Kamill Strugatsky. Distant Rainbow

Arkady and Boris Strugatsky: double star Vishnevsky Boris Lazarevich

"Distant Rainbow" (1962)

"Distant Rainbow" (1962)

DR is the only “disaster novel” of ABS. True, it is not the Earth or part of it that perishes in it, but an earthly colony on the distant planet Rainbow, turned into a giant testing ground for experiments on zero-transportation. The book has two key themes: the possible tragic consequences of a scientific experiment getting out of control and the behavior of people in the face of imminent death.

Actually, both the first and second topics are by no means original. Who has not warned about the danger to humanity that scientific experiments can bring with them - starting with Jules Verne and ending with Paul Anderson. And who hasn’t described situations where there are fewer places in lifeboats than there are passengers willing to be saved.

But why, in fact, did the Strugatskys suddenly turn to such a specific genre?

BNS comment:

In August 1962, the first (and it seems the last) meeting of writers and critics working in the science fiction genre took place in Moscow. There were ideologically targeting us all, reports, meetings with fairly high-ranking bosses (for example, with the Secretary of the Komsomol Central Committee Len Karpinsky), discussions and behind-the-scenes get-togethers, and most importantly, Kramer’s film “On the Farthest Shore” was shown to us there in great secret.

(This film is now almost forgotten, but in vain. In those years when the threat of nuclear disaster was no less real than today the threat of, say, rampant drug addiction, this film made such a terrible and powerful impression on the whole world that the UN even adopted The solution was to show it on the so-called Peace Day in all countries at the same time. Even our top management reluctantly took this step and showed “On the Farthest Shore” on Peace Day in one (!) cinema in Moscow. Although it could, by the way, and not show it at all: as we know, the concern for nuclear safety was alien and incomprehensible to us Soviets - we were already confident that no nuclear catastrophe threatened us, and that it threatened only the rotting imperialist regimes of the West.)

The film literally shocked us. A picture of the last days of humanity, dying, almost already dead, slowly and forever shrouded in radioactive fog to the sounds of the piercingly sad melody “Volsing Matilda”... When we went out onto the cheerful sunny streets of Moscow, I remember confessing to the Academy of Sciences that I wanted every military man I met with the rank of colonel and above - slapping people in the face shouting “stop... your mother, stop immediately!” AN experienced much the same thing. (Although, if you think about it, what does it have to do with the military, even those with a rank higher than colonel? Was it their fault? And what, in fact, should they have stopped immediately?) Of course, this was completely, unequivocally and unconditionally excluded - to write a novel- catastrophe based on today’s material and on our material, and we so painfully and passionately wanted to make the Soviet version of “On the Last Shore”: dead wastelands, melted ruins of cities, ripples from the icy wind on empty lakes, black dugouts, people black with grief and fear and dreary a melody-prayer over all this: “Ducks are flying, ducks and two geese are flying...” We thought about all the possible and impossible options for such a story (it already had a name - “Ducks Are Flying”), built episodes, drew mental pictures and landscapes and understood : all this is in vain, nothing will come of it, and never in our lifetime.

Almost immediately after the meeting, we went together to Crimea and there we finally figured out how all this could be done: we just need to go to a world where there are no nuclear wars, but - alas! – there are still disasters. Moreover, this world was already invented, thought out and created in advance and seemed to us a little less real than the one in which we live.

It must be said that the imagined world of the Rainbow is really only a little less real than the real one. Actually, Rainbow is a kind of big Dubna, where scientists conduct experiments, have heated discussions and fight tooth and nail for the right to get equipment for these experiments out of turn. It’s just that this equipment is called not synchrophasotrons, but ulmotrons... All this fit perfectly into the then state of intelligent minds! Let us remember: the beginning of the 60s was a time of boundless faith in the power of science, especially physics. It was then that physicists confidently defeated lyricists, competition for admission to physics universities was off the charts, and the most popular man in the country was Alexey Batalov, who played the physicist Gusev in “Nine Days of One Year.” Therefore, an entire planet completely given over to scientists for experiments is completely in the spirit of the times. And the fantastic surroundings don’t add much: after all, why is the Wave so much worse than a nuclear explosion? By the way, to say in the early 60s that it is not necessary to unquestioningly supply scientists with everything they ask for to satisfy their curiosity at public expense (quoting, it seems, Lev Landau) - and this is precisely the morality of the DR - was close to blasphemy...

But, of course, DR is a story about the future, about the same World of Noon: the time of action, as the Luden group calculated, is the 60s of the 22nd century. Moreover, according to the authors’ plans, this was supposed to be the last story about distant communism - on November 23, 1963 Arkady Strugatsky made a corresponding entry in his diary...

BNS comment:

I just came across this entry in the NA diary and shuddered. But it’s true! After all, in fact, we said then, at the end of ’62, to each other: “That’s it! Enough about this. Tired of it! Enough about the fictional world, the main thing on Earth is pure realism!..” And this is how (or almost this) it turned out: having finished it, we did not return to the World of Noon for many subsequent years, right up until 1970 of the year.

What is true is true: it is difficult to consider “The Inhabited Island” and especially “It’s Hard to Be a God” as works about the future. But AR is a story about a future where the only problem is where to get energy to meet the growing needs of scientists.

“The meaning of human life is scientific knowledge,” says one of the characters in DR, physicist Alpa. And he adds: “It saddens me to see that billions of people shun science, seeking their calling in sentimental communication with nature, which they call art. Science is going through a period of material insufficiency, and at the same time billions of people are drawing pictures, rhyming words... and among them there are many potentially excellent workers...” The physicist still does not dare to continue this simple thought, and Gorbovsky does it instead: they say, it would be nice drive all these artists and poets into training camps, take away their brushes and goose feathers, force them to take short-term courses and force them to build new conveyors for the production of ulmotrons (something like enormously powerful energy accumulators) for the soldiers of science...

In the future outlined in the DR, the following problem is being discussed in all seriousness: should we not transfer some of the energy from the Abundance Fund to science? This means that the Strugatskys believed then that there would be both Abundance and Fund in the World of Noon. They believed that the idea would be discussed in the name of pure science to “press humanity in the area of ​​basic needs.” They believed that some would put forward the slogan “Scientists are ready to starve,” and others would answer them, “But six billion children are not ready. We are just as unready as you are unready to develop social projects”...

