“Translating from one language to another, unless it is from Greek and Latin, the queens of all languages, is like looking at Flemish tapestries from the wrong side, for although the figures are visible, they are covered by threads that obscure them, and cannot be seen with the smoothness and color of the right side.”

― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote

Ogres out of a paleontology exhibit, at their task of making a cup from an enemy’s skull, the whole family industriously scooping out the contents—the raw brains—first, to eat. Then useful utensils of men’s leg bones. Thrifty, to think not only of eating the people you did not like, but eating them out of their own skull. The first technicians! Prehistoric man in a sterile white lab coat in some Berlin university lab, experimenting with uses to which other people’s skull, skin, ears, fat could be put to. Ja, Herr Doktor. A new use for the big toe; see, one can adapt the joint for a quick-acting cigarette lighter mechanism. Now, if only Herr Krupp can produce it in quantity…

Чрезвычайное Происшествие

As always, a short story might be short but is definitely full of important aspects.

First, alien life survivability. On the one hand, just because we cannot survive in a certain climate, like vacuum, does not mean other forms of alien life would not be able to. Also, just because the climate and the atmosphere is friendly to us, does not mean it would not be deadly to alien life. This is why the “flies” came unexpectedly from “outside” and water, which is imperative for the survival of everything on Earth, would be deadly to them.

Second, we finally hear the concern about bringing something deadly back to Earth. Even those that went to the moon had to be placed into quarantine upon return, just to be safe. So I am happy to see the mention of the necessary fail-safes.  

“Else, how could we flood village and city with our information? The people must learn how well I govern them. How would they know if we didn’t tell them?”

“The recruits come to believe in time that such a place as Salusa Secundus is justified because it produced them—the elite."

"Страна Багровых Туч"

Summary: Six men, 2 pilots, 2 geologists, captain and a dessert specialist, venture to the planet Venus to test out a new form of space engine and to explore a radioactive valley that could be a source of all kinds of useful things. Once the group survives the landing they venture out in the direction of the valley. First they find a crash site with a dead explorer inside. Then one of theirs goes missing. They never find a body, just his gun. The captain sprains his ankle and is unable to join others in exploring. But they make it to the valley, they do some exploring, they put up the landing signals, even though one of them is going nuts, the other is going blind, and all of them are suffering from radiation poisoning. With the work completed and them unable to radio the ship they decide to make the long track back the way they came. However, not even half way they fall victim to an underground nuclear blast that destroys their vehicle, kills the captain in said vehicle, and burns one of the teammates. They are now stuck in the middle of nowhere, with no way to contact the ship, and with limited supply of oxygen and water. So they start walking. And walking. And walking. And when they cannot walk anymore they crawl. And they crawl. And they crawl. Eventually, after reaching the landing site they discover that the ship is gone. However, before their long trek began, they saw two flares go up at a different location, and they eventually head that way. The ship had moved, to avoid sinking into the swamp, and they do find it. And they do return back to earth. And all is well.

Ignoring all the innocent things like breathing Venetian air, and plants and animals on both Venus and Mars, and glass cups used in space ships, I love this book. I love this book not for the action or even the characters, but for the most important message. When you are stuck far away from home, you start walking, and you keep walking, and you keep walking until you cannot walk anymore and then you keep walking. Eventually you will have nothing left in you and you will crawl. But you will get there. You will get there not because you are a hero and it's important to get there, you will get there because you can. And if you could and you gave up half way, then it would be unfair. So you keep walking, and keep walking, and you do not quit.

I would be lying if I said I didn't cry while reading that section. It touched me on such a simple fundamental level that it was hard not to relate to. I mean, they weren't being heroes, they were not doing it for money or fame, or love. They were doing it because they could and they would, because you just had to.

