In Kirill Bulychev’s short story, “A Difficult Child,” Ker, a creature found in a rescue capsule orbiting a planet in a distant solar system, is brought into an Earth family’s home to be raised, perhaps as a pet, but more likely as an exotic equal to the humans. On the first day in his new home he sits in the corner, hissing, and clutching a gray rag. His enormous gray-blue eyes are described as “evil-looking and suspicious.” He bares his teeth at Katerina, the young girl in the family, and brushes away all attempts at friendly petting.
All that was known about Ker was that he originally came from a settlement on his home planet, one which had perished for unknown reasons. Ker and five other young ones just like him had evidently been put into a rescue capsule with apparent hopes by their parents that someone would find them and give them a new life. All the babies, barely alive, were brought to earth by the exploratory vessel Vega.
Initially some of the scientists thought that all the creatures should be kept together in a special school for study and observation. But more humane hearts intervened and insisted that they go to individual homes. Katerina’s dad is a cosmobiologist, while her mom is a doctor and the grandmother of the house specializes in preschool education theory – seemingly an ideal situation for this intelligent little E.T. However, after Ker’s negative response to his new family, the young daughter despairs of ever making friends with her new “brother.” Ker learns Russian and the family learns his language, but that somehow doesn’t facilitate communication. Instead it seems that he stubbornly does not want to understand anything about his new surroundings.
Doubtlessly he is depressed by being separated from his homeland and his friends. Furthermore, he is constantly under observation in his new home (cameras in every room and notes being jotted down about his (mis)behavior by all family members). As the short story progresses, Ker never quite makes friends with anyone but the grandmother, who reads children’s books to him. However, right before he hears that he can return to his home planet, he does something that shows he cares about Katerina. You will have to read the story in Gusliar Wonders to discover what Ker’s heroic act was.
Using some of the ideas in this story, written sometime in the 1960s, Kirill Bulychev was ready to work with director Richard Viktorov on the script for TO THE STARS BY HARD WAYS (1981). Bulychev was already famous for having published a large number of sci-fi tales and novels. Born Igor Vasevelodovich Mozheiko in Moscow (1934), Bulychev lived through a very difficult childhood because of Stalin’s paranoia, policies, and purges of the 30s and because of the horrors of starvation and massive dislocation brought by World War II and the German invasion of the Soviet Union. Bulychev’s father Vsevolod Mojeiko (Mozheiko) served as a lawyer in Stalin’s USSR at the time of the purges and show trials, a time that being a lawyer would have been a nightmare. Igor’s mother, Maria Mikhailovna Bulycheva [hence his later pseudonym], was orphaned by the Bolshevik-Menshivik civil war of the early Soviet era in the late 1910s. Most of Igor Mozheiko’s relatives on his father’s side were murdered by the Communist government or “forced into suicide.”
In the mid-1930s Igor’s mother became a military engineer (shortly after all her professors were executed, doubtlessly for the broadly applied term “political deviance”) and was put in charge of a fortress serving as an ammunition dump. After transferring to a job at an institute of experimental medicine, she divorced her first husband, Igor’s father, and married a doctor of chemical sciences, much more compatible with her own studies in chemistry. Their circle of friends included many noted Academy of Sciences members, so the conversations around the dinner table were doubtlessly stimulating to the young Igor.
With two chemists in the house, it would have been unsurprising for the young man to study chemistry, but instead he pursued a degree in languages, especially after being encouraged by the Communist Youth League, who recognized a rising need for English translators. After graduating in 1957, he was sent to Burma to translate for a large construction project financed by the USSR.
When he was ten Igor’s mother gave him his first sci-fi book (Five Cubes by Ivan Efremov), and in Burma he was able to find British and American sci-fi books by Huxley, Asimov, Clark, Pohl, and Orwell. Back home in the USSR, he became a graduate student in South-East Asian studies at the Academy of Sciences, Institute of Eastern Studies. He wrote his first sci-fi tale when he worked for the Russian equivalent of National Geographic (which always included fantasy fiction). His new passion was born. But as he began to write more frequently, he still maintained his jobs as an academic and interpreter. Despite outside pressure, he remained his own man, even at times running the risk of censorship or worse. He never joined the official state union of writers, but he thereby adroitly avoided their restrictions. He didn’t even join the Communist Party – with the very good reason that “They killed almost everyone I might ever have been related to."
