Talk:Disquiet (novel)

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[edit] Two questions

First of all, is that certain, that the events of the book take place before the "Noon. 22nd Century" (see last paragraph of the Trivia section)? Second, should we keep the title for "Улитка..." used before ("Snail on the Slope") or stick to the new one ("Snail on the Mountainside")? --Koveras 17:55, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

The events in "Disquiet" happen certainly after the chapter "Zloumyshlenniki" in "Noon. 22nd Century", but before the chapter "Porazhenie". The content of the "Noon. 22nd Century" changes a little from version to version (sometimes the chapters "Noch' na Marse", "Pochti takie zhe", "Porazhenie" are absent, the chapter "Glubokij poisk" is substututed by "Moby Dick", and the content of other chapters slightly fluctuates). I like the title "The Snail on the Slope" better (especially since it is a title of a published book in English, see [1]), I just took the title from Boris and Arkady Strugatsky article. --Misha Stepanov, 128.165.96.84 19:38, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

From what I read in the article, the events of the book take place after 2119 AD (since that's when the bioblockade was invented). Any idea in which year "Porazhenie" is set? I just try to fit the book into the Noon Universe Chronology... --Koveras 19:56, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

The only relevant places in "Porazhenie" that I'm aware of are:

А когда Акимов и Сермус запустили первую систему киберразведчиков, Сидоров даже хотел уйти из космоса. Это было тридцать лет назад, и с тех пор ему приходилось не раз прыгать в ад за исковерканными обломками киберов и делать то, что не смогли сделать они...

Он вдруг вспомнил, как испытывался первый механозародыш, модель Яйца. Это было несколько лет назад. Тогда он был еще совершенным новичком в эмбриомеханике.

Какие-то мерзавцы двести лет назад устроили в ней залитое бетоном темное помещение. Они набили это помещение артиллерийскими снарядами.

That "thirty years ago" event certainly happened after Athos' work on Vladislava. BTW, "Disquiet" also happened after his work on Vladislava [2] (end of the text on the page):

Вы помните Атоса, Леонид Андреевич? Он писал мне, что когда-то работал с вами. — Да, на Владиславе. Атос-Сидоров. — Он погиб, — сказал Поль, не оборачиваясь. — Давно уже. Где-то вон там... Жалко, что он вам не понравился.

The Athos' work on Vladislava is dated by year 31, [3]. Paul Gnedykh was a hunter during about year 48, not (yet?) a director of the base, [4]. Early 60-s — Ark Project [5]. Yayla is mentioned to be opened in 70-s [6], and it is mentioned in "Disquiet":

— Я не такой уж и новичок, директор, — сказал Марио с веселым достоинством. — Я уже охотился на Яйле. Может быть, можно обойтись без пробы?

(that could mean, BTW, that the Ark Project happened before the events described in "Disquiet", not as I wrote in Trivia section). Yayla is also mentioned in chapter "Svidanie" in the "Noon. 22 century":

— Чем ты меня порадуешь на этот раз? — деловито спросил Костылин. — Ты ведь с Яйлы?..

Это было семнадцать лет назад. «Зачем это случилось? – подумал Охотник. – Ведь я не собирался там охотиться. Крукс сообщал, что там нет жизни – только бактерии да сухопутные рачки. И все-таки, когда Сандерс попросил меня осмотреть окрестности, я взял карабин...»

If Yayla was discovered in 70-s, that means that the hunting at Crux happened not earlier 70-17 = 53. The document [7] dates it as "Approximately at the same time" with year 48. OK. Athos spent at least 3 years in the forest. Athos works at COMCON-2 during the Great Revelation. So, I would estimate the time of "Porazhenie" to be 2nd half of 70-s, 1st half of 80-s, but I don't know exactly. There is also a mention of Rainbow in "Disquiet":

— А на базах, которые вам не вверены? — Какие имеются в виду? — Земля, например. Или, скажем, Радуга. — На Земле тоже недостатка ни в чем не испытывают. Испытывают избыток. А на Радуге... Знаете что, Леонид Андреевич, сводки уже в типографии, через полчаса прочтете сами.

although the Experiment there happened at year 56. --Misha Stepanov, 128.165.96.84 04:37, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

Just a note. According to [8] some people think that the "Disquiet" is not a description of events happened in the Noon Universe, but a text written in the Noon Universe. I dont' know. I guess that some group of people tried to connect all the books and decided that this worked best for them. --Misha Stepanov 07:24, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

Wow, that's a lot of text to read through... You know that last idea of "Diquiet" being a text written in the Noon Universe appeals to me more now. %) Thanks. --Koveras 17:52, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

This is all very interesting to me, Alan Myers, as I translated The Snail on the Slope (and Far Rainbow for MIR in 1967). I'm mystified that the earlier variant is discussed in such detail when Snail, surely a masteriece of Russian SF, doesn't have an entry at all. The lake in Snail, incidentally, is full of human bodies and may well be the 'source' of the Forest's inhabitants, who possess no myth of origin.

The Snail on the Slope is the literal translation of the Russian title, though the epigraph to the novel indicates that the slope is that of Mount Fuji.

The essence of the novel is that Pepper (Perez) in the Forest Directorate 'falls' upward and eventually arrives at the top of the hierarchy there. Meanwhile in the fearfully alien Forest, Kandid resists the arbitrary flow of history (a familiar trope in the Strugatskys) and doggedly heads for the bottom of the hierarchy there, achieving an existential satisfaction.

There are several challenging languages in Snail: the maddeningly repetitive speech of the Forest dwellers (Hopalong, Buster and the rest, to use my nomenclature); the meaningless obfuscations and 'pseudo-scientific' gobbledegook from the Directorate management and personnel; the mysterious conversation between the machines; the equally mysterious commentaries picked up by seers in the Forest villages and more.

I met the Strugatsky brothers in Moscow in the 1960s, when Boris made it clear that they would have preferred 'To Be a God' translated rather than 'Far Rainbow' but that wasn't my decision. The brothers later told me by letter that the scientific rubbish spouted by Directorate officials in Snail should merely sound plausible to a non-scientist.

Professor Efremov's novel The Hour of the Bull had just been translated into Japanese, and Arkady Strugatsky translated a bit of it on the spot (in Efremov's flat) though he was surprised to find the word 'minesweeper' there.

There is quite a lot of Strugatsky material on the web. I wrote a short survey on Russian Science fiction for the first edition of the Encyclopaedia of Science Fiction, and some of this was retained for the second edition.

I've learned a lot from this discussion and will look out the Strugatsky work I haven't read.

(Bandalore 01:24, 7 November 2007 (UTC))