Let us start at the very first death and what it meant. The first death we encounter is the Robert Loyd's, the man in the ship that was leaking oxygen. The shocking thing about his death is not the death itself, but the fact that the Hious crew could do nothing more than to listen to him die. No matter what they did, they would not have been able to reach the man in time. And sitting there listening to his last words was difficult. To say the least. Importantly, the man did not die in vain. His last thoughts were to make sure his work lived on, because otherwise it would have been as if he did not exist. So with his last breath he makes sure to open all doors so the crew that would eventually find his ship would be able to enter.

The second death the crew encounters is that of their own team member, Spitsin. His death is vastly different from Loyd's in the way that instead of not being able to help, the team is unable to find him. It would have been much easier for them to just find the body, instead they have to guess if he is hurt and they are just not doing enough to find him. Every minute they spend looking they know he could be dying. Every minute they have to rest, they know could be the last minute he has to spare. They don't find him. They leave only when there is no more hope. And yet you have to think if he did survive, how long did he lay there in hope of rescue that never came.

The third death, while unimportant at first glance is worth mentioning. The death is of the captain Yermakov. Why is his death important? First, it is a freak accident. There is nothing they could have done to prevent it. Just by chance if they stopped a bit to the right or left of their location, they all would have been just fine. I think the fact that the red mass surrounded them made them think that it is avoiding them because of the vehicle being there, as opposed to the center of the explosion. Second, if you think about it, the captain was staying safe. He stayed behind, because of the injured leg. He did not venture out to explore. He should have been fine, while the others that decided to approach an unknown phenomenon should have been hurt. But that's not how things work. Sometimes shit happens. More often than not, that shit is not in your control.

The journey of 150,000 steps is the most important part of the book, for me personally. As much as I was saddened by the earlier deaths, they did not make me tear up as much as Bikov's walk. It is hard to explain this feeling that bubbled up deep inside, as I read about his thirst and fatigue and determination to not quit. Seeing the vehicle destroyed I would have personally chose to lay down and die. I do not think I would have had the emotional and psychological reserves to keep going. But Bikov did! He had the stubbornness to keep putting one foot in front of the other. He wasn't doing it for fame or glory, not for the honor of motherland or gigantic monetary payout, he was doing it because it would be a shame for him to lay down and die, when he could have made it.

“Надо идти потому, что они дойдут, наверняка дойдут, без всякого сомнения дойдут, и будет очень обидно, если они лягут здесь и заснут... хотя они могли дойти. Это будет ужасно обидно. И поэтому надо.”

The other reason he kept walking is because he knew what it was like for a team member to go missing and not know what happened to him. He didn't want to put Krutikov, and Krayuhin back on Earth, into the same position as they have been with Spitsin. To know that your friends are out there, alive, in need of help, and you not knowing how you could help them.

Bikov's determination and stubbornness is not the only thing that made me cry. It was the way he was determined to get Yurkovskii back to the ship. In one instance he tells him that he does not give a shit about him as a person. He does not want to save him out of some altruistic thoughts. He wants him back on the ship because all of the data they collected burned up with the vehicle, and he needs someone that remembers even a portion of that data to share it with others. It is such a concrete reason that you cannot argue about it philosophically. You cannot say, letting him die would improve your chances of getting out alive. He has data, that data needs to be on the ship. Period. End of story. Now, move!

— Я хочу спать, я очень устал. Дай слово, что во время сна ты не удерешь...

Юрковский молчал.

— Я очень хочу спать, очень... Ты не даешь мне заснуть, Володя...

Юрковский молчал упрямо, только с ненавистью сопел в микрофон.

— Дай мне заснуть, Володя!.. Мы поговорим обо всем, когда я проснусь. Прошу, Владимир Сергеевич...

That is such a heartbreaking moment. Yurkovskii wants to sacrifice himself so Bikov, who is dragging Daug literally on his back, has a better chance of survival. Yet the very act and desire to sacrifice himself is impeding Bikov in his determination to get them all out alive.

