LOSSES: Denise Deaton, My Sister
SOVIET AND RUSSIAN SCIENCE FICTION
By Alex Ness
January 24, 2022
A PERSONAL NOTE
From birth I had been adopted, as the circumstances of my conception were brutal and hard to move forward from for my birth mother. I was always allowed to know I was adopted, and while my parents were perfectionists, I know they loved me, and I found better circumstance than I might otherwise have had. When I turned 18 and didn't get any notices of people searching, followed by age 21, and lastly at age 50 I assumed that I'd never been contacted. Now, I had no burning desire to be contacted by the adoption agency and then told I'd been searched for. That wasn't my outlook. I didn't have any burning regrets or resentment about it, and I might be an idiot or fool, but I rarely entertain thoughts of great mysteries that will end with vast riches or recognition, love or fame. I assumed my life was what it was, and there'd be nothing beyond what I knew. But in 2017 I received a letter from the agency, and was told that my DNA family had searched for me. In making contact I was happy to learn my DNA mother and two siblings wanted to meet me. I didn't meet them in person immediately, my "new" siblings, but we did speak, we did learn about each other. I met my brother Nate rather soon after contact was made, but I didn't meet my sister Denise until 2 years after contact.
With Nate, he was eager to know me, and as I was 54 years old the meeting was very nice, but I had a feeling of being worried to not impress or worse, disappoint him. I felt him talented and had great worth as a person, but also, we didn't share much in common. He is an outdoors-man, and I am a book reading basement dweller. However, he is a good guy, and I liked him whatever our interests. With Denise, I had to wait to meet her since she lived in the heart of Tennessee, and Minnesota isn't a short day trip by car/truck. However, Denise and I did chat often, and as I've said elsewhere, I felt it was less of a meet and greet, and more of a renewal of a long standing family member who was easy to appreciate and love. She was very bright, had an accent from living in the South, despite being a Minnesota girl. She had been in Military Intelligence, as was her hubby, and she was very able as a person, it was clear.
Both Nate and Denise were bright, so, I did feel at home with both, and appreciated them. In my year of physical travails, 2020, life saving surgery and more, I learned my sister had been having vertigo and falls. She was a tiny lady, thin, but had grown more thin. Doctors didn't find anything at first, but then she had to be placed in the hospital as they finally discovered lymphoma. After 3 months of isolation and worries, she had been pushed back the cancer, and was released home. She still had some issues, not feeling totally well. And just after Christmas she was readmitted, as the cancer had spread. She didn't beat the cancer this time.
I always found it odd, when people asked me what I thought my DNA family had been like but had zero idea. Even so, I said to a number of people, I don't know anything, but I've always had some odd feeling that I have a sister. I couldn't explain it then, and even now with her gone, I can't. So maybe there was a space in my heart that God placed, waiting for her, and Nate too, to fill. I don't know why life happens how it does, I could look at this in frustration at God, saying, why did you reunite me with family, only for them to go away? Or, I could look at it and say, God, thank you for sharing with me the family I never had. I'll miss Denise, as will her husband Steve, daughter Samantha, and Nate and birth Mother. She was a force of nature, and I'd be unaware of her greatness had I never been searched for, and I'd not have a good brother in Nate, I'd not have an amazing brother in law with Steve, and Samantha is a helluva niece, who by age 25 already owned her home and has the future open to her.
FICTION FROM THE SOVIET UNION & RUSSIA
A reader of this website, one who sends me comments and questions, and among those mentioned the fact that the Soviet Union is a focus of mine and that it amuses her to see it in my poetry and in my reviews and books interest areas. That is very true.
I find the establishment of a society on the foundations of Soviet Communism to be fascinating. I don't idealize what happened, but I absolutely wonder what efforts could have had a result, had there not been the many issues facing such a society when that society began. Born of revolution, rejecting the war of the capitalist states, the Soviet Union came from a failed empire. The Russian Empire stretched from White Russia across the Eurasia steppe, reaching all the way to the Pacific ocean. It was powerful, in military history, cultural expression, and blended cultural influences from the Mongols to the great monarchies of Europe. When the distinct regions neighboring Russia in revolution, were brought into a national form of a state with Russia, it became the Soviet Union.
The arts of Russia and the Soviet Union were lush, state supported, and
important. The arts became, along with the scientific advancements, the
symbol of greatness of the Soviet state. Until the fall of the Soviet
Union, in December 26, 1991, the arts were used for the advancement of
the Soviet people, i.e. for prestige in the international community to
demonstrate the heights reached by the Soviets. Prior to the fall of
the Soviet Union, cultural works rarely entered into Western hands.
Books, music, ballet, art films were known, but rarely accessible from
outside of the Soviet Union.
Things like comics, sci fi novels, popular films, television, or pop
music rarely received sanction from the state. But, those few works
that reached the West, were often exciting, and different to the extent
that a clear voice could be heard/read/viewed that wasn't propaganda,
but it was also not Western in flavor. Science Fiction books, first in
Yevgeny Zamyatin's WE, a predecessor of 1984, Anthem, or a Brave New
World, demonstrated that the author had a view of a dystopia that those in the
West rarely understood, from a personal, and real view point. It is the
first book about a dystopia that anyone should pursue. Boris
and Arkady Strugatsky collaborated to explore science fiction concepts,
but they wrote way beyond the surface level exploration of large ideas,
as well as using deft language and explanations to show that the
Communist utopia of the 22nd Century is in fact purely a dystopia. Every
inch traveled leaves the reader knowing less about the 22nd Century and
an ironic and sardonic understanding of the world of the Soviet Union
in decline in the late 1970s. I've heard that people often get confused
by the trail of crumbs to follow, thinking from perspectives one knows,
rather than trying to understand the path being prepared.
Dmitry Glukhovsky's METRO series is brilliant in word and has been
accepted by the current world, post Soviet era, as being a dark
depiction of the future. Readers learn less about the past as they do
the present, and what is written is not metaphor. Like the other works,
it is a dystopia, about a world destroyed and now slowly falling further
into despair. The player of the games related to this series report
the atmosphere and texture of the game, are as effective as the books.
Sergei Lukyanenko writes a work in his Night Watch series that might
seem more fantasy or horror, than science fiction or straight fiction.
It is relentlessly dark, I know people who quit reading it, saying it
was unpleasant. But most people I know who read the series, so far,
have told me that it is a dark chess game played upon the chess board of
the night, Moscow, Russia, and the children of the night. What I've
read is limited, but what I read is perfectly dark, entertaining, and
has a flavor that other works "about" Russia do not possess.
LAST WORDS
First off, I can be found on Facebook, Twitter or through email at Alexanderness63@gmail.com. I accept hard copies, so when you inquire at any of these places, I'll
follow through by telling you my street address. I no longer have a post
box, although I regret that. It was a crushing defeat to no longer
have a p.o. box, when I came to realize I was getting so little product
it made no sense to pay for the privilege to not receive mail at both my
home and at the post office. If you send hard copies for review I will
always review them, but if you prefer to send pdf or ebooks to my email,
I will review these at my discretion. I don't share my pdf/ebooks, so
you can avoid worry that I'd dispense them for free to others.
MY LINKS:
My Poetry Blog AlexNessPoetry.Blogspot.Com
My Published Work AlexNessPoetry.Blogspot.Com/2007/01/My-Work.html
My Amazon Page Amazon.com/author/AlexNess
Lovecraft Styled Horror CthulhuDarkness.Blogspot.Com
Atlantis and other Lost Worlds AlexNessLostWorlds.Blogspot.Com
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