From the sky high (Branstner)
From Heaven Up or Cosmic All Too Funny (subtitles: These are unbelievable stories of the kind that are told to space veterans in the “Wirtshaus zum Müden Gaul” on Thursday evenings ) is a cycle of humorous science fiction stories by Gerhard Branstner . It was published in 1974 by the publishing house Das Neue Berlin with illustrations by Horst Bartsch. In the 1982 edition and the “new, reviewed edition” from 2005 ( Trafo Verlag ), the title was Vom Himmel hoch. Utopian lies .
action
In a disused space station, which is used as a home for “space veterans”, four older men meet every Thursday in the “Zum müden Gaul” inn to tell each other stories over a few bottles of red wine. Since the real stories get boring at some point, they decide to only tell invented stories. The action extends over three evenings, with four stories being told each evening - one each from:
- the microbiologist savoy, called "sky gardener",
- the cook Stroganoff, called "room cook",
- the astrophysicist Kraftschyk, called "Schwerenöter" and
- the robot engineer Fontanelli, known as the “machine doctor”.
Between the stories, the four gentlemen discuss the (im) possibility or (in) probability of the events being told. A secondary character is played by the "service machine", a kind of waiter robot that speaks with a child's voice due to a defect.
The stories and their narrators:
The first evening:
- Savoy cabbage: the hair-raising rescue from mortal danger
- Stroganoff: The sun in tow
- Fontanelli: The fool in the orphanage
- Kraftschyk: The encounter with true error
The second evening:
- Stroganoff: The iron squire
- Kraftschyk: Kumpelfings in space
- Savoy: The comet mail
- Fontanelli: The helper who ran away
The third evening:
- Fontanelli: The robot in love
- Stroganoff: The runaway perpetuum mobile
- Savoy cabbage: the king's game
- Kraftschyk: Up from the sky
source
- Gerhard Branstner: Up from the sky. Utopian lies . The new life. Berlin 1982.