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.