Prisoners of Power

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Prisoners of Power

Author	Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
Original title (if not in English)	Обитаемый остров
Translator	Helen Saltz Jacobson
Country	Soviet Union
Language	Russian
Series	Noon Universe
Genre(s)	Science fiction novel
Publisher	Macmillan
Released	1971
Released in English	1977
Media Type	Print (Hardcover)
ISBN	ISBN 0-02-615160-X
Preceded by	Disquiet
Followed by	Space Mowgli

Prisoners of Power a.k.a. Inhabited Island (In Russian: Обитаемый остров, Obitaemyi ostrov) is a science fiction novel written by Russian science fiction authors Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. Originally it was published in 1971, after modifications by Soviet censors to remove possible allusions to the Soviet Union. In 1992 a new, author-authorized edition was published. Most of the censor-dictated alterations were removed, though a few minor changes and character names carried over from the censored version.

The hero is a young activist of Freelance Search Group Maxim Kammerer, crashed in the industrial Land of Fathers on planet Saraksh.

[edit] Book Setting

In the time of the 22nd century cycle, humanity has already achieved rapid interstellar travel; a number of non-human species exist in this universe, two of them having also built space ships and established diplomatic ties with Earth, but only humans are depicted as aggressively exploring and seeking new horizons. Human social organization is presumably Communist (the novels having been written and published in the USSR), however it can be better explained as a post-industrial technocracy based on superabundance due to automatic production. It is a society that has effectively solved all of its material problems, feels no existential threats (except possibly from unknown alien civilizations), and spends much of its efforts on scientific research and space exploration. One of their more controversial projects are the Progressors, agents embedded to the less developed humanoid civilizations in order to "speed up" their development (by means ranging from helping out or protecting scholars and scientists to overthrowing the local governments, depending on the situations and people involved). Kammerer will eventually encounter some of these Progressors on planet Saraksh, albeit too late.

[edit] Plot Summary

The story evolves around the adventures of Maxim Kammerer. He is then a young man who, failing achieving an interesting career on Earth, gets an unprestigious job in space exploration. He finds an uncharted planet (Saraksh) inhabited by a humanoid species similar to humanity of the mid 20th century, living with the dire consequences of a recent nuclear war. His ship shot down by the abandoned, yet functional, air defense system, he settles in the society of the Land of the Fathers nation (becoming a "robinson" of an "inhabited island"; hence the title).

The society of the Land of the Fathers is controlled by a totalitarian, militaristic, avowedly fascist, regime headed by the Fathers, an oligarchy of high officials and business leaders. The nation is in the state of constant war against the rival Island Empire, whose incessant seaborne attacks seek to pave way for conquest and wholesale extermination of the people of the continent. Somewhat less justifiably, the propaganda regularly portrays the states to the north, in truth divided and weak, as constituting a military threat.

The most significant feature of the Land of the Fathers is its use of mind control through special frequencies of electromagnetic waves broadcast throughout the territory of the country. A vast network of rebroadcast towers are claimed to be a ballistic missile defense network of unspecified nature, while in actuality serving to broadcast mind-altering transmissions. The primary, constant, broadcasts suppress ability to evaluate information critically, hence making the omnipresent regime propaganda much more effective. Of course, these broadcasts by themselves carry no information, hence making effective any kind of propaganda; thus, for example, Kammerer encounters a state research institute where employees are intentionally shielded from official propaganda (newspapers and radio) and are exposed only to internal publications, assuring their loyalty to their superiors rather than the state in general.

An additional, intense broadcast, turned on twice a day, serves to relieve mental stress caused by the difference between the propaganda and the observed reality by provoking a strong outburst of blinding enthusiasm. Indeed, Boris Strugatsky gives a masterful description of this process at work, delineating the train of thought of a character as it rapidly switches from a state of peeved boredom and disdain for his superiors to one of rapture about people around him and life in general. The people are divided into the majority, susceptible to the broadcasts and a minority of "mutants" (выродки) who are not affected by the regular broadcasts and who experience strong pain due to the intense periodic enthusiasm-inducing ones. The mutant minority (easily distinguished by their induced epileptic seizures) is actively persecuted by the regime, dubbed traitors and a biological threat to the species, and most of them are imprisoned in concentration camps. Nevertheless, the high officials of the government (the Fathers) are themselves mutants, paying for the power of mind control over the people with great personal suffering during intense broadcasts. The arrival of Kammerer, a human, brings in a third alternative to this picture: he is not susceptible to any effect of these waves.

Kammerer fairly rapidly acquaints himself with the reality of life on Saraksh, at first being merely repelled by the brutality of the regime (which he experiences firsthand having enlisted in the military and receiving orders to execute mutants), and later exposed to the truth about the mind control system. He tries out several failed schemes to overthrow the regime, including trying to foment an invasion by barbarian tribes from the inhospitable jungle to the south, as well as contacting the Island Empire. He abandons the latter project after perusing photos in a destroyed submarine off the coast which suggest that the Islanders are guilty of genocidal atrocities and are by far the bigger of the two evils. Eventually, he is captured, nearly gets killed in an abortive invasion of the north carried out by the Fathers (he is conscripted for the service on the frontlines along with other concentration camp inmates), and is eventually discovered by agents of one of the factions within the oligarchy.

