(listen to episode on Spotify)
(music: James Bellak - "Comet Schottisch" plyed on bright echoey bells)
S. Belsky biography, non-spoiler discussion
Nate:
Good evening and welcome to Chrononauts, a science fiction literature history podcast. I'm Nate and I'm joined by my co-host Gretchen and JM, and this month we are taking a look at the apocalypse.
Take a listen to our first segment for Amado Nervo's "The Last War", and in this segment we'll be taking a look at S. Belsky's "Under the Comet" from 1910.
S. Belsky is the pseudonym of Semyon Savchenko, and like some of these other obscure authors from the Russophone world, the website fantlab.ru is the most complete biographical portrait of their lives, and according to fantlab, "information about his life is rather scarce and the sources have major discrepancies with one another," so off to a good start.
He's sighted as being born sometime in 1873 in the village of Vozdvizhenskaya, a small village in the south of Russia about 120 miles from the Black Sea, and maybe 300 or so miles from the Georgian border. Fantlab also notes that the city of Pskov has a street named after him, also claiming him as a native. Pskov is on the other side of Russia, about 30 miles away from the Estonian border, and maybe 200 miles from the Gulf of Finland.
Complicating things, his surname, Savchenko, is Ukrainian, and while Pskov is the closer of the two locations to Ukraine, it's not very close at all, so who knows, and at this point it's probably really anyone's best guess without really digging into archival research.
His origins aside, he was a journalist involved in publishing from 1895 to 1917, employed at the long-running Moscow Journal, which was established in 1756, and also stopped publishing in 1917, and certainly no coincidence that both stopped in 1917, but before we get to why that is exactly, we can briefly talk about Belsky's publishing and writing career.
Belsky was very much involved in the industry, not only working for the Moscow Journal, but also the long-running literature journal The Field, which existed from 1869 to 1918, and Belsky was also the editor at the Russian Press Bureau.
Fantlab attributes 43 short stories to him, possibly 44, depending on whether or not you consider tonight's story, "Under the Comment", a short story, or a novella. The bulk of his fiction, including this one, was written between 1909 and 1914.
His journalism work brought him all over Russia. His first published work from 1895 is a description of the Stavropol area intended for school children. Stavropol being a city in southern Russia, not too far from the Vozdvizhenskaya village that claims him as a resident.
He also seems to have spent time in the Russian Far East, as apparently he used that as a setting for a lot of his fantasy and adventurous stories, and he also wrote a few political pieces which may explain why his publishing stops in 1917.
Belsky was a member of the Union of 17 October, or the Oktoberist Party, who were a center-right-wing anti-revolutionary party who supported a constitutional monarchy in Russia. The party lost significant traction by the outbreak of World War I in 1914.
In 1907, Belsky published "Goals of the Union of 17 October Party Press", which appears to be a 16-page booklet that Belsky initially read out loud at a meeting, but later published in Moscow. I wasn't able to find the text of this, but it definitely survives, as it's been cited in a few dissertations that talk about the political situation in pre-revolutionary Russia, but I'd imagine one would have to travel to some library in Russia to find it. Again, very unlikely for that to happen on Chrononauts.
As such, when the monarchy was overthrown, Belsky presumably thought it wise to make himself scarce and flees Russia. Fantlab speculates he flees to France initially, but ends up in Yugoslavia at some point, as on August 23rd of 1923 he dies in Brod na Save, which at the time was a city in then what was Yugoslavia.
The city's modern name is Slavonski Brod and is located in modern-day Croatia, across the river from modern-day Bosnia, and seems like an interesting city from the drone footage on YouTube I was watching, and certainly a lot of history just in the 20th century alone.
But as far as Belsky's fiction goes, he had three short story collections come out during his lifetime, one in 1909 and two in 1914, but also had a few published in literary journals and magazines, including one in World of Adventure, "At the Foot of the Sayan Mountains" published in the July 1916 issue.
And the description Fantlab gives of this one is, "following mysterious signs left by the ancient inhabitants of the foothills of the Sayan Mountains, the narrator finds a passage to the underworld," which sounds pretty cool. A lot of his stuff does sound very fantastic, adventurey-type stuff, but he does have more science fiction-sounding stuff, especially later on, including "Between the Sky and the Earth" from 1917, which Fantlab says another apocalypse story, this time dealing with a group of survivors trying to launch a colony ship bound for Jupiter, and "Laboratory of Great Destruction" from 1916, which is described as, "A Russian journalist becomes a witness and participant in the dark events that unfold in the dungeons of the Bernadine Monastery in Avignon, where a group of scientists are working on the invention of Pyronite, an explosive substance of enormous destructive power, a pinch of which is capable of destroying the entire planet. Here in the stone labyrinth, a mysterious stranger is hunting the inventors of the Pyronite, killing them one by one.
So these both sound pretty awesome and are shorter than this one, so perhaps worth a revisit when I return to the early Soviet-Russian Revolution-era-type stuff.
But for tonight, "Under the Comment" is both his most popular work within Russia and by far the longest, initially published in standalone, soft-bound volume in 1910 for the low price of 75 Kopecks, were you able to buy it new in 1910. If you want to buy it used on the collector market in 2025, there's a copy currently selling for $400 from some guy in Massachusetts from one of those auction sites, so if you want an original and you live stateside, now is your chance.
This was published in St. Petersburg, and unfortunately does not credit the illustrator aside from the initials TXN, written in the Latin alphabet perhaps? The TX letters could also be Cyrillic as the letter in Cyrillic that's often transliterated as Kh, and English is written as a letter that looks like X in Russian, so who knows if it's a mix of Cyrillic and Latin or Latin.
But I wish I could find this person's work though, as I absolutely love the graphic design and illustrations on this, which are part of the translation that we posted on the blogspot. And we've also linked to a place where you can find a scan of the original PDF, and even if you don't know any Russian it's pretty cool to flip through.
The book runs for 125 printed pages and is written in pre-reform Russian, which is of course modernized in the numerous modern reprintings of which there are several, including a bunch from last year. Looking around I can see at least seven distinct modern editions, both in standalone republications, that being included in larger anthologies of Belsky's stuff and stuff from the period. So it's definitely out there in the Russian speaking world and on the internet.
So yeah, I spent a lot of time thinking about this one and going through it translating it. What do you guys think of this one? There's definitely a lot here for sure.
