The twentieth century begins. Fantastic weapons of new science fiction
Torpedo diver Iktaner on his high-speed submersible. Illustration from the book (by the way, you can read it today, it is on the Web) "Iktaner and Moisette"
And the generals and admirals would have taken away Zurita Ichthyander, what good, in order to force the amphibious man to sink warships. No, I could not make Ichthyander and the Ichthyanders common property in a country where struggle and greed turn the highest discoveries into evil, increasing the amount of human suffering.
"Amphibian Man" Alexander Belyaev
"Amphibian Man" Alexander Belyaev
stories about weapons. Both Jules Verne and H. G. Wells, with all their talent and visionary gift, largely remained people of their era, that is, the 1908th century. Meanwhile, already the beginning of the XNUMXth century gave humanity many new authors, whose fantasies even today can only be envied. One of them was, again, a Frenchman, Count Adolphe-Ferdinand Celestin d'Espies de la Ire, who in XNUMX published the fantastic novel The Fire Wheel, in which it was nothing more, nothing less than interplanetary flights from Earth to Mercury and Venus, and not with the help of guns or rockets, but through the use of psychic energy.
Jean de la Hire (1878–1956)
It was in it that the author described aircraft in the form of "flying saucers" and introduced the terrible theme of the abduction of earthlings by aliens. The novel gained such popularity that the publishers of the Le Matin newspaper, which printed it in separate editions, immediately concluded an agreement with La Hire, according to which he had to write one such novel for them annually. In the same 1908, the novel began to be published here in Russia under the name "Sparkling Wheel". Throughout his life, the author has published many science fiction and adventure novels, one of which was directly related to the theme of war and weapons, and the man himself is in this novel! This novel, published in 1909, was called “The Man Who Could Live Under Water” (another name is “Iktaner and Moisette”), and subsequently it was on its basis that in 1927 Alexander Belyaev wrote his own version of the vision of this topic - “The Amphibian Man ".
Gutierre (Anastasia Vertinskaya) and Ichthyander (Vladimir Korenev). Frame from the film. Unlike the theme of the struggle for power over the world, the plot of Belyaev's book is simpler, but no less dramatic for that. And the film based on this book in 1961 was shot simply wonderful. It can be said that it was a classic, which it was not possible to surpass in the subsequent film adaptation of this book. And what kind of actors ... Eh, I don’t even remember how many times I went to see this film as a boy!
Belyaev has a beautiful romantic and sad story, but de la Hire, in fact, has an action movie in which the young man Iktaner becomes perhaps the first superhero and weapon in the hands of the insidious Jesuit Fulber, who dreams of power over the world. An evil genius transplants the gills of a young shark into little Iktaner instead of one lung and inspires hatred for the human race. Having matured, Iktaner began to sink entire squadrons in the oceans with the help of torpedoes, and Fulber presented the world with one ultimatum after another. And maybe the Jesuit villain achieved his goal, but love got involved in the matter. Iktaner meets the girl Moisette and falls in love with her. And she, in turn, opens his eyes to what is happening and tells him about God. It is clear that after this the young man breaks with Fulber, in Paris the luminaries of science perform an operation on him to remove the gills, after which he and his beloved leave for Tahiti, where they will live happily ever after.
Anastasia Vertinskaya as Gutierre - isn't that lovely?
However, the adventures of "a man who could live under water" did not end there. They continued ... in Russia, where in 1909 the novel de la Ira became the print newspaper "Zemshchina". Now it was called "Man-Fish" and had certain differences from the original edition. So, the Jesuit Fulber turned into ... a Jew, who is at the head of the world Jewish conspiracy, the purpose of which is the enslavement of all mankind. As many as sixty Jewish emissaries in various countries work for the next contender for world domination. Well, in all other respects, the Russian alteration retained the storyline of the French original.
And even the scoundrel Pedro Zurita in our film is a real handsome man!
And how do you like this? So, is it love at first sight?
- Is there any other love?
And, I must say, the idea of a person with superpowers captured de la Ira. He came up with another hero - Captain St. Clair, nicknamed Nyctalope. So he was called because he could see in the dark. And also this superman, who today would most likely be called simply a mutant, had an artificial heart and had a number of superpowers. As a result, Nyctalope became the hero of a whole series of novels by de la Ira, who exploited his image almost until his death. In fact, this was the ancestor of the later Superman, who happened to fight on land, and on water, and under water, and even in space, and defeat a variety of villains and vile criminals.
Cover of a novel by a French writer
For some reason, even then, on the covers of science fiction novels, women were too little covered ...
And there were many such covers. So much for European puritanism in the early XNUMXth century...
Here it is - the St. Petersburg newspaper Zemshchina, which even tried to remind people on the pages of science fiction that all the troubles on earth are from the Jews!
In fact, it becomes a weapon in the hands of gangsters and another romantic character of Alexander Belyaev - the flying young man "Ariel" from the novel of the same name, published in 1941. Nothing bad happened there, however, in the end it didn’t happen, otherwise Ariel’s naivety could cost him dearly.
As for the Soviet film "Amphibian Man", it should be noted that books are usually better than the films on which they are based. But in this case, the movie is much better than the book!
The idea of a person who could be used as a weapon also came to such a famous Soviet writer as L. I. Lagin (1903-1979), the author of the immortal children's fairy tale "Old Man Hottabych". But he also owns a number of science fiction novels written in the post-war period, among which, perhaps, one occupies a special place - the novel "Patent AB".
And what wonderful notes of humor, which were not in the book, were introduced into the film by directors Vladimir Chebotarev and Gennady Kazansky? – Is that enough? - (Ihtiandr gives money, the value of which he does not know) - Crazy millionaire! says the fishmonger
In the novel, children become weapons, who at a very young age are injected with a growth stimulant - the Elixir of Berenice. Because of this, they grow very quickly and turn into adults, but with a mind that remains quite childish. The novel is by no means a copy of Wells' Food of the Gods. Everything is different in it, both the plot and the plot itself. Adult youngsters in the novel are put into human-controlled torpedoes and sent to sink ships, having previously trained them so that they firmly believe that they will get a cake for hitting the target accurately! The novel takes place in the fictional country of Argenteuil, but everyone understands that it is about a country like the United States. By the way, he was also one of the first to write a novel about a hit man. So, the hero of his novel The Blue Man (1957-1963) is transferred from 1959 to Tsarist Russia in 1894, where he meets Lenin, and, of course, participates in the revolutionary struggle.
Here in this form the story "Night Eagle" was published in "Pionerskaya Pravda"
Another Soviet writer Alexander Lomm (real name Vatslav Klichka) continued the theme of “man as a weapon” in his story “Night Eagle”, published for the first time in the Pionerskaya Pravda newspaper in 1967. The story takes place in 1944. A Soviet paratrooper is thrown into the German rear, but during the jump his parachute fails. The hero is saved by the ability to fly acquired in a critical situation, having mastered which, he begins to fight the Nazis from the air, and takes on the nickname "Night Eagle". Fighting alongside the Czech partisans, he is captured by the Nazis, who put a lot of effort into finding out his secret. But ... the secret in the end remains a secret for everyone, and not just for the Germans, although the hero of the story managed to stay alive.
Well, then the heroes, endowed with all sorts of abilities either by nature, or acquired them quite by accident, literally flooded the pages of science fiction works. The reason for this is banal - a person's dream of omnipotence, of a superweapon that does not outwardly manifest itself in any way, of truly unlimited possibilities. Well, today you will not surprise anyone with the most fantastic technology. However, interesting projects of various types of advanced weapons also became an integral part of the sci-fi literature of the twentieth century.
To be continued ...
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