Finally, the moment Bikov emerges from the brush and buts helmet first into Lrutikov you can almost feel the tight grip being released on your heart. We followed Bikov through all of his 150,000 steps, and we were there when he came to the landing site only to discover the ship not being there. We can only imagine the overwhelming emotion, once he realizes that by far this was not the finish line. And even more so, he has no reason to think that the new location is a location of the ship, and not something completely unrelated. In the beginning of his journey he was sure the ship was there and he just had to make it, when he starts out for the new location he is not even certain there is a finish. But he is stubborn! Blind, dehydrated, starving, bloodied, but he damn well made it!

I don't think this book is about space exploration and awesomeness, or the forests on Mars and plant life on Venus. This book is about determination. This book is about doing your job, no matter how boring, with possible no payoff in the end, but doing it because you have to do it. Someone has to do the boring job of collecting specimens. Someone has to fill the petri dishes and measure bacterial growth. It's boring. It won't get your name into history books. But you do it because you know that because of the work YOU do, someone will discover something to benefit humanity. And it's OK if their name makes it into the textbook, but not yours. You, your fame, your name, your personality, is not as important as the possible benefit you can bring to society.

So get out there. One day at a time. One step at a time. Keep going no matter if you have 150,000 steps or 1,500,000 steps. You keep going. Because it would be such a shame if you could have made it but instead quit.  

“ЧАСТНЫЕ ПРЕДПОЛОЖЕНИЯ”

Summary: Petrov, and a team of interstellar travelers, are suppose to leave on a voyage to a distant planet in ten days. His trip will only take a few years, but those few years will equate to 200 to 250 years on Earth. And that means that by the time they return their friends, their loved ones, and their home planet as they know it will be gone. It is especially difficult for Petrov because he is leaving behind his wife. But such is the price of interstellar travel. With the team gone, those left behind grieve, yet only six months later they receive a notification that the spaceship is returning. There is some speculation over Petrov, the captain of the ship, being afraid and aborting the mission. However, it is not the case as evident the moment everyone sees the crew, or what was left of it. As we find out in the final chapter, Petrov proposed an experiment to his crew, to which they agreed, instead of traveling at a constant speed and having time slow inside the spaceship, they would travel at constant acceleration thereby possibly making the time pass faster inside the spaceship relative to Earth. Their experiment succeeded, at the cost of lives of two of their team members, and damage to their health after having to live so long in gravity up to seven times that of Earth. There is also a mention of Bikov and his ship whose departure was described in a previous short story.

There are two aspects of this story that I want to address. First, the idea that those who are sent out to explore have to sacrifice not only their lives but also their health, and that is on top of the sacrifices they already had to make. Life at seven times the gravity that is on Earth, is not easy, it is something that will effect their health for the rest of their lives. But is that cost worth the reward of returning to their home and their loved ones? Besides, should we really put ourselves in the position where we tell others if they can or cannot sacrifice themselves? Then again the previous story “Six matchsticks” speaks to that aspect and at the time I had said that sacrificing yourself is wasteful.

The second aspect is the fairness of having sent other explorers out there when ultimately their efforts are unneeded. Imagine if you send a ship to a planet, the trip will take 20 years. But in 5 years a new engine will be developed which will make the trip last only 5 years, and that means the second crew will arrive before the first. And the sacrifice of the first will be pointless, as their years will be spent en route for no reason. Then again, perhaps if the first crew never goes out then maybe that second faster engine never gets developed.  

Trickle Down Economics

“ЗАБЫТЫЙ ЭКСПЕРИМЕНТ”

Summary: Two physicists and a driver enter a restricted zone, with a diameter of about 200 kilometers. The zone is restricted because an incredibly large explosion took place about four decades ago, which seemed to have irradiated the surrounding area. But radiation is not the reason the physicists are there, they came to look for an experimental “eternal engine” that draws power from time, as if time was an actual physical force. The radiation zone is not the only place this type of experimental engine was built, but it is the only one that is actually producing energy in significant amounts. The physicists make their way across the contaminated zone, crossing paths with a disfigured deer and hearing strange calls from mutated animal life. They experience the effects of the blue fog, byproduct of the energy production, on themselves even while in the highly protected vehicle and watch how their exploration robots are frightened by the fog. Eventually they make it to what little was left of the place where the time engine was stored and climb underground. There they confirm that the engine is functioning and is in fact the source of the blue fog and the strange mutations. They return to the armored vehicle and make contact with the outside world, calling in scientific reinforcements.

