Russian Science Fiction Literature and Cinema

Banerjee is an Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and a Faculty Fellow at the Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future at Cornell University. She is the author of "We Modern People: Science Fiction and the Making of Russian Modernity" (Wesleyan University Press, 2013), winner of the Science Fiction and Technoculture Studies Book Prize.

A decidedly scholarly work attempting to reconcile Soviet-era space race Sci-Fi with Cinema – also politics, technology and society – though one which remains particularly valuable given the paucity of any consistent accounts to date. It’s a comprehensive, and even exhaustive, read featuring a host of contributors and which, to varying extents, likely will appeal not just to those wanting a handle on the Sci-Fi/Cinema connection, but perhaps to Russophiles across-the-board, too.

• INTRODUCTION Anindita Banerjee. A Possible Strangeness: Reading Russian Science Fiction on the Page and the Screen I. FROM UTOPIAN TRADITIONS TO REVOLUTIONARY DREAMS Darko Suvin. The Utopian Tradition of Russian Science Fiction Mark B. Adams. Red Star: Another Look at Aleksandr Bogdanov Anindita Banerjee. Generating Power Asif A. Siddiqi. Imagining the Cosmos: Utopians, Mystics, and the Popular Culture of Spaceflight in Revolutionary Russia II. RUSSIA’S ROARING TWENTIES Dominic Esler. Soviet Science Fiction of the 1920s: Explaining a Literary Genre in its Political and Social Context Eliot Borenstein. The Plural Self: Zamjatin’s We and the Logic of Synecdoche Andrew J. Horton. Science Fiction of the Domestic: Iakov Protazanov’s Aelita Yvonne Howell. Eugenics, Rejuvenation, and Bulgakov’s Journey into the Heart of Dogness III. FROM STALIN TO SPUTNIK AND BEYOND Michael G. Smith. Stalinism and the Genesis of Cosmonautics Lynn Barker and Robert Skotak. Klushantsev: Russia’s Wizard of Fantastika Istvan Csicsery-Ronay Jr. Towards the Last Fairy Tale: The Fairy-Tale Paradigm in the Strugatskys’ Science Fiction, 1963–72 Stephen Dalton. Tarkovsky, Solaris, and Stalker IV. FUTURES AT THE END OF UTOPIA Elana Gomel. Viktor Pelevin and Literary Postmodernism in Soviet Russia Vlad Strukov. The Forces of Kinship: Timur Bekmambetov’s Night Watch Cinematic Trilogy Aleksandr Chantsev. The Antiuopia Factory: The Dystopian Discourse in Russian Literature in the Mid-2000s