JM:
This one's really interesting. I kind of liked it. I mean it's not, definitely got some weird issues, but I don't know. It was very imaginative and there was some really cool imagery. It was kind of funny because the story didn't really hang together. The first part is completely different than the rest of it. The rest is just going back and explaining how the disaster happened. And I kind of thought we were going to concentrate on these people after the disaster. And we just kind of, he just kind of drops all that and just goes into, okay, this is how it all happened and this is the society of the old world that just got swept away.
At first I was like, well, is he going to come back to that? And I kind of realized though he's probably not going to come back to that, but I don't know. The society was pretty interesting. It reminded me of some of the older things we'd done on the podcast like "The Mummy" or even "Star Psi". It got that weird in a couple of parts. So it was like, in a way it felt like an older work, but also not quite because you know, we could tell that it was informed by some of the developments that happened in the early 20th century. You know, there's lots of discussion of airplanes and stuff like that.
But yeah, I don't know, it was, it was interesting. It's funny how he just drops things in there and just like, it kind of makes you reread the paragraph and go, wait, what? And he never comes back to it. He never brings it up again. Like at one point they talk about, they're sending people into the future. And it's like, well, you just threw that in there. You're sending people into the future. What's happening with that? How far into the future are they going? What are they finding out?
The story is full of anecdotes. And I kind of find that fun. I mean, he'll tell you generally about something, how the something in the society works and it'll be like, I have a friend who had this strange thing happen to him and then he'll explain it. And I don't know, it's kind of funny. I appreciate it.
Yeah, there's some things that definitely raise some eyebrows. Definitely, I don't know, like some things definitely come off maybe misogynistic that don't get addressed. And it's like kind of like, again, it would have been different if it had been addressed. Like maybe it was going to go somewhere, but it just seemed like he changed the, we never get to find out what happened to the four remaining people hanging out, sorry, six remaining people hanging out in the museum and what they're going to do. I guess it doesn't matter. I guess he's more interested in exploring the fall of the decadent world, which is done in a way that's definitely.... not this is the fall of the bourgeoisie. It's definitely a lot more conservative feeling like it doesn't feel like this is a communist work at all.
And I don't know, so it is interesting, I think definitely different than the other recent Russian stuff that we've done too, in that sense, because a lot of that felt like there was more than a hint of Soviet propaganda and some of those works and not so here, that's for sure.
Nate:
No, definitely not.
Gretchen:
Yeah. Yeah, I do think like you were saying, J.M., I agree with there are really interesting pieces of imagery here and some really interesting ideas. I was also very upset, though, that they didn't return to the initial scene. It does feel like it was giving the audience sort of this interesting hook so that you would keep reading. And then, like you were saying, he didn't really care much about that and just wanted to talk to you about the society before that happened. Because I just think it is very odd to contrast that first bit with the end where it's like, oh, that didn't really matter then, like none of that whole conflict we set up mattered.
But yeah, I definitely agree with you too about the misogynistic bent to especially that first part and also getting into some parts of the society that we see beforehand.
Yeah. It's different. It's funny to read this side by side with "The Last War" because "The Last War"'s we were saying was very concise and it has a very clear, the message may be hard to parse depending on whether he's being sarcastic or not, but at least you know the topic he's going for where this one feels like the author has multiple things he's trying to address and is throwing them all out, which makes it feel a lot less directed.
Nate:
Yeah, it is very unfocused at times and yeah, I had the exact same feeling when I was first reading this. I was like, oh, this is going to be a tight character drama and you just don't get that at all. The characters you get in the later chapters are just kind of like weird sketches and it does feel like randomly thrown in along with the just off the wall future tech that is everywhere in this city.
JM:
Yeah, it's really angry too. It feels like he really hates stuff.
Nate:
Yeah, he really cuts in with it.
Gretchen:
Yeah, he's very bitter. It's a very bitter work.
Nate:
Yeah.
JM:
Yeah.
Gretchen:
It's not like "Тhe Last War". It's like, I don't know if he's being sarcastic or not. Here you know. It's very venomous.
Nate:
Yeah, much more so than something like "Erewhon", which felt really mild in its critiques. This definitely goes for the jugular pretty much all times and because he was from like a center-right party, it does feel like it borders on conservative polemic at times, which does have echoes of modern conservative polemics, which I always think is fascinating to see how sometimes these political writings, whether they be right wing or left wing, don't differ that much from-
Gretchen:
We don't know if it's a man or a woman anymore. We don't know that anymore. What's a man?
Nate:
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Gretchen:
Sorry, that's the part that I was like, oh, okay. Yeah.
Nate:
No, I mean, it's the exact same critiques of socialism and communism that again, you would see from a conservative political commentator today, and yeah, it does get very sexist in places and we'll definitely talk about that when we do the summary.
But yeah, there are some amazing images in here that are some of the best things that we've covered in this episode, but it's again, incredibly unfocused and it just feels like a weird pastiche of the social commentary and future tech.
JM:
And it does feel like some science fiction, and this has always been commented on, does have a danger of falling into like being some kind of polemic and he's kind of attacking everything about society that he doesn't like, which is a lot. And this is the way he sees things are going and the first chapter is all desolate and it's like after the fallout, everything is destroyed and is very bleak and desolate. And you don't quite get the sense of what's what he's going to come down hard on. And so he brings you back and shows you exactly what's wrong and you know, go into all kinds of minute detail about it. And I think that's like, it was interesting, but yeah, I mean, talking about the readability kind of thing that we were bringing up last time and how much I wouldn't probably not give this more than like a 6.5 or something just because it's like, I don't know, I mean, it doesn't really hold together as a story in terms of those sci fi polemics. It's not the least interesting that we've come across, I don't think it's definitely imaginative enough. And yeah, like we've all been saying, there's really cool imagery in it. And if you want to read something that's kind of far out, I guess, and like gets really weird with this precursor to the apocalypse and the society and everything, and he's attacking everything from Esperanto to cats.
