Latecomers to summer

The basis of the concept of hyperromancer is the idea of ​​the universe as a manipulation with reality ^[7] . Chronologically and thematically, the seven parts are built linearly as a reflection of the real history of humanity in the 20th century. Sergei Pereslegin noted that the "technological time" of the novel corresponds to the main milestones of real history: for example, Hyperborea Lazarchuk survived two world wars. The main duration of the cycle covers the period from the 1940s to the conditional "modernity" ^[8] . According to S. Pereslegin, these details emphasize the anti-utopian nature of the novel. The poetics of A. Lazarchuk recalls the realities of the anti-utopia of D. Orwell ; according to S. Pereslegin, the author found that the Orwellian world is capable of self-development ^[8] . According to V. Babenko , the reality of what is happening is emphasized by the realism of the image of a “fictional country in semi-industrial time” ^[2] . According to V. Shilovsky, “the novel examines reality, its dependence on our sensations, and ways of changing it through exposure to the human senses” ^[9] .

According to V. Babenko, “... this book is about Russia, about the history of Russia, about the place of Russia in the world, about us and you, about our place in history and the world, about our common destiny. So, and no less. And the fact that you and I are called Oswald, Peter, Marty, Menander, Larry, Lucas, Amadeo, Mickey, Noeli in this book, but the truth is Tatyana and Dimami too ... <...> So I tell you: allegory. If you really want to, substitute instead of Swearing Ivanov, instead of Gangnus and Slolish - Schek and Khoriv, ​​and instead of Albast - at least Moscow ” ^[2] .

The epic of Lazarchuk was created in 1983-1988 ^[5] . The attempt to publish the epic in the Krasnoyarsk Book Publishing House ended in failure, the novel was printed in parts in random order in periodicals and copyright collections, starting in 1989. The first separate edition in two books was sold by the ABC Publishing House in 1996 with a circulation of 20,000 copies. In 2001-2002, all parts of the novel were published by AST in three books (the Star Maze series), with print runs of 10,000 to 13,000 copies. In one volume, the novel was completely reprinted in 2005 by the publishers AST and Lux, the layout of this publication was personally prepared by A. Lazarchuk ^[10] ; he came out in two versions of serial design with a total circulation of 5000 copies. (series "Library of science fiction" and "Library of world science fiction"). This publication may be considered the most authentic ^[10] ; in copyright the afterword of V. Babenko and the photograph of the author are stated, but they are not in the published book ^[11] . In 2018, the cycle was published in its entirety in the World of Fantasy series of the ABC Publishing House ^[12] .

The epigraph and the name refer to the hokka of the fictional Japanese poet Tokagawa Ori ^{[2] [Note 1]} :

The cycle consists of several short stories and stories that have independent content, but arranged in chronological order and linked to a common canvas, with a small number of fundamental realities and cross-cutting characters. Regardless of volume and genre, all structural units of the text are referred to as "parts". Linking all the conceptual nodes and a detailed description of the picture of the world are given in the final seventh part - the novel "The Soldiers of Babylon." The author himself recalled that in the first half of the 1980s, “there was no hope of publishing any volumetric thing”, so the novel initially consisted of plot-finished fragments and chapters that could be published separately, which was done. A. Lazarchuk stated that there is no reason to consider the chapters of the novel as novels and stories, the text is integral, forming a single and cross-cutting plot. After the end of Waterloo Bridge and The Way of the Vanquished, the author rewrote the beginning of the novel. The old version of the introduction formed an independent story, “Nowhere and Never,” published much later and not included in the publication of the novel ^[14] .

Sorcerer

A short story - introduction to the cycle. It was first published in the author’s collection “Latecomers to summer” in 1990 with a preface by A. and B. Strugatsky and an afterword by S. Pereslegin . The action takes place on the eve of and during World War II in the village of Caperi county of an unnamed country. The protagonist is the miller-world- eating Oswald ^{[Note 2]} , who settled in the wordless Chinese Liu, cultivating a wonderful garden that resembles a self-assembled tablecloth. Over time, this raises suspicions among neighbors who are going to destroy the “sorcerer” with its strange garden. Surrealism of what is happening is emphasized by the letters of the father of the protagonist, who had left home before the war and went by ship to Tahiti , but then lost all connection with reality. Oswald also has to support a young cousin - Monica - who "does not understand a number of generally accepted conventions."

