Dunno on the Moon

Dunno on the Moon
Author Nikolay Nosov
Original title Незнайка на Луне
Country USSR
Language Russian

Dunno on the Moon (Russian: Незнайка на Луне) is a fairytale novel by Nikolay Nosov from the series about the adventures of Dunno with elements of science fiction. This is the final part of a trilogy of Nosov's novels, consisting of the works The Adventures of Dunno and His Friends (1953-1954), Dunno in the Sun City (1958), and Dunno on the Moon (1964-1965).

For the first time novel, Dunno on the Moon was published in the magazine Family and School (rus. Семья и школа) in the years 1964-1965. A separate edition of the book was published by Detskaya Literatura in 1965.

In 1969 Nosov was awarded the RSFSR State Prize commemorated to Nadezhda Krupskaya for his trilogy of works about Dunno. In 1997-1999 at the studio FAF Entertainment on the script of Vladimir Antonovich Golovanov and Sergei Ivanov based on the novel was shot eponymous cartoon.

Characters

Plot

Beginning

Even before the events described in the book, Doono with Fuksiya and Selyodochka from Sun City visited the Moon and brought out the moon mineral with extraordinary properties (later called lunit). After a number of events turns out that its rapprochement with the magnet gives the effect of local weightlessness that can allow to send to the moon spaceship with large crew and supplies on board. As hopes Doono, there is intelligent life over there, due to the loss of the atmosphere has moved inside of the Moon. The cosmonauts take with them the seeds of terrestrial cultivated plants. However, the exclusion Dunno from the flight for stealing the weightlessness device from the Pavilion and careless handling of it, which nearly led to its loss, brings to these plans unexpected adjustments. Dunno instigates Roly-Poly, who was also not included into the crew, to fly as stowaways. The day before the launch they snuck into the rocket. At night before the flight Roly-Poly has changed his mind, but instead of getting out of the rocket accidentally launched it in flight in automatic mode.

After the moon landing Dunno and Roly-Poly come out in space suits for a walk to a nearby mountain. In a cave Dunno falls into an icy tunnel leading down to the internal cavity of the moon and slides down, apparently sitting down, thereon in the sublunary space. Going down on a parafoil, he finds on the inner core of the moon (which the locals call the Earth, too) civilization of the same shorties, but living according to the laws of capitalism. Size of lunar plants, in contrast to terrestrial is proportional to the height of the shorties so they appear to be undersized for Dunno. Roly-Poly, after losing Dunno, runs in panic back to the rocket.

Being on the moon, Dunno, unfamiliar with the concepts of money (lunar currency — "ferting" consisting of a hundred of "santik") and private property is always getting into unpleasant situations. At first, he appears in the garden of Mr. Klops and eats it raspberries, that's why he was grabbed and hounded by order of Klops as a thief. Dunno, fortunately, managed to escape over the fence, while he did not understand what is, in fact, his fault. Then he was taken to a jail for refusing to pay in street cafe, where at registration through a system of identification, reminding simplified Bertillon method was mistakenly identified as famous gangster Pretty Boy (Красавчик), as a result police was extorting a bribe, and Dunno's refusal and complete misunderstanding of the situation regarded as the intractability and placed him into a cell. There he meets with unemployed shorty Kozlik and small crook Miga. Miga believed the story of Dunno about the seeds of giant plants, helps him to avoid a scuffle in the chamber, and before the release of Dunno from prison gives him a letter to his friend, arms dealer Zhulio.

After leaving the jail Dunno and Kozlik came to Zhulio. He makes a bail for Miga and all four are discussing the prospects for growing terrestrial plants on the Moon, seeds of which were left in the rocket on the Moon surface. To raise funds for the construction of an aircraft capable to reach the outer Moon surface, they found a joint-stock company called the «Society of giant plants», whose shares are secured by future shares of prospective seeds (ie, at the beginning of the company's activities it is actually a consumer cooperative). In doing so they promoting the fact of Dunno's arrival as an cosmonaut in mass media and using methods of outdoor advertising (Especially effective it was in the countryside, whose residents, as a rule, do not buy newspapers). Gradually the shares are selling. Their activities are disturbing the local monopolists, because appearance of giant plants threatens them with devastation. Spruts, their leader, the largest landowner and owner of the textile and sugar factories, takes measures to collapse Company. He bribes Miga and Zhulio, and they run with received for the shares cash, leaving Dunno and Kozlik to their fate. At the same time fragmentary allusions to the fraudulent nature of the company, launched by editor of Spruts' owned newspaper, Grizzle, lead to a panic among small shareholders. Remaining unaware about what was happening Dunno and Kozlik are forced to flee, and go to San Komarik. Not finding there Miga and Zhulio, have found themselves on the side of life. They wander, with hunger and disasters in flophouses without any work.

Lunar capitalism

The novel was written as a satire on Western capitalism of that time. Some things are too exaggerated, some things, on the contrary, remained to this day. According to the writer's grandson, Igor Nosov, Dunno on the Moon was ahead of the time, becoming a factual description of post-Soviet Russia, describing its inherent «wild capitalism». The following are the main features of the Lunar Society:

In the satirical purpose the names of the rich and their minions, and most of the names of lunar cities — derived from words with a negative shade (Grabenberg, Brehenville, Los Svinos, Los Paganos cities; Spruts, Gryazing, Dryaning, Skuperfild rich, judge Vrigl etc.). The novel also used the names of famous villains (Dracula the salt magnate, Fantomas city).

Despite a satirical tone of the novel and a frank ridiculing of Western capitalist orders of that time, at the end of the story Nosov indirectly hints that a «good» capitalism still has a right to existence. After overthrowing the power of the monopolists and taking control of both the economy and society as a whole in their hands, the moon workers and peasants did not radically change the economic system: commodity-money relations (and the market in general) of the inhabitants of intralunar civilization has remained. This differs Nosov from the most of writers-propagandists of the Soviet era, who had not seen in their works about the social and revolutionary achievements no other way but to build communism.

Interesting facts

Wacky Island is very similar to the Land of Fun in Carlo Collodi's book The Adventures of Pinocchio, with the only difference being that in the Land of Fun all enters it turn into donkeys.

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