Science fiction is an almost forgotten branch of literature. Its roots are in Wells’ Martians and Selenites and in Čapek’s robots; its heyday was between two world crises: the end of the Second World War and the end of the Russian revolution. In this time of peace, science fiction occupied an exceptional place in literature: first of all, of course, the place of modern mythology, but also philosophy, even a kind of metaphysics. Science fiction treated everything — first and foremost, man. This, by the way, is the first sign of philosophical creativity, the first philosophical question. ‘What is man?’, ‘What am I myself?’ — philosophy has always and everywhere begun with this question. ‘Science fiction’ also answered this question, but not by reasoning, not by studying man, but by imaginary experience, which was put over man in many fantastic books. ‘What would happen if a man were placed in such and such imaginary circumstances’, the writer asked himself. It is needless to say that the circumstances which science fiction chose with particular eagerness were, as might be expected, fantastic. The most fantastic illumination did not prevent from considering man — not, however, that which is, was, and will be, but that which was seen and imagined by the writers of that time. When the Strugatsky brothers spoke ironically of ‘the world of humane imagination’ and ‘the world of fear of the future’, they were right about their era, but they did not imagine that these two worlds, the two concepts of man, would soon merge into one… At first, this separation is clear and vivid; it coincides with the political boundary between East and West. After a while, when the revolutionary faith has dried up in the East as well, this division will disappear. ‘Easterners’ will become just as pessimistic, if not more so, about all things human. ‘Science fiction’, the spawn of humanist philosophy, will pronounce judgement on humanism.

In fact, the philosophy expressed in fantastic literature made its course very rapid. Certainly, in general terms, it expressed the old humanist outlook, which can be reduced to an extreme optimism about human nature. As one contemporary author has observed, ‘within its boundaries, the humanist outlook coincides with the liberal outlook’. Quite right: liberals simply express the humanist dream in a no-nonsense (relatively!) and concise way: ‘The individual, left to himself and freed from all constraints, especially those of an ideal, spiritual, moral nature, has every reason to achieve prosperity and complete perfection. A society that wants to know nothing about good and evil, that pursues only material goals, that owes all its power to science, is the best and ultimate society of all that has ever existed on earth. Its power is infinite and its authority is inviolable. To it belong the sky and the stars’.

I may have said ‘no-nonsense’, i. e. serious and impartial, in vain. The liberal, humanistic dream is precisely a dream, and it is not by chance that I ended its brief expression with the words ‘sky and stars’. The most sober liberal is a complete dreamer, who does not want to know reality, who is faithful only to his dream… The mental content of science fiction fully expressed this old dream, but if the Western dreamers believed in a personality completely freed from prohibitions and restrictions, ultimately — from itself, then in the East, where the revolution killed Christianity, but preserved its values (at least in part), believed in a personality, not deprived of sanctities and beliefs, but these sanctities and beliefs, of course, accepted from Science. This was all the easier because the revolution had long covered itself with the cloak of scientific approach, having deceived even Rozanov, who exclaimed: ‘Science and revolution are one!’ It was not difficult to feel like a Marxist and a scientist, a supporter of Marx and a supporter of thought in Russia after 1917… With this exception, Western and Eastern dreamers were quite in agreement. Both proceeded from the idea of an omnipotent humanity — and brought out to meet it aliens from other places and times.

