Slavonic and East European Review

SEER, 94, 3, july 2016 518 Smyrniw, Walter. Ukrainian Science Fiction: Historical and Thematic Perspectives. Peter Lang, Bern, 2013. 388 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Selective chronological bibliography. Index. €82.00: £61.00 (paperback). Walter Smyrniw’s monograph makes the case for Ukrainian science fiction as a culturally distinct branch of the international sci-fi family. Despite taking as his epigraph Einstein’s remark that ‘imagination embraces the entire world’, Smyrniw’s parameters are more cautious. Rather than an exhaustive history, he aims at outlining ‘the representative and the most imaginative Ukrainian science fiction [...] by writers residing in Ukraine and abroad’ (p. 9). After warning that ‘there is no single, viable definition of science fiction’, Smyrniw opens with a history of the genre worldwide. Unusually and intriguingly, he neglects well-known texts for obscurer works which were ‘firsts’ in their field, like Bishop Godwin’s 1638 The Man in the Moone (the first off-world utopia), or Denis Vairasse’s 1679 Histoire des Sévarambes (the first utopia set in Australia). In later chapters, Smyrniw locates other such ‘firsts’ in Ukrainian fiction — Vasyl Berezhnyi’s novella about an alien base discovered on the Moon is described as a ‘great leap forward for Soviet Ukrainian science fiction’ (p. 176); given the context, one wonders whether it might have been a ‘giant leap’ for Ukrainian novelists, too. Smyrniw relies on writers — such as Kingsley Amis and Ray Bradbury — rather than academics for theoretical commentary, ignoring Fredric Jameson and barely citing Darko Suvin. Each of the eighteen chapters explores a particular theme of twentieth-century Ukrainian scientific fantasy, including utopias; aliens; robots, androids and cyborgs (painstakingly differentiated and separately discussed); space travel; and technology. We gradually realize — though never explicitly told — that by Ukrainian science fiction Smyrniw means science fiction in the Ukrainian language. Ukrainian-born authors writing in Russian need not apply. This excludes Mikhail Bulgakov (The Fatal Eggs or Adam and Eve); Sigizmund Krzhizhanovskii’s odd dystopian fantasies; and, very disappointingly, mainstream science fiction writers such as the great (and comparatively widely translated) Anatolii Dneprov. In his keenness to refute what he calls the ‘myopic perception’ (p. 111) abroad of Ukrainian science fiction as an offshoot of Soviet writings, Smyrniw ruthlessly excludes other Russian influences, echoes and encounters. Concepts widespread in modern Slavic culture, such as Solov´ev’s man-godhood, Vernadskii’s noosphere or Federov’s ideas about immortality and resurrection, inevitably emerge in the texts discussed. By failing to credit their Russian origins, this book misses an opportunity to compare the common sources of Russian and Ukrainian imagination. Smyrniw’s determined exclusion of Russian authors clashes with his marked openness to Western influences on his field, by authors like H. G. Wells, Karel Čapek, Jules REVIEWS 519 Verne or Percival Lowell (the man behind the myth of Martian canals). Yet it feels like a major concession when Smyrniw mentions Ivan Efremov’s hugely influential novel Andromeda Nebula (and only because it is referenced by an Oles’ Berdnyk character). Conversely, Smyrniw is at his best discussing the stifling of Ukrainian writers by Soviet ideology and censorship. Chapter seven compares two space travel novels from the early 1930s, one by the pro-Soviet Volodymyr Vladko (Argonauts of the Universe), the other by the Catholic writer Myroslav Kapii (The Land of Blue Orchids), in a convincing case study of narrative deformed by ideology. Kapii’s Mars mission boasts an international crew, a Ukrainian astronomer, and a landing site near Kiev, whereas Vladko’s Venusian expedition ignores or belittles any characters (including Venusians) who are neither Soviet nor Russian. Vladko’s novel appeared in several editions and languages; Kapii’s simply lapsed into obscurity. Smyrniw stresses such continuity gaps in Ukrainian science fiction, where later authors like Berdnyk or Berezhnyi fail to recognize or benefit from the influence of predecessors like Kapii (apparently, ‘the progenitor of space voyages in Ukrainian science fiction’, p.123) because their work remained unavailable or unknown. He is particularly keen to dethrone writers like Vladko or Iurii Smolych (‘almost invariably hailed as the patriarch of Ukrainian science fiction’, p. 135) who owe their legacy to popularity with Soviet critics and over-representation in Russian translation. Smyrniw corrects the record by...