Subsequently, this faith will dry up quite soon - already in “The Kid”, not to mention “The Boy from the Underworld”, “The Beetle in the Anthill” or “The Waves Quench the Wind”, the people of Noon are preoccupied with completely different problems. Much more complex - and much sadder.

BNS comment:

The first draft of “DR” was started and finished in November-December 1962, but then we tinkered with this story for quite a long time - rewrote, added, shortened, improved (as it seemed to us), removed philosophical conversations (for publication in the publishing house’s almanac “Knowledge”), inserted philosophical conversations back (for publication in “Young Guard”), and all this lasted a good six months, and maybe longer.

However, the main question related to “Distant Rainbow” is the question about Gorbovsky. Did Gorbovsky die in the deadly flames of the Wave or did he survive? If he survived, how did he do it? If he died, then why does he appear in many subsequent stories as if nothing had happened?

ABNS never gives any answer to this famous question, and the reader has to figure everything out for himself. But it must be said that DR is characterized by the reader’s seemingly unfounded, yet complete confidence that at the last moment some miracle is about to happen. Either the Wave - a frantic, all-destroying substance of degenerate matter - will stop before it can destroy people, or the oncoming northern and southern Waves will self-destruct when approaching, or, as fourth-grade student Slava Rybakov (now the famous science fiction writer Vyacheslav Rybakov) writes to Strugatsky, The story simply doesn't have an ending. And it should be, according to Slava Rybakov, like this:

“Suddenly a roar was heard in the sky. A black dot appeared on the horizon. She quickly rushed across the sky and took on increasingly clear outlines. It was Arrow."

This refers to the starship “Strela”, which in the original DR cannot be in time to help, but, in the opinion of many, many readers, is obliged to be in time. Otherwise, we will have to assume that not only Gorbovsky will die, but also Mark Falkenstein, and Etienne Lamondois, and Gina Pickbridge, and Matvey Vyazanitsyn, and Robert and Tanya, and Alya Postysheva, and Kaneko, and the brave eight of the never-fulfilled zeros. pilots... Not a single ABS reader in his right mind and clear memory can allow this to happen. This means that everyone HAD to be saved - which is confirmed by the successful appearance of Gorbovsky in the World of Noon in subsequent novels. Since Gorbovsky alone could not escape (it is quite difficult to assume that Leonid Andreevich secretly made his way on board the Tariel-Second at the last moment), it means that everyone else was saved as well. And all the scientific problems of zero-T, apparently, were subsequently successfully resolved. After all, let’s say, when in “The Beetle in the Anthill” Maxim Kammerer uses a cabin for zero-transportation, traveling to the Osinushka resort and back, no Waves are observed nearby...

And one more thing that cannot be ignored when remembering the DR is the Camille phenomenon. The last of the “Devil's Dozen” fanatics who merged themselves with machines. A naked mind and unlimited possibilities for improving the body - a researcher who is his own transport and instruments. Ulmotron man, flyer man, laboratory man, invulnerable, immortal...

It turns out, however, according to Camille, a completely joyless state. Instead of “you want, but you can’t” - “you can, but you don’t want to.” It turns out that the absence of desires, feelings and sensations, which gives the transition to absolute concentration in order to achieve scientific success, is disastrous for the “human” half of each of the “Devil's Dozen”. And it entails only one thing - an unbearably sad feeling of loneliness. And it’s not without reason that three decades after the events described in the DR, Camille will commit suicide, or rather “self-destruct,” - the heroes of “Waves Quench the Wind” will talk about this. And they will remember that “for the last hundred years Camille was completely alone - we cannot even imagine such loneliness...

Rainbow A rainbow rocker, a seven-colored gem, hung on the shoulder of a mountain - And there is no rain in the world. The day decisively and cheerfully lowered the splashing buckets of the overflowing lakes to the foot of the mountains. And the whole neighborhood forgot how the gardens rustle with grass, how the chain mail rings in the rain, the shell

NATURE, DISTANT AND NEAR Biologists and experienced naturalists, traveling around our country or abroad, look closely at the world around them, subtly notice everything new or unusual, get acquainted with the local nature and the problems of its protection. Such information

FAR SKHELDA That snow - in anticipation of new snow, I will only say about it, I will hide the rest. And last winter the action of the sky lasted over Shhelda, over the illuminated mountain. There is a constant change of light and darkness - this is the experience of the mountain, making the mind wise. That snow is waiting for new snow - in

Rainbow Have you been to Ladoga, to Rainbow's birthday party? Well, weren't they? Did not see? They didn’t know... Of all those born, the most Holy and deceptive, Transparent and unsteady, Graceful and flexible. Water and light briefly give birth to a Rainbow Daughter, to everyone's surprise, but only in the distance. Behind

“Not distant and not a stranger...” Not distant and not a stranger, You are mine in this blessed hour, I caress you, exposing you to my lips, my hands, and my eyes. Yesterday I felt the oppression of dissatisfaction to the limit, And today the desired body clings to mine with feminine ardor. And drunk with kisses

Rainbow Seven-colored rainbow - Triumphal Arch of Rain! They won’t tell you on the radio where you will light up, a little later. Weather forecasters won't tell you how to walk under the rainbow of happiness... Inspiration of optics, paths forbidden to people. But I heard from time immemorial, That under the rainbow there were traces - Before

DISTANT MUSIC This is an afterword, but not an epilogue. We now live in England, where my daughter is studying at a Quaker boarding school. I am a resident alien again, but now with an American passport in my hands. Thousands of Americans live abroad, but no one considers them “defectors.”

