Da Comrade

Another collection of short stories. The little pile of novels that I have started and couldn't get into may point to the reason. Short story collections aren't that easy to come by these days. The local booksellers are very careful about how many they get in as they just don't sell well enough to justify having many on their shelves. I've talked to a number of the buyers from these shops and they would all like to have more short story volumes on their shelves but they can't justify it. Luckily Matt at Arty Bees keeps a box of some secondhand short story titles out in the back room for those few customers who he knows are interested. Unfortunately for me littenz had picked through the current offering a few days before I did so all I came away with was Path Into the Unknown - The Best of Soviet S.F. that was published in 1966.

There isn't much to say about these stories. They are really rather ordinary. The strange alien Russia that I saw in Night Watch and Day Watch is missing. I don't ascribe this to the authors though. I think this is a result of the translators. It really seems to me that the language of the originals has been massaged in order to make them more acceptable to western tastes. At least I think so. Without reference to the originals it is hard to tell. Conversely, they could just be ordinary.