Exploring my Library: Soviet Sci Fi Short Stories (a niche collection…)

I realise that Soviet Sci Fi short stories are a bit of a niche read – and certainly my recent guest post about that kind of story by women writers was even more obscure, as it was quite a task to track down any in translation! This set me digging around in my collection of Russian short story books, and I though it might be interesting to share the ones I have.

The first collection I ever acquired was “The Ultimate Threshold”. Translated by the esteemed Mirra Ginsburg, I think it’s probably one of the better known anthologies, and in fact it did contain one of the stories I read for my post.

As you can see from the contents below, the stories are all from the 1960s, which is interesting in itself. This was mainly the Brezhnev era, when there were attempts at détente between the east and the west, so maybe the book’s appearance reflects this. I don’t think I’d heard of any of the authors before obtaining the book, which is even more exciting. I’ve only read the Larionova so far, and it’s excellent, which bodes well for the rest of the book.

“World’s Spring” is a more recent acquisition, and one I got hold of when I was in search of stories by Kirill Bulychev, who has two works featured. Both were wonderful reads, and the book itself has a wide range of titles, split according to general theme. I also found one of my women’s stories in this volume, and I think it’s another highly regarded anthology.

My old friend J, picking up on my interest in Soviet Sci Fi, procured these for me from a bookseller friend of hers! I was of course attracted to the first by the fact that the Strugatskys were featured…

The second has another Strugatsky, plus a further selection of new-to-me names!

“Destination: Amaltheia” is the book I tracked down to be able to read “The Astronaut” for my guest post, and I’m so glad I did. It was a wonderful tale and one of the most moving sci-fi stories I’ve read. Plus the book is very beautiful…

I’m including this final anthology, although it isn’t strictly speaking a sci-fi one, because from reading the foreword it seems that at least one title is a science fiction story. It’s one I acquired for the Kataev story it contains, but there are a number of other authors I know of included so again there are plenty of riches to be explored!

Although I’ve only read a few of the stories from these collections, each one has been a gem and I’m very excited at the prospect of having such wonderful delightsto dip into. Maybe I’ll find time over the Christmas break to indulge a little…. 🙂