The day lasts more than a hundred years

What Hacker News says

1. bootsupSep 2022
   My favorite Soviet/Eastern Bloc scifi novel is The Day Lasts More Than A Hundred Years (1981) by Chingiz Aitmatov.

   "Ethnic" writers were accorded more freedom of topic than white Russians, confined to village prose in the Breznev era. Aitmatov's book sweeps the vast steppes of Central Asia and interstellar space, begins from the perspective of a fox, considers traumas of the Great Patriotic War and Stalin's resettlement, thousand-year-old traditions, the quest to give a dead railroad switchman a proper Muslim burial, and an international incident caused in space.

   Aitmatov was ethnically Kyrgyz. The book's mostly set on Kazakh steppes.

   OP was looking for context on the meat-grinder in Ukraine. He won't find it in the meat-grinder near the end of Roadsite Picnic.

   Sienkiewicz (1884), With Fire and Sword, set in 1640s-1650s Khmelnytsky Uprising (Cossacks of Zaporozhian Sich vs Polish-Lithuanian empire) is remarkably good, and geographically contiguous with the current meat grinder in Ukraine. A pre-Soviet book from outside what became USSR (Polish), not scifi, but which clearly inspired Frank Herbert and possibly Tolkein. Scifi and fantasy continued the adventure genre, after all. If you read it, be prepared for Iliad or The Bridge on the Drina-level violence at times.

   For more non-scifi lit grounded in war in previous iterations of Ukrainian statehood, see especially Bulgakov's (1925) The White Guard. A love song to Kiev, loving and complex critique of its bourgeoisie that could only have been written by a physician.

   Roadside Picnic's a fast-paced philosophical read. Solaris (yes it's Polish, but Tarkovsky painted it in film) has the dreamy, encyclopedic quality of something like Moby-Dick. (Post-Soviet) Metro 2033 is lower quality, more pulpy, feels like it was written to be turned into a series, video game, etc. (it was), but it's an interesting page-turner.

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2. doubleorsevenJul 2026
   should i do it? im looking for the "The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years" opening lines
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