“Distant Rainbow” (1962) DR is ABS’s only “disaster novel.” True, it is not the Earth or part of it that perishes in it, but an earthly colony on the distant planet Rainbow, turned into a giant testing ground for experiments on zero-transportation. There are two key themes in the book: possible

Part four THE DISTANT PRINCESS July 12, 1952Lee. England is cloudy, colorless, foggy, cold. After Greece, it seems like undergrowth replacing open space. Sensible nonentities instead of people, a meticulously designed family order. Life is not deep, but

“DISTANT RAINBOW” In August 1962, the first (and, it seems, the last) meeting of writers and critics working in the science fiction genre took place in Moscow. There were reports that aimed us all ideologically, meetings with fairly high-ranking bosses (for example, with the Secretary of the Central Committee

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CHAPTER 5. DISTANT WAR “I realized that the older you get, the more mysterious people and the whole world around you are to you.” In the small village of Rendorf, the first months of the World War passed relatively calmly. True, from time to time there were shortages of food, especially in

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8. "Rainbow" One evening Pete Townsend came into the Week - he was worried about Eric Clapton. After Eric's group "Derek and the Dominos" broke up in 1971, he and his then-girlfriend Ellis Ormsby-Gore (daughter Lord Harlech, who, unfortunately, died of an overdose) decided

The second retrospective is very distant. It can explain a lot in the behavior and affairs of Amosov, yesterday and today. He was born in the village of Olkhovo in the Vologda region on the eve of the First World War, in the family of a rural midwife. His teenage years (and this is the end of the twenties and

History of creation

The work was created in 1963.

According to Boris Strugatsky, in August 1962 the first meeting of writers and critics working in the science fiction genre took place in Moscow. It showed Kramer's film "On the Shore" - a film about the last days of humanity dying after a nuclear disaster. This film show shocked the Strugatsky brothers so much that Boris Strugatsky recalls how he then wanted to “slap every military man he met with the rank of colonel and above in the face, shouting ‘stop it, ... your mother, stop it immediately!’”

Almost immediately after this viewing, the Strugatsky brothers came up with the idea of ​​a disaster novel based on contemporary material, the Soviet version of “On the Shore”; even its working title appeared - “Ducks Are Flying” (after the name of the song that was supposed to become the leitmotif of the novel). But both understood that they would not be allowed to publish such an apocalyptic work under Soviet rule.

The Strugatskys had to transfer the action of the novel into their own invented world, which seemed to them “a little less real than the one in which we live.” Many drafts were created, which described “various ways in which different characters might react to what was happening; finished episodes; detailed portrait-biography of Robert Sklyarov; a detailed plan “The Wave and its development”, a curious “staffing table” of the Rainbow.”

The first draft of "Distant Rainbow" was started and completed in November-December 1962. Writers then worked on the novel for a long time, reworking it, rewriting it, shortening it and writing it again. This work lasted for more than six months until the novel took on the final form known to the modern reader.

Plot

• Time of action: presumably between 2140 and 2160 (see Noon World Timeline).
• Scene: deep space, planet Rainbow.
• Social structure: developed communism ( Noon).

The action takes place over one day. Planet Rainbow has been used by scientists for thirty years to conduct experiments (including physicists on null-transportation (teleportation) - a technology previously available only to Travelers). After each teleportation experiment, a Wave appears on the planet - two energy walls “to the sky”, moving from the poles of the planet to the equator, and burning out all organic matter in its path. Until recently, the Wave was stopped by “charybdis” - energy-absorbing machines that disperse the deadly products of null-transportation experiments.

A P-Wave of unprecedented power, arising as a result of another experiment on null transportation, begins to move across the planet, destroying all living things. Robert Sklyarov, who monitors the experiments from the Stepnaya post, will be one of the first to learn about the impending danger. After the death of the scientist Camille, who came to watch the eruption, Robert is evacuated from the station, fleeing the Wave. Arriving in Greenfield to see the chief Malyaev, Robert learns that Camille did not die - after Robert’s departure, he reports the strange nature of the new Wave, and communication with him is interrupted. “Charybdis” are not able to stop the P-Wave - they burn like candles, unable to cope with its monstrous power.

A hasty evacuation of scientists, their families and tourists begins to the equator, to the Rainbow Capital.

The large transport starship Strela is approaching Rainbow, but it will not have time to arrive before the disaster. There is only one starship on the planet itself, the small-capacity landing ship Tariel-2 under the command of Leonid Gorbovsky. While the Rainbow Council is discussing the question of who and what to save, Gorbovsky single-handedly decides to send children and, if possible, the most valuable scientific materials into space. By order of Gorbovsky, all equipment for interstellar flights is removed from Tariel-2 and turned into a self-propelled space barge. Now the ship can take on board about a hundred children remaining on Raduga, go into orbit and wait for Strela there. Gorbovsky himself and his crew remain on the Rainbow, like almost all adults, waiting for the moment when the two Waves meet in the Capital area. It is clear that people are doomed. They spend their last hours calmly and with dignity.

The appearance of Gorbovsky in a number of other works by the Strugatskys, describing later events (in accordance with the chronology of the World of Noon), suggests that perhaps the Wave once again demonstrated its changeable nature and stopped without ever colliding with its wings at the equator. The novel “The Beetle in the Anthill” describes a developed public network of “Nul-T cabins”, that is, experiments with null-transportation in the fictional world of the Strugatskys still led to success.

Issues

• The problem of the permissibility of scientific knowledge, scientific egoism: the problem of the “genie in a bottle”, which a person can release, but cannot control (this problem is not indicated by the author of the article, but is assumed to be the main one in this work: the work was written in 1963, while 1961 - the year the USSR tested the most powerful hydrogen bomb)
• The problem of human choice and responsibility.
  • Robert faces a rationally insoluble task when he can save either his beloved Tatiana, a kindergarten teacher, or one of her students (but not all). Robert deceives Tanya to the Capital, leaving the children to die.

You are crazy! - said Gaba. He slowly rose from the grass. - These are kids! Come to your senses!..
- And those who stay here, aren’t they children? Who will choose the three who will fly to the Capital and to Earth? You? Go, choose!
…
“She will hate you,” Gaba said quietly. Robert let him go and laughed.
“In three hours I will die too,” he said. - I won't care. Goodbye Gaba.

• • The Rainbow public is visibly relieved when, in the midst of a discussion about who and what to save on the Tariel, Gorbovsky appears and lifts the burden of this decision from the people.

You see,” Gorbovsky said soulfully into a megaphone, “I’m afraid there’s some kind of misunderstanding here.” Comrade Lamondois invites you to decide. But you see, there’s really nothing to decide. Everything has already been decided. Nurseries and mothers with newborns are already on the spaceship. (The crowd sighed loudly). The rest of the kids are loading now. I think everyone will fit. I don't even think, I'm sure. Forgive me, but I decided on my own. I have the right to do this. I even have the right to resolutely suppress all attempts to prevent me from carrying out this decision. But this right, in my opinion, is useless.
…
“That’s all,” someone in the crowd said loudly. - And rightly so. Miners, follow me!
…
They looked at the melting crowd, at the animated faces, which immediately became very different, and Gorbovsky muttered with a sigh:
- It's funny, though. Here we are improving, improving, becoming better, smarter, kinder, but how nice it is when someone makes a decision for you...

