Доктор Офболи (in our translation)! I have forgotten about him :) I loved the book growing up. It’s very cool seeing this exposure of the roots of the books I grew up with and never have thought to research.
I know this post is two weeks old, and perhaps my comment isn't really relevant anymore, but I just felt I had to say something.
I have both Doctor, Oh Boli and Buratino. I was in Bulgaria for the last two weeks and looked for them in my parents' old house. My mom to check some boxes in the attic... but I just didn't have the energy for that in the heat.
I remember that I didn't like Doctor... . It was a shabby paperback with ugly illustrations, and I don't think I gave it a second look. Buratino, however, was a totally different story....I loved it. It was given to me in the late '70s. It was a big, apple-green book with beautiful illustrations, and although Malvina was bossy, as you say, I liked her very much because she was so different from the "good girls" who filled our children's books. At the time, I didn't know about Pinocchio, so I couldn't really compare the two. Later, when I read Pinocchio, I was very confused about which story came first and who had been inspired by whom. Much later, when my daughter was about three or four years old, I read Buratino to her, and she liked it better than Pinocchio, which she found rather scary. As I was reading Buratino to her, I remember thinking that Malvina reminded me a little of Wendy from Peter Pan. I also remember there being a note by the author of Buratino, saying something along the lines that he had read another story (Collodi's book), loved it so much that he wanted to retell it, and that, in the process, the original story became twisted and intertwined with his own ideas, and Buratino was the result. I wanted to find the book so I could read that explanation again... but perhaps another time.
While searching through my old books, though, I found something else that brought me right back to my teenage years and to the way I discovered science fiction: Alexander Belyaev. His story Amphibian Man (1928)... oh, I cried so much about the lot of Ichthyander. And then there was Professor Dowell's Head (1925). I think I read that book so many times it literally started to fall apart. I'm very curious, Belyaev was light-years ahead of his time, and Soviet science fiction in general was groundbreaking but controversial back then. Why was it tolerated....especially Belyaev with his "gen-modifications" and "inter-species" ideas...I went to see a retrospective exhibition at the Barbican in London some years ago, and it reminded me just how good sci-fi it was.
I'd be very interested and curious to hear your thoughts on the Russian (Soviet) science fiction boom sometime. Are there still sci-fi authors as visionary as Belyaev?
Well, if Buratino is still relevant, we can totally discuss the post that is a couple of weeks old 😏
Thank you for your memories! Super interesting for me.
It’s a great idea to write about science fiction, both from bookish side and from movies. I remember that Vladimir Korenev, who played Ichthyander in the 1962 Soviet film The Amphibian Man, became a sex symbol and one of the most popular actors in the USSR after the film's release. This is the main association I have with Ichthyander, that women loved him 😎
It was a Beatles-level obsession, he received heaps of letters from fans, who found out his address and would wait for him outside his home!
I had a teacher, she was teaching physics, she named her son Ichthyander...quite avantguard in the mid 60s..perhaps she loved that actor Korenev ..who knows
Volkov was translated into German as "Der Zauberer der Smaragdenstadt". It was ine if my favourite books in childhood and I read it many times. They kept the drawings in.
I loved reading this. A whole new world to me, thank you.
Доктор Офболи (in our translation)! I have forgotten about him :) I loved the book growing up. It’s very cool seeing this exposure of the roots of the books I grew up with and never have thought to research.
I know this post is two weeks old, and perhaps my comment isn't really relevant anymore, but I just felt I had to say something.
I have both Doctor, Oh Boli and Buratino. I was in Bulgaria for the last two weeks and looked for them in my parents' old house. My mom to check some boxes in the attic... but I just didn't have the energy for that in the heat.
I remember that I didn't like Doctor... . It was a shabby paperback with ugly illustrations, and I don't think I gave it a second look. Buratino, however, was a totally different story....I loved it. It was given to me in the late '70s. It was a big, apple-green book with beautiful illustrations, and although Malvina was bossy, as you say, I liked her very much because she was so different from the "good girls" who filled our children's books. At the time, I didn't know about Pinocchio, so I couldn't really compare the two. Later, when I read Pinocchio, I was very confused about which story came first and who had been inspired by whom. Much later, when my daughter was about three or four years old, I read Buratino to her, and she liked it better than Pinocchio, which she found rather scary. As I was reading Buratino to her, I remember thinking that Malvina reminded me a little of Wendy from Peter Pan. I also remember there being a note by the author of Buratino, saying something along the lines that he had read another story (Collodi's book), loved it so much that he wanted to retell it, and that, in the process, the original story became twisted and intertwined with his own ideas, and Buratino was the result. I wanted to find the book so I could read that explanation again... but perhaps another time.
While searching through my old books, though, I found something else that brought me right back to my teenage years and to the way I discovered science fiction: Alexander Belyaev. His story Amphibian Man (1928)... oh, I cried so much about the lot of Ichthyander. And then there was Professor Dowell's Head (1925). I think I read that book so many times it literally started to fall apart. I'm very curious, Belyaev was light-years ahead of his time, and Soviet science fiction in general was groundbreaking but controversial back then. Why was it tolerated....especially Belyaev with his "gen-modifications" and "inter-species" ideas...I went to see a retrospective exhibition at the Barbican in London some years ago, and it reminded me just how good sci-fi it was.
I'd be very interested and curious to hear your thoughts on the Russian (Soviet) science fiction boom sometime. Are there still sci-fi authors as visionary as Belyaev?
Well, if Buratino is still relevant, we can totally discuss the post that is a couple of weeks old 😏
Thank you for your memories! Super interesting for me.
It’s a great idea to write about science fiction, both from bookish side and from movies. I remember that Vladimir Korenev, who played Ichthyander in the 1962 Soviet film The Amphibian Man, became a sex symbol and one of the most popular actors in the USSR after the film's release. This is the main association I have with Ichthyander, that women loved him 😎
It was a Beatles-level obsession, he received heaps of letters from fans, who found out his address and would wait for him outside his home!
I had a teacher, she was teaching physics, she named her son Ichthyander...quite avantguard in the mid 60s..perhaps she loved that actor Korenev ..who knows
Thank you for uncovering the story of Volkov's publications! I didn't know that it was pushed forward by the illustrator. Very interesting 👍
Volkov was translated into German as "Der Zauberer der Smaragdenstadt". It was ine if my favourite books in childhood and I read it many times. They kept the drawings in.