A Father known as Smartie (Умник) realized that his lack of susceptibility to mind control transmissions may allow him to seize control of the central broadcast station that is protected primarily by local intense emissions that would incapacitate any normal inhabitant of Saraksh who might attempt a break-in. Expecting a purge at the hands of their political enemies for the failure of the northern war, he decided to use him to take control of the center, temporarily incapacitate the population (and their enemies) with appropriate broadcasts, and then use the radio propaganda apparatus to establish Kammerer as the head of a new regime, a new focus of loyalty like the Fathers have been. Sure enough, Kammerer takes over the center and then blows it up. Hence, he effectively eliminates the mind control technology from Saraksh because, as is suggested, Saraksh scientists used components acquired from the Wanderers, and would not be able to rebuild the center.

The book ends with all of the people of the Land of the Fathers having a collective hangover due to the lack of transmissions to which they are accustomed, and Kammerer being caught and lambasted by the resident human Progressor, Rudolf Sikorski, (who works with a cover of being one of the Fathers and running the main research institute of the state) for totally messing up the situation the Progressors were trying to improve gradually. It is said that Kammerer remains on Saraksh for awhile to work with Sikorski to deal with the resulting chaos (political, social, and possibly military, since a major invasion from the Islands is in the offing).

[edit] Thoughts on Inhabited Island

It merits noting that "Inhabited Island", while portraying an evil, venal, and fascist society, in a sense an epitome of what "Western imperialism" has stood for in the Soviet propaganda, is actually a thinly veiled satire of the Soviet system itself. A global, inescapable propaganda system, close state control of the economy, extreme militarism coupled with opportunism and ineptitude in military planning, rule by faceless cliques of party leaders who do not believe the official ideology themselves, a huge prison camps population (which is conscripted in war in a distinct reference to Stalin's wartime policy), all these are very suggestive to readers who have lived in the USSR, or at least grown up within the post-Soviet Russian culture. Hence, the destruction of the center becomes a metaphor, eventually a prophetic one, for an end to the Soviet propaganda system leading to the collapse of the regime. The parallels were quite apparent to the Soviet censors, who allowed the publication but required a large number of cosmetic changes in wordings to make the Land of the Fathers feel less identifiably Soviet, and preferably more German. Some of these changes included replacement of modern military ranks (lieutenant, major) with archaic or made up ones (brigadier), giving Fathers identifiably German nicknames (Chancellor, Baron), and renaming the internal security military service, that Kammerer served in, from "Guard" (which is appellation of some of the divisions in the Russian army) to the decidedly non-Russian "Legion". The German last names of the characters themselves have also resulted from this editing: it was hoped to give a sense of having a German Communist freedom fighter battling a loosely-German fascist state. In latter, post-Perestroika, editions many of these changes were undone as decidedly aesthetically ugly to the Russian ear, and indeed as running counter to the intent of the authors, but quite a few remained, such as Kammerer's last name which, by then, has already shown up in a number of other books of the cycle.

[edit] Overall Summary

Overall, the novel is not generally considered as influential, in terms of the scope of social problems discussed with, as Strugatskys' other major works, such as The Final Circle of Paradise or Roadside Picnic. Indeed, it may well be just too action-packed, uncharacteristically for Strugatsky fiction, for the taste of the more serious literary critic. Nevertheless, it has a captivating plot, is an easy and enjoyable reading (in Russian, at least), and is very popular among the fans of Strugatskys and of Russian science fiction.

[edit] Adaptations

There have been announced three PC games based on the novel: adventure game Inhabited Island: Earthling developed by Step Creative Group, strategy Inhabited Island: Battlefield developed by Wargaming.Net and first-person shooter Inhabited Island: Prisoner of Power by Orion Games. All the games distributed by Akella and is announced for the 1st quarter of 2007.

[edit] English releases

1. Strugatsky, Arkady and Boris. Prisoners of Power (Best of Soviet Science Fiction) translated by Helen Saltz Jacobson. New York: Macmillan Pub Co, August, 1977, 286 pp. ISBN 0-02-615160-X. LCCN: 77005145.
2. Strugatsky, Arkady and Boris. Prisoners of Power translated by Helen Saltz Jacobson. New York: Collier Books, 1978, 286 pp. ISBN 0-02-025580-2.
3. Strugatsky, Arkady and Boris. Prisoners of Power. London: Gollancz, 1978. ISBN 0-57-502545-X.
4. Strugatsky, Arkady and Boris. Prisoners of Power. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books Ltd, July 28, 1983, 320 pp. ISBN 0-14-005134-1.

[edit] External links

• Read Prisoners of Power by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky on the RussianSiFiction.com
• Read Prisoners of Power by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky on the Perm mirror of Maxim Moshkow Library.