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Аероторпеди повертають назад
«Аероторпеди повертають назад» — воєнно-фантастичний роман Володимира Владка 1934 року. Тривалий час повний текст вважався втраченим, існували лише уривки, зокрема однойменне оповідання.
У романі конфлікт глобальний – насувається й розгортається світова війна, у сторонах якої легко впізнати пронацистський і прорадянський блоки. Хто переможе – очевидно, але це далеко не найважливіше, як часто буває у фантастичних романах.
У романі конфлікт глобальний – насувається й розгортається світова війна, у сторонах якої легко впізнати пронацистський і прорадянський блоки. Хто переможе – очевидно, але це далеко не найважливіше, як часто буває у фантастичних романах.
284 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1934
11 people want to read
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October 4, 2022
This is an SF novel from the early 1930s Soviet Ukraine, of the ‘future war’ sub-genre. I know that the genre was rather popular before the start of WW1, see H.G. Wells’s The War in the Air (1908). In the USSR there was a bunch of such books in the 20s and early 30s, with the mentality of a surrounded fortress – a bit similar to Islam’s division between dar al-Islam (lit. territory of Islam/voluntary submission to God) and dar al-harb (lit. territory of war), only with ‘rule of the proletariat’ instead of Islam.
The English title of the book is Air torpedoes turn back. The story starts with a formal protagonist (formal because most of the story is about different impersonalized attempts of world capitalist states to attack the Soviet Union) Dick Gordon, carousing with friends after his graduation from the university. He shares the news that famous scientist Morris Renuar hires him for his diploma project – a leaping tank.
- Okay! Listen. Of course, I can't tell you everything. However, I will say something. Imagine, gentlemen, a tank. An ordinary, at first glance, high-speed tank that travels about one hundred kilometers per hour. Several such tanks are attacking. But the enemy is waiting for this attack, he cut the field with deep trenches with vertical walls. What can a tank do when it meets such an obstacle?
- Stop, - answered several voices in unison.
- Yes, to stop, because an ordinary tank cannot overcome such a ditch. A normal tank will capsize, it will bury its nose if it even tries to roll over a moat with vertical walls. Such is the fate of an ordinary tank - and the enemy knows it well. But my tank has some mechanical addition. My tank develops the highest speed and at the last second before the ditch it breaks off the ground and jumps over that ditch. Do you understand?
The silence answered to him. A tank that jumps over obstacles, leaps over a ditch?.. This silence seemed to prompt Dick Gordon to continue:
- Are you surprised? OK. Here is another case during the same attack. The tank meets another obstacle on the way, let's say - a stone wall several meters high. Can he overcome such an obstacle? No, you will answer. Maybe, I will say. Because my tank will jump and jump over the wall!
While such ideas may look like satire today, back then, other similar ideas were actually tried, just look at the flying tank project - Antonov A-40. Gordon becomes part of professor Renuar’s team (which also includes a Finn, a white Russian emigree Gagarin and an Italian) and soon Western states use an accident when Soviet border guards shot at running away foreign tourists to start a war. Professor Renuar quickly becomes a professor-general and sends his radio-controlled air torpedoes to bomb Moscow. The idea is fully realized now in kamikaze drones like US Switchblade or Iranian Shahed, currently used in Ukraine. However, his evil plans are spoiled by Soviet hi-tech defense systems. For the rest of the book, the capitalist aggressors try different weapons and tactics, from naval fleet to bombard coasts, to ground assault to air bombing but fail, while on their homefront a proletarian revolution starts. One of the interesting reversals – in the book, Japan (referred to as the Yellow empire) tries a naval descent but small and highly maneuverable Soviet torpedo glaciers drown them, almost a kamikaze attack in reverse.
