Self-discovery

Science fiction has been termed a medicine for future shock. Future shock is that sense of disorientation brought about by the rush of invention, the impact of technical events evolving infinitely faster than the bodies and minds of the common man. One wonders if Savchenko has read Alvin Toffler (who invented the term) while realizing that he need not have; the phenomenon and its effects are quite evident to anyone who cares to look. Science fiction writers and their proliferating and increasingly addicted readers are, and have been all along, the people who care to look. They look with practiced eyes, not only at what is and what will be, but at that entrancing infinity of what might be: alternate worlds, alternate cultures and mores, extrapolations of the known, be it space flight, organ transplants, social security, ecological awareness, or any other current, idea, or force in a perpetually moving universe: if this goes on, where will it go? For stasis, and stasis alone, is unnatural and unachievable and has failed every time mankind has been tempted to try it. The very nature of science fiction is to be aware of this and to recognize that the only security lies in dynamic equilibrium, like that of the gull in flight, the planet in orbit, the balanced churning of the galaxies themselves… and of course, the demonstrable fact that the cells of your body and the molecules which compose them are not at all what they were when you picked up this book. The future can shock only those who are wedded to stasis.

(Parenthetically, science fiction writers are not immune to future shock, though it may take the form of an overpowering urge to kick themselves. Example: up until very recently there was — as far as I know — not one single science fiction story which included a device like the wristwatch my wife wears, which delivers the time, day, date, adjusts itself for months of varying lengths, is a stopwatch and elapsed — time recorder, and has a solar panel which gulps down any available light and recharges its battery. The development of these microelectronic devices, now quite common and inexpensive, was simply unthought of by science fiction professionals, and is by no means the only example of technological quantum leaps which season our arrogance. It is beneficial to all concerned when our dignitaries are observed, from time to time, to slip and sit down in mud puddles.)

Mud puddles, or their narrative equivalent, are far from absent in this book, for Savchenko has a delicious sense of humor and a lovely appreciation of the outrageous. Let us posit, for example, that you are a brilliant but not particularly attractive man with little concern for the more gracious amenities, who happens to be loved by a beautiful and forgiving lady. In the course of your work you produce a living, breathing version of yourself who is a physical Adonis and who, further, has a clear recollection of every word, every intimacy, that has ever passed between you and the woman.

And they meet, and she likes him.

How do you feel?

Why?

And then there's Onisimov — poor, devoted, duty — bound Onisimov — a detective in whose veins runs the essence of the Keystone Kop, up against a case with a perfectly rational solution which he is utterly unequipped to solve — not at all because he is unable to understand it, but because he simply cannot believe it.

Then there's the offensive Hilobok, unfortunately (as mentioned above) not quite a parody, but the object of not a few instances of Krivoshein/Savchenko's irrepressible puckishness, and a gatekeeper who is certainly Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern rolled into one, and a fine sprinkling of smiles amid the cascades of heavy ideation.

Over and above everything else, however — the mind — bending ideation, the unexpected narrative turns, the wide spectrum of characterization, the humor, the suspense — shines the author's love for and faith in the species. As he says through his protagonist, he talks not about man, but about people. And at the end, the very last words of the novel bespeak this faith and this optimism.

There's no point in looking at those last words now, by the way. They will carry no freight until you put it there by reading the novel.

— THEODORE STURGEON

Los Angeles.

PART ONE FOOTSTEPS FROM BEHIND

Chapter 1

“When checking the wiring, disconnect power".

A poster on industrial safety

The brief short circuit in the line that fed the New Systems Laboratory occurred at three A.M. The circuit breaker at the substation of the Dneprovsk Institute of Systemology did what all automatic safety devices do in these cases: it disconnected the line from the transformer, lit up a blinking red light on the board in the office, and turned on the alarm.