunity to embody Belyaev's fantasies properly. It would be interesting to see them filmed in Hollywood style!

As for the novels that have not yet reached the big screen, then among the first candidates for blockbusters, perhaps, “The Man Who Lost His Face”. According to the plot, an American comedian actor with a stunningly ugly appearance is being treated in the clinic of a strange Russian doctor, where, miraculously, influencing only endocrinology, he changes his appearance, turning him into a charming young man. Now he can propose to his beloved without her involuntarily beginning to laugh.

But the film industry does not need an unknown pretty girl, which means that the girl does not need him either. And it turns out to be difficult to prove by documents that you are you, and the hero is literally robbed. Then he finds a way to get several important people who have trampled on his life to drink the drugs of the Russian doctor, and these people begin to change terribly. One becomes a three-meter giant, the other is incredibly fat, the third is black, and the groom of the former lover is becoming uglier … Isn't it "Joker" against the backdrop of Hollywood in the twenties?

Olga Larionova: I don't mind the bird

The Leningrad German Olga Tideman, hiding under the name Larionova, was considered a "magazine" writer, that is, one whose books are not published for a long time, because there will be no demand, but who are willingly published in magazines. Nevertheless, one of her books has spawned an army of fans of the described world - we are talking about "The Chakra of the Centaur", a story that was initially conceived as a parody. According to the plot, a small group of earthlings ends up on the planet Jasper, where the power is actually seized by intelligent birds that parasitize people, in everything similar to earthlings, except for one … It is believed that each of them is born blind.

On Jasper, everyone wears their own bird on their heads, reads the future from a special deck of cards; there they are still fighting in knightly tournaments and collecting a semblance of crusades - only using lasers and spaceships. The world described by Larionova turned out to be so bright that it is strange that no anime has yet been filmed for it or a computer game has not been created.

Ivan Efremov: the world is too beautiful

You can now hear about the works of Efremov - "Soviet utopias are of no interest to anyone." They are criticized a lot. But if you combine criticism and the novels themselves, you can get a couple of stunning atmospheric dystopias that require a large number of actors familiar with the gym for film adaptation.

They even tried to transfer his most famous book, The Andromeda Nebula, to the screen, breaking it up into several parts. But the first part turned out to be so disastrous that no one began to bring the project to completion. According to the plot of the novel, the crew of an earthlings ship flying in space is forced to make an emergency landing on an unfamiliar planet - and discovers two more ships there. One of them is also from Earth, he disappeared many years ago. But the second belongs to some other civilization.

Meanwhile, on Earth, on the Island of Oblivion - actually a colony for criminals with a beautiful name - there is a mad scientist who conducted experiments with teleportation. First on subjects, then on young, naive volunteer enthusiasts. He threw several people in completely unknown places, before he was stopped. They are trying to persuade him to continue experiments after many years of punishment for them. All this is against the background of describing a very specific structure of society, ascetic, fanatical and based on the aesthetics of the human body. The abundance of female and non-white characters opens the film adaptation a direct road to the Oscar.

Georgy Martynov: the glory of computerization

One of Martynov's most famous novels, Gianea, is named after an alien teenage girl discovered by earthlings on the moon. She belongs to a highly developed and very conservative civilization in terms of social attitudes. On the moon, she was landed by a saboteur who blew up the ship on which they flew to conquer the Earth. Gianea speaks excellent Spanish during the time of the conquest of the Aztecs - it turns out that the first representatives of her civilization had already landed on Earth at that time, and Gianea herself was supposed to become a translator during the conquest of the earthlings.

Meanwhile, the threat of alien conquest has not gone anywhere, and Gianeya herself will have to somehow adapt to life among earthlings, who have achieved social equality that she does not understand. In the end, the earthlings spot an approaching ship from the planet Gianei. They do not destroy it, but capture it - and find that representatives of a third, undeveloped civilization, enslaved by the planet Gianei, are on board. These are the rebels who decided to warn the earthlings. Not understanding anything about space travel, they relied on the on-board computer, which itself guided the ship on the right course.

Naturally, the book was written within the framework of the idea that earthlings will inevitably face a bright communist future, and the proletarians of all planets are able to unite. Nevertheless, it would make a great retrofuturistic thriller, especially if you show what is happening through the eyes of a confused, so lonely and helpless Gianei. Finding out that she's been lied to her whole life. Experiencing first, non-reciprocal love. A stranger in the land of strangers. The scene in which the girl tries to poison herself after learning about the death of her sisters conveys well the tragedy of Gianei's situation.

In the USSR, adults were offered mostly only fantasy, while fantasy was given to children. Fantasy of the Soviet era: Favorite movie tales from the countries of the socialist camp.