Science Fiction
Among Rybakov's works were first published and include the prize-winning novels: Fireplace on a Tower (Ochag na bashne, 1990), and Gravilyot Tsesarevitch (1993) which depicts an alternative world featuring a Russian Empire in which communism is merely a religion, and our world is just an insane scientific experiment.
His Death of Ivan Ilyich (1997) reveals the inner world of a contemporary person in a moment before his death.
The novel Na budushchiy god v Moskve (In the adjacent year in Moscow, 2003) explores a Russia torn apart into small, poor countries, ruled by those idealists of the late Soviet Union who sincerely hated totalitarianism but didn't notice any good features of the nation, ruined the whole system of government and survived with help of the West. In the story space is ruled by Darths and Vaders, and a Russian rocket scientist Ivan Obiwankin attempts to resurrect his people's feelings of nationalism by launching his own space ship.
Rybakov preaches equality of cultures and states that cultures are often based on restrictions, and that simply removing the restrictions as anti-democratic may ruin the culture. Rybakov's novel also examines the Russian mentality, criticizing its tendency to understand and agree with the positions of others as an inappropriate way to deal with the encroaching Western civilization. He argues that all living civilizations are unique, and that in the future it may become essential to save some other civilization from stagnation, because a world ruled by only one civilization has no future.
He shows through an example of the ruined family of the main character Alexey that,
"the surest way for you to cease being esteemed and appreciated... even just loved... is to implicitly cede something essential and principal."
Vyacheslav Rybakov and Igor Alimov were also the authors of There are no bad people. The works was originally attributed to Holm van Zaichik but was later proved to be a hoax. The series tells the story of the world of the Orduss, a fictional country with a humane and rich culture, that unifies lands of China, Russia and the Near East.
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Famous quotes containing the words science fiction, science and/or fiction:
“Everything is becoming science fiction. From the margins of an almost invisible literature has sprung the intact reality of the 20th century.”
—J.G. (James Graham)
“Already nature is serving all those uses which science slowly derives on a much higher and grander scale to him that will be served by her. When the sunshine falls on the path of the poet, he enjoys all those pure benefits and pleasures which the arts slowly and partially realize from age to age. The winds which fan his cheek waft him the sum of that profit and happiness which their lagging inventions supply.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“A predilection for genre fiction is symptomatic of a kind of arrested development.”
—Thomas M. Disch (b. 1940)