Waterloo Bridge

An independent story, written in 1983-1984, and published in 1990 in the author's collection "Latecomers to summer" ^[5] . Science fiction writer Mikhail Ouspensky argued that Lazarchuk turned to the genre of anti-war parable primarily because “in the days when this novel was written, the only chance to deceive censorship was the“ struggle for peace. ” But censorship was not deceived ” ^[16] . For the first time in this story, the concept of the Big Machine appears - the totality of all the technical achievements of mankind - which gradually begins to impose its own goals on it.

The action takes place during the war of Hyperborean power with an unnamed enemy. The plot is based on the construction of an unsupported bridge across the canyon, which has a dual - military and ideological-propaganda significance. Tanks can be thrown over this bridge, and hit the enemy rear; as Hyperborea loses the war, the bridge becomes the last bet on victory. A group of military operators, headed by an official of the Ministry of Propaganda Gunnar Marchel, is sent to the construction site, who begins to build his own reality (so far only by means of cinema - using layouts and special effects ), for the sake of which you can bring to the suicide of engineer Jungman, the only one who can build a bridge. The reason for suicide was a mistake in the calculations, because of which successful construction is impossible: ideological cleanliness prevents the use of formulas deduced by an expert disloyal to the regime. The operators are trying to save reality (albeit unbearable) - secretly shooting scenes of construction - but are doomed to failure from the very beginning. The film becomes an essential element of propaganda, and in the capital no one wants to take responsibility for the initial meaninglessness of the undertaking, and misinforms the top leadership. After the defeat in the war and the collapse of the front, the installation of the film ends - along the constructed bridge, the tanks go on the offensive.

The Strugatsky brothers in the preface to the first publication noted that Lazarchuk

“Wrote about all the wars at once, but first of all about the wars of the second half of the 20th century with all their fighters — special mendacity and cruelty, rich ideological equipment, increased senselessness and mediocrity” ^[17] .

Lavieri Attraction

A short story, first published in the author's collection of "Latecomers to the summer" of 1990. The action takes place immediately after the war in the occupied Hyperborean power. Larry Herber (stage name - Lavieri) is able to feel the danger and direction of his gaze, and organized an attraction in which he gave anyone who wants to shoot himself. This ability could not fail to attract the attention of special services and political conspirators.

The Way of the Vanquished

The first of the published parts of the hyper-novel, published in 1989 in the journal Metallurg (No. 7–9). A short story, the action of which takes place many years after the end of the military devastation - in the past tense, the “eighty-fourth” year is mentioned ^[18] . At this time, mutants appear, endowed with superpowers, but devoid of motivation and the will to win; they are easy to distinguish externally - during creative ecstasy, the mutant begins to literally glow. The main character is the brilliant artist Mart Traian, who in fact is his twin brother Maurice, who accidentally survived during the extermination of mutants (Caper incident of the 84th year ^{[Note 3]} ) and exists according to his documents. All the paintings of this March were created in collaboration with Maurice or Maurice himself. Mart-Maurice has to hide his nature by participating in a government program to bring culture to the province; Most of the money he earns is sent to the families of the destroyed mutants. In the provincial town, Mart meets his former lover - Veneta, whom she once parted with on the orders of the head of the terrorist organization in which they were both members. The terrorist Sherkhan - the chief of this organization - together with the army team conducts tests of toxic substances on patients at the clinic of Dr. Pettser; Veneta goes to the counterintelligence colonel Happa - with the help of police chief Andris - and they manage to neutralize the terrorists. March again parted with Veneta (she was evacuated along with Andris, wounded in a fight) and decides to die, because in love ecstasy he forgot about caution and showed his essence as a mutant - the army team started hunting him. Here, the drunk mutant artist Trigas intervenes, takes out a gun and drives Martha from the house that appeared to him in visions: the mutants foresee their death. The runaway Mart hears the shots, realizes that he left Trigas to die, and he has to somehow live with it further.

