The Bull's Hour (alternatively: The Ox Hour; Russian: Час Быка, Chas Byká) 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 the "Capitalism" and the Chinese brand of political communist system of the time.
This novel is considered a sequel to the 1957 novel Andromeda: A Space-Age Tale, taking place in the same universe some century or more later. Even though the cast of characters is entirely different, an occasional reference is made to the events and characters of 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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Some 3000 years in the future, a Communist Earth has just developed faster-than-light space travel based on the experiment of Ren Boz (of 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 Earth escapees from the Age before World Unification.
The society of this distant planet is labelled by Efremov as "an amalgamation of a Capitalism in its worst form and of a Chinese pseudo-socialism" and a part of "Inferno" (a deep philosophical concept of Efremov's relating to the Nature and the natural way of things, always as he claims infernal towards the living thinking sentient beings), a society in which ordinary workers' lives are limited to 26 local years ("short-living", KJI, or КЖИ for Russian: "короткоживущие") while scientists, engineers and other selected qualified professionals live out their natural lives ("long-living", DJI, or ДЖИ for Russian: "долгоживущие"), with artists, sportspeople and "models" given somewhat longer life-spans than that of KJI (up to about 34 years). Both KJI and DJI are under the ruthless totalitarian control of the ruling class of government bureaucracy ("snake-carriers", similar to the prototypical "inner-party members" of Orwell's "1984") and the police forces ("the lilac"), which in turn are under the direct command of the Council of Four and its Chairman, the actual Ruler of the planet. The most shocking aspect of its civilization for the Earthians is its total control of information, maintaining separate information systems for separate social strata, with full and true information available ultimately only to the Supreme Leader.
The plot follows the Communist crew as they establish contact and explore the planet's society, eventually sacrificing some lives including that of the expedition leader, female historian Fay Rodis, for the sake of free future of the planet and its people's children. Their influence is predominantly through providing full and true information freely to all people about Earth's past and present, and their views of the situation on the planet. They also provide a selective short memory-eraser (a modifier of social and behavioural skills) to be used against the system's spies by the nascent resistance. Also, some of the crew (esp. Rodis) have the mental capacity to do the same sort of influence without use of the device. Every member of the crew was also accompanied by a nine-legged discoid robot called "SDF" (Servant, Defender and Freighter).
The book's seemingly strong anti-Chinese sentiment was added because the novel was written in the time of the Sino–Soviet split, as a device to get it past the censors. Examples of it are found throughout the novel; for example, the gardens of the Planet's Dictator were called Zoam Gardens, an obvious backward reading for Mao Zedong, The Council of Four represented the Chinese Gang of Four. The name of the novel deriving from an old (1909) Chinese-Russian dictionary (quoting the phrase "Earth is born in the Bull's hour (or Daemon's hour, 2:00 am)"). This quote also appears in the novel's epigraph.
"Not one state has such a right [to deny access to information], not one planet! The sacred duty of each of us is to contravene such an unprecedented oppression. Who dares block the way of a sentient reasoning being towards knowledge? ... When in the Great Ring a state is discovered that blocks the way to knowledge for its people, such a state is destroyed. This is the only case that gives the right to interfere in the affairs of another planet. ... the prohibition to learn about arts, sciences, life on other planets, is unacceptable."
Spanning approximately three thousand years from the 20th century to the present time of the novel, these are:
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