BOGDANOV, Alexander

   Pseudonym of Russian writer and political thinker Alexander (Alexandrovich) Malinovsky (1873-1928); he survived criticism from Vladimir Lenin only to die in a blood-transfusion experiment. He is remembered for a UTOPIAN sequence - Krasnaia Zvezda ("The Red Star") (1908) and Inzhener Menni ("Engineer Menni") (1913), both assembled with a 1924 poem as The Red Star: The First Bolsehvik Utopia (omni trans Charles Rougle 1984 US) - depicting the flight of its protagonist, a Russian revolutionary, to Mars where a technocratic utopia, based on principles of "rational management" is built. The first volume was reprinted just after the Socialist Revolution in 1917, and perhaps for that reason was thought of as the first authentic example of "Soviet" sf; however, it was not again reprinted until 1977, when it was purged of episodes describing "free love" in the utopia. The second volume includes interesting speculations that adumbrated the relationship of CYBERNETICS to modern management and also anticipated the need for a COMPUTER on SPACESHIPS, describing the ship itself as being driven by atomic energy.

   VG

   See also: RUSSIA.