Bait for the Devil

I thought that all this is tomorrow. It turned out - yesterday ... ^[20]

A story illustrating the situation of conditional "modernity". First published in the anthology "Detectives, science fiction and much more ..." in 1992. Scientific intelligence conducts experiments with the human brain in order to create the perfect soldier, which turns out quite by accident when an ordinary student Eric begins to realize that strange things are happening to him. He came to Dr. Pettser (director of the clinic from the Way of the Vanquished). On the tomogram of the brain, a foreign object, implanted under the skull box, is clearly visible. It turned out that this is a serious military development based on the study of the Lavieri phenomenon: an implant that includes some parts of the brain and blocks others, making long training unnecessary. There is also a secret base on which ordinary people are turned into biorobots. However, Pettser attracts a special service, the head of which is Colonel Hupp, has long been hunting for army developments, and this time it all ends happily for the protagonist and his girlfriend.

Tin Border

The story was first published in Kharkov and Donetsk in 1996 in the eponymous author’s collection edited by D. Gromov and O. Ladyzhensky . The action takes place in 2000 ^[19] . In terms of development, the world has outstripped our own, first of all, with the technologies of three-dimensional transmission and synthesis of information (for example, television does not use leading people). One of the most important art forms is holographic interactive action - holo. The main character, police chief Andris (from The Way of the Vanquished), wounded in a fight with terrorists, travels to the university city of Platibor to undergo a treatment session. Here he meets and falls in love with Marina - the daughter of the artist Trayan (“The Way of the Vanquished”); later it turns out that their meeting was rigged by the conspirators. A complex biotechnogenic complex was developed near the city to regulate the biocenosis of the suburban forest, which began to saturate information networks with incomprehensible information without the knowledge of people, and the atmosphere of Bor - with pheromones , selecting visitors according to unknown criteria. Soon, among the people visiting Serebryany Bor, “elves” appeared - carriers of the general consciousness interacting with the machine. The main characters suggest that Bohr was a fragment of the future, accidentally abandoned in our world, and desperately trying to survive. At the same time, the city is preparing a coup Kristaldovites - followers of the ultra-left terrorist regime of the neighboring republic of Elver. The army men, who learned about everything, call up heavy artillery and destroy the boron along with all the "elves", one of which was Marina. Andris discovers that Hupp’s counterintelligence chief used him as a “ decoy duck, ” and when the police chief is offered evacuation, he prefers to stay in the city and die.

The critic Vasily Vladimirsky , recognizing the high literary merits of the story, described his philosophical and ethical base as follows:

... If you have depression, if it seems to you that the whole world continues to live by inertia, if all your beginnings perish in the bud, if you feel that you are making an irreparable mistake, then in all of this common sorrow, anyone and anything can be to blame (stupid and the evil superintelligence - the Golem , infinitely alien and therefore absolutely inhuman God, an ugly state system or spontaneously breaking into the Present piece of a strange and terrible Future - it’s necessary to emphasize what is missing), but not only. People who are imbued with this philosophy have one of two things left: either agree with the intended, humbly bowing to the Rock, or die artificially, leaving the a priori cruelty of the world in which and according to the laws of which they live. And it is not surprising that the main character of Tin Bor has chosen this very simple way out - after all, the hero Andrei Lazarchuk simply could not make any other choice that preserves at least the appearance of human dignity ^[21] .

The Babylon Soldiers

The novel, which completes all the ideological lines of the cycle, occupies approximately a third of its volume. First published in Krasnoyarsk in the eponymous collection in 1995 (with an afterword by M. Uspensky ). The duration of the main storyline is four years after the events of the tin story “Tin Bor” ^[22] . In the context of the technological development of the world described in the three previous stories, codons appear - technogenic active information packets that are introduced into the human mind and intercept from him the preliminary processing of input information. As a result, the brain receives, perhaps, not at all the information that is perceived by sight, hearing, touch. Special services deal with malicious codons. However, the situation is complicated by the fact that the world is not the only one, but a construction of 22 levels, called the letters of the Hebrew alphabet , in which the same people coexist, whose consciousness is not always able to distinguish between these worlds. Most likely, these are only informational reflections, and not physical entities ^[23] . According to Konstantin Frumkin , in Lazarchuk’s novel, “the idea of ​​multilayered on the basis of Russian literature” reached its climax ^[23] .