I could not detect any serious theme in the short story. Aside from feeling an uncomfortable chill at the description of the mold growing on the deer's eyes this story was all straight forward. The idea of time as a physical force that could be harvested is really interesting. From my super limited understanding of dimensions I believe the fourth dimension would be time, and beings that exist in four dimensions would be able to move in time as easily as we can move in our physical three dimensional space. Don't quote me on that, as I may not know what I am talking about!

“ИСПЫТАНИЕ «СКИБР»”

Summary: Bikov, the grandson of the Bikov from “The Land of Crimson Clouds”, arrives at a testing ground to see the demonstration of a new kind of robot. The robot, or actually a team of robots all controlled by a single brain robot, is suppose to pass through a stretch or land while avoiding obstacles and not getting blown up. When the robot run is successfully completed, Bikov has the difficult job of telling the lead programmer, Akimov, that the programmer that was suppose to go on the 12 year voyage with Bikov had hurt himself. The way things stand, Akimov will have to replace the hurt programmer, regardless of the fact that Akimov is in love and has promised the girl that after the test was done they would leave and be together forever and ever.

I think the short story is suppose to illustrate the difficulty of the sacrifice, when you have to give up 12 years of your life, and also how hard it is to be the person to ask for such a sacrifice. However, I feel like there was not enough attention paid to that aspect. Ninety percent of the story was the robots running the obstacle course, with just a sliver of bookends discussing the fact that Akimov will have to leave.

The time and relationship sacrifice is rarely mentioned when talking about space exploration. Usually the talk is of sacrificing lives and safety, but if you have to dedicate 50 years of your life for training and traveling are you not technically sacrificing your life? Would it be fair to ask your relatives and loved ones to put their lives on hold and wait for you? Would it be fair to add the sacrifice of having no loved ones along with risking your life? If you know no one is waiting for you to come back, are you less likely to fight to live?

Yes what the short story is talking about is important, I just don't think the execution was very good.  

“ШЕСТЬ СПИЧЕК”

Summary: An inspector is investigating a work related accident that had left one of the scientists, Komilin, in a coma. Before the accident Komilin was using a new tool to direct pulses of neutrinos at specific sections of the brain, calling it Neutrino Acupuncture. Through his experiments he found out that the Neutrino Acupuncture seems to stimulate not only the areas of the brain responsible for rapid healing but also ones that may lead to discovery of new never before seen abilities. In order to properly document the new abilities Komilin decides to start testing on himself. This is the crucial moment when things go wrong as he overexerts himself trying to lift six matches, therefore winding up in a coma.

The most important aspect of this story, I think, is the question whether or not it is acceptable to use your own body for experiments. The investigator does not think so, saying that the most precious thing we have is human life, and we should allow robots or animals be sacrificed instead of humans. The ethical question about using animals for experiments aside, I think it is a bad mental investment for a scientist to compromise themselves. At the very least he could have looked for volunteers to replace him so he could stay safe and continue the experiment even if the side effects were to become debilitating.

In the end a counterargument is made to the inspector that he himself had risked his life to disarm a weapon and that a scientist risking himself is equivalent. I do not think it is a very strong parallel, as scientific discovery, especially the one in question, is not life threatening. There would not have been any harm in Komilin being patient. Playing fast and lose with the new discovery lead to him being sick and unable to work, so in a way, by rushing he had pushed back any meaningful scientific work. Sometimes slow and steady does in fact win the race.  

