Lame Fate (Russian: Хромая Судьба) is a novel by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, a representative of realistic fantasy in their work, although it includes mystical elements. It was written during 1982, with the magazine publication following in 1986.
Both plot lines of the novel are dedicated to the relationships between an artist and the omnipotent state. The hero of the "Moscow" chapters (Felix Sorokin) is a not-so-young "writer of military-patriotic themes", many details of whose biography are inspired by the life path of Arkady Strugatsky. The hero of Sorokin's manuscript —writer Viktor Banev —lives in a state unknown historically and territorially and is unwelcome to the authorities. Felix Sorokin is mainly occupied with drinking with his writer friends and working on a tedious commissioned script; however, in that January week of 1982 when the action takes place, he encounters people and situations that seem to have come straight from the pages of his old manuscripts. First, he is forced to obtain an elixir of life for a neighbor; then he is mistaken for an extraterrestrial; and finally, in a café, the writer encounters a fallen angel offering to buy the score for the trumpets of the Last Judgment. Each of the numerous plots breaks off and in principle cannot have a resolution, but all these events prevent Sorokin from reaching the Institute of Linguistic Research, where he is obliged to present his manuscripts for study. In the evenings, Felix invariably returns to the Blue Folder—his main, most intimate text, not intended for publication.
In Banev's world (Blue Folder) — endless rain and a city populated by common folk, whose children are alienated from their parents by the "wet ones". These beings in masks are said to have a genetic disease, and yet they are supervised by military intelligence. Viktor Banev finds himself in this city essentially in exile, since the president himself has suggested to him to "stop strumming". Banev reasons extensively about the value of creativity and tries to actively figure out what is happening in the mysterious city. When Sorokin finally reaches the Institute, it turns out that an electronic machine capable of measuring the value of a writer's labor is installed there. The computer is operated by a certain Mikhail Afanasievich, who declares that his main mission is to ensure that the Blue Folder is completed and finished, and reads a finale that does not yet exist. Banev becomes a witness to the end of the old world and the onset of the new, sunny and bright one, in which alcohol and drugs turn into spring water, concrete fortresses collapse, and weapons rust. Banev is happy to witness all this, but the new world does not belong to him, and he must "not forget to return".
The main plot line —objective measurement of the writer's mastery— appears in the Strugatsky' work diary in 1971. However, the further ideas that led to the creation of Lame Fame were gradually developed starting from 1977. Work on the text was carried out in 1982. At the first stage, the content of Felix Sorokin's Blue Folder was the novel The Doomed City. In 1985, the co-authors decided to use the standalone novella Ugly Swans, created back in the 1960s but not published in the USSR, as the Blue Folder. The first publication in the magazine Neva (1986, Nos. 8 and 9), however, contained references to The Doomed City and had numerous censorship excisions due to the Gorbachev anti-alcohol campaign. Ugly Swans (under the title Time of Rain) was published in the magazine Daugava in 1987. The full edition, including the text of Ugly Swans alternating with chapters about Felix Sorokin and Banev, came out in 1989 and has been repeatedly reissued. In the "Worlds of the Strugatsky Brothers" series, Lame Fame and Ugly Swans were published separately. In the complete 33-volume collected works, both variants are presented: with inserts from The Doomed City and the final text.
Plot The novel consists of ten chapters with a linear plot. Since Lame Fame has two fable —the writer and his work— the chapters alternate. The Moscow chapters have odd numbering: "1. Felix Sorokin. Blizzard" (chapter 1), "3. Felix Sorokin. Adventure" (chapter 2), "5. Felix Sorokin. '...And Livestock!'" (chapter 3), "7. Felix Sorokin. 'Izpital'" (chapter 4), and "9. Felix Sorokin. '...Why Do You Keep Blowing That Trumpet, Young Man?'" (chapter 5). The text of "Ugly Swans" originally included 12 chapters and is arranged in the novel as follows: "2. Banev. In the Circle of Family and Friends" (original chapters 1–3), "4. Banev. Prodigies" (4–6), "6. Banev. Stirring to Activity" (7–8), "8. Banev. Ugly Swans" (chapters 9–11; the former title of the novella was transferred here), and "10. Banev. Exodus" (chapter 12).
Chapters about Sorokin
The main character is Felix Alexandrovich Sorokin, a member of the Union of Soviet Writers, a 56 years old prose writer and screenwriter. He is from Leningrad, and during the war graduated from the Military Institute of Foreign Languages, and served in Kamchatka. After demobilization and moving to Moscow, Sorokin became a military writer, known for his novella Comrade Officers and the play Eyes Front to the Center!, but at the time described, he writes scripts for military films to earn a living. Felix Alexandrovich is deeply dissatisfied with his own life and, reflecting on the fact that he miraculously did not die at the Kursk salient and spent his entire youth in the army, comes to the conclusion that he should not have written about the war and the military. He has long been divorced, his daughter Katka lives separately with her children, although she asks her father to obtain scarce goods through the Union of Writers, for example, a fur coat or collected works. Felix felt like a true creator once, when he dared to publish the fantastic Modern Fairy Tales, for which he was subjected to the most severe political purges and critical attacks, as a result of which he suffered a myocardial infarction. His personal life did not work out either: "F. Sorokin had...two or three women, and not a single love". He feels happy only when he takes the Blue Folder out of the cherished closet, in which lies the manuscript of a novel about a strange city where it is always raining. Sorokin understands that he is writing "for the drawer," that is, his manuscript will never be published during his lifetime for political and censorship reasons.
