The Land of Crimson Clouds

Atom volcano Golkonda (Russian Страна багровых туч; scientific transliteration Strana bagrovych TUC, Duden transcription Strana bagrowych tutsch (literally "the land of purple clouds" ) ) is the first science - fiction novel of the brothers Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. He appeared in 1959 in the Soviet Union.

The novel is connected by the main character Alexei Bykov with the novel The Way to Amalthea (1960 ) and the episodic novel Interns (1962). Publish the authors had to revise their original text.

Content

Six cosmonauts prepare for the end of the 20th century in the communist Soviet Union on a journey to the planet Venus. The new spaceship Chiu's Venus Mission is driven by photons. Venus is an unexplored, covered by clouds Planet. The interest of science is aroused when the nuclear volcano Golkonda forms Urankupfererz and other heavy metals by a meteorite impact. The cosmonauts get into ever more dangerous situations in which it comes to deaths. The Russian original title The land of purple clouds playing on the warning " be afraid of the red ring " to the geologist Tachmasib Mechti. What it 's all about, is revealed at the end of the novel.

The nature of Venus, as it is described in the novel in the late 1950s, is very different from the current state of knowledge. Water pressure and water temperature are significantly lower than on the real planet, there are plants and a low developed wildlife and the period of rotation around its own axis is only 57 hours instead of 243 days.

Interpretation

In the novel, two problems are addressed: the interrelation between general interest and individual interests on the one hand and the general technical progress and the conquest of space on the other.

Publication history

Even before the first publication of the novel, the authors were forced to make numerous changes to the text; they criticized the high number of casualties, demanded the change almost all of the names occurring figures and insisted to delete any mention of military and military ranks from the manuscript. In the later often reprinted GDR edition was re- painted and trimmed; also the epilogue of the novel fell off. The first complete German edition is the version published in Golkonda -Verlag, 2012.