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Assignments

from Yakov Protazanov's film Aèlita

* A weekly contribution to the course blog, about 500 words. If you feel shy about sharing, give me a page or two of written or typed notes. In either form. due each Thursday at the beginning of class. This will be folded into your grade for attendance and participation.

* Short paper (5-7 pp.) or equivalent web presentation, due February 9. See the list of possible topics on the syllabus.

* One-hour take-home midterm exam, self-scheduled, due March 16.

*One longer paper (10-12 pp.) or equivalent web presentation, due April 6. Topic: compare/contrast one work we're reading to one we aren't; OR to a similar work from the Western tradition; OR to a TV or film adaptation.

* One additional project, due on April 27:

Write a new article on Wikipedia, or expand/edit an article that is already there. If you know one of the relevant languages, translating from Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Polish, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovene, or Ukrainian Wikipedia would be very much appreciated too. Choose your topic after consulting with the instructor. Possibilities will vary depending on the author or topic you choose. You'll work on research practices, attributing statements, and following the key policies, The writing you do should come out to about 2000-2500 words total; this means it's possible to work on more than one topic if that's how you prefer to distribute your time. (I will of course look at your work on Wikipedia, but since it may, and eventually probably will, be edited there I will need the "original" copy for my files. 

* Final examination (short answer and essay): a 3-hour self-scheduled exam, due to me by May 11 (or, if you're a Bi-Co student, by May 6).

* Extra credit: collect and prepare info on a writer of SF from Russia, East Europe or Central Asia (who's available in English translation) for use in future editions of this course. OR: translate a short story that is not yet available in English. To be arranged after talking with the instructor.

Viktor Pelevin, Omon Ra

Omon Ra

 

Viktor Pelevin, Omon Ra

Viktor Pelevin (or Victor, in his English translations) was born in 1962, so grew up during the period of Stagnation. He attended aviation college in Moscow but has been a full-time writer since 1991. He is the first post-modern writer on our syllabus, and you'll see difference, though Omon Ra presents its questions about reality in a pretty realistic style. In her article about Pelevin in Neil Cornwell, ed., Reference Guide to Russian Literature (1998), Sally Dalton-Brown notes that his work is "characterized by fragmentation, conscious artificiality (i.e. the construction of 'hyperrealities'), and game-playing." Interesting to note that one of his stories is entitled "The Ninth Dream of Vera Pavlovna" - referring back to Chernyshevsky. Omon Ra was written in 1992, making it one of his earlier works; before 1991 he was better known as a writer of short stories. He often chooses to write science fiction, and you'll see the references to earlier (Soviet) SF in this book; he also moves into adjacent genres (fantasy, etc). He has written 14 novels or novellas, plus lots of essays. One short novel has the title "Prince StatePlan" (Принц Госплан), so this is not the only place where a character is named for a piece of Soviet realia - a name that no one would ever give a child.

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Stanisław Lem, The Cyberiad

Stanisław Lem, The Cyberiad: Fables for the Cybernetic Age

Lem's Cyberiada (1967) was beautifully, amusingly, brilliantly translated by Michael Kandel (whose PhD in Slavics is put to the best possible use in his inventive and impressive work on Lem, and I hope he can wallow in the royalties - though I don't mean to dis the other translators), and it has been in print ever since it appeared in 1974. Note also the wonderful original illustrations by Daniel Mróz (some still labeled in Polish).

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Zoran Živković, Time Gifts

Time Gifts

Zoran Živković, Time Gifts

Zoran Živković (born 1948) is one of the best-known SF authors in the West from former Yugoslavia, thanks largely to very good translations of his work into English. (Alica Copple-Tošić, who translated Time Gifts, is not just a native speaker of English with a good style, but a sensitive reader of the original. I have the book in Serbian - with some melting Dalí clocks on the cover! - so let me know if you have questions about the original of any passages.) Some of Ž's works refer to well-known figures from Western culture (such as a plot line about Sherlock Holmes in his The Fourth Circle). His other books are listed on the back of our edition, so check there first if you would like to know and read more. He has a career as a publisher as well. Note: the first syllable of his last name suggests the adjective živ ('live' or 'lively') or the noun život ('life').