And what happened? Science fiction, based on the idea of an omnipotent humanity, very quickly, over the course of some twenty years or so, came to the idea that man did not need this omnipotence. The spectre of ‘and you will be like gods’ was dispelled very quickly. Writers who had begun with extreme cheerfulness about mankind and its future, then passed on to extreme gloom. If at first they asserted that there was nothing higher than man, they soon began to speak of warlike or peaceful aliens who were superior to man in every way, and who should come to earth to elevate him to themselves or do away with him altogether. The fantastic literature of the East (as above, I mean the ‘political’ East) for a long time preserved more serenity and looked for events and characters exclusively on earth, i. e. thought about man himself, not about how to improve him or to do away with him. In a word, it believed in man, that is, it kept intact a smaller but necessary part of faith in God. This faith allowed it to reason not about how and when humanity would perish, but how and when it would overcome its passions. (Which was, of course, an unconsciously Christian questioning. The Strugatsky brothers in The Predatory Things of the Century even directly quote the elder Zosima, his words about ‘unnecessary needs’.) However, instead of ‘the East’ it is better to speak directly about Russia. Already St. Lem does not have inherent in the Strugatsky brothers (in their own way, of course) Christian roots. Christianity was for him only a ground from which to push off. No dreams of transformation of man and mankind, no special hopes for future changes for the better can be found in him. At one time he believed in science, in a just, convenient, practical social order; soon, however, he realised that science is powerful but immoral; that a practical social order not only can, but must turn out to be an inhuman social order; that technical omnipotence is of no use to a weak, passionate, mistaken animal — man.

I think that both Lem and Strugatsky somehow strangely, sideways, tangentially passed close to the Christian idea of man and human history. Development as the overcoming of passions (including in this notion the social passions, which are most accessible to the Marxist mind) is a purely Christian idea. Original sin — as another name for that mysterious deviation which makes ruins out of any tower built by mankind; leads any movement away from its goal; breaks the unity of intentions and achievements — confused Lem, but he hated the term. Lem is even more conscious than the Russian dreamers because he is more educated and more wicked than they are. Lem, for example, knows firmly that the chief evil in human history is religion; that the only good is science; and he does not (did not, rather) tire of ridiculing the Church (and philosophy) in his early books. The attentive reader will easily notice in Lem this incessant teasing of faith and thought. The Strugatsky brothers, of course, also heard how harmful and how dangerous the Church is, because they wrote a cartoonish, from the point of view of history and common sense, story It is difficult to be a god (by the way, the capital letter in the last word of this title is inappropriate. Rather, we are talking about a hero, a pagan deity, powerful, intelligent, but not all-good). In this story, set on a distant but Earth-like planet, the Church, in alliance with gangs of thieves and ‘fat-bellied shopkeepers’, organises a ‘fascist coup’ in a certain state. I would call this story ‘anti-historical nonsense’ if it had not been cheerfully written and read by the young reader, for whom it was appointed, with irresistible interest. ‘Shopkeepers’, ‘brigands’, the Church — and a ‘fascist coup d’état’! Indeed, one had to take for granted all the intricacies of the ‘party course’ to produce such a hilarious story… But that’s the thing, it’s all a hilarious story, a children’s game that lacks the seriousness of the dark denial that permeates Lem’s works….

Be that as it may, in the late 1960s the fog around the Russian revolution and the society it created began to dissipate. Disillusionment with this society and its possibilities shattered many worldviews and hopes, including those nourished by science fiction literature. After all, the utopian worldview (including the worldview of socialism) is, first and foremost, a belief in the beneficial nature of known social mechanics; in a set of material techniques, following which it is possible to build an ideal society — forgetting about the contradictory, internally divided nature of man; moreover, putting this nature ‘out of brackets’. Hopes for a ‘new society’ were not fulfilled. The society built by the revolution was neither newer nor better than the previous ones; it had vices as old as the world without new virtues. Where virtues did appear, they, as it happens, came from old (national and Christian) cultural roots and had nothing new in them… The passionate, mistaken being, prone to faith and doubt at the same time — man — was once again at liberty, and his future was without any security or guarantees. Fantastic literature could not survive this; unable and unwilling to bless freedom, it cursed man — and moved on to describing his future misfortunes, which is, in fact, the content of the science fiction of our days. There is nothing ‘scientific’ about it, because it no longer believes in science. It is no longer a world view, or an expression of any world view, but only the play of a pessimistic and at times very perverse imagination. The short time of this literature has passed.

Timofey Sherudilo.
From the book Knowledge and Creativity

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