Попробовал тряхнуть стариной и сделал перевод одной из моих любимых книг детства на английский язык — роман Александра Беляева «Вечный хлеб». Заодно сделал из него аудиокнигу. Если кому интересно, книгу можно бесплатно слушать целиком на YouTube, а в печатном виде можно приобрести на всех англоязычных площадках.
A long time ago, in a communist galaxy far far away, The Amphibian Man and Professor Dowell’s Head were on my bookshelf (both books dog-eared and with cracked spine from reading).
Moved to this galaxy after the wall fell. Left those books behind…
But, for sure, Alexander Romanovich Belyaev could write! Glad he’s being remembered.
This is awesome — we really do need more Russian language sci fi translation in the west. It’s something that really hasn’t been available beyond Strugatsky bros and even that is a fairly recent development
OP is doing the lord’s work. Translation is a thankless task. Flagged for a listen later. Thank you!
Thank you for the kind words 🙂
I started SciFi with the Strugatzkis after playing Stalker and reading Roadside Picknick. Their work is great and always had a way of hidden criticism against communism and the soviet system (also the reason why they were banned and later rediscovered).
I like almost everything by them.
I’m looking for books like this but can’t really find any in English. What titles did you have in mind?
Early Strugatsky brothers is where I’d recommend you start looking. Monday Starts on Saturday, One Billion Years to the End of the World, Flight to Amalthea, etc. https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=strugatsky&i=digital-text&crid=3OH5RCVD2FJM3&sprefix=strugatsky%2Cdigital-text%2C203&ref=nb_sb_noss_1
Can you tell me more about the book and why you chose this one to translate?
As far as Belyaev’s works go, this one is less known than Professor Dowell’s Head or The Amphibian Man, for example. Eternal Bread is more post-apocalyptic or «what if» kind of a book. Among Soviet-era sci-fi novels that was not a popular subject, at least in my experience. I mostly remember space travel while building communism 🙂 And because it’s a less-known work, I wanted to bring it to English language readers.
The fact all these people are so happy to just consume blatant soviet propaganda is pretty surprising.
Until, of course, we realize all those comments are coming from that side of the world and are likely russians themselves.
I think it’s just curiosity, not adherence to propaganda. Soviet scifi is a lost artifact of the days gone by, and people like to unearth forgotten things.
I like to read old scifi stories to see how they imagined the future. It’s funny, for example, when in «Flight to Amalthea» the ship’s captain, after the successful launch, spends all his time catching up on the news by reading the stack of newspapers he brought with him on the flight. 🙂 Kinda like people were commenting on how we still don’t have self-tying sneakers from Back to the Future 2…
Sci-fi is sci-fi, regardless of the agenda the author tried to push. Stories are stories. You don’t read them to get indoctrinated. If you have established beliefs and worldview, reading propaganda won’t make you change it.
Thanks for the share. Soviet SciFi has always had a weird place in my heart since I was a kid lol.
Same