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Karel Čapek, War with the Newts

War with the Newts

Karel Čapek (1890-1938) - Information and questions for reading War with the Newts

An introduction by Ivan Klíma mentions Faust, I quote (p. xii): "A man who feels equal to the creator labors under the delusion that he can and should make the world confirm to his own idea." 

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Vladimir Nabokov, Invitation to a Beheading

Invitation to a Beheading

Vladimir Nabokov, Invitation to a Beheading

Invitation to a Beheading (Приглашение на казнь) was drafted in 1934 and completed in 1935-6, after Nabokov had already written several novels in Russian. It is more political than his earlier work had been, and its speculative elements remained a departure for him. Scholars consider it a response at once to the Stalinization of the Soviet Union and the rise of the Nazis in Germany (you can imagine how Nabokov scorned them!). He was researching the life of our friend Nikolai Chernyshevsky for what became his finest novel in Russian, The Gift (Дар), and you should recognize traces of Vera Pavlovna's fourth dream in many of its angles. 

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Mikhail Bulgakov, "The Fatal Eggs"

 

 

Mikhail Bulgakov, "The Fatal Eggs"

Mikhail Afanas'evich Bulgakov (1891-1940) was born in Kiev. He trained and practiced as a doctor, but in 1920 he decided to quit and become a writer. He is best known for his plays ("Days of the Turbins," "Zoyka's Apartment," "The Crimson Island," "Molière," and others) and his novel The Master and Margarita (left not quite finished when he died), but he wrote some shorter fiction as well. "The Fatal Eggs," written in 1924, was published in the collection Diavoliada ('The Diaboliad') in Moscow in 1925 and fairly enthusiastically received. Bulgakov was skeptical of the Bolshevik revolution, and as a result he experienced all kinds of unpleasant censorship - indeed, by 1927 (a year before most of the action in "Fatal Eggs" takes place!) Bulgakov's prose was banned, and he never published any more prose in his lifetime. His success as a dramatic author lasted a bit longer, but Stalin did not let him emigrate when he asked to in 1930. Bulgakov's third wife preserved his archive after his death from nephrosclerosis, and when The Master and Margarita was finally published in the 1960s - in a censored edition! - it was a big surprise for readers everywhere.

more...

Mikhail Bulgakov, "The Fatal Eggs"

 

 

Mikhail Bulgakov, "The Fatal Eggs"

Mikhail Afanas'evich Bulgakov (1891-1940) was born in Kiev. He trained and practiced as a doctor, but in 1920 he decided to quit and become a writer. He is best known for his plays ("Days of the Turbins," "Zoyka's Apartment," "The Crimson Island," "Molière," and others) and his novel The Master and Margarita (left not quite finished when he died), but he wrote some shorter fiction as well. "The Fatal Eggs," written in 1924, was published in the collection Diavoliada ('The Diaboliad') in Moscow in 1925 and fairly enthusiastically received. Bulgakov was skeptical of the Bolshevik revolution, and as a result he experienced all kinds of unpleasant censorship - indeed, by 1927 (a year before most of the action in "Fatal Eggs" takes place!) Bulgakov's prose was banned, and he never published any more prose in his lifetime. His success as a dramatic author lasted a bit longer, but Stalin did not let him emigrate when he asked to in 1930. Bulgakov's third wife preserved his archive after his death from nephrosclerosis, and when The Master and Margarita was finally published in the 1960s - in a censored edition! - it was a big surprise for readers everywhere.

more...

Contact

Sibelan Forrester

Office: Kohlberg 340
Phone: 610.328.8162
Email: sforres1@swarthmore.edu

Office Hours:

Monday: 11:00-12:00
Tuesday: 10:00-11:00
Thursday: 1:30-2:30
...or by appointment