So yeah, this is like, we really know what Belsky doesn't like, and it's over 100 years old. So I think it's easy enough to kind of laugh at it now. And I get it. I get it. I get what somebody might want to do something like this. It does kind of seem a little strident at times, like it's always interesting to me seeing how somebody 100 years ago can speculate about things that might happen in the future to do with like how the borders between people will become more porous and very early on in his social commentary, he talks about the differences between the genders breaking down and stuff like that. And he's like, at first I'm like, well, that's kind of interesting, you know, it's just cool that he's like, at first I wasn't sure if he was going to be like, well, the old world was really awesome before it got destroyed. But no, actually, everything about it almost is portrayed in a very negative light. Everything from the way they handle religion, the way they handle sexuality, the fact that they don't drink proper alcohol anymore. It's just like, the science is like language, like everything, everything is just, it's so decadent, like just fallen to seed pretty much, and he's not even just blaming humanity for that. It's like, towards the end, he's like speculating through the mouthpiece of one of his characters that the earth is entering this spiritual dead zone or something like that, and that there's like negative influences that are basically going to turn us into idiots.
Gretchen:
Like very astrological.
Nate:
Yeah.
JM:
Yeah. Yeah.
Nate:
It's the return to primal beast that we see come out in the first chapter, and it was certainly addressed that much again, as something that the structure of the story could have handled a lot better. But yeah, it's one of the more interesting points that he makes is that there's obvious elements of communism being critiqued in the future society that we get, even though this is obviously before the Revolution, the Revolution was very much in the air and socialist party politics were in the forefront of the Russian Empire at the time. The comet itself could also be seen as a form of communist revolution, and that is this giant red light that comes in and wipes out everything in its path, reducing man to a state of primacy.
It's definitely an interesting approach in how he takes it here. But yeah, unfocused, and 6.5 is about how I would feel on the journey to get there because it doesn't really come together as a cohesive story, even though there are these bits and pieces that are really outstanding. And there are other novels that take this format basically of a person walking through a city and weird stuff happens that I think are much more effective in communicating ideas than this one is here.
JM:
Lots of like, aside and tangents describing a situation that could have been almost a story unto itself.
Nate:
Yeah.
Gretchen:
And it feels very reminiscent, of course, kind of ironic since this is the dystopian episode, but it gives like the utopian vibe of like, let's just walk around and talk about this specific aspect, you know, it's a tour guide, kind of feel to it.
Nate:
Yeah. Yeah, it definitely has a lot in common with stuff like "Erewhon", but is fortunately way, way shorter. And again, it's much harsher in its social critique, even though it does come from sometimes an uncomfortable place of sexist conservatism, a bit of racism creeps into, unfortunately.
JM:
So at the end of the day, I'm actually quite happy that I thought I knew what this story was going to be. I thought reading the first chapter, I'm like, oh, you know, it's going to be about how this tiny community of survivors basically either descends into madness and spend a whole bunch of pages fighting or somehow they managed to figure out a solution or something like that. And it's totally not any of that. And I guess I'm kind of glad it turned out to be less predictable that way. I kind of thought, oh, yeah, you know, I know what this is going to be right now. It's a description of another messed up future society and how it came to its end, which is like the coming natural disaster is much needed, I think in Belsky's point of view.
So yeah, I don't know. It's kind of cool. I'm glad we did this one too. But I'm not sure everybody would want to read it necessarily because it is certainly a lot longer than something like the Nervo. And if you expect your stories to be neat and tidy and wrap up properly and go somewhere, you're definitely going to be disappointed by this. There's certainly no plot. There's like a million cool anecdotes stuffed in, each of which could have made its own cool little vignette or something like that. I don't know. I kind of liked it. It's definitely an interesting work.
Nate:
Yeah. Certainly one to check out if you're interested in the history of these kind of ideas and as a place in Russian science fiction.
So I guess before we get into the summary, I just want to point out that the original printing and subsequent reprintings that I was able to find in modernized Russian all have a lot of typos in them. And a lot of stuff is just inconsistent with how it's written in the novel, novellette, novella, short story, whatever we're calling this. Yeah, I didn't make any attempt to correct any of that stuff. So when Belsky's figures are inaccurate and don't add up, I'm going to point it out in the summary, but I left it as-is in the text. So if you do decide to read this and check that out, just keep that in mind when you're reading that. There's a lot, a lot, a lot of typos in the original.
(music: fluttery ambience)
spoiler summary and discussion
All right. So I guess getting into what happens in this one, we open off with civilization being destroyed, burnt out by the flames of the destructive comet, which is still visible in the sky overhead, gorgeous and terrifying. The narrator tells us that "the Oldet Peak looks like a giant who bending his knees and bowing his head carefully examines something in the ruins of Heliopolis," which is the cover of the original printing of the book and replicated as the first illustration that appears before chapter one opens, which is this giant man bent over in a position of supplication, hands seemingly in prayer, his back hunched up in a position that looks like a mountain peak, with the hair on his head, looks like a patch of trees or vegetation, and in front of him is what looks like some sort of incense burner. I'm not sure if there's a specific word for this kind, but it's emitting vapors that form the clouds that fill the top quarter or so of the frame.
And yeah, I just love, love the illustrations in this book. It's to me, one of the coolest parts of this. And yeah, I'm glad I was able to find that original scan of the first printing, which has them in decent quality. So we were able to post them on the blogspot, but a lot of floral designs and cool patterns and it looks really neat.
But Heliopolis appears to have been some megacity, possibly containing the world's entire population. I'm not really sure he's kind of vague on that. Location is unspecified, but it feels vaguely pan-European in character. It's really hard to pin down what the culture of this place is, but regardless of what it was, it's now been reduced to total ruins. And here's where we start to get into the inconsistencies.
So there are six survivors left who have been living in the ruins of the Royal Antiquities Museum for three months since the disaster.
Six?
Well, that's what the text says anyway, but he instead goes on to describe eight. The text says, "we are six, two women and four men," but as we'll see that breakdown is six men and two women. And the fact that there are so many obvious inconsistencies.
JM:
I've been confused about that.
Nate:
Yeah.
Gretchen:
Yeah. I was also like, it kept going. I'm like, where, where are the women? I honestly was.
JM:
Yeah. Even, even when I was saying earlier, I was, I was saying it's the four, wait, no, the six.
Nate:
Yeah.
JM:
I'm not sure. And at the end, it confused me even more because the narrator doesn't seem to include himself, but then at the end, they all sign it as like 369, but anyway, we'll get there.
Nate:
Well, there's a very good explanation for why the narrator is not there at the end, which we'll see very, very shortly. But yeah, a lot of typos in this, I don't think there was pretty much any editorial oversight. I wasn't really able to find anything about the publisher. If this would have appeared in a magazine, they probably would have smoothed some of that out, but well, this is what we get and I didn't correct it. So there we go.