"ЧЕЛОВЕК ИЗ ПАСИФИДЫ"

Summary: Japan, little ocean town. A strange large metal man appears out of nowhere on the shore. Two Japanese men and two members of the US navy have a little disagreement over who should be able to take over the questioning of this strange metal man that had come from the bottom of the sea. Some money exchanges hands and the US soldiers are able to persuade the others that the metal man should come with them. After a few days of questioning and promises of diamonds, pearls, and secret advanced technology the metal man explodes leaving no trace behind. In the final scene we find out that the metal man was in fact a man dressed in an old suit designed for working on high voltage powerlines that one of the Japanese soldiers had sold earlier. And the only man who could translate for the metal man, also the one who bought that suit, was now on the board of directors of a large stock company selling stocks on the future diamonds and pearls exported from the ocean depths.

I think there are two important aspects of this story to talk about. First, the US Navy being left holding nothing and the Japanese characters having some similarities with post revolutionary Russian characters. Considering the time that this story was written I can see it being well received.

The second aspect is the desire of people to benefit financially from pretty much everything. If aliens landed on earth tomorrow I do not think it would be that much of a stretch to think that plenty of people would be trying to at the very least sell tickets to watch the landing. Then maybe some attempts to privatize new technology and rare artifacts and photo opportunities. That is, after the governments get done fighting over who gets to claim the position of Earth representative.  

"СПОНТАННЫЙ РЕФЛЕКС"

Summary: a robot designed to explore planets without the need for human intervention, becomes bored and decides to go exploring the compound of the institute. While being polite, he is nonetheless very destructive, but is eventually caught by bulldozers and is turned off by one of the scientists.

This story is another exploration on robot explorers, although this one is about the beginning stage of building something that is capable of learning.

I had a couple concerns about the story; Why would you build a machine that is so destructive until you iron out all the wrinkles in the programming? Is turning it off technically killing it, if it is capable of independent thought? A machine that is built for exploring seems to spend very little time on actual exploring. When it enters a new environment it seems to spend very little time exploring before moving on.

It's a short story but it feels like it's another handful of details to a proposed situation.

"ИЗВНЕ"

Summary:

Four men climb a small volcano, on the way back they hear a low flying plane. When the sound is gone they discover a man in a dirty shirt and stretched out pants, passed out on the ground. In the following chapters we learn that the man's name is Lozowskii, he was initially abducted by alien spider machines. The machines examine him and take his picture, and then ignore him. Lozowskii feels that he must at the very least make an attempt to investigate the space ship and maybe get in contact with the beings that built the machines. However, his plan goes awry. The space ship never goes to the home planet, but it does land inside a larger spaceship which seems to be the mother ship where the spider robots bring samples they collect.

Lozowskii spends days wondering the hallways of the ship, discovering a sort of intergalactic zoo, but he never comes in contact with anyone but the spider robots. He goes through his food and water supplies and fails to find anything more to sustain him, not counting what he could steal from the spiders feeding the zoo inhabitants. He becomes progressively more weak until he finally passes out, thinks he is hallucinating seeing the 'aliens', and is then taken back to Earth.

This story seems to be based on a small discussion between the team in the “Land of the Crimson Clouds”, the idea of the robots making it to distant stars long before humans. This story is just a sample of how it may have worked out.

Additionally this story speaks to the nature of us humans. Would you be willing to be treated like an animal if that means access to food and water? Lozowskii fights tooth and nail to makes the spider robots understand that he is not just some animal, he stands tall and proud. But at the cost of being proud, of being more spacial than animals, did he not lose the chance to meet the builders of the spider robots? Was his pride not at fault for getting him sent back to earth? If he had swallowed his pride and sat tight, maybe he would have made first contact.

How many opportunities we as humans passed up just because we think we are special?

This Be The Verse By Philip Larkin

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
    They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
    And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
    By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
    And half at one another’s throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
    It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
    And don’t have any kids yourself.