Synchronous physicists are joking: new Russian fiction looks to the future with pessimism

The genre of science fiction, which at one time was greatly weakened by social dystopias and multi-volume fantasy sagas from the lives of non-existent peoples of the North, seems to be returning to the reader again. A new novel by Eduard Verkin explores the traditional theme of the future for science fiction writers since the time of Wells. Critic Lidia Maslova presents the book of the week specifically for Izvestia.

Edward Verkin

"The Magpie on the Gallows"

Moscow: Eksmo, 2025. 512 p.

It is not immediately possible to determine the time of the "Magpie on the Gallows", but it is approximately the middle of the XXIV century, judging by indirect, "bibliographic" signs — the dating of the books mentioned in the text. Books and those who work with them in one way or another are important in many of Verkin's writings. This time, librarian Maria is the only female character out of seven central characters (not counting a domestic replicant panther named Barsik), who languish on the distant planet Regen, awaiting a Grand Jury meeting. It sometimes gathers in case of urgent need to resolve issues that determine the fate of all mankind. This time, he will have to deal with synchronous physics, an ambitious science that promised to solve almost all the problems of space exploration. But now the World Council governing the Ecumene is "one step away from recognizing synchronous physics as a dead-end branch of the development of space physics."

The Jury is formed according to the most democratic principles: it includes six internationally recognized authorities in various fields and six ordinary people chosen at random. One of them is the lyrical hero-narrator Jan, a young rescuer of tourists on the terrestrial plateau of Putorana. Having withstood the psychological pressure of his father and twin brother, who consider Jan insufficiently responsible for the mission assigned to him, the hero, having met Maria and on-board doctor Weathers on the way, arrives at Regen and meets with the rest of the characters. This is the young genius of synchronous physics and the inexhaustible joker Whistler, the coordinator of the Jury is the economist Shuisky, the main opponent of the Cassini synchronists ("an encyclopedist, schemer and skeptic") and the director of the Steiner Space Institute.

The atmosphere at the Institute of Space, filled with philosophical skirmishes and the eccentric antics of some characters, in some places resembles the endless discussions of the inhabitants of the Solaris station in the novel by Stanislav Lem. However, no "guests" — phantoms from the past - visit the heroes of "Magpie ...", and the materialization of sensual ideas, coupled with remorse, like poor Chris Kelvin, does not happen to them. But still, there are enough distortions of perception and bizarre special effects, which Maria describes as "strange incidents, unusual people, obsessive deja vu, unprecedented coincidences..." For example, in the novel, the same scene repeats three times, with some variations, each time acquiring an increasingly dreamlike character — Jan and Maria's walk to the "Jung flow actuator" built by synchronous physicists for their experiments, and in terms of hallucinatory entertainment, this triple excursion is in no way inferior to Lem's descriptions of visions generated by The ocean of Solaris.

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The "Jung flow", which focuses on synchronous physics in relation to deep space travel, is one of the key concepts of the "Magpie on the Gallows". The concept of synchronicity, which belongs to the classic psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung, is explained in detail in a story written by Verkin several years ago for the collection Futuriad with the art history title "The Girl with the Pearl Earring", where the hero gives Jung's "semi-magical" synchronicity a more objective character, states its existence in addition to man and his consciousness: "A semi-magical semantic field, which Jung operated on, there is a field, without a doubt, a physical one. Not even a field, but rather a channel. The stream."

Peter Brueghel the Elder "The Magpie on the Gallows"

Photo: Getty Images/Heritage Images/Contributor

The novel "The Magpie on the Gallows" is also named after a famous painting by Peter Brueghel the elder. A gallows with a bird on top was cut out of a Brueghel canvas for the Verkin cover and pasted onto the starry sky. In this collage, the curved shape of the gallows is particularly striking, which is questionable from the Euclidean point of view. Brueghel's visual focus can be considered a kind of symbol of synchronous physics with its "parallels, fantasies, blasphemies." The synchronic method is repeatedly explained in the book in different ways using both scientific terms and artistic metaphors, but each time at the last moment it escapes final understanding — something like when trying to put the essence of quantum physics in your head once and for all (by the way, in "The Magpie ..." there is an intriguing plot of an anecdote: "Meets a synchronous quantum physicist once...").

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One can see a certain similarity between the degenerating, stagnating Lem's "solaristics" and the stalled synchronous physics as sciences that have suffered a fiasco in the sense of the lack of a concrete practical result for humanity. Lem uses the word "scam" in relation to "solaristics" in reputable scientific circles, while Verkin's opponents of synchronous physics have a much broader, more diverse and expressive vocabulary. No matter how Cassini calls synchronous physics that he hates: "cataracts in the eyes of humanity", "a shameful disease of modern society", "an ugly mutation of quantum mechanics, a smiling Jungian lomehusa, a doppelganger, an ersatz doppelganger", "a bow-legged shaman of second-handedness, a virtuoso of suggestive yodeling, a copromonger, a sharper with a degree, a buffoon, a fake prophet-a one-night stand, a witness to degradation, an intellectual pygmy, a sower of obscurantism", "a pygmy on trust, a farrier of dubious practices, a despicable fraudster, a fatal incubus of pseudoscience".

Photo: Getty Images/Rastan

This verbal firework delights the hero, who himself has only an approximate layman's idea of synchronicity, and therefore it is easy and convenient for the reader, who sometimes loses the thread of scientific reasoning, to identify with Jan. However, the reflections of pundits often sound quite transparent, although sad, as, for example, Steiner's words about the loneliness of man in his cosmic expansion: "It's just us here, so it's all ours. We are the measure of everything, the world is empty and lightless without us..."

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The reproach of the self-confidence of the human race is clearly heard in "The Magpie ...", where it is repeatedly hinted at the need for homo sapiens to admit the limitations of their powers, but at the same time the unbearability of such recognition. This thick book slowly examines this issue from different angles and is illustrated by various cases from life and scientific practice, for example, the sad story of experiments with artificial intelligence grown in a test tube, which prefers to annihilate as soon as it realizes its extremity.

In thinking about the limits of human cognition, Verkin intersects with the same Lem in some places as a philosopher and futurist. However, the advantage of the Russian writer over his Polish colleague is that Lem worked at a time when ironic intonations were not particularly accepted in assumptions about the future of mankind, even if expressed in the form of fiction. In Solaris, he seems to restrain his rather caustic sense of humor, while Verkin is not constrained by any framework and sometimes gives free rein to irony so much that what is happening in The Magpie ... resembles a parody of Solaris overloaded with religious and philosophical sophistry, to the author of which one could redirect the remark of Verkin's trickster, synchronized Whistler: "The carnivality of the current existence should not be underestimated."