• In “Distant Rainbow” the Strugatskys for the first time touch upon the issue crossing living organisms and machines(or “humanizing” the mechanisms). Gorbovsky mentions the so-called. Massachusetts car- a cybernetic device created at the beginning of the 22nd century with “phenomenal speed” and “immense memory.” This machine operated for only four minutes and was then turned off and completely isolated from the outside world and is banned by the World Council. The reason was that she “began to behave.” Apparently, scientists of the future managed to create a device with artificial intelligence (according to the story “The Beetle in the Anthill”, “before the eyes of stunned researchers, a new, non-human civilization of the Earth was born and began to gain strength”).

• The flip side of the quest to make machines intelligent is activity of the so-called "The Devil's Dozen"- a group of thirteen scientists who tried to merge themselves with machines.

They are called fanatics, but, in my opinion, there is something attractive about them. Get rid of all these weaknesses, passions, outbursts of emotions... A naked mind plus unlimited possibilities for improving the body.

It is officially believed that all participants in the experiment died, but at the end of the novel it turns out that Camille is the last surviving member of the Devil's Dozen. Despite his acquired immortality and phenomenal abilities, Camille declares that the experiment was a failure. A person cannot become an insensitive machine and cease to be a person.

- ... The experiment was not a success, Leonid. Instead of the state of “you want to, but you can’t”, the state of “you can, but you don’t want to.” It’s unbearably sad to be able and not want to.
Gorbovsky listened with his eyes closed.
“Yes, I understand,” he said. - Being able and not wanting is from the machine. And sadness comes from a person.
“You don’t understand anything,” said Camillus. - You sometimes like to dream about the wisdom of patriarchs who have neither desires, nor feelings, nor even sensations. Colorblind brain. Great Logician.<…>Where will you go from your mental prism? From the innate ability to feel... After all, you need to love, you need to read about love, you need green hills, music, paintings, dissatisfaction, fear, envy... You try to limit yourself - and you lose a huge piece of happiness.

- “Distant Rainbow”

• The tragedy of Camille illustrates the problem of the relationship and role of science and art considered in the novel, the world of reason and the world of feelings. This could be called a dispute between “physicists” and “lyricists” of the 22nd century. In the World of Noon, the division into the so-called emotionalists And logicians (emotionalism as emerging in the art of the 22nd century. the current is mentioned in the earlier novel "An Attempt to Escape"). As Camille predicts, according to one of the characters:

Humanity is on the eve of a split. Emotionalists and logicians - apparently, he means people of art and science - become strangers to each other, cease to understand each other and cease to need each other. Man is born an emotionalist and a logician. This lies in the very nature of man. And someday humanity will split into two societies, as alien to each other as we are alien to the Leonidians...

The Strugatskys symbolically show that for the people of the World of Noon, science and art are equivalent, and at the same time they will never overshadow the significance of human life itself. On the ship in which children (“the future”) are evacuated from Rainbow, Gorbovsky allows you to take only one work of art and one film with filmed scientific materials.

What is this? - asked Gorbovsky.
- My last picture. I'm Johann Surd.
“Johann Surd,” Gorbovsky repeated. - I didn't know you were here.
- Take it. It weighs very little. This is the best thing I've done in my life. I brought her here for the exhibition. This is "Wind"...
Gorbovsky's stomach tightened.
“Come on,” he said and carefully accepted the package.

Author's assessment and criticism. Censorship

"Distant Rainbow" mentions the "ulmotron", a very valuable and scarce device related to scientific experiments. Gorbovsky’s ship just arrived at Rainbow with a cargo of ulmotrons. The purpose of the device is unclear, and is not important for understanding the plot. The production of ulmotrons is extremely difficult and expensive, the queue for obtaining them is scheduled for years in advance, and the value is so great that during the disaster the main characters saved the devices at the risk of their own lives. In order to get an Ulmotron for their unit out of turn, the heroes even resort to various reprehensible tricks (a transparent allusion to the situation with the distribution of shortages in the USSR).

Arkady Strugatsky, Boris Strugatsky

Distant Rainbow

Tanya’s palm, warm and slightly rough, lay in front of his eyes, and he didn’t care about anything else. He felt the bitter-salty smell of dust, the steppe birds creaked sleepily, and the dry grass pricked and tickled the back of his head. It was hard and uncomfortable to lie down, his neck itched unbearably, but he did not move, listening to Tanya’s quiet, even breathing. He smiled and rejoiced in the darkness, because the smile was probably indecently stupid and contented.

Then, out of place and out of time, a call signal squealed in the laboratory on the tower. Let be! Not the first time. This evening all calls are out of place and out of time.

“Robik,” Tanya said in a whisper. - Do you hear?

“I don’t hear anything at all,” Robert muttered.

He blinked to tickle Tanya's palm with his eyelashes. Everything was far, far away and completely unnecessary. Patrick, always dazed from lack of sleep, was far away. Malyaev with his manners of an icy sphinx was far away. Their whole world of constant haste, constant abstruse conversations, eternal dissatisfaction and preoccupation, this whole extra-sensory world, where they despise the clear, where they rejoice only in the incomprehensible, where people forgot that they were men and women - all this was far, far away... Here there was only night steppe, for hundreds of kilometers there is only empty steppe, swallowing up the hot day, warm, full of dark, exciting smells.

The signal chirped again.

Again,” Tanya said.

Let it go. I'm not here. I died. I was eaten by shrews. I'm fine as it is. I love you. I don't want to go anywhere. Why on earth? Would you go?

Don't know.

It's because you don't love enough. A man who loves enough never goes anywhere.

“Theoretician,” Tanya said.

I'm not a theorist. I'm a practitioner. And, as a practitioner, I ask you: why on earth would I suddenly go somewhere? You must be able to love. But you don’t know how. You are only talking about love. You don't like love. You love to talk about her. Am I talking a lot?

Yes. Terrible!

