'Future That We Have...What?': The Tenses of the Modern Russian Science Fiction

• In Event: "More Than Sci-Fi": The Models of Society in Late Soviet and Post-Soviet Speculative Fiction

Abstract

It’s been long noticed and discussed that in the last 30 years Russian speculative fiction has developed a curious relationship with the future – past a certain point the simple future stemming from the current existing present increasingly becomes something that is somehow difficult to imagine and portray. Even radically alternative, “what-if”, futures, that is – futures in a subjunctive mood – are becoming relatively rare (and increasingly subversive even within the realm of mass literature). What seems to flourish, though, are various forms of future-in-the past, where Russian (and world) history is rewritten (in the “time-traveller” “popadantsy” version – together with the personal history of the character) to fit the “proper” image of what should have been, or where that history has been different (and, once again, properly cynicised and archaicised) to begin with. In this paper we would like to discuss the possible reasons for this desperate reduction of the future in the future- and speculation-driven genres – linking it not just to ressentiment but to the image of the “world as it is” and the collective fears that (being more sustainable economically – in all senses of the term) have replaced even sectoral collective dreams.

Author

• Elena Mikhailik, U of New South Wales (Australia)