But onto our eight survivors, there's father Vincent Enrio, an old monk who's happened sane already, used to solitude and doesn't have a hard time adjusting. He mostly misses the demon that plays tricks on him throughout the course of the day.
Then there's the curator of the museum, Olrid, who understands the nature of the problem from an archeological standpoint as he's dealt with dead civilizations for his entire career. Then there's Philip Evert, the mad scientist who wanted to create an artificial brain, a project very much needed since none of the current living brains are able to produce anything useful.
And then there's a man who spent decades in prison for murder, even though he of course insists that it's self-defense. He has no known name and instead calls himself number 369.
King Meredith XVI also survives a simple but kind monarch, certainly nothing like the heroic depictions of him, which as we'll see in a bit is a common theme for the public figures in Heliopolis.
And the last of the men is Enrio Vittorino, our narrator, a newspaper man who's snarky and cutting comments, including feuds with other newspaper men, will be with us for the entirety of the story.
The two women are the virgin Susanna and the prostitute Eloiza, or Elza, which is pretty much the exact representation of what is commonly called the Madonna-Whore complex. This apparently comes from Freud, but he doesn't use those exact terms. And I tried to find the source of the Freud quote, and it appears to be an amalgamation and simplification of concepts introduced in "Three essays on the Theory of Sexuality," the first edition from 1905, but apparently it grew from there, and "A Special Type of Choice of Object Made by Men" from 1910.
But it certainly sounds something for Freud anyway, and the fact that these are so close in publication from one another, 1905 and 1910, is just another fascinating coincidence that doing the stuff in the podcast keeps turning up, because yeah, here we have the exact scenario of viewing women as only a virgin or a prostitute. Freud, eat your heart out.
Gretchen:
All of the other characters, you know, they get a couple of paragraphs of background. Both women described in one paragraph, and it's all about how they look.
Nate:
Yeah.
JM:
I mean, I guess it would have been different, again, if we came back there afterwards, but maybe not. It's strange, because the second woman character, the one that everybody's not fighting over, she doesn't get anything.
Gretchen:
No.
JM:
Like, not a thing.
Nate:
Yeah.
JM:
Barely imagined.
Gretchen:
We just know she's a prostitute. That's it.
Nate:
So, yeah, she has no value and worth other than that.
Gretchen:
Yeah.
JM:
Well, what's funny, too, is she's supposed to be the one that's, like, been genetically enhanced or whatever, or bred to be, like, especially beautiful or whatever. But I guess this is a time when we're rejecting all that now. So it seems like they're not really, I don't know, she's not being acknowledged, I guess. So.
Gretchen:
Well, it's also, I think, because the virgin, she's one that could produce children.
Nate:
Right.
Gretchen:
So I think that's, it's like, that's why she's valued.
JM:
Yeah. Yeah. Good point.
Nate:
Yeah. And that's what the nameless one tells us, is he's going to be the patriarch of this new race, and that's what sets up this conflict here, which, again, when I first was reading this, I was like, all right, this is going to be this tense character drama where we get this, like, fight over these women, and it's going to explore political and sexual themes, but it ends pretty quickly.
Most of the men spend a lot of their time arguing and getting in fights, which the women keep out of, even though they're mostly over Susanna the virgin. And here's where the norms of civilized society collapse, and the beast in man reawakens. So might is right, the strongest survive, et cetera. And it sounds like it's going to be, again, this setup for a tense character drama. There's already a fair amount of satire, humor, and social commentary. But instead, our narrator, Enrio Viterino, gets cyanide poisoning, and before his death reviews the notes left behind a history of the final days of Earth before the comet.
And just like that, the story rug pulls us into this utopian-type scenario where we get a tour of the city with our narrator, already deceased, and the things that he's left behind reviewed by one of the other survivors, Evert, while this, I guess, grotesquely sexist battle over the fight for the future of humanity through the virgin Susanna takes place in the background.
So yeah, I did find this a major disappointment, this particular point here as, I don't know, the first chapter seems like it really was going to be leading and building towards something, but pretty much everything introduced here is dropped from this point forward.
This chapter ends with a balding man flipping through a large, amateurly bound book resembling a medieval manuscript or Elizabethan folio in size, and again, a really cool illustration. The next chapter opens up with an illustration of a woman in a Greco-Roman-looking dress gazing at the starry sky with two trees in the background, the images framed in this floral-type design.
Here is where Vittorino describes the first news of the comet. Vittorino was a newspaper reporter, and in Heliopolis the press is incredibly corrupt, with bribes and paid stories being the norm. These is broadcast from a certain district of the city over endless gramophones, and the press even managed to elevate the reputation and image of Venturio, who is the head of the Heliopolis brothel syndicate. He is a fat balding man, but is depicted as if he were some Greco-Roman god in triumph in his statue, which is presumably enormous, and the inclusion of prostitution is used both to directly compare the press themselves with prostitutes, but also to go into some, again, rather sexist commentary in that women of the future did the same jobs as men, and gender differences between the sexes begin to disappear. But much to everybody's delight, Venturio did away with all the social progress by reintroducing feminine beauty through his prostitutes, so not exactly the best messaging.
JM:
Yeah, so now it's like this thing that's been created is the direct cause of the need for a very specific class of prostitutes, like, because I guess the, I don't know, desirable women as he sees it have all been turned into something else, so we have to make substitutes. It's definitely, definitely weird.
The city actually, Heliopolis, I mean, I thought it was kind of, it was neat, like, it actually reminded me a little of the descriptions of the city of Lankhmar from Fritz Leiber's sword and sorcery series, not in the sense of like the technology and the gramophones and stuff, but the fact that there's like individual streets set aside for everything, and there's like cheap street and whore street and cash street and what, you know, all these different elements of society, they all kind of segregated in their own little communities and everything's kind of chaotic in the main and it's like, Leiber makes it seem more interesting and fun to be there. This kind of feels a little bit like hell, but, you know, but interesting, the way it reminded me of that, and oh yeah, there's one of the best Lankhmar stories is it talks about the, I can't remember what he calls it, but yeah, it's basically the street of the temples and all the religious sects and stuff like that, all basically on the same square and having to like compete with each other and stuff, it's a lot like this.
Nate:
Yeah.
JM:
It's pretty neat, I thought.
Nate:
Yeah, we get that coming up in a little bit, but yeah, here are the newspaper quarters right next to the red light district, I guess, and yeah, again, some unfortunate sexist commentary here.
