Metro 2033 (Roman)
Metro 2033 is a dystopian novel by the Russian author Dmitri Alexejewitsch Gluchowski from 2007. The action takes place in a future Moscow , the above-ground part of which has become uninhabitable after a nuclear war , so that the survivors are forced to live in the metro , which has also been partially destroyed .
action
The plot of the book presupposes a major nuclear conflict , which is not described in detail , which completely devastated large parts of the earth and made it uninhabitable for an indefinite period of time. In the year 2033, the time when the events described in the book set in, the world is therefore completely different from the present. An icy nuclear winter , triggered by the effects of nuclear explosions on the earth's atmosphere, covers the entire planet, and the massive residual radiation does not allow any unprotected human being to survive on the surface for more than a few minutes. In the context of the story, man has lost his supremacy once and for all and has to take refuge underground in the subway systems . In the meantime, triggered by the massive nuclear radiation, bizarrely mutated forms of life have formed, ranging from small, light-sensitive amoeba mushrooms in the underground to winged “demons” and even eerie human-like “blacks”.
The protagonist of the novel, a young Russian named Artjom, sees himself threatened by dark-colored mutants, the so-called "blacks", at his home station, the VDNKh . The blacks appear to him again and again in enigmatic visions. One day a soldier named Hunter appears on the station, to whom Artyom tells his secret: He is probably responsible for the “blacks” attacking the VDNKh himself. As a boy, he and two friends left for an uninhabited neighboring station. There they opened the Hermetic Gate to get to the surface. Frightened by the sight of the sky, they fled in a panic, leaving the gate open.
Hunter goes to close the gate again. Artyom is instructed by Hunter, if he, Hunter, did not return, to report this danger, which could possibly destroy the entire Moscow Metro, to the station group called "Polis" in the middle of the subway. When Hunter actually doesn't return, Artyom leaves. His way to the polis leads him through many stations of the Moscow Metro, but is characterized by inevitable detours, as in the stations mostly different groups are in power, e.g. B .: The Hanse (the community of ring stations), bandits, but also communists and fascists . In addition, some stations are very close to the irradiated surface, which has caused mutations in station residents. Arriving at the polis, Artyom soon finds out that the council of ring stations is unable to provide assistance to the VDNKh. Artyom is devastated until a council member takes him aside for a private conversation and tells Artyom that there is still a solution: go up to the large library to look for a fabled book. In return, he is promised an opportunity to destroy the “blacks”. Artjom makes his way to the library with some of his colleagues, but initially does not find the documents he is looking for, and ultimately his companion Danila is killed by one of the mutated beings living there, a so-called "librarian". He had some blood-soaked documents with him that point the way to an intact missile base, accessible through a secret area of the metro (the "D-6"), which was formerly reserved for the Soviet government. Ultimately, Artyom and his colleagues succeeded, despite the dangers still waiting for Artyom (for example, he had to cope with the way to the next station alone on the surface), from the top of the Ostankino tower to transmit the necessary target coordinates for a missile attack to the home of blacks, the Moscow Botanical Garden . Artyom watches from the tower as his target is destroyed by the fragmentation warheads.
The VDNKh is saved, but one last vision of the blacks makes Artyom pensive. In this Artjom thinks he recognizes that this one, recurring vision, in which he walks down a dark metro tunnel and finally meets a black man, was merely an attempt by black people who wanted to contact him telepathically . In retrospect, Artyom realizes that the blacks never used violence or tried to injure or kill anyone, even when they penetrated the VDNKh, but that they only tried to establish peaceful contact with the people. Artyom, who was one of the few people with whom the blacks could communicate telepathically because of his dreams, whose messages he did not yet understand, was supposed to serve as a mediator. However, the guards at the station, its residents and Artyom himself never considered that the blacks might be peaceful, sentient, intelligent beings, but instead considered them to be ordinary mutated and dangerous animals and opened fire immediately each time when they approached the station. In retrospect, however, the mutants turned out to be beneficiaries of the new situation on the planet after the devastation of the nuclear war, which simply adapted better to the new living conditions on the contaminated earth's surface than humans and who wanted to help humans in a peaceful way to adapt to the new conditions on the earth's surface so that they too could one day live there again. Weeping, Artyom takes off his gas mask, as he understands that through his own actions and through the violent, intolerant nature of man towards other living beings, he has destroyed humanity's last hope for salvation or a life on the surface.
background
During his journey through the subway, the protagonist repeatedly encounters different metro stations and population groups whose composition reflects historical or contemporary social structures. For example, in the novel there are both communists who live on the subway line 1 , known as the “Red Line”, and fascists who have built their so-called “Fourth Reich” at the transfer hub below Pushkin Square . A social gradient can also be identified, which is also evident in the architectural features of the individual metro stations.
In his novel, Dmitri Gluchowski takes up the modern legend of a secret underground line, the so-called "Metro 2" . In the book, the fictional line connects various strategically important locations with the Kremlin .
criticism
In the criticism, the basic idea of the novel is perceived as an original variation of known patterns. The three works (Metro 2033, Metro 2034 and Metro 2035) are also considered special because they were published in an unfinished form on the Internet during their creation process, so that readers could influence the creation.
Sequels
The sequel to Metro 2033 , written by Dmitri Gluchowski, was published in German in October 2009 with the title Metro 2034 . The protagonist here is an old man named Homer, who has to defeat a virus with Hunter.
On June 12, 2015, the third official part by Dmitri Gluchowski was published. It bears the title Metro 2035 . The German translation was published on April 11, 2016.
Since 2009, other novels, written by other authors and set in the Metro 2033 universe , have appeared in Russia . So far, nine books have been translated into German, published by Heyne Verlag in the METRO 2033-Universum-Roman series .
Video games
In March 2010, the game Metro 2033 , which simulates the plot of the book , was released for the Xbox 360 and Windows . It was developed by the Ukrainian studio 4A Games and published by the US game publisher THQ . The video game deviates from the bookstore in places, for example the location of the rocket base is taken from the archive, while in the book this originally represents the reward for finding a certain tome.
Based on Metro 2033 , 4A Games developed a sequel that once again puts the protagonist Artyom in the foreground, who is investigating rumors of the sighting of a single surviving black man. The game was released on May 17, 2013 for Windows, OS X and Linux as well as Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 .
Metro Exodus was released on February 14, 2019 .
expenditure
- Dmitri Alexejewitsch Glukhovski: Metro 2033 , Heyne Verlag, 2008, ISBN 978-3-453-53298-4 ; The abridged audio book version, read by Detlef Bierstedt : Dmitri Alexejewitsch Glukhovski: Metro 2033 , DAV, 2009, ISBN 978-3-89813-852-9
- new edition:
- Metro 2033 , Heyne Verlag, 2012, ISBN 978-3-4535-2968-7
- Metro 2033 / Metro 2034 , Heyne Verlag, 2014, ISBN 978-3-4533-1593-8
literature
- Matthias Schwartz, Nina Weller: Putin's Matrix: On the mystification, banalization and subversion of the political in current Russian fantasy , in: Wiener Slawistischer Almanach , Volume 68 (2011) , pp. 225-273.