The linear plot is deliberately complicated by the author. The action of the novel simultaneously unfolds on three levels, where the same heroes, who have different identities, act:

1. Hat (kingdom of Albast) is a semi- fantasy world in which the living dead seized power over the kingdom, transforming people into some other form of existence. Here the protagonists meet the elderly Mrs. Monica from the story “The Sorcerer”, which reports that during the war, mutant plants spread around the world.
2. Zayin is our Earth, the small Siberian town of Osherov, in which, according to one of the heroes of the novel, something happens that resembles the end of the world described in the Revelation of John the Theologian , but on the scale of one city cut off from the outside world (here, people's fears materialize behind the barrier ) The action in this layer of reality takes place in 1989, since there is still an Afghan war , but the celebration of the millennium of the baptism of Russia is mentioned in the past tense.
3. Vav (port of Albast) - the world of the former Hyperborean empire, in which network technologies got out of control, there was a merger of electronic networks with biological information exchange between human individuals. Non-human entities - including the overmind, using the human brain as logical elements - wage war among themselves, not suspecting the existence of humanity, just as society does not understand the essence of what is happening ^{[Note 4]} . The chief of military scientific intelligence, Meesters, suggests that humanity has come to the threshold of practical omnipotence and is almost aware of the essence of the processes taking place in the world.

The main conflict in the novel is generated by the collision of super creatures - saury and sartas, which, among other things, are able to generate gods as information packages, and see reality in its present form, as a result, having the ability to change it. However, not all levels of reality are accessible to them: presumably, at the Aleph level, some powerful forces are acting that have become sources of the appearance of mutants at lower levels.

According to S. Berezhnoy, “Soldiers of Babylon” is a philosophical novel :

In my deepest conviction, Lazarchuk built the novel on a single but comprehensive idea - the problem of non-interaction of human ethics with the laws governing the universe. These laws are reduced by Lazarchuk to the global philosophical principle of the equivalence of matter and consciousness, replacing this postulate with orthodox attempts to solve the fundamental problem of classical philosophy. Such a move gives him the opportunity to take a completely new look at the role of information in the structure of the universe: even God, from the point of view of the author, is an information package generated by the generalized consciousness of mankind. Such a god is practically incompatible with the modern understanding of ethics, which gives rise to a conflict between him and man, for which ethics is one of the foundations of social existence ^[25] .

According to S. Berezhnoy (in the preface to the full 1996 edition), Lazarchuk’s hyper-novel was underestimated by literary critics who did not distinguish him from the general stream of science fiction ^[5] . He cited an example from an internal review of the Krasnoyarsk book publishing house, where in 1988 the first volume of the novel was submitted for consideration. The reviewer noted that the style of "Latecomers to summer" is characterized by "a combination of stable clichéd formulas with blurred context" ^[5] . V. Babenko also stated that A. Lazarchuk’s novel should be analyzed in the context of Russian literature, “and not in the context of <...> escheat terminology denoted by the word“ fiction ”, and be designated as symbolic prose ^[2] .

Analyzing the poetics of A. Lazarchuk, S. Berezhnoy argued that it was not associated with either utopia or dystopia (dystopia) . “The action of his stories always occurs between the past (which utopias do not have) and the future (which dystopias lack), in the present, which will never become either selflessly bright or hopelessly gloomy” ^[5] . At the same time, in a creative sense, A. Lazarchuk, according to S. Berezhny, depended on the Strugatsky brothers , since it was they who became the creators of socio-psychological science fiction, simulating many extreme situations of the relationship between the individual and society, but not daring to move on. Lazarchuk continued from this stage, modeling the problem of the relationship between the individual and reality as such, and in conditions when a person is capable of arbitrarily changing reality. In addition to the Strugatsky, S. Berezhnoy noted the influence on Lazarchuk of the ideas and style of prose by Philip Dick , whose translation “ Ubika ” was published by Andrei Gennadievich in those years ^[5] .