JM:
Yeah.
Nate:
Feels very tedious, but yet familiar commentary on traditional beauty and how the socialists are just ruining it all by taking away the differences between men and women and all that. Again, it feels very modern and old at the same time.
Gretchen:
Yeah. And also, for a second Orwell reference, I guess, of this night, it does feel very much like 1984 with like how women are portrayed when they're the workers, Julia first, before she gets all dolled up for, what's the main character's name in 1984, I'm blanking on it.
Nate:
Winston smith.
Gretchen:
Yes. Winston Smith.
Gretchen:
Oh. I couldn't think of it.
Nate:
Yeah. It's been so long since I've read 1984.
JM:
Yeah. There's a few things that reminded me of 1984, definitely.
Nate:
Yeah. And I guess more relevant to this in particular is Zamyatin's "We", which I would like to do on the podcast at some point, but again, it does take similar approaches to a genderless society where those differences between the sexes are.
JM:
I think that like, I don't know, we're kind of going into territory that we might want to explore more later at, maybe I'm not really an expert on, but I, like, I always kind of got the impression that communist Russia, like especially the fifties and onwards was a real contrast to the United States, especially in terms of equality of genders. And that women were actually, they had often had higher positions in the Soviet Union than they did in the United States at the time. And it seems like there were female Russian scientists of note and that they were treated just like, well, like workers, like everybody else, like men, all the men. And I guess, I don't know, I'm sure there was still sexism, but it seems like Belsky's kind of anticipating that and maybe railing against it again, like, you know, seeing all that this is like, this is the way we're going with this really.
Although things hadn't really gotten started yet when he wrote this, but this is kind of interesting because I'm sure there was a lot of commentary from, and maybe we'll get to some of those stories when we, it would be kind of cool to do some like anti-communist stories from the US pulp magazines or something like that, talking about like, oh, it's that James Bond movie. And it's, well, like, I think people had this idea for a while of this, like, really hardcore Russian woman who's like, really intimidating. And she's like, she can best any of her male counterparts. And she's like a hardcore communist and stuff like that. And this is obviously the kind of person we should be afraid of, right? And I don't know.
It just seems like interesting that this story comes from just before the revolution, really. So I'm guessing Belsky's not really a fan of this.
Nate:
No, he's certainly not. Yeah. I mean, that's pretty obvious. From the story and his events of his personal life, basically fleeing Russia after the revolution. Yeah, I mean, gender roles certainly were not muted to the extent that he's foreseeing in the Soviet Union, even during their peak. But yeah, you do see a lot more Russian women, scientists and astronauts and even women serving in the military. There's this great movie that I saw a couple of months ago called "Wings", which is a fictionalized account, but it's about a woman fighter pilot who served in World War Two.
Gretchen:
That's the director, Larissa....
Nate:
Yes, that is her.
Gretchen:
Yes, I can't think of the last name, but I heard of her. I know she did that in "The Ascent."
Nate:
Yeah, I haven't seen "The Ascent", but it's supposed to be really good. And I really like this one. But yeah, it's about a woman fighter pilot who served during World War Two. And the movie set a couple of decades later in the sixties when she teaches and she's just having trouble readjusting to society and how things have been changing since the death of Stalin and things have been opening up. It's just a really fascinating look at Russian society in the time. And gender roles do play a major part in that. It's definitely interesting to take a look at if you're interested in that kind of thing.
But yeah, here it's a bit, I don't know, his commentary on gender is a bit unfortunate, I think, but I guess probably representative of the thinking of that party in Russia at the time. So again, if you're interested in a Russian thought pre-revolution, an example of somebody who would have been an anti-communist, anti-revolutionary, this exemplifies it very, very much. And the unfortunate gender commentary goes, I think, hand in hand with that.
But the phone rings at the newspaper office and it's the observatory. They've cited the comet and it's going to collide with the Earth. But since they don't have the money to bribe their way onto the gramophones, news of it is initially ignored, but managed to spread organically, first gaining traction within the mystics and the religious cults.
And as we alluded to earlier, Heliopolis is home to every religion and even has its own religious quarter. Here the priests and gods of the ancient Egyptians and Greeks, all the various sects of Christianity to psychics and mediums and magicians and miracle performers to the Believers in Something. And this is one of the few moments that are like this groaner, "Erewhon" level of just like lazy satire. It feels at home in some of these kind of utopias, but definitely not one of his best digs.
Some of the priests run the crypt of the suicides where people can take some kind of injection and suspend themselves for a few years.
JM:
This part reminded me of "Star Psi" for some reason.
Nate:
Yeah.
JM:
Just such a weird people going and describing the slow poison and how like they can control us so minutely. It's just pretty strange.
Nate:
Yeah. It also reminded me of "The Moon Woman" that we did in our Amazing episode where, yeah, we get this like sleep potion, basically, and it's a common plot device and a lot of the science fiction from this period. But yeah, people can do it for 10 years for a century or whatever. Because sometimes they have criminals who are sentenced to long sentences in the future and they have the legal people assigned to their case go to sleep right with them so they can wake up and be covered in a mountain of paperwork as soon as they re-awake.
Gretchen:
I love that idea of a bunch of people just laying comatose with these briefcases in hand. That is very fun.
Nate:
It is a funny image. Yeah.
JM:
Yeah.
Nate:
One of the other inconsistencies in this story, maybe, I don't know. But in Elza makes an appearance at this scene, or at least somebody looking for her anyway. And I'm not sure if it's the prostitute Elza from the first chapter who is one of the survivors of the comet, or maybe it's a descendant of this Elza. It's not really clear. It could be somebody else altogether. So who knows?
But the giant Temple of Man next to Vera Square was where a lot of these weird religious cults and priests are located. And the day after the comet was sighted by the observatory, this quarter of a city was abuzz with doomsday preachers and everybody alarmed about the implications of what's going to happen.
Panic starts to break out, which turns into riots. And the government wanted to send in troops, but bureaucracy prevents any sort of action, which is another running theme we'll see in Belsky's criticisms here.
Chapter three opens up with an illustration of two nude figures, a male and a female looking at a mountainous island behind the frame of the picture, which is another cool floral design.
