Book Review: Path into the Unknown (edited?) and Introduction by Judith Merril

 

 Paerback, 189 pages, Ace 1968
Hardcover Published , 1966 by Generic

I bought my paperback of this at my hometown bookstore, Cavent Emptor, more than a decade ago, and it has hovered close to my TBR for most of that time. Part of my interest was the introduction by Judith Merril, an author I have great respect for. Although the paperback doesn’t credit her with selecting the stories, it appears she did. I wonder if she excused herself from that title because they were limited by what was available in translation. Just a guess. Most of this work comes from the Khrushchev era, and it is easy to imagine why SF in the Stalin era might have been a little less inventive. Russian literature certainly has a reputation as some of the best in the world so it should be no surprise that there is a lot of good stuff. The problem is that during the Cold War, there was not a lot of appetite for translating it. 

I am not sure if it was the Cold War energy that the Russians were the “bad guys,” but I think SF readers would know better than to blame writers for their leaders. I would also think, like myself, that readers would be curious what kind of SF ideas were coming out from behind the Iron Curtain, outside Lem, the polish writer very little has penetrated.

The first story to get my attention was Meeting My Brother by Vladislav Krapivin, which had a very detailed description of another planet. That was the first story that really caught my attention. The weird science aspects of it totally worked for me. 

I didn’t love every story, but three of them stand out. A Day of Wrath - novelette by Sever Gansovsky was the most PKD-ish with serious “what is human” vibes. “You read in several languages, you are familiar with higher mathematics and can perform all manner of work. Do you think that this makes you human?”  The main character encounters beings called Otarks, who are devoid of empathy, of course a direct PKD theme.

This author has a collection translated into English. I want to check it out.  It doesn’t feel that different from American SF, and I didn’t detect anything directly Russian or Soviet about it.

The best story is An Emergency Case, " a short story by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. A spaceship is approaching Titan and then…insert the Breaking Bad episode “The Fly.” I loved the setup of this story, and it is a bit of spoiler, so beware, the point of the story is something as small as a fly, which has no business being there, had a really creepy vibe, and for me it had a cosmic horror vibe that I quite enjoyed. 

The Boy by Gennady Gor was my favorite, edging out the Strugatsky bros with this. The author, according to the internet, survived the Battle of Stalingrad, and his family was exiled to Siberia, something that influenced much of his work. The POV character has been in suspended animation, traveling to Earth, and has the luck of showing up in Siberia. Parts of this story reminded me of the PKD story I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon, but it pre-dates that one.

A Path Into the Unknown is not a mandatory collection, but if you are interested in international SF then you can’t exactly go wrong. It is an excellent place to start.