The Bull's Hour
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The Bull's Hour (alternatively: The Ox Hour) (Russian: Час Быка, Tcha's Byka' ) is a social science fiction novel written by Russian author and paleontologist Ivan Yefremov in 1968. It was banned in the Soviet Union six months after its publication and attempted to be taken out from all the libraries and bookshops throughout the country [1] when it was realized by the authorities to contain a sharp criticism of the current state of affairs in the USSR though pretending to be critical of Chinese brand of political communist system.
This novel is considered a sequel to the 1957 novel Andromeda: A Space-Age Tale, even though the cast of characters is entirely different, due to the occasional reference made to the previous volume. For example, the main character in The Bull's Hour is a female historian who on one occasion remembers most of the notable Andromeda characters as historical figures.
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[edit] Plot summary
A futuristic Communist Earth has just developed the faster-than-light travel based on the experiment of Ren Boz, described in the first novel The Andromeda Nebula. Using the new technology, Earth constructs "straight-beam" starships which travel by sliding on the edge between our Universe (Shakti) and the Anti-Universe (Tamas). The second ship of that kind, Dark Flame, departs from the Solar System on a mission to a habitable planet Tormance (the name is borrowed from David Lindsay's A Voyage to Arcturus) in the Lynx constellation, which was reported by alien space voyagers from Cepheus to be colonized by humans, thought to be the Earth escapees from the Age before world unification.
The society of this distant planet is called by the Author "Inferno" and "an amalgamation of a Capitalism in its worst form and of a Chinese pseudo-socialism". The book's strong anti-Chinese sentiment was added because the novel was written in the time of the Sino-Soviet split. There are some interesting references to this antipathy found throughout the novel; for example, the gardens of the Dictator of the Planet were called Zoam Gardens, an obvious backward reading for Mao Zedong, The Big Four, the council which ruled the planet, represented the Chinese Gang of Four. Even the name of the novel derived from an old (1909) Chinese-Russian dictionary (quoting the phrase "Earth born in the Bull's hour (or Daemon's hour, 2:00 am)"). This quote also appeared in the epigraph of the novel.
The plot follows the Communist crew, who sacrificed some lives including the life of the expedition commander, historian Fuy Rodis, for the sake of the class-free future of the planet and of his people's children. The only weapon they used for this objective was a selective short memory-eraser which they provided to be used by the local resistance forces. Also, some of the crew (esp Rodis) have the mental capacity to do the same sort of thing without use of the device, though with less efficiency, comparablee to the Jedi mind trick from Star Wars and the neuralizer from Men in Black). Every member of the crew was also accompanied by a robot with nine legs called "SDF" (Servant, Defender and Freighter).
[edit] Main characters
[edit] Starship "Dark Fire" Crew
- Fuy Rodis, expedition commander, historian
- Grif Rift, annihilation drive engineer, starship commander
- Vir Norin, astronavigator-I
- Menta Cor, astronavigator-II
- Div Simbel, pilot-engineer
- Gan Atal, armour belt defence engineer
- Nei Holly, biological defence engineer
- Sol Sain, computational devices engineer
- Olla Dez, communication and photography officer
- Evisa Tanet, medical officer, StarFlot Doctor
- Tivisa Henako, biologist
- Chedi Daan, sociologist, linguist
- Tor Lik, astrophysicist, planetologist
[edit] Planet Tormance characters
- Choyo Chagas, Chairman of the Big Four, Lord of the Planet
- Gen Shi, Zet Ug, Ka Loof, his deputies, other members of the Big Four
- Yantre Yahah, his wife
- Er Vo-Bia, his girlfriend
- Hontello Tollo Fraelle (or Taele), his information officer
- Yan Gao-Yuar (Yangar), commander of the "Lilac"
- Su An-Te (Su-Te), Tormance girl
- Kzer Boo-Yam, leader of the "kgee" ("shortlivers")
[edit] References
- ^ "The Mentor." (PDF)
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