Vittorino goes to visit the observatory. And on his way there, he stumbles into a musical society who performed their concerts on aeroplanes above a certain height as to not disrupt the public with their megaphones. And here's where there's some unfortunate racism and a kind of a throwaway line where the presumably European Heliopolis thwart an invading African army by playing Beethoven's sonatas through the megaphones to thwart them.
JM:
Yeah, they've blasted the armies with Beethoven.
Nate:
Yeah.
JM:
Music cannons.
Nate:
European culture saves the day.
Gretchen:
Yeah.
Nate:
Again, unfortunate in its implications and real throwaway line, which just kind of doesn't really serve anything.
Gretchen:
Yeah. I think there was a reference to an African invasion or an African war earlier in the story, but this is where they kind of elaborate on it. It's not great.
Nate:
No, it's not. And again, probably representative of the politics at the time that the revolutionaries wanted to do away with.
JM:
But also, like, it's a deception because at the beginning we're sort of under the impression that this city spans the whole world, and it's like, you know, everybody's included in this. And then gradually we learn piece by piece. Actually no. Actually there was an invasion and actually there's a whole bunch of people that don't live in this Heliopolis and they're the outsiders that I guess rejected the way society is. Obviously, they're considered savages and stuff like that. I mean, it's kind of a bit "Brave New World", right?
Nate:
Yeah, or rejected by society through various circumstances as we'll see in a little bit.
Gretchen:
Also, I would like to mention one thing that I did find a little funny is right before this part, the narrator he's talking about like, oh, for people who are from the future who don't know anything about our civilization, here's what this futuristic piece of technology is. Also, we used it to project Beethoven's Sonatas, which you obviously know.
JM:
Yeah, right. And then even at the end of the story, it's even like, yeah, the tone of the story is too frivolous or something like that.
Gretchen:
I just thought that was very funny.
Nate:
Yeah. Well, Beethoven does stand the test of time. I mean, I think a lot of people would be familiar with Moonlight Sonata more than almost any other classical piece out there.
Gretchen:
That's true.
Nate:
So yeah, there's something to be said about the power of Beethoven, who was certainly more recent in Belsky's time than ours, but unfortunate use of Beethoven perhaps here. So I do think it is kind of interesting the technological terminology he uses as megaphones didn't really exist as far as like an electronic megaphone back then or even loudspeakers. It's kind of interesting how the technology that he describes functions similar to what we conceive as modern speakers, but came about a couple years later. So it's interesting with the technology timelines and how it fits into the real world.
But the observatory is located about two hours by aeroplane travel outside the city. And between Heliopolis and the observatory is harsh, deserted terrain with all the civilized people living in Heliopolis and great masses of wild peoples living outside of the walls. These people scavenge what they can from the over cultivated lands and peddle in junk, but generally speaking live in absolute squalor, poverty and misery and are deliberately kept out of civilized society where people eat their diet pills and enjoy their intoxicants in the form of laughing bacterium and hypnosis.
Upon landing at the observatory, their aeroplane is immediately overtaken by a mob of these so-called wolf-men, as they're officially called. And Vittorino is able to get them away by throwing out various items at them before they're dispersed by police aeroplanes and electric whips.
In stark contrast to the wolf men, the observatory is on the huge ornate temple of science walled off from these so-called barbarians. Incredibly powerful weapons harnessing the power of lightning destroyed numerous cities, forcing their inhabitants out into the wastelands, creating huge numbers of these living outside the walls of civilization.
The scientific fields at this point have become so specialized that it takes years of study to even get your foot in the door and talking to anyone else about anything meaningful is impossible due to the knowledge required. And as such, the observatory collects more data than anybody can reasonably process in one's lifetime, as is explained by Hockey, the astronomer of the 64th degree who has earned the right to wear a pink robe.
But nevertheless, the huge machines in the observatory spin and whir and do their calculating and recording, and Hockey offers Vittorino a look at the comet through the telescope. It's the most beautiful thing he's ever seen, mysterious, incomprehensible, ominous, and it's like he's witnessing creation in real time. And afterwards, they're quickly on their way back, but their aeroplane breaks down slightly outside of the city.
Vittorino encounters a vagrant who can't wait to see the city burn down and gives Vittorino some incredibly vitriolic, angry speech about how he just hates the scientist, he hates government, and can't wait for the comet.
The chapter ends with an illustration of these two flowers that resemble incense burners, and the next chapter opens up with an illustration of two nude figures in prayer to the sun peeking out from the clouds surrounded by trees that form the frame.
However, here, writer's block strikes at Vittorino, and here is where we get the anti-Esperanto polemic.
JM:
Yeah. Yeah. Forrest Ackerman is not pleased.
Nate:
No. Yeah. He just really, really does not like constructed languages.
Gretchen:
Yeah. Don't show any more conlangs to this guy.
Nate:
No. No. He would absolutely hate it.
JM:
It's going to kill creativity, make it so that, I guess, books are written for everybody, and that's bad. So, yeah.
Nate:
Yeah. We have a future-constructed language called 'birdspeak', which consists of only four syllables. But even with only four syllables, he still makes a typo in the example of birdspeak and gives us a fifth syllable that he doesn't previously enumerate. But not like he had a lot to keep track of, I guess, editorial oversight. I don't know. It wasn't a thing here. But yeah.
It's just really funny to see an anti-Esperanto polemic in the middle of this that just comes out of nowhere. And it's a nice contrast to the American sci-fi market, who was very much in favor of Esperanto. There's so much Esperanto content in the fanzines that we took a look at from the 1930s, and it filters its way into some science fiction.
JM:
Yeah. All these guys thought it was such a big deal.
Nate:
Yeah.
JM:
And like nobody talks about it. now
Gretchen:
Yeah. It's like, we shouldn't use language to connect people.
JM:
Yeah.
Nate:
Yeah. I don't know. Esperanto did have the weird following within the science fiction community. I don't know if you guys have ever seen the movie "Incubus" with William Shatner, which is an Esperanto language film.
Gretchen:
Oh, yeah. I've heard about that. I haven't seen it myself, but I've heard of myself.
Nate:
It's not good, but it's certainly really, really weird. And yeah....
JM:
Does it actually have an incubus in it?
Nate:
Yeah. It's definitely a strange experience, for sure.
But here, panic is mounting on the streets. The government, again, due to bureaucracy, is incapable of acting. And soon enough, the comet is in view of the naked eye, and it's too late to do anything about it.