With his Alice stories (a girl from 2080), originally created to entertain his own little girl named Alice, he became immensely popular. Millions of Soviet children loved Kir’s stories. After teaming with Viktorov on TO THE STARS BY HARD WAYS, he worked with many other directors throughout the 1980s in adapting his own stories or writing original screenplays for the movies. He was recognized by the Soviet government as a worthy writer upon being granted a “Laureate of the State prize” in 1982 for the screenplay of TO THE STARS. Other recognition followed, culminating in the Aelita award for sci-fi cinema in 1997.
As the old Communist system of government fell throughout Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union in the early 1990s, Bulychev was elated and full of hope for a wonderful future in his country, which had betrayed so many ideals. But surprisingly he no longer worked in cinema, as state support for the film industry began disappearing. “He was not at all pleased by the turns post Soviet Russia had taken in terms of the rise of mysticism, the Russian Mafia, and the war in Chechnya, nor was he overly fond of American post-Cold War triumphalism.”
But aside from his trips as a translator, he found a new personal freedom with the changes brought by the collapse. Starting in the early 90s, he spent nearly every summer in London. He also visited the US twice and was generally feted and toasted in various European literary circles. Several of his books of tales have been translated into English: Gusliar Wonders (Macmillan, 1983) and Half a Life (Macmillan, 1977)
Kirril Bulychev’s Attitudes toward Sci-Fi and fantasy:
“I write science fiction stories for the magazine, but, despite the frequent requests of the editors, I have never inserted anything scientific into them.”
“And please be advised that I cannot for the life of me stand conversations about flying saucers, ESP, … mages, wizards, and seers, new chronologies, and the goodness and humanity of comrade Lenin. Or the predictions of Nostradamus.”
“Sci-fi, I am convinced, is more precise than mainstream literature; it describes the condition of society. I will explain this by the fact that realistic literature predominantly is concerned with the study of [person-to-person] relationships; for SF this is more likely: man - society - time. Contemporary social SF was born in the 20th Century, when human civilization had entered into a period of crises unbelievable from the point of view of the preceding century.”
“Man by thought seeks the solutions not only to personal, but to social problems. We want to understand what exactly causes this and where does that lead. Science fiction always deals with alternatives and implies freedom of thought.”
And finally a Few Bits of Information about TO THE STARS BY HARD WAYS
Among the seven films he had directed before TO THE STARS, Richard Viktorov had directed only one other sci-fi film, TEENS IN THE UNIVERSE (1974). However, the director and the screenwriter were able to work together to create a fascinating sci-fi film, which has become something of a cult classic in post-Soviet Russia. The original 1981 version ran 148 minutes long and was actually presented in two parts, Niya - a test tube human and Guardian angels of space. I could find no information about the film upon its release but for the 20th anniversary the director’s son Nikolai restored the supposedly lost film to a 118-minute version, added a new score, and even shot a few new SFX sequences. The original release in 1981 was never seen in the US. Instead, American producer Sandy Frank bought the American rights to the film and began chopping away and re-dubbing, just as Corman, Bogdanovich, and Coppola did to earlier Russian sci-fi films. Sandy Frank released his shortened mishmash as HUMANOID WOMAN (fortunately unavailable in Austin video stores), a version so bad that Mystery Science Theater 3000 chose HUMANOID WOMAN for the 11th episode of their first season. That is apparently available through the MST website.
Little information could be found in English about director Richard Viktorov (1929-1983). At a very young age he fought on the Russian front in World War II. Studying philology, he decided that he was more passionate about images than words and switched to the Russian State Institute of Cinematography, where he studied under Sergei Yutkevich, a well-known director and educator. Following his film studies, Viktorov worked as a director at Belarus Studio and then the venerable Gorky Studio, where he made TO THE STARS. He was given several awards for his films, but died at the age of 53 after completing one final film, COMETA (1983).
-- Chale Nafus, Director of Programming, Austin Film Society
Sources
• Kir Bulychev, “Hanging On"
• Obituary of Kir Bulychev (Igor Vsevolodovich Mojeiko)
• Kir Bulychev on Wikipedia
• Vera Ivanova and Mikhail Manykin, “Kir Bulychev : Tale-Teller and Scientist,” Russia Info-Centre
• KEVIN LYONS, “Kev’s Cupboard@EOFFTV
• British Film Institute info
• MST 3000