He took her hand from his eyes and put it on his lips. Now he saw the sky covered with clouds, and red identification lights on the tower trusses at a height of twenty meters. The signal squealed continuously, and Robert imagined an angry Patrick pressing the call button, his kind thick lips sticking out offendedly.

“But I’ll turn you off now,” Robert said indistinctly. - Tanya, do you want him to shut up with me forever? Let everything be forever. We will have love forever, and he will be silent forever.

In the darkness he saw her face - bright, with huge sparkling eyes. She took her hand away and said:

Let me talk to him. I will say that I am a hallucination. There are always hallucinations at night.

He never hallucinates. That’s the kind of person he is, Tanechka. He never deceives himself.

Do you want me to tell you what he is like? I really love guessing characters from videophone calls. He is a stubborn, angry and tactless person. And he will not, for any price, sit with a woman at night in the steppe. Here he is - right in the palm of his hand. And all he knows about the night is that it’s dark at night.

No, said fair Robert. - That's right about the gingerbread. But he is kind, soft and weak.

“I don’t believe it,” Tanya said. - Just listen. - They listened. - Is this a weakling? This is a clear "tenacem propositi virum".

Is it true? I will tell him.

Tell. Go and tell me.

Immediately.

Robert stood up, and she remained sitting with her hands wrapped around her knees.

Just kiss me first,” she asked.

In the elevator car, he leaned his forehead against the cold wall and stood there for a while, with his eyes closed, laughing and touching his lips with his tongue. There was not a single thought in his head, only some triumphant voice screamed incoherently: “Loves!... Me!... Loves me!... Here you are!... Me!...” Then he discovered that the cabin had stopped long ago and tried to open door. The door was not found immediately, and there was a lot of unnecessary furniture in the laboratory: he dropped chairs, moved tables and hit cabinets until he realized that he had forgotten to turn on the light. Bursting with laughter, he fumbled for the switch, raised his chair and sat down next to the videophone.

When a sleepy Patrick appeared on the screen, Robert greeted him in a friendly manner:

Good evening, little pig! And why can’t you sleep, my titmouse, wagtail?

Patrick looked at him puzzled, often blinking his inflamed eyelids.

What are you looking at, doggie? He squealed and squealed, he tore me away from important activities, and now you are silent!

Patrick finally opened his mouth.

You... you... - he tapped himself on the forehead, and a questioning expression appeared on his face. - A?…

And how! - exclaimed Robert. - Loneliness! Yearning! Premonitions! And not only that - hallucinations! I almost forgot!

Are you kidding? - Patrick asked seriously.

No! They don't joke around at the post. But don't pay any attention and get on with it.

Patrick blinked uncertainly.

I don’t understand,” he admitted.

“Where are you going?” Robert said gloatingly. - These are emotions, Patrick! You know?... How would you make this simpler, more understandable?... Well, not completely algorithmic disturbances in super-complex logical complexes. Got it?

“Yeah,” said Patrick. He scratched his chin with his fingers, concentrating. - Why am I calling you, Rob? Here's the thing: there's a leak somewhere again. It might not be a leak, but it might be a leak. Just in case, check the ulmotrons. Some strange Wave today...

Robert looked out the open window in confusion. He completely forgot about the eruption. Turns out I'm sitting here for the eruptions. Not because Tanya is here, but because Volna is out there somewhere.

Why are you silent? - Patrick asked patiently.

“I’m looking at how Wave is doing,” Robert said angrily.

Patrick's eyes widened.

Do you see the Wave?

I? Why do you think so?

You just said you were watching.

Yes, I `m watching!

That's all. What do you want from me?

Patrick's eyes grew salty again.

“I didn’t understand you,” he said. - What were we talking about? Yes! So be sure to check the ulmotrons.

Do you understand what you're saying? How can I test Ulmotrons?

“Somehow,” said Patrick. - At least connections... We are completely lost. I'll explain it to you now. Today at the institute they sent a mass to Earth... however, you know all that. - Patrick waved his outstretched fingers in front of his face. - We were waiting for a Wave of great power, but some kind of thin fountain was registered. Do you understand what the salt is? Such a thin fountain... a fountain... - He moved close to his videophone, so that only a huge eye, dull from insomnia, remained on the screen. The eye blinked frequently. - Understood? - there was a deafening thunder in the loudspeaker. - Our equipment registers a quasi-zero field. Young's counter gives a minimum... can be neglected. The fields of the ulmotrons overlap so that the resonating surface lies in the focal hyperplane, can you imagine? The quasi-zero field is twelve-component, and the receiver convolutions it into six even components. So the focus is six-component.

1. Question: Your “Devil’s Dozen” in “Distant Rainbow” appeared during those years when debates about cybernetics and what a machine can and cannot do reached its climax. Now, if not much, then something has already been clarified in this dispute. Tell me, please, if you took up this topic today, in our computerized time, would Camille’s fate change? And further. In one of your interviews, you admitted that you are not a fan of happy endings and such an ending was not planned for DR. Then why did you “resurrect” Gorbovsky (although I personally have nothing against this!)?

Evgeniy Nikolaev< [email protected] >
Yoshkar-Ola, Russia - 06/26/98 16:56:39 MSK

Dear Evgeniy!
Camille's fate is completely independent of the level of our cybernetic knowledge. This is the fate of a creature (I’m not talking about a person) who can do everything, but wants nothing. Or - if you prefer - the fate of a god forced to live among people with whom he is not interested, and without whom he is somehow sad. But the main thing is an endlessly lasting terrifying state when “there are no questions for answers.”
“Distant Rainbow” was at one time conceived as the LAST story about the world of the Bright Future. It was a kind of farewell to this world forever. When, half a dozen years later, we decided to return to this world again, we naturally returned to Gorbovsky, without whom this world is unthinkable. Many of our readers are unwilling to believe or accept that ABS never set out to write a “series” about the World of Noon. Each item in this cycle was conceived and written by us as a completely separate and independent work - we simply used ready-made surroundings, ready-made scenery, in which it was so convenient to play out more and more new stories.

Dmitriy< [email protected] >
Moscow, Russia - 04/11/99 23:51:15 MSK

“Distant Rainbow” was written under the strong impression of Stanley Kramer’s wonderful film “On the Farthest Shore” and was originally conceived as a purely tragic work - everyone, without exception, had to die. In addition, we believed then that we were writing the LAST work about the World of Noon, so we felt sorry for the heroes (Gorbovsky), of course, but not too much - it was already “spent material.”

