On the New Cosmic Supply
Reading the novel «The Habitable Sphere,» one cannot shake a persistent feeling. What appears to be science fiction—spaceships, relativistic physics, engineering marvels of the future—is merely a facade. Turn a few more pages, and the familiar pattern emerges: society is once again divided into masters and subordinates. Only now, the masters are called gods.
Note this curious detail. Ordinary people work, colonize planets, collect material wealth, are born, and die. The gods, however, allocate positions, control the Pantheons, live three times longer than everyone else, and, naturally, justify their privileged status by citing the higher interests of the Cosmos. A painfully familiar picture, isn’t it?
The issue of genetic prohibition is particularly telling. The author does not state it directly, but the reader quickly understands that this has nothing to do with medicine. The question being posed is about power—specifically, the most repellent form of power: bureaucratic authority.
The author populates the future with gods who bear an uncanny resemblance to ordinary civil servants. The Pantheons have staffing schedules, vacancies, talent reserves, inspectors, foremen, and an endless stream of documentation. These are not immortal Olympians; they are well-organized demons, complete with elements of paganism.
The most repulsive element is that this structure unexpectedly begins to function. The reader, initially scoffing at the god-bureaucrats, gradually finds themselves contemplating the nature of inequality and the price of longevity.
One could, of course, label the novel another space fantasy. But if so, one must admit that this fantasy is malevolent. In essence, it is not a fairy tale, but a satire of the social system that attempts to declare privilege a natural law of nature. Yesterday, privileges were justified by lineage; today, by ownership; tomorrow, by biology. It feels like this has happened somewhere before.
«The Habitable Sphere» leaves an unsettling impression. It is impossible to tell whether it simultaneously admires its bureaucratic universe or ruthlessly exposes it. It seems the author himself does not know where the truth lies. The truth constantly evades him, leaving the reader not so much with the characters as without them.
