Engineer Menni by Alexander Bogdanov

Prequel to Red Star’s Martian utopia

Physician, philosopher, and Russian revolutionary Alexander Aleksandrovich Bogdanov was one of the founders of the Bolshevik party before being expelled by his rival Vladimir Lenin. Bogdanov also authored two science fiction novels. Engineer Menni, published in 1913, is the prequel to his 1908 utopian novel Red Star. In Red Star, an earthling is invited to visit a perfect Communist utopia on Mars. Engineer Menni takes place a few generations earlier and shows how that Communist paradise came into being. Both novels have a character named Menni. Engineer Menni was briefly mentioned in Red Star as the illustrious ancestor of the Menni character in that book. In this second novel, Bogdanov delves deeper into the earlier Menni’s life.

The story begins in the year 1667 of our calendar. By that time Mars had already developed a technologically advanced civilization. Although Mars has a few large bodies of water, the famed canals that were viewed by Earth telescopes of the 19th century did not yet exist. To create more habitable land for Mars’s growing population, a genius engineer named Menni comes up with an ambitious plan to dig a system of canals to direct water into desert areas of the planet. Not only will this irrigate vast stretches of land for agriculture; it will fundamentally alter the climate of large areas of land, making them more livable. (This “terraforming” of Mars calls to mind the planned climate alteration of Frank Herbert’s Dune.) In assuming the leadership of his Great Project, as it comes to be called, Menni is granted a great deal of political and financial power, effectively making him one of the most powerful men on Mars. His uncompromising attitude leads to conflicts with various stakeholders, including government officials who resent his high level of authority and workers who dislike his negative attitude toward trade unions.

Just as with Red Star, it’s really quite amazing how well-written this is. For a science fiction novel that was published over a century ago, it shows none of the clunkiness or kitschiness suffered by so many of its contemporaries. Surely some of the credit for that is due to the translator, Charles Rougle, who prepared the English text of both Red Star and Engineer Menni for the combined edition published by Indiana University Press. Although the story deals with topics pertinent to the burgeoning Russian Revolution, the prose reads as if it were written last week. Bogdanov forgoes any far-fetched futuristic flights of fancy to present a narrative grounded in science (including political science). Even though we know now that there are no literal canals on Mars, Bogdanov manages to construct a very rational and realistic narrative around the idea.

Despite all its admirable qualities, Engineer Menni is not quite as interesting or compelling as Red Star. Menni is not a socialist but a capitalist, so whereas Red Star was an optimistic book about what’s right with communism, this is a pessimistic book about what’s wrong with capitalism. The critique that Bogdanov presents is not fiery enough to be exciting. The book often takes the form of policy debates between Menni and his young socialist protégé Netti. There is a commendable verisimilitude to the proceedings of politics on Mars—one can almost recognize some of today’s Congressional hearings—but Bogdanov ultimately veers away from realism into dream sequences and a touch of mysticism. Together, Red Star and Engineer Menni make for an impressive literary achievement, but the latter book is clearly the weaker of the two. Fans of vintage science fiction will enjoy these books, whether a Bolshevik or not, but they will appeal especially to those with an interest in the history of the Russian Revolution and the birth of the Soviet state.

Red Star by Alexander Bogdanov

Ingenious Bolshevik utopia on Mars

Alexander Aleksandrovich Bogdanov was one of the founding members of the Bolshevik party in Russia and a friend of Vladimir Lenin until they had a falling out. Bogdanov was also a physician, philosopher, and a writer of science fiction. His first and best-known work in that genre is his novel Red Star. The book was published in 1908, after the failed Russian Revolution of 1905. Bogdanov nevertheless kept Bolshevik hopes alive with this novel about a utopian Communist society on Mars. An English translation of Red Star by Charles Rougle was published in 1984 by the University of Indiana Press, in a volume edited by Loren Graham and Richard Stites.

Leonid, the narrator of Red Star, is a mathematician living in St. Petersburg and, like Bogdanov, a Bolshevik revolutionary. Through his political party activities he meets an unusual man named Menni, who claims to be a visitor from the South. After they strike up a friendship, however, Menni reveals to Leonid that he is a Martian. His people have already conquered the problem of space travel, and he invites Leonid to join him on a journey to his home planet. In fact, Menni confesses that he has intentionally recruited Leonid as a possible cultural exchange ambassador through whom the two cultures can learn about one another before the Martians reveal their existence to the people of Earth. Leonid, or Lenni as the Martians call him, agrees to the trip and accompanies Menni to Mars, where he finds an ideal communist society in operation, the likes of which he and his Bolshevik comrades have envisioned in their dreams.

I read a lot of utopian and dystopian science fiction from the early years of the genre. I enjoy experiencing the futuristic visions of antiquated writers and seeing how those visions measure up to subsequent history. Old sci-fi literature, however, is often unrealistic in its speculations and clunky in style. Sometimes this can add to a book’s charm, but sometimes it merely annoys. Bogdanov’s Red Star, however, reads as remarkably intelligent, eloquent, and relevant more than a century after it was written. Some credit for that is likely due to Rougle, who’s translation renders Bogdanov’s prose as lively and articulate as if it were written last week.

Bogdanov himself, however, deserves commendation for how well thought-out his utopia is. Nothing in Bogdanov’s vision of the future is there without a reason. When he describes the fictional technological advances of Martian society, his speculations are supported by reasonable scientific justifications. There’s no superfluous fantasy just for the sake of “Wouldn’t it be cool if . . .” The same holds true for the book’s political content. Every element of the story is specifically designed to express Bogdanov’s ideas on Bolshevism. When the characters talk about events in Martian history or policies of the Martian government, there is always a well-conceived reason for those decisions, within Bogdanov’s conception of Marxism.

Unlike a lot of utopian novels, Bogdanov does actually include a satisfying fictional narrative amongst all the political, scientific, and economic theory. The book doesn’t read like a stuffy treatise. An unconventional romance livens things up and doesn’t feel gratuitous. If there is an aspect of the book that feels a little overdone, it’s the focus on the narrator’s mental health. Lenni’s propensity for mood swings and hallucinations is at times a bit too histrionic. That is a small complaint, however, in what is otherwise a fascinating and entertaining read. Having not only influenced many subsequent authors in the genre but also the very development of the Soviet Union itself, Red Star is truly a landmark work of Russian science fiction that will be of interest to more than just Bolsheviks.