The book has an interesting fate: almost immediately after its publication in 1934, the entire edition (10,000 copies) was destroyed. The reasons as usual, haven’t been given, but supposedly because it shows Germany (Swabia in the book) and Great Britain (Great Sax) as aggressors. In addition, the author noted Joseph Stalin only in the epigraph. The novel describes the retreat of the Red Army, the internal vulnerabilities of the USSR, the weakness of its navy, while similar assumptions were met in the 1930s very sharply. However, the destruction of the novel did not affect the career of Volodymyr Vladko. The writer actively continued to write and was successfully published in the following years. In 1936, 6 revised chapters of this book were printed in his collection "Twelve Stories" as stories. For a long time, the full text of the novel was considered lost, even information about it was destroyed. However, stories based on it (about a half of the novel) were not banned.
Is it a good book? I’d say no, but it can be of interest to people who are curious about how Ukrainian and Soviet SF developed in the 20th century.
The English title of the book is Air torpedoes turn back. The story starts with a formal protagonist (formal because most of the story is about different impersonalized attempts of world capitalist states to attack the Soviet Union) Dick Gordon, carousing with friends after his graduation from the university. He shares the news that famous scientist Morris Renuar hires him for his diploma project – a leaping tank.
- Okay! Listen. Of course, I can't tell you everything. However, I will say something. Imagine, gentlemen, a tank. An ordinary, at first glance, high-speed tank that travels about one hundred kilometers per hour. Several such tanks are attacking. But the enemy is waiting for this attack, he cut the field with deep trenches with vertical walls. What can a tank do when it meets such an obstacle?
- Stop, - answered several voices in unison.
- Yes, to stop, because an ordinary tank cannot overcome such a ditch. A normal tank will capsize, it will bury its nose if it even tries to roll over a moat with vertical walls. Such is the fate of an ordinary tank - and the enemy knows it well. But my tank has some mechanical addition. My tank develops the highest speed and at the last second before the ditch it breaks off the ground and jumps over that ditch. Do you understand?
The silence answered to him. A tank that jumps over obstacles, leaps over a ditch?.. This silence seemed to prompt Dick Gordon to continue:
- Are you surprised? OK. Here is another case during the same attack. The tank meets another obstacle on the way, let's say - a stone wall several meters high. Can he overcome such an obstacle? No, you will answer. Maybe, I will say. Because my tank will jump and jump over the wall!
While such ideas may look like satire today, back then, other similar ideas were actually tried, just look at the flying tank project - Antonov A-40. Gordon becomes part of professor Renuar’s team (which also includes a Finn, a white Russian emigree Gagarin and an Italian) and soon Western states use an accident when Soviet border guards shot at running away foreign tourists to start a war. Professor Renuar quickly becomes a professor-general and sends his radio-controlled air torpedoes to bomb Moscow. The idea is fully realized now in kamikaze drones like US Switchblade or Iranian Shahed, currently used in Ukraine. However, his evil plans are spoiled by Soviet hi-tech defense systems. For the rest of the book, the capitalist aggressors try different weapons and tactics, from naval fleet to bombard coasts, to ground assault to air bombing but fail, while on their homefront a proletarian revolution starts. One of the interesting reversals – in the book, Japan (referred to as the Yellow empire) tries a naval descent but small and highly maneuverable Soviet torpedo glaciers drown them, almost a kamikaze attack in reverse.
The book has an interesting fate: almost immediately after its publication in 1934, the entire edition (10,000 copies) was destroyed. The reasons as usual, haven’t been given, but supposedly because it shows Germany (Swabia in the book) and Great Britain (Great Sax) as aggressors. In addition, the author noted Joseph Stalin only in the epigraph. The novel describes the retreat of the Red Army, the internal vulnerabilities of the USSR, the weakness of its navy, while similar assumptions were met in the 1930s very sharply. However, the destruction of the novel did not affect the career of Volodymyr Vladko. The writer actively continued to write and was successfully published in the following years. In 1936, 6 revised chapters of this book were printed in his collection "Twelve Stories" as stories. For a long time, the full text of the novel was considered lost, even information about it was destroyed. However, stories based on it (about a half of the novel) were not banned.
Is it a good book? I’d say no, but it can be of interest to people who are curious about how Ukrainian and Soviet SF developed in the 20th century.
Displaying 1 of 1 review