Monday Begins on Saturday
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Monday Begins on Saturday (Russian: Понедельник начинается в субботу) is a 1964 science fiction (science fantasy) novel by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky. Set in a fictional town in northern Russia, where highly classified research in magic occurs, the novel is a satire of Soviet scientific research institutes, complete with an inept administration, a dishonest, show-horse professor, and numerous equipment failures. It offers an idealistic view of the scientific work ethic, as reflected in the title which suggests that the scientists' weekends are nonexistent.
The "Scientific Research Institute of Sorcery and Wizardry" located in a fictional Northern Russian town of Solovets is portrayed as a place where everyone must work hard willingly, or else their loss of honesty is symbolized by hair growing from their ears. These hairy-eared people are viewed with disdain, but, in a turn symbolic of Soviet times, many of them stay in the institute because it provides them with a comfortable living no matter what.
Tale of the Troika, which describes Soviet bureaucracy at its worst, is a sequel, featuring many of the same characters.
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[edit] Characters and events
The novel is written from the point of view of a young programmer from Leningrad, Aleksandr Ivanovich Privalov (usually called Sasha), who picks up two hitchhikers during a road trip north through Karelia. After the two find out that he is a programmer, they convince him to stay in Solovets and work together with them in the Scientific Research Institute of Sorcery and Wizardry (abbreviated NIIChaVo).
The book contains a large number of references to well-known Russian fairy tales and children's stories (Baba Yaga, The Learned Cat from Pushkin's "Ruslan and Lyudmila" as a sclerotic bard, Zmey Gorynych), as well as mythology (genies, Cain) and portrays these persons and concepts (such as magic) either as objects of scientific enquiry or members of the Institute. Merlin, for example, is described as an incompetent boaster and is in charge of Institute's Department of Predictions. The Technical Helpdesk is headed by one Sabaoth Baalovich Odin, also described as the most powerful wizard in the universe, while the front desk is staffed by Alfred, a vampire.
The novel is remarkable for its colorful characters. Take Cristóbal Josevich Junta, for example: formerly a Grand Inquisitor, he is now the head of the Department of the Meaning of Life. He is also a talented taxidermist. It is rumored that his collection includes a Standartenführer of SS, an erstwhile friend of Junta's and also a taxidermist. Cristóbal Josevich, so goes the rumor, was equally skilled, only faster. Fyodor Simeonovich Kivrin, the head of the Department of Linear Happiness, is a stuttering big guy, an eternal optimist, an apprentice programmer, a fan of Erle Stanley Gardner and a mentor of sorts to Privalov. Modest Matveevich Kamnoedov (whose surname translates to "stone-eater") is an archetypal administrator bureaucrat who does not understand the "Monday begins on Saturday" work ethic. On New Year's Eve, he directs Privalov to turn off the lights and lock all doors, but Privalov soon finds out that everyone is still at the Institute and research continues. For example, the archetypically rude Viktor Korneev (usually called Vitka) claims to have left his "duplicate" to work in his lab, which Privalov recognizes to be Korneev himself, because "duplicates" never sing or show any emotion.
Much of the action centers on the laboratory of Amvrosiy Ambroisovich Vybegallo (roughly "one who runs out"), a professor whose gargantuan experiments are spectacularly wasteful and crowd-pleasing but utterly unscientific. On a New Year's Day, in his quest for an "ideal man" he hatches a "model of a completely satisfied man" who can instantly satisfy any his wants. The model (called a "cadaver" in the institute's jargon) attempts to consume the whole universe, but Roman Oyra-Oyra manages to stop him by throwing him a genie in a bottle. Vybegallo is modeled in large part on Trofim Lysenko, the charlatan and politico responsible for so many setbacks in the science of genetics in USSR.
The final part of the book concerns the mystery of Janus Poluektovich Nevstruev, the director of the institute, who is known to be one man in two personas, called A-Janus and U-Janus. The latter fact was commonly acknowledged, but generally not questioned, until the main characters find out that U-Janus is a future version of A-Janus who started travelling back in time in a peculiar way: at the midnight of each day he goes to the previous day instead of the next one (dubbed as "discrete contramotion").
[edit] Genre classification
While the events of the novel are fantastic and are unlike most science fiction in that they are not explained, this work is traditionally considered one of science fiction, rather than fantasy for a number of reasons: the genre of fantasy did not exist in Soviet Union and rare exceptions were formally classified as sci-fi by publishers; the authors have written many books that are undoubtedly science fiction; the underlying philosophy is that of science. Sometimes this work is called as "Russian Harry Potter" because the magic world in this book is very similar to the Harry Potter world.
[edit] Translations
The first English translation was published by DAW Books in 1977 [1]. In August 2005, Seagull Publishing, London, published the translation by Andrew Bromfield titled Monday Starts on Saturday (ISBN-13 978-0954336820)[2]. The publisher described it as "the Russian equivalent of Harry Potter, written 40 years earlier". The book uses the illustrations by Evgeny Migunov, one of the best illustrators of the works of brothers Strugatsky.
[edit] Puns and hints
- The Russian language abbreviation for the institute, NIICHAVO, sounds like a colloquial pronunciation for the word "nichego" ("nothing").
- The place of "Solovets" hints at Solovetsky Islands, with their historical and mythological associations
- "A-Janus and U-Janus" is a hint both to Janus Bifrons and (being "one director in two persons") to the concept of the Trinity
- Vybegallo with his pseudo-commoner appearance and radical pseudoscientific ideas is a hint to Trofim Lysenko[3]
- Vybegallo's "Ideal Man" is a mockery of the idea of the New Soviet Man
[edit] References
- Online text at Lib.ru (Russian)
- Byron Lindsey, "On the Strugackij Brothers’ Contemporary Fairytale Monday Begins of Saturday". Book chapter. "The Supernatural in Russian Literature". Editor: Amy Mandelker. Columbus: Slavica, 1988: 290-302. ()