3. Question: Dear Boris Natanovich!
I am re-reading your books once again. And yesterday I re-read “Distant Rainbow”. Maybe it’s not entirely correct to ask authors why they wrote this way and not otherwise. But still: why didn’t you even touch on the topic of responsibility for everything that happened on the planet? After all, in my opinion, this is a novel about a crime. A crime against humanity, represented by all people living on this planet. And although this may be legally classified as criminal negligence, but from a human point of view... And the second question: do you not consider the morality of that society to be similar to the morality of sheep in a slaughterhouse? And besides, glorifying their executioners and the massacre itself. Honestly, I wouldn't want my grandchildren to live in such a future. Thanks in advance (and sorry if I spoke very harshly, but something really hurt me)!

Andrey Kirik< [email protected] >
St. Petersburg, Russia - 01/02/00 20:31:55 MSK

I've heard something similar from readers before, and each time I threw up my hands in despair. What crime? What kind of criminals? It always seemed to me that the authors very clearly and absolutely unambiguously showed that the world of the Rainbow was absolutely safe according to EVERYONE! Well, it’s no coincidence that they allowed this to be a planet-resort, a planet-sanatorium, a planet-pioneer camp. It could not have occurred to anyone (and, by the way, it contradicted all theoretical considerations) that such a catastrophe was possible. If such a miscalculation is considered a crime, then the history of science (and philosophy) is chock full of criminals. Here are the Curies, and Roentgen, and Ford, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Marx... As for the “morality of sheep in the slaughterhouse,” I simply don’t understand this. In my opinion, these people behave very decently. Today's people, alas, are not capable of such behavior. En mass.

4. Question: Dear Boris Natanovich!
With great interest I read your text in the electronic “Library of Maxim Moshkov” with a short preface-explanation by an unknown author (excerpt from it: “Comments on the works of the Strugatsky brothers were written by Boris Natanovich for the complete works, which is being prepared for publication in the Donetsk publishing house “Stalker”) . I found a link to this text right there in A. Neshmonin’s guest book: http://www.parkline.ru/Library/win/STRUGACKIE/comments.txt.
As you, of course, understand, the “Commentary” raises many more questions than it answers, but with gnashing of teeth I refuse them all in favor of one: where did the Distant Rainbow go? Or is it not there because “the version is a magazine version”? Or maybe AR really stands apart? So it stands out from the History of the World of Noon: there are references to it, the catastrophe seems to have happened, and yet Gorbovsky, who died there, lives on as if nothing had happened.

Ilya Yudin< [email protected] >
Ossining, USA - 01/25/00 17:43:55 MSK

You have read the abbreviated text of the “Comments” published in the magazine “If”. The editors of the magazine selected comments at their own discretion and, apparently, decided not to include the chapter on AR (like many others).

Ilya Yudin< [email protected] >
Ossining, USA - 01/25/00 17:50:29 MSK

You are not far from the truth. While working on the DR, we really thought that this was our last story about the World of Noon (“The World of Return,” as we called it then). And then they didn’t write anything about this World for a long time - probably five years (if you don’t count, however, “It’s Hard to Be a God”). That’s why we sacrificed Gorbovsky (sobbing and beating our chests). And then, when we needed it again, we re-read the DR and convinced each other that there were quite a lot of hints scattered throughout the story about the possibility of salvation.

Ilya Yudin< [email protected] >
Ossining, USA - 01/25/00 17:53:37 MSK

For example, someone’s hypothesis was realized that the Northern and Southern Waves, having collided, “annihilated” each other. Or - the captain of the "Strela" did the impossible and managed to do it on time.

7. Question: Hello, Boris Natanovich!
I have been a fan of ABS's work since my school years, since the mid-80s. At that time it was not so easy to get hold of your works, and I read a lot of them in “samizdat” versions. One of them is “Distant Rainbow”. This book shocked the then teenager and still remains one of my favorite stories of yours. Recently in an interview you answered several questions about AR. I kindly ask you to return to this topic and answer my questions.
1. What do you think now, after so many years, did the leadership of the planet act correctly and lawfully, leaving great scientists, a brilliant artist to die in the name of saving children, from whom it is still unknown what will turn out and whether it will work out at all? After all, even in the World of Noon, not everyone was a genius; there were, for example, simple null-T testers or the same Robert.

Maxim Nersesyants< [email protected] >
Rostov-on-Don, Russia - 02/08/00 18:27:28 MSK

The Rainbow situation, in principle, cannot be resolved in terms of “correct-reasonable-rational-legal.” This is a situation of a MORAL choice and it is resolved in terms of “moral-immoral-honest-mean”. In my opinion, Gorbovsky (and everyone else) solved this problem MORALLY CORRECTLY. Although it may be irrational. It is also morally correct, but completely irrational, for a person who cannot swim to rush to save a drowning child or even another person. Or a bespectacled intellectual standing up for the honor of a woman insulted by a hefty boor. Or the teacher Janusz Korczak, who went to the gas chamber along with his defective pupils, although the SS men offered him a completely rational and reasonable solution: to send these pupils to death, and to raise other children himself (“after all, you are so talented, you can bring a lot more benefits in the future...").

Maxim Nersesyants< [email protected] >
Rostov-on-Don, Russia - 02/08/00 18:30:42 MSK

This is undoubtedly a very serious problem. I think the children will be dealt with by professional psychologists. Fortunately, the psyche of children is labile and can be “adjusted.”

Maxim Nersesyants< [email protected] >
Rostov-on-Don, Russia - 02/08/00 18:31:35 MSK

In my opinion, Camille is mentioned in some of the later works. (It seems in VGV.) We didn’t write about him anymore simply because he became uninteresting to us: everything we thought about him was said in the DR.

Michael< [email protected] >
Kherson, Ukraine - 03/15/00 18:06:00 MSK

Scattered throughout the story are references to several possible options for escape from the Wave. Consider that one of these options has come true. Although in fact, when we wrote “Rainbow”, we were sure that this was the LAST story about the future, and our Gorbovsky was doomed to death, poor fellow.

