This study examines Soviet science fiction cinema from 1957 to 1990 and its relation to the space age. The author examines dozens of films and examines their aesthetics and how the films related to conceptions of the future, utopia, the ideological guidelines of the Soviet state, and changes within the Soviet system.

For Soviet culture, space flight used to be a dream that turned reality, first on screen and later in the deed. The link between science and cinema became a testing ground for future achievements in the cosmos. Natalija Majsova's Soviet Science Fiction Cinema and the Space Age: Memorable Futures is an engagingly written study of sci-fi films about space, Soviet and post-Soviet, which studies the films through a kaleidoscope of approaches, from the cosmos as utopian space, space exploration, liminality of outer space and Othering, as well as memory. Majsova offers a refreshing break from traditional readings of science-fiction film and representation of space as she subordinates patriotic discourse to a more global approach. This book makes a great addition to studies of science-fiction film and cosmic space in Russia.

If you ever wondered what Russian sci-fi cinema was like, and how it related to the Space Age, you need to look no further than this pioneering book. Majsova navigates the reader through the almost unknown and often unsafe terrain with the confidence of Stalker in Andrei Tarkovsky’s eponymous masterpiece.

The future is no longer what it quite used to be, Paul Valéry remarked in 1938. In this admirable study, Natalija Majsova offers an extensive and profound close reading of three dozen Soviet space films, ranging from science fiction blockbusters Aelita (1924) and Soliaris (1972) to less widely known cult films such as Kin-Dza-Dza! (1986) and present-day reinterpretations of the heroic era of Russian spaceflight. Elegantly interweaving theoretical insights from science-fiction studies, literary criticism, and astroculture with a sharp eye for cinematic, compositional, and historical detail, this book will make readers want to become viewers, primed to rediscover a fascinating corpus of Soviet and post-Soviet space utopias. This study is an indispensable guidebook to those fantastic worlds once far, far away, yet seemingly so close again.

Natalija Majsova’s book is an impressive piece of scholarship, exemplary in the breadth of material covered in the course of examining the origins and evolution of Soviet and post-Soviet space science fiction cinema. By placing the films within a variety of historical, cultural, and political contexts, Majsova’s provocative and intriguing analyses offer a valuable contribution not only to the discussions of the genre, but also to the larger discourses on technological progress, space exploration, utopianism, cultural memory, and nostalgia.

For those of us who have watched Soviet and Russian space-age, science-fiction movies over the years, reading this book takes us back. It’s like reading a movie review, if with something of a delay, well after we’ve seen the movie, recalling some of the scenes and dialogue, and learning a few new things too. In the best of senses, it’s also like meeting an old friend and reminiscing about a shared movie experience. This book encompasses several generations of movies, the kind we teach and the kind we need to know more about. Natalija Majsova has written a timely work…. Majsova’s comparative approach is valuable. She studies these movies aligned with popular Russian war epics and gangster movies, and more recent blockbusters. She matches the Soviet and Russian movies with the classics of American and European cinema and television, offering a global perspective. She studies their moralizing and formative influences, how they indoctrinated and entertained their audiences about presumed Soviet futures and pasts. This study will therefore be useful for university courses teaching film. It will also serve as a rich reference point for anyone teaching Soviet-Russian history and space-age history, a resource to better understand the part-real, part-mythical figures like Konstantin Tsiolkovskii, S. P. Korolev, and Yuri Gagarin.

Natalija Majsova is assistant professor at the University of Ljubljana.