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Ivan Yefremov: Difference between revisions
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He then sailed a couple of years in the Russian Far East, but in the end the scientific calling won over, and he soon enrolled to Leningrad University's Biology Department. There Yefremov specialized in paleontology, making his doctorate in 1935, and for a couple of decades divided his time between studies and expeditions. Experiences of this turbulent life gave them a lot of inspiration, and he turned to writing quite early. His first short stories, originally a simple adventure yarns, often based on his expeditions and his brief sea career, began to be published during the WWII, but he quickly started to add fantastic elements to them. After the war, Yefremov [[The Professor|continued to pursue the scientific career]], creating a new discipline in the modern paleontology — the so-called tafonomy, a study of how the fossils distributed in the earth — while his writing steadily became more grandiose and epic.
[[The Fifties]] became a major breakthrough for him, as in 1955 Yefremov completed his Magnum Opus, a sweeping epic [[Utopia]] called ''[[
You see, being a prominent scientist and fundamental believer in that the [[Rousseau Was Right]], Yefremov found the [[Humans Are Bastards]] trope and all its consequences distasteful in the extreme. He also was disturbed by the frequent [[Science Is Bad|antiscientism]], which then started to appear not only in Western, but also in the Soviet society. He also became quite disillusioned with the Soviet society at laarge, and his next epic, ''[[Literature/The Bulls Hour|The Bull's Hour]]'', while on the surface criticizing the Chinese brand of "ant socialism", how he called it (the novel was completed in 1968, at the height of the Sino-Soviet Split), was close enough to home for the authorities [[Banned in China|to ban it]] ''days'' after the book was out.
After that, Yefremov turned to [[Historical Fiction]]. Early on he already published an adventure novel about [[Ancient Egypt]]-cum-[[Ancient Greece]], ''[[Literature/At The Edge Of Ecumene|At The Edge Of Ecumene]]'' and returned to the theme once more, in his last work, ''[[
The key point of this theory is that the Nature is completely indifferent to the individual and is thus inherently endlessly cruel, and all natural processes (including spontaneous, uncontrolled processes in society) only serve to increase the suffering of the intelligent beings — a process he called "the circle of Inferno". He also predicted that the uncontrolled social processes will introduce the negative selection — essentially a moral version of [[The Peter Principle]], where [[Aristocrats Are Evil|only the worst will come to the top]]. Only conscious, controlled and good-natured effort could break this vicious circle.
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* ''Star Ships'' — second short story cycle, 1945
* ''[[Literature/At The Edge Of Ecumene|At The Edge Of Ecumene]]'' — [[Historical Fiction]] adventure novel, 1946-1959
* ''[[
** ''[[
** ''[[Literature/The Snakes Heart|The Snakes Heart]]'' - ''Nebula's'' related novella
*** Only in [[Alternate Continuity]]. The world is pretty similar overall, but it is stated there that this IS a [[First Contact]], and no Great Circle is ever mentioned.
** ''[[Literature/The Bulls Hour|The Bulls Hour]]'' — ''Nebula's'' distant [[Sequel]], a social critique, 1968
* ''Razor's Edge'' — another adventure novel, set in [[Present Day Present Time]] (that is, [[The Sixties]]), 1962
* ''[[
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=== His writing provides examples of these tropes: ===
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