A friend of Vittorino's, Whitman, gives him the news, mobs of wild people have broken into the city and are looting and destroying everything in their path, and they need to get out and going in quick. Shop prices are hyper-inflating. Money is useless. Because the government ineffectively tries to halt the panic by downplaying the danger from the comet and holding a carnival, the poster of which Vittorino encloses in the manuscript.
Gunshots break out. Military warships are seen overhead. The sky turns red, and the heat becomes nearly unbearable. It's truly the end now.
Already hundreds, if not thousands, are dead from the panic. And one of the people on the streets Vittorino encounters is the mathematician Anvers, who says this is just part of a larger cycle of the universe. Every 40,000 years or so. And good, just let it all burn down.
We get another illustration of a floral pattern, a single flower, and to end the chapter. And the last chapter opens up with an illustration of two birds flying over the sea at night against a starry background.
Here, artificial lights are blaring, and music and sounds are blasting from everywhere. And we get another lengthy tangent about how automatons are just everywhere in society, in the theater, the government, and many people just can't tell the difference between a real person and one of these automaton robots. And many of these are now wandering around in the red light, whose artificial laughter is eerily horrifying.
This is just such an awesome image in the story. A red light flooding everything in this thick haze, and vague figures are popping out of the mist, and the only thing moving around outside is these horribly laughing robots. An incredible, incredible image. One of the best things from this episode. I wish there were more moments in the story like this.
But soon the automatons are the only thing left outside, as all the organic people are killed by the thousands by the huge fiery stones the comet is ejecting and raining down on the city. Even the warships are fleeing, presumably containing the super rich, but I don't know, to where?
Vittorino and Whitman lurch out with the huddled masses of survivors still clinging to their useless possessions from their former life. It soon gets hard to see through the red fog and dust. Vittorino ties a rope between him and Whitman, so they don't get separated. But Vittorino fades in and out of consciousness as he crashes to the ground and sees Whitman covered in blood. His rope is cut, and Vittorino is pulled inside a corridor and witnesses a mob of people circling Whitman's body, presumably about to tear him apart.
Vittorino was pulled inside by two people, Evert and the Nameless One, and the long trek to the museum is one that he endures with much effort, again in and out of consciousness and perception, but safe from the intense and fatal rain of stones that wipe out the rest of the city and population. And the manuscript is signed with the last quote, "we confirm that all events are accurately laid out in Enrio Vittorino's notes."
By the king, Ivert the Nameless One, who also signs on Suzanne's behalf, and Eloiza or Elza or whatever her name is. Not signing is the monk, I'm not sure if it's another typo, or Belsky just forgot about him or if it was a deliberate choice.
Then we get our final floral illustration, and the last page is taken up by Olrid the Curator, refusing to sign off for the manuscript stating, "the frivolous tone of a story does not correspond to the importance of the events, I propose destroying all 36 slabs from the museum on which Enrio Vittorino has scrawled the history of our disasters."
And that is the end of "Under the Comet."
JM:
Luckily they didn't destroy all 36 things and we have no story to talk about today.
Gretchen:
This and Beethoven survived.
Nate:
Exactly, yeah. Yeah. I guess the future generation will be enjoying the Ninth Symphony just as much as we all have.
JM:
Oh yeah. No doubt.
Gretchen:
Yeah.
Nate:
But yeah, definitely an interesting one. Again, maybe not the best story we've covered tonight, but I think it brings out a lot of interesting ideas and some of the future stuff that he throws in here is just so off the wall wacky. I didn't really get into a lot of it in the plot summary here, and it's just one of things you'll just have to take a look at when you read the story. But he really throws in a lot of these crazy tangents that, yeah, I feel like "The Mummy" in places with these automaton machines everywhere that replace society and legal functions and in music halls and the whole airplane concerts thing.
Gretchen:
I love the idea of a hypnosis bar.
Nate:
Yeah.
Gretchen:
I think that's so fun.
Nate:
Yeah, it is.
JM:
Yeah, I know.
Gretchen:
Such a bizarre idea, but it's really good.
Nate:
Yeah, and he frames it still using normal bar terms like, I'll have a bottle of hypnosis.
JM:
And there's a lot of that in here.
Nate:
Yeah.
JM:
Definitely what makes it worth reading, even if it's in the service of social commentary that isn't necessarily, I don't know, it's got that, well, look, it's a downhill slope kind of thing where you get people who are saying things like, well, if we let them do this, where are we going to be in 50 years?
Nate:
Right.
JM:
There's going to be like furries walking around the office. That would suck.
Gretchen:
It's a slippery slope. It's a slippery slope. You know, you let people love who they want to love, what will happen next?
Nate:
Yeah.
JM:
Yeah.
JM:
Gender will be gone and we'll have to bring back prostitutes to have the human race reproduce.
Gretchen:
Yeah.
Nate:
Again, Freud, eat your heart out.
JM:
There was a time when I was almost easily convinced by arguments like that. It's not in the same way that it feels very personal, but it's definitely got it's like propagandistic. Like, this is what I'm trying to demonstrate to you all kind of haranguing this to it. But there's so much inventive off the wall craziness that I didn't really mind that much.
I mean, you know, you talk about it now and really criticize it and say, like, oh, you know, it's pointlessly angry about society and the changes that he thinks are coming that are going to be bad and the rise of Esperanto and the disgusting meows of the cats and all this stuff that he doesn't like.
Gretchen:
Also, even like when he's at that concert, he's like, this guy turned to me like he thought I liked music. And it's like, you don't like music?
JM:
Yeah, this is like, I don't know, yeah, he seems like maybe not a very pleasant person doesn't like very much. I don't know.
Gretchen:
He doesn't seem like he has a lot of joy.
JM:
No, not really. Even though there are some funny parts of the story and he talks about, well, it sucks that we've lost real joy. We don't really know how to fun anymore because all we have is the we hypnotize people into thinking they're drinking alcohol and we also feed them laughing bacteria. But that's not the same thing.
Gretchen:
I will admit, when Whitman showed up, my first thought was he has friends!
Nate:
Yeah.
Gretchen:
He has a friend.
Nate:
Yeah. That's for very long, though.
Gretchen:
No.
JM:
I think it's really interesting to read science fiction like this, though. I mean, there are people out there who can't they kind of feel like the whole shotters very one sided and it's either all one way or all the other way, technophobic or embracing every new technological development like some of the people that would be, well, I don't know, we kind of covered some of this ground in the Tiptree episode last time, but these technological oligarchs who are like basically just rushing forward with everything, not really thinking of the consequences and stuff like that.