V. Vladimirsky in 1996 claimed that the novel was late with publication for about a decade. He developed this thesis in his review of the reprint of the cycle in 2005. The novel is characterized as “classic” for the “fourth wave”, which has concentrated all the advantages and all the shortcomings inherent in the leading authors of this generation. “The densest text, every word, every construction carries a powerful semantic load - but the plot behind all this is difficult to see. The deliberate realism of the characters, the emphasized plausibility of situations - and, as an inevitable consequence, a deviation into " blackmail ", depression, the absence of happy endings ... ” ^[10] . A similar idea - playing up the name of the cycle - was put forward by M. Uspensky in the afterword to the publication of the Bridge of Waterloo and the Soldier of Babylon in 1995 ^[16] .

F. Kapitsa and T. Kolyadich in the textbook for philologists “Russian prose at the turn of the 20th — 21st centuries” presented the epic as an example of modern science fiction literature and its narrower genre trends, in particular, turborealism . The authors argue that the novel “ Another Sky ”, the plot of which is based on the assumption of the conquest of Russia by Germany, is thematically adjacent to “Latecomers ...” According to Kapitsa and Kolyadich, A. Lazarchuk parodied the style of different directions of Soviet prose of the 1940-1950s, his “rigidity” allows us to talk about mastering the experience of Western science fiction - this also applies to the rest of Lazarchuk’s works. A separate mention was given to the concept of hyper-novel, in which the story moves according to the law of the loop, and characters can fall into parallel versions of the development of the world ^[1] .

• Agenosov V.V. , Kapitsa F.S. (et al.). Russian prose at the turn of the 20th – 21st centuries: Textbook. allowance / Scientific. ed. T.M. Kolyadich. - M .: Flint, Science, 2011 .-- 520 p. - 1000 copies. - ISBN 978-5-9765-0912-5 .
• Lazarchuk A. G. Latecomers to the summer: Fantast. novel. - M .: AST: LUX, 2005 .-- 736 p. - (Fiction Library). - 3000 copies. - ISBN 5-17-025950-6 , 5-9660-0306-8.
• Assumption M. Afterword // A. Lazarchuk. The soldiers of Babylon. - Krasnoyarsk: Univers, 1995 .-- S. 602-603. - 608 p. - (TURBO). - 5,000 copies. - ISBN 5-87748-192-4 .
• Frumkin K.G. Philosophy and Psychology of Science Fiction. - M .: URSS editorial , 2004 .-- 240 p. - ISBN 5-354-00838-7 .

• "Latecomers to summer" on the site " Fantasy Laboratory "

• The text of the novel (neopr.) . Andrey Lazarchuk, Irina Andronati. Official site. Date of treatment March 23, 2016.
• Andrey Andreev. Latecomers to the Summer: Walkthrough Guide (unspecified) (inaccessible link) . Date of treatment February 26, 2016. Archived April 2, 2016.
• Vitaliy Babenko. Latecomers to ... (unopened) . Andrey Lazarchuk. Irina Andronati. Official site. Date of treatment March 23, 2016.
• Sergey Berezhnoy. The corridor of mirrors (neopr.) . Preface to the first volume of Andrei Lazarchuk’s novel “Latecomers to the summer” . Date of treatment February 26, 2016.
• Sergey Berezhnoy. Standing on the walls of Babylon (Neopr.) . Preface to the second volume of Andrei Lazarchuk’s novel “Latecomers to the summer” . Date of treatment February 26, 2016.
• Vasily Vladimirsky. Review on the collection of A. Lazarchuk "Tin can" (neopr.) . “ If ”, 1996, No. 7. P. 224-225 . Date of treatment February 26, 2016.
• Vasily Vladimirsky. Andrey Lazarchuk. Latecomers to the summer. (unspecified) . PETERbook (2005). Date of treatment February 26, 2016.
• Alexey Karavaev. On the way to summer (neopr.) (1998). Date of treatment February 26, 2016.
• Sergey Pereslegin. Space and time are not defined: afterword to the book: A. Lazarchuk, “Latecomers to the summer” (unopened) (inaccessible link) . Date of treatment February 26, 2016. Archived March 4, 2016.
• Foreword by A. and B. Strugatsky to A. Lazarchuk’s novel “Latecomers to summer” (neopr.) . Date of treatment February 26, 2016.
• Vlad Shilovsky. Andrey Lazarchuk. Latecomers to the summer (neopr.) . Freelancer reviews: Andrey Lazarchuk . Date of treatment February 26, 2016.