Russian Spring

Rating:
Summary: An interesting look at what might have been.
Review: In light of the events of the last few years, this novel (published in 1991) seems pretty dated. Some of the characterization also seems sketchy, and suggests that this book was written with too much haste. Still, it's an enjoyable, well-crafted story, and a good reflection of the concerns of 1991.

Rating:
Summary: An interesting look at what might have been.
Review: In light of the events of the last few years, this novel (published in 1991) seems pretty dated. Some of the characterization also seems sketchy, and suggests that this book was written with too much haste. Still, it's an enjoyable, well-crafted story, and a good reflection of the concerns of 1991.

Rating:
Summary: The Future Ain't What it Used to Be
Review: Many of the predictions made by Spinrad in this book had already come to pass by the time of its publication. When Spinrad began work on this novel in the fall of 1988, he could only imagine the dissolution of the Soviet empire and the collapse of communism, the re-unifcation of Germany, the success of the Euopean common market, and America thrust into depression by decades of deficit spending and military buildup.

Spinrad is at his best in Russian Spring while detailing the inner conflicts in which his characters must choose between their compassion and their ideals. If the novel suffers is that it tries to encompas to much in its scope: a second sexual revolution in the wake of an AIDS vaccine; a character who runs for the Vice Presidency of the United States. But there are enough moments of brilliance to keep one turning the pages. And perhaps these events, in some form or another, will happen, too.

Rating:
Summary: Don't read this book unless you're a true literate.
Review: Norman Spinrad did an extraordinary job in taking a snapshot of the world as it might (and should) have looked like these days, if things were a little different. Norman wrote this book in Paris, far from his native country, the United States, and I read it again and again in the United States, far from my home in Eastern Europe. So I can see there's sadness in his writing and his characters, the wise sadness of a man with too many shattered dreams, who can't feel comfortable anymore in this "brave(! ) new world". People focus excessively on the writer's gift to be a prophet and often forget to worry about the literary value. Still, the "Russian Spring" has plenty of both. OK, Russia went into turmoil deeper and more desperately than in the book, and the European Union is less effective than we hoped, but so what? Tragically, Spinrad is right about one thing: America is truly becoming provincial and narrow-minded.

This is a book about people, their power to dream, and their dedication to bring the dreams to life, regardless of the sacrifices they have to make. The setting is less important, regardless of the glamour of the fantasy. The people you meet as you turn the pages are real, their qualities, defects, joys and sorrows are real, and the political games played on both sides of the Atlantic are just as disgusting as in real life. Alas that we don't have the road to stars, yet. Like the film "Contact", this book is easy to be overlooked by snobbish and arrogant critics, who can only think in terms of "thumbs up and down", easily digested by the masses. But there is a spark in Spinrad's book that I've rarely met in contemporary literature, and its catharthic quality hits you like a brilliant flash. As long as there'll be writers out there who do their job like Norman Spinrad, the human race still has a chance to evolve from the seemingly endless gutter of consumerism and cheap thrills.

Rating:
Summary: A child of perestroika
Review: This book is the fruit of a great feeling of optimism for a more united and free Europe, launched by the reformist communist leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Never popular in his own country, he was and still is in Europe and when I was reading this book 92, it sounded like an interesting perspective of the European future, with an integrated Russia... Nothing to do with the Cold Peace we experienced since shortly after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Interestingly, this is not the first science fiction book treating the "immediate" future of our world, by showing us a very unpopular and isolationist United States, menace that everytime comes alive when you listen to Republican politicians talking about the role of the USA in world politics.

For Europeans, this book caresses a dream of a future "common house" (to cite Gorbachev) where war is definitely a bad memory. What a contrast to the reality with wars in the Balkans and the Caucasus.

Besides the social and political aspects of this book, this novel is also a wonderful story of a woman and a man from two different worlds coming together... Read about their fascinating lives and that of their children... You wont regret it.