The main action begins in the January week of 1982, when the secretariat of the Union of Writers asked to provide samples of texts to a certain Institute of Linguistic Research "on Banya" for research in the field of information theory. Strange adventures begin immediately: on the stairwell, a neighbor-poet poisoned by canned food asks to obtain some "mafusallin", and Sorokin has to break through the fence into a mysterious restricted institute. When he reports the poet's request to the terrible Ivan Davydovich Martins (whom he compares to a vampire), a certain type in glasses and a checkered coat begins to follow the writer, and the poet himself, instead of gratitude, demands silence and threatens. Then Sorokin receives an anonymous letter stating that he is an alien from space, lost by "his own," but they promise to provide all possible assistance. When Felix decides to have breakfast in a café (having ordered a meat pot and beer in the morning), a strange hunchback giant with long blond hair approaches him, introducing himself as an angel exiled from heaven, and offering to buy the score of the trumpets of the Last Judgment. Sorokin passes the notes bought for five rubles to his neighbor-composer, but he pays no attention to them: "Spartak has lost again!" Next to the angel, the type in checkered appears again. Finally reaching Banya (the spy dozes in an empty corridor), Felix Sorokin learns that an electronic machine IzpitalAbbreviation of "measurement of writerly talent". is installed in the Institute, which is capable of calculating the "most probable number of readers" of a given manuscript, that is, predicting its future fate. Here Felix Sorokin recalls the story by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa Mensura Zoilii, which inspired a similar plot. The gray-eyed Mikhail Afanasievich works with Sorokin's old manuscripts, whom Felix initially does not recognize. In the finale, Sorokin, with his "last woman," the beauty Rita, goes to the writers' Club restaurant, where, stunned, he realizes who Mikhail Afanasyevich is. In their final conversation, it is clearly demonstrated that Felix's torments regarding the Blue Folder are meaningless: Mikhail Afanasyevich reads to Sorokin the finale of his novel that has not yet been written.You should understand, Felix Alexandrovich, I don't care about your internal struggles, or your spiritual confusion, or your, forgive me, self-admiration. The only thing that interests me is your Blue Folder, so that your novel is written and finished. And how you do it, at what cost — that's not my concern as a literary scholar or biographer; honestly, it doesn't interest me. Of course, people tend to expect rewards for their labors and torments, and in general, that's fair, but there are exceptions: there is and cannot be a reward for creative torment. This torment itself contains the reward. Therefore, Felix Alexandrovich,
Chapters about Banev
In the novel from the Blue Folder, the fashionable capital writer Viktor Banev, due to his disrespect for the president, is forced to return to the city of his childhood. The authorities have ordered Viktor to "stop strumming." His ex-wife Lola and their teenage daughter Irma live in the city. It is constantly raining in the city, and the townsfolk associate this phenomenon with the "wet ones" or "spectacled ones" — strange people suffering from some genetic disease. Banev lives either in a hotel, where he drinks every evening in the restaurant, or in a sanatorium where his girlfriend-mistress Diana works as a nurse, sympathizing with the wet ones and supplying them with medicines. It turns out that her husband was once Zurzmansor — a famous philosopher who became a wet one. Banev spends his days talking with the chief physician of the leper colony (where the wet ones live) named Golem, the drunken artist Quadriga, and the sanitary inspector Pavor Summann. The latter sets Banev against the military, who, it turns out, patronize the wet ones, while the burgomaster patronizes the fascist young men — the so-called Legion. Chief physician Yul Golem claims that the wet ones are representatives of future humanity, a new genetic species, so they are oriented toward contacts with children, because adults have completely discredited themselves. The sanitary inspector turns out to be an employee of some special service collecting information about the wet ones and tries to kidnap one of them. Banev turns to counterintelligence and as a result receives a reward on behalf of the president; he can return to the capital. In the finale, events rush forward: all children leave their parents for the wet ones, who begin building a new world, and the rest of the city's residents have to evacuate. The rain stops, the sun rises, and under its rays the city evaporates. Golem tells Banev that there are no more wet ones, there won't be, and there weren't, and offers to leave, to which he receives the answer: "Why the hell do I need it if I don't look? This is my specialty—to look." Diana also stays with Banev: "Now I have no one left but this man". Irma and her prodigy friend Bol-Kunats appear grown up and full of happiness.Diana laughed. Viktor looked at her and saw that it was another Diana, a completely new one, as she had never been before; he hadn't even suspected that such a Diana was possible — Happy Diana. And then he wagged his finger at himself and thought: all this is wonderful, but here's the thing, I must not forget to return.
History of creation and publication Artistic idea