Max
Moscow, Russia - 06/06/00 22:25:59 MSD

The story offers several options for possible salvation. Consider that one of them has come true.

12. Question: Hello, dear Boris Natanovich.
Firstly, I would like to thank you for your books with your brother.
We need them now more than ever. Thank you.
Secondly, I would like to ask a question:
Why in the book “Distant Rainbow” “Tariel” could not evacuate people from the Capital beyond the Wave, to those latitudes where it had already passed?
Surely the plasma barrier couldn't have stopped him?

Kirill< [email protected] >
N. Novgorod, Russia - 06/21/00 15:54:19 MSD

Too risky. There is no rocket launch site at these latitudes - landing is possible, but dangerous. Besides, time is running out, there is no time.

Rumata< [email protected] >
Moscow, Russia - 06/26/00 16:20:26 MSD

Because they did not have time to dig it deep enough and install reliable “doors”.

14. Question: Dear Boris Natanovich!
Thank you twice: for your books and for this interview.
Books are like smart interlocutors; come back to them a year later, and they are a little different, and already communicate something new. And the interview is a bit like A. Privalov’s questions to Janus:
“And I asked in a low voice, looking around cautiously:
“Janus Poluektovich, allow me to ask you one question?”
Allow me, Boris Natanovich?
So Kirill noticed that in “Distant Rainbow” “Tariel” could transport people through the Wave. Frankly, for a long time I considered this a problem in the book: why does a landing starship need a spaceport?
However, this has nothing to do with the idea of ​​the book.

Chaichenets Semyon< [email protected] >
Oxford, UK - 06/29/00 14:13:29 MSD

Landing is a rather risky procedure and requires a skillful landing. A landing starship is not designed to drop a hundred (untrained) passengers at a time. And the main thing is time! There was not enough time for all these operations: loading - takeoff - landing - unloading - and again all over again. And risk. What is there behind the Wave? Is it possible to live there - for hours, for days?.. After all, the Strela is NOT a landing starship, it will be forced to land at a rocket launch site, far from the landing site... Children in a scorched desert - is this good? What if ANOTHER Wave comes? No, no, it was all too risky.

The first two chapters give the reader an almost popular and bucolic picture, painting an image of a completely comfortable and almost half-asleep planet with an absolutely loyal climate and excellent suitability for languid bliss. The presence of a couple in love in the first chapter only draws out these signs of the Rainbow more sharply and clearly. And the crew of the small D-starship "Teriel" is immediately filled with this feeling, and the authors immediately help their heroes plunge into the depths of the feeling that has gripped them, sending the good-natured and bearded Percy Dixon to the Children's, arranging a completely "random" for the navigator and space "wolf" Mark Falkenstein meeting with the languid brunette beauty Alya Postysheva and promising a friendly lunch with a former fellow paratrooper Leonid Andreevich Gorbovsky, captain of the Teriel. For contrast, the Strugatskys present and show us the most pressing and pressing problems of the Rainbow - the shortage of energy, which is extremely necessary for all scientific groups of the planet's population. Energy needed, first of all, to solve the most pressing problem, the problem of zero transportation.
All this grace ends very quickly - the course of the experiment got out of the control of physicists and a deadly Wave of a completely new, as yet unexplored type arose at both poles of the planet, representing a powerful emission of degenerate matter and possessing extreme destructive power. And people are faced with the simplest and most difficult problems to solve - how to save, what to save and whom to save. Rescue with a minimum of means of rescue. Our beloved zero-year physicist Robert Sklyarov must (and more than once) make his terrible Choice, theoretical physicists Patrick, Lamondois, Malyaev, power engineer Raduga Pagava and their opponents and counterparts must make a Choice, all other small and big people of this scientific planet, and Dixon, Falkenstein and Gorbovsky, the crew of a small landing D-starship, are forced to make difficult decisions in the same way.
As a matter of fact, this need to make some specific Choice in an acute, critical, mortal situation is the grain of this small story, but so important for understanding the Strugatskys’ value system. And involuntarily you put yourself in the place of various characters in the book, try to understand their motives and try to understand yourself, what you yourself would do...

It is a great pleasure to read and re-read this book, to savor the witty phrases, unusual words, colorful characters, and dizzying plot twists. I love this story for many things: for the inimitable Gorbovsky with his “Can I lie down?”, for the image of the sweet Ali Postysheva, “a tall, plump brunette in white shorts,” pulling a heavy cable, for Camille, the last of the Devil’s Dozen, for many others .
And especially for this: “He let out a long roar and, kicking his legs, rushed on all fours into the forest. For a few seconds the children, with their mouths open, looked at him, then someone squealed cheerfully, someone yelled belligerently, and the whole crowd ran behind Gaba, who was already peeking out from behind the trees with a growl."
But most of all for this: “Gorbovsky was pushed hard on the shoulder. He staggered and saw Sklyarov backing away in fear, retreating, and a small, thin woman, surprisingly graceful and slender, with strong gray hair in her golden hair and a beautiful, but as if with a petrified face."
And of course for this:
...You, without bowing your head,
I looked through the blue hole
And she continued on her way...

Good reader. The book was a little boring at the beginning, but when the events began to unfold, I got involved. It was interesting.
Thank you.