And yeah, I mean, maybe there are certain downhill slopes, but kind of funny seeing all this railing going on way back in the early 1900s. Some of the same things are still kind of talked about now and we can kind of see it still. But it's interesting just to seeing the different perspectives that genre can be used for and not everybody feels the same way about the development of society or technology and so on. And they were going to, this is a perfect way to express your feelings about stuff like that one way or the other.
So I'm kind of glad that I read this, but I'm also glad that I'm sort of beyond the point where I'm going to be taken in by something like this, I guess.
Nate:
Yeah, definitely.
Gretchen:
Before the episode, Nate had said that this would be more of a story that's interesting to analyze and look at than actually read. And I kind of agree with that. Where it is interesting, I'm happy that I read it. It's given me the same feeling as like "Medusa" where it's like, it may not have been the best read, but I still think there's a lot of interesting ideas to think about afterwards and to kind of examine it after the fact.
Nate:
It definitely has its place within certain historical political movements and it gives you a really interesting portrait of Belsky the man through his writing here. He was definitely a flawed individual, but sometimes these flawed individuals with strange outdated ideas are just fascinating to take a look at. And the story really lets you in on the stuff he liked and disliked about Russian society, which is quite numerous.
JM:
Yeah. Yeah, definitely. And yeah, there was a bit of that too. We got the discussion even in chapter one about the artificial brain that was being created. And that was just another thing that I guess that was the first indication that, oh, maybe he's like talking about people thought we needed this because it's well acknowledged that creativity has died out and stuff like that. And maybe we create an artificial brain and it'll be free of the constraints that we've opposed upon ourselves. Meanwhile, the guy who's doing it is having doubts and he's starting to think that maybe he's doing the wrong thing. So it's yes, Frankenstein all over again. Right.
Nate:
Yeah. And that's one paragraph and that could have easily been his own story, which is again, this is not like the shortest thing. In fact, is the longest thing that we've covered in this episode, but it's still not a long work. I think it's like 17,000 words somewhere in there. But he throws a lot in here that could be their own stories that last maybe a sentence or two, sometimes a paragraph. Yeah, it feels very much like "The Mummy" in that regard where he throws.
JM:
Yeah, totally.
Nate:
Yeah.
JM:
Just like I definitely got that too.
Gretchen:
Yeah. And did mention before that I sometimes felt that produced a scattered feeling and kind of aimless. But I do think that is not always a bad thing. At some points, it does feel a bit too much. But there are other times when I do like the extra asides and the details that he gives.
JM:
Not really enough focus.
Nate:
It definitely doesn't feel like "Erewhon" where he's just harping on the same thing for like pages and pages and pages at a time.
JM:
Yeah. Well, "The Mummy" was certainly more complete narrative. It was more satisfying in some ways. It's kind of funny ever since we did "The Nummy", I've always been like the covert quiet "Mummy" fan. And just like, yeah, you know, it was actually kind of good, right?
Nate:
Yeah.
JM:
I mean, I'm not going to say it's a masterpiece, but it was pretty cool in its way and kind of like something that I mean, we kind of contrasted it with Frankenstein at the time because the person that wrote it was around the same age. And she was like destined for a very different kind of life than Mary Shelley. But yeah, like obviously less known, probably with good reason. But yeah, she did this really cool, original, adventurous thing that was fun to read. This didn't make me laugh as much as "The Mummy" did and it was like more nasty. So I don't know. Yeah. I still think "The Mummy" comes up on top, but yeah.
Nate:
Yeah. That was an interesting one. This was an interesting one. And if you want to read this one, it's up on our blogspot. So yeah, check that out. Let us know what you think about the story, what you think about the translation. And I'm sure we'll be returning to this period of Russian science fiction at some point in the future.
JM:
Yeah, definitely. And yeah, definitely. If you're interested after all our commentary, you still want to read this. Kind of an interesting historical piece. I'm glad that we kind of resurrected it and brought it into English. That's pretty cool.
Nate:
Yeah. Yeah, definitely a fun process, certainly more time consuming than all the other stories basically because it is quite longer than all the other Russian stories that I've translated. But yeah, a cool experience and the original text was written in pre-reform Russian. So it's just kind of interesting to see the drastic changes that were made to the language itself by the revolution.
Gretchen:
I wonder if Belsky would be happy with that.
Nate:
Probably not. It does eliminate some of the old world character, I think, out of the Russian language. It eliminated a couple of vowels in particular. The words for "peace" and the "world" were two different spellings before the revolution and after the revolution, they're spelled the same way. So I'm sure Belsky would get all hung up on that about how it's not as poetic spelling it one way versus the other or something.
JM:
Yeah, and we'll definitely be covering some stuff from the 50s and beyond in Russia as well. So a lot of that stuff has been translated into English. So we can do that and we won't be facing any copyright strikes or anything like that.
Nate:
Yeah, it's kind of interesting how, I guess, worldwide science fiction develops in translation and that I've been noticing that with the Russian language stuff, the Spanish language stuff and even a bit of the Italian language stuff, translations in English are a lot more available after the 1950s. So like starting with the early 1960s and onward with...
JM:
The era of the 60s and beyond especially.
Nate:
Yeah. I think Galaxy is going to play a major part in that, which we'll hopefully see later this year. Yeah, the 50s and before is still a lot of stuff out there in the pulp magazines that still have yet to be translated. Even though this one wasn't in the pulp magazine, it was a standalone publication. Belsky still published in those same pulp magazines that we talked about in the episode we did a couple months back. And yeah, it'll be interesting taking a look at those other pockets from Latin America and other places around the world from the 1950s and before that just haven't been translated in English. So it's been a rewarding and interesting journey going through these things. And yeah, a lot of cool stuff, even though they're not masterpieces all the time, they're still interesting to take a look at both in terms of the genre and their place in history.
JM:
Yeah. And this was definitely exactly that very much. Whether you choose to take your solace with hypnosis or with the power of the laughing bacteria, we hope you'll return, because when we return, we'll still be talking about comets and we're going to talk about W. E. B. Du Bois, "The Comet".
Bibliography:
Laboratory of Fantastika - "S. Belsky" https://fantlab.ru/autor10001
Music:
Bellak, James - "Comet Schottisch" (1853) https://www.loc.gov/item/2023806609
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