Andromeda - A Space Age Tale : Russian Communist Sci-Fi : Ivan Yefremov 1st 1959

Andromeda - A Space Age Tale

Ivan Yefremov

Translated from Russian by George Hanna

Moscow : Foreign Language Publishing House (1959). First English Translation. Hardback with dust jacket and in purple and pink decorative cloth binding. Top edge stained pink. 445 pages. There are b&w illustrations at the start of each chapter.

CONDITION
A good first English edition. The dust jacket is price clipped and is rubbed at the edges but is generally in good condition. The boards and spine are very good. Endpapers good. No writing or names. All contents present and pages clean throughout. Overall a good first english edition of this popular Russian sci-fi novel.

Andromeda: A Space-Age Tale is a science fiction novel by the Soviet writer and paleontologist Ivan Yefremov, written in 1955–1956 and published in 1957. It was translated into English as Andromeda: A Space-Age Tale by George Hanna. The novel predicted some future inventions (borazon, space probe, powered exoskeleton and ion thruster). It was made into a film in 1967, The Andromeda Nebula.

Yefremov's 1958 short story "The Heart of the Serpent" and 1968 novel The Bull's Hour, which is set in the same universe taking place some 200 years later, are considered as its sequels.

THE PLOT
The book portrays Yefremov's conception of a classic communist utopia set in a distant future. Throughout the novel, the author's attention is focused on the social and cultural aspects of the society, and the struggle to conquer vast cosmic distances. There are several principal heroes, including a starship captain, two scientists, a historian, and an archeologist. Though the world described in the novel is intended to be ideal, there is an attempt to show a conflict and its resolution with a voluntary self-punishment of a scientist whose reckless experiment caused damage. There's also a fair amount of action in the episodes where the crew of the starship fight alien predators.

(Location : Desk, Lower Shelf, far left)