Victor Pelevin: C/D?

The Clay machine Gun stands as one of my all time favourite novels. Contemporary Russian literature is one of the most exiting things in literature today.

Ambrose to thread, re other authors.

?!!!! this is a bit contentious ed. ie not true really.

(haha I was gonna quote something on this thread until I realised I'd quoted it at the end of this one!)

I think it's true in terms of it's influence on later work. Withgout M&M Bulgakov would be a minor russian writer liked by Stalin, which would have been the kiss of death for him in terms of posterity. The only reason that any of his canon is known at all is because of the M&M.

The Helmet of Horror, its called, part of a series of myth reworkings, I've also got the MArget Atwood one, a retelling of Penelope's story from the Odessy.

I am late to the game - just started Homo Zapiens, which is crackin me up. how did I miss this guy

Going way back upthread: a good starting point for Pelevin might be the little 4 by Pelevin edition from New Directions -- four middle-length pieces, which I think are "Hermit and Sixtoes," the "Shed Number 12" one, "Vera [can't-remember's] Ninth Dream," and ... something else.

I can imagine the Bulgakov influence, sure, but I don't think the experience of reading is quite the same -- Bulgakov takes the period's naturalist arrangements and makes them hallucinatory, whereas Pelevin stories start from a point of being radically dislocated, the narrators always in closed systems that the reader can never get a full view of it, and which we have to gradually piece together until we're all like "OH, I get it, this is from the point of view of a PENCIL!"

must read

S.N.U.F.F. is a science fiction novel by Russian writer Viktor Pelevin published in 2011. The plot's setting is a post-apocalyptic world where the majority of people live either in a poor, technologically backwards Urkaine with about 300 million Slavic speaking inhabitants with a capital city "Slava" or in a technologically advanced English-speaking artificial flying city "Big Byz" (or "Byzantium") which is locked in the sky above Urkaine and has a population of about 30 million.

The book invents a set of neologisms (using English even in Russian edition) such as discourse monger - a provoker paid by Big Byz media and military who under disguise of defending human rights against Urkainian dictatorship (in fact covertly controlled by Big Byz), provokes a conflict, which usually leads to regularly repeated "wars" - organized slaughter and bombing campaigns by Big Byz's fused military and media against virtually weaponless Urkaine's people. Such "wars", thoroughly filmed and used for entertainment, are organized nearly every year. The perpetrators from the Big Byz side being porn stars wearing suits of Batman or Ninja Turtles rather than soldiers, and protected by flying drones from any damage. The resulting footage being called "S.N.U.F.F.", an acronym from "Special Newsreel/Universal Feature Film" and sold both in Big Byz and in Urkaine.

The story is narrated from the person of a pilot of a remotely controlled drone which is equipped by both a camera and multiple weapons including guns and bombs. He works for both military and media and his usual work in peacetime is to broadcast poverty, brutality and chaos of Urkaine to confirm the barbaric and totalitarian nature of this people, called "Orcs" in the slang of Big Byz, and their authorities. In other cases he protects discourse mongers by the guns of his drone so that they could denigrate and provoke Urkainian officials safely.

Another invented term is smart free speech, a term used to denote smart following (or even predicting) of the current political trend by the Big Byz media employees so to earn good money and avoid being ostracized.

The people of Big Byz are not living in paradise either. It turns out that a popular custom among Big Biz elite and pilots is to use robotic women as sexual partners because sex and pornography with persons under 46 is prohibited due to age of consent, and according the narrative it is planned to increase it up to 48 due to a lobby of aging porn stars and feminists. The naturally-decreasing population of Big Byz is usually replenished with immigrants from Urkaine and by child-buyers who go to poor Urkainian villages to buy babies.