A LITERATURE OF THE FUTURE
Fiction of real war: literature about the future is written even at the front
New Ukrainian mass culture is born under Russian shelling and bombing
This article is published on Liga.net website.
Back in 2023, the Kharkiv publishing house Folio offered us to compile an anthology of contemporary Ukrainian science fiction-a collection of novels and short stories. The task turned out to be unexpectedly difficult. Why?
First, Ukrainian fiction has always been dominated by “bizarre prose”, the so-called magical realism with Ukrainian specifics, to which mysticism, horror, and various fantasy trends were later added. Science fiction has always been rather scarce in Ukrainian literature. And it is still scarce, unfortunately.
And the second and main reason is the war. When we started looking for authors to invite them to participate in the anthology, it turned out that many of them are either fighting in the ranks of the Armed Forces, recovering in hospitals after being wounded, or actively volunteering, getting what our soldiers need by all means and means, and delivering goods to the front under fire. Some simply live in frontline cities and towns under constant shelling and bombardment.
But!
This is where the “but” came in, which time and again allows us all to do the seemingly impossible.
Despite the war, exhaustion, sleepless nights, shelling, combat and volunteer work on the verge of, or even beyond, human strength, many of these people continued to write!
They wrote in fragments, in between duties, military missions, trips to the frontline zone; in dugouts, basements and bomb shelters; edited their work while lying in hospitals after serious operations… One of the authors of the anthology started writing while already in the military, during the fighting. And his debut novel turned out to be not just good, but also completely atypical, in some ways even “breakthrough”!
The fact that people continue to write even in such conditions gave us a powerful impetus, inspired, to take up our work with renewed vigor. We contacted them, apologizing for distracting them from much more important things, asking them to send their stories for the anthology – and people responded, sent texts, and they were worthy, we must say. It was so scary when one of them did not respond to a letter about publishing for a day or two. Then they would reply: “Sorry, I was out of touch, I was on a mission…”
And it came from the heart: alive!
In our opinion, the anthology entitled Me and My Robots, which was recently published by Folio Publishing House (the edition, by the way, according to the publisher’s website, has already run out, because the book has gone to readers!), was indicative in two ways:
Firstly, the texts that make up the collection are very different from each other, providing an almost complete spectrum of contemporary SF: hard SF, soft SF, social, satirical, ironic, adventure, philosophical, post-apocalyptic, historical, cyberpunk, nanopunk, robopunk, and all kinds of “hbrid forms” of SF with other literary trends. Fiction is generally about diversity, surprise, different views of reality, the universe, humans, and possible futures. So we have a very revealing cross-section of contemporary Ukrainian SF.
Secondly, despite the war, pain, sadness, and losses, Ukrainians continue to create – even at the front! – and care not only about today’s survival, but also try to look into the future. Yes, this future in the stories turns out to be more disturbing than joyful. But warning about the possible consequences of today’s trends is also one of the functions of fiction. Of course, the tragic events of today leave their mark on the work of Ukrainian writers.
But even so, in most of the works one can see a ray of light and hope. A ray that breaks through from dugouts and trenches, from basements and bomb shelters.
We hope that in the next collections – we are sure that they will be forthcoming – there will be a place for more positive features of the future we would like to live in.
The fragment of the literary landscape that the anthology represents fits perfectly into the overall picture of both all Ukrainian fiction with its numerous trends and varieties, and the broader picture of contemporary Ukrainian literature in general.
Because now, despite everything, we are witnessing a real flourishing of Ukrainian literature – both fantastic and conventionally “realistic”, both fiction (almost all of its trends) and non-fiction (so-called non-fiction): memoirs, diaries, analytics, sociology, psychology, etc.
Of course, there are plenty of problems: burned and destroyed printing houses and libraries, people killed, including employees of printing houses and publishing houses, disrupted logistics chains, many people leaving for other countries, and a decrease in the purchasing power of readers.. .
And in general: the war! Many people have no time for books now.
And despite everything: people are writing, people are reading! We know of many cases when our soldiers at the front ask us to send them fresh Ukrainian (paper!) books and then carry them in their backpacks for months, along with ammunition, water and power banks, reading excerpts in trenches and dugouts. Publishers and printing houses are working: the queues for orders are now months in advance. And numerous book festivals and fairs (yes, during the war!) delight with a variety of new books.
This gives us hope. We will live!
Dmytro Gromov & Oleg Ladyzhenskij (Henry Lion Oldie), Ukraine