Half a Life

by Kir Bulychev

Book Overview

Contents: Introduction by Theodore Sturgeon Half a Life - novelette I Was the First to Find You - short story Protest - short story May I Please Speak to Nina? - short story Red Deer, White Deer -... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0020178506
• ISBN13: 9780020178507
• Release Date: January 1978
• Publisher: Collier Books, Macmillan Publishing
• Length: 142 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Human

I'd say a little bit uncharacteristic book for Bulychev, between the standard scifi (and qiute boring) "Passage", deliriously funny "Intergalactical Police" and childish "Alisa". My favorite stories here are "May I speak to Nina" which is well described by "Rottenberg's rotten book review" and "The first layer of Memory": the group of speleologists get trapped in a cave. One of them manages to get out, but looses consciousness before he gets to people. He is found some time later. His brain is transplanted to someone else, who starts recalling the already dead speleologist's thoughts - first to visit the old father of one of the guys from the group and give him a cure they found in the cave, and only then he is able to recall where is the exit he found to leave the cave and brings the people to rescue the rest of the team. In general all the stories are very short (sometimes 3-4 pages short) and, I guess, the word that describes them is "human".

Excellent sci-fi from the former CCCP

Possibly the only time that Sci-Fi made me cry, "Half a Life" is a collection of stories and a novella about normal sounding people experiencing the viscitudes that seemed reserved (in convetional sci-fi) for steely-eyed heroes or hyper-intelligent engineers who blather in incomprehensible technobabble. The heroin of "Half a Life", a human taken prisoner by alien robots, wanted nothing more, than a quiet life on some Oblast (I guess a town or collective or something) when she finds herself the latest addition to a menagerie of creatures from different planets. Instead of adjusting to prison life, she humanizes her fellow prisoners and seizes control of the means of freedom. The zoo ship is discovered by human cosmonauts years later, apparently a floating derelict in space. Surprised to find fragments of a diary among the remains of alien specimens (luckily the author and the cosmonaust are both Russian), the explorers piece together the story of the zoo ship's final days and the fate of the human author. The heroic explorers of "Red Deer, White Deer" look past their prejudices against the brutal ape creatures of a newly discovered planet, to find the common kernel of humanity - with all of its qualities and failings. The protagonist of "Can I Speak to Nina" is something of a child frozen in the body of an adult - emotionally paralyzed by his clumsy loss of a ration card during WWII. Not entirely willing to forgive himself the mistake which made life much less pleasant in an unpleasant time (the rest of the family had to give up some of their rations), he never comes alive until accidentally calling a young girl who's literally more backward than he - eerily convinced that the year is not 1972, but 1943!A group of interplanetary explorers learn the risks of interstellar travel at lightspeed in "I was the First to Find You." Without giving away too much of the plot, if you know that during your 10 year trip, 200 years will pass on Earth (thank you, Mr. Einstein), you've got to face the possibility that mankind will make some technological strides in the mean - the chief among them being a spaceship that take a ten year trip that only takes ten years of Earth time.Lovers are separated by the vastness of space and by incompatible biology, while intergalactic athletic competition tries to conform the species of many worlds to a single standard and the subject of an experiment in human memory transfer finds his cynical shell under assault from a dying optimist.The oddities of the universe, which cover up the unoriginality of plots or flatness of characters in other sc-fi, cause Bulychev's characters to unfold here like a flower. His prose only seem spare but mask an inner humanity. when futuristic cosmonauts stumble on the derelict zoo-ship of "Half a Life", they argue on seemingly petty history - like whether Natasha, the human abductee, made it into space before Sputnik, or had to follow Gagarin. When other interplanetary explorers are welcomed h

Intelligent life on Earth

Possibly the only time that Sci-Fi made me cry, "Half a Life" is a collection of stories and a novells about normal sounding people experiencing the viscitudes that seemed reserved (in convetional sci-fi) for steely-eyed heroes or hyper-intelligent engineers who blather in incomprehensible technobabble. The heroin of "Half a Life", a human taken prisoner by alien robots, wanted nothing more after WWII, than a quiet life on some Oblast when she finds herself the latest addition to a menagerie of creatures from different planets. Instead of adjusting to prison life, she humanizes her fellow prisoners and seizes control of the means of freedom. The heroic explorers of "Red Deer, White Deer" look past their prejudices against the brutal ape creatures of a newly discovered planet, to find the kernel of humanity - with all of its qualities and failings. The protagonist of "Can I Speak to Nina" is something of a child frozen in the body of an adult - emotionally paralyzed by his clumsy loss of a ration card during WWII. Not entirely willing to forgive himself the mistake which made life much less pleasant in an unpleasant time (the rest of the family had to give up some of their rations), he never comes alive until accidentally calling a young girl who's literally more backward than he - eerily convinced that the year is not 1972, but 1943! The oddities of the universe, which cover up the unoriginality of plots or flatness of charachters in other sc-fi, cause Bulychev's charachters to unfold like a flower. His prose only seem spare but mask an inner humanity. when futuristic cosmonauts stumble on the derelict zoo-ship of "Half a Life", they argue on seemingly petty history - like whether Natasha, the human abductee, made it into space before Sputnik, or had to follow Gagarin. When other interplanetary explorers are welcomed home after a seemingly meaningless mission, you'll want to shout along "I was the first to find you!" Don't lose this one.

One of the Best

This novella and collection of short stories by the Russian author is one of my favorite science fiction works. He is unusally clear, original, poignant, and human. For a man who wrote this when Communism was not only Law in Russia, but Religion as well, his prose lacks the political pollution so typical of inferior Russian works that had to be approved by a Ministry before they were printed. Bulychev isn't given to flights of fancy to mask ignorance. His science is proven; his extrapolation of scientific ideas is believable; and his stories are marvellous. To those who enjoyed "The Ice People" by Rene Barjavel, Bulychev should be equally good. If not, well, at least I hope that "Half a Life" and the stories "Red Deer, White Deer," and "May I Please Speak to Nina?" (my favorite ones) will have still proven to be good enough. Happy reading.