Billions of years before the end of the world
Billion years before the end of the world , even a billion years before the end of the world (OT: Russian За миллиард лет до конца света , transcribed Za milliard let do kontsa sveta ), is a 1977 published science fiction - novel by Strugatsky Brothers . The novel was first published in German in a translation by Welta Ehlert in 1980 by Volk und Welt in the GDR and a year later in the FRG by Heyne . In 1986 it came out at Suhrkamp .
content
During a hot summer, the astrophysicist Maljanow is on the verge of a breakthrough with his work on The Interaction of Stars and Diffuse Matter in a high-rise building in Leningrad in the 1970s . However, he is prevented from completion by a series of unusual events: He receives an unordered delivery of delicacies that have already been paid for; an attractive stranger who claims to be a school friend of his wife stands at the door and spends the night in his apartment; his neighbor, who works for a secret government project, commits suicide or is murdered; Malianov is questioned by the police and suspected.
Maljanow learns from some well-known scientists from other disciplines that they are also being kept from their work, sometimes by even more drastic and absurd measures. Is there an extraterrestrial supercivilization behind these processes or the secret society of the Nine , which has existed since prehistoric times, both of which want to stop the progress of humanity?
His neighbor, the mathematician Wetscherowski, suspects that the homeostatic world structure , the balance between increasing reason and non-decreasing entropy , will be threatened in the distant future by the increasing knowledge of mankind , and that the current events are the first reaction of the world structure to the danger, humanity could turn into a super civilization. The world building is defending itself.
Under the increasing pressure, the scientists end their research for various reasons, only Wetscherowski, who considers this to be a law of nature that should be researched and then used, does not surrender. With the work of the others, he wants to fight the universe alone in the solitude of the Pamir .
shape
The novel can be assigned to the powesti due to the small size and the concentration on the character Maljanow within Russian literature . The individual chapters and sub-chapters begin or end with ellipses and clauses that have been started or not completed. In the eighth chapter the narrative perspective changes from the third to the first person (Maljanow). More important to the Strugazkis than an explanation are the different reactions of the scientists in the face of the anonymous overwhelming threat. Erik Simon counts the novel to the philosophical novels of the Strugazkis.
filming
The film Days of Darkness by Alexander Nikolayevich Sokurow is based on the Strugazkis' novel.
proof
- ↑ Strugazki Bibliography (German editions)
- ^ One billion years before the end of the world , p. 96, Suhrkamp, 1986, ISBN 3-518-37838-4
- ↑ Erik Simon: Werkführer
- ↑ days of darkness in the Internet Movie Database (English)