In fact, this is a topic as old as time and not at all fantastic: how people behave on the eve of a catastrophe. People who almost certainly know that they are doomed, but still hope for something. People who are trying to save as much as possible from what makes up their lives.
And how good and interesting and exciting it all began. The Strugatskys know how to create amazing worlds, literally sketching out individual details here and there with a few dashes. The overall picture seems to be visible, but not completely - and this does not create the feeling that everything is already clear and uninteresting. On the contrary, it is the white spots and unexplained places that give the greatest charm. When did they start to develop Rainbow and how did the society that exists there now develop? What are these mysterious suicide athletes who are ready at any moment to turn from a potential lab rat into a pile of smoking guts? And, finally, what is this mysterious Wave - as well as all the “physical” terms associated with it. What is Camille, the man-machine who dies and is reborn? A sea of ​​questions related to the fundamental structure of the world. And at the same time, it’s impossible to say that the world is not written down - on the contrary, everything is honest, we know exactly as much as most of the heroes know. Not the most “advanced” of them, but Lamondois’ pov is not given. Still, one gets the feeling that just shortly before the catastrophe, the world is somehow stable, the system of interaction in it is quite understandable and implementable, and does not require crazy feats from the heroes.
And then something terrible happens that destroys the usual picture of the world. And on the one hand, this terrible thing is attractive precisely because of its unusualness, because it goes out of the ordinary - but ABS would not be social science fiction writers if they depicted history from this particular angle. Because the disaster is shown exactly as much as it is reflected in the people inhabiting the Rainbow. After all, by the end of the story, only one Camill died, and even then he turned out to be alive, and the rest are only on the threshold of death. *Nothing has happened yet* - but in the hearts of the heroes and the reader, everything has already happened. The soul is placed on scales, measured, described and removed. All decisions have been made, it doesn’t matter anymore. Whether all those remaining will burn out in a suitable Wave of a new type and whether Camillus will be left alone on the planet covered with black snow is, in fact, not so important. Figuratively speaking, they have already burned out.
In this “Rainbow” is a completely non-fantastic thing. Let me explain, all behavior, and exploits, and cowardice and betrayal, and squabbles, and attempts to save oneself, and the inability to decide who lives and who dies, fits perfectly within the framework of all similar conflicts. This is a besieged city that makes a deal with the besiegers in order to allow the women and children to be released, while the men are left there to die. This is generally the whole history of wars, by and large, when something or someone has to be sacrificed. People say they were given these ulmotrons, stupid people, they don’t value their lives. I don't agree with you. Nietzsche has a great idea about such sacrifices: he says that a person who sacrifices his life for the sake of something else, be it science, fatherland, a child, simply values ​​one part of himself above another. He places himself as a scientist, patriot, and parent higher than himself as a biological being. I don’t see anything abnormal in this, in general. No one reproached Bruno for the fact that “she still spins” - although, it would seem, what difference does it make who admits it, and is it worth going to the stake because of this?
And the problem with who to save is not really a problem. And there is no specific moral decision there - it lies on the surface, the only thing is to describe how people come to it and implement it.
It's very difficult to explain why Rainbow seems such an amazing thing. This is an excitingly interesting and menacing world, in which there is at the same time something bordering on magic and terrible risk. And everything is written out so vividly and authentically that at some point you begin to envy the inhabitants of the Rainbow - and continue to the last.

What form will Evil take in a welfare society? In a blessed world, where there is no social inequality, where from everyone according to their abilities - and everyone equally, where religion has long become only a heritage of the history of the development of human society, and the place of the Almighty Lord in human souls is finally occupied by faith in the omnipotence of Man - and this faith grows stronger every day day, fueled by new and new victories of the human mind over the forces of nature? In a world where people are like gods - and where it is often so difficult to be a god?..
In the World of Noon.
In the world of comfortable planets.
In a world where only Man himself can become the Human Enemy, while remaining himself.
Distant Rainbow.
A book about responsibility.
Responsibility of scientists for the deeds of their hands; for good intentions, which lie like cobblestones of broken hopes, unfulfilled dreams and overnight broken human destinies on the pavement of the yellow brick road, bounded on both sides by the rising from earth to heaven and steadily approaching walls of man-made Waves coming from the poles of the planet, the energies contained in which were called upon yet to benefit the human race more - but brought their creators only a painful expectation of inevitable death...
The responsibility of people for their own actions in conditions when all social institutions, nurtured in the sweat and blood of the dark ages by human Civilization, are tested for strength; when animal instincts suddenly awaken in the souls of the most morally steadfast citizens of the new world; when, under the heavy burden of circumstances, the very concepts of ethics and morality turn from absolute axioms into difficult-to-prove theorems with many solutions, each of which suddenly receives a full right to exist - and these decisions turn out to be unexpectedly difficult, and their consequences are terribly, blatantly, heartbreakingly clear to us, people of our time who never got into the failed World of Noon, but who strive there with all their souls...
A book about choice.
The choice is difficult, uncomfortable and scary. The only choice, which is not a choice at all - and about “how we all love it when they choose for us.” About attempts to evade the need to choose - to evade in different ways, justifying the means as an end... And how different can this most important choice in life become: to stay alive - or to remain Human? And you can also remain a Human in different ways: saving love, destroying yourself... Ruining others...
A book about the Soldiers of Science - and those whom these soldiers are called upon to protect from themselves. Written during the epoch-making confrontation between the Physicists and the Lyricists, it fully reflects the raging passions that tormented the enlightened part of society contemporary to the Brothers, the search for ideas and the competition in life positions of the opposing sides. What rules us? Feelings - or reason? What is more important in life? Duty - or desires? How should our actions be determined? Their practical benefits - or the preservation of peace of mind after their completion? And Distant Rainbow poses the same questions to the reader, but extremely sharply - as dictated by the extreme situation, requiring extraordinary measures from both the null physicist and the poet...
Book about Price. The price that sooner or later each of us pays for a life lived exactly this way and not otherwise - he pays with the realization that he will never be able to change anything in the future, feeling the pressure of the environment, Fatum, Rock... The wave that has shortened the future to one single day, which must be lived with dignity - in order to take with you into the unknown the proud title of a Man, remaining a Man to the end... And it’s good if, when leaving, there will be no excruciating pain over the years...
The deadly walls are getting closer and closer; There is less and less room for maneuver; With each page, the cunning duet of a physicist and a lyricist places, without exception, all the characters of the drama played out under the skies of the Rainbow, from the main characters to the tertiary characters who flashed in the background in a single episode, into increasingly stricter frameworks - and the tension hovering between the lines of this short story grows and grows, threatening to explode. An explosion of emotions. A surge of feelings. A storm of passions. But…
But the authors leave the actual explosion behind the scenes. Emotions are exhausted, feelings are dulled, passions raged in the prelude to a natural disaster, revealing to the world a social catastrophe - in the cozy microsociety of the Rainbow and in the universe of the souls of each of its inhabitants.
And the authors are true to themselves and infinitely right, leaving the ending of the story open and completing the narrative with an idyllic scene on the beach, with a couple in love on the edge of the surf, with Gorbovsky sitting comfortably and calmly in a sun lounger (“Can I lie down?”), with the sounds of a banjo and unprecedented illogical, but such a human group swim behind the buoys - nowhere, nowhere, never...
To Eternity.
To Infinity.
In Humanity.