Полет большевика на Марс: «Красная звезда» А. Богданова с естественно-научной точки зрения
The flight of a Bolshevik to Mars: A. Bogdanov's "Red Star" from a natural-scientific point of view

Summary/Abstract: The paper analyzes the utopian science fiction novel Red Star by A. Bogdanov (1908). The study focuses on the description of a fictional interplanetary travel analyzed in the context of scientific knowledge in the field of theoretical physics and astrophysics in the beginning of the twentieth century, and compares it with modern scientific concepts. A comparison of Bogdanov’s technological imagery with the existing technologies of space travel is also presented. The study considers such concepts as antigravity, the theory of matter and ‘minus-matter’, ideas related to radioactivity and the possibilities of its use, the characteristics of the fictional interplanetary spacecraft etheroneph, the idea of the parameters of an interplanetary flight, including a description of weightlessness and its effects on a human body, space flight trajectory, the importance of using computer technologies, presented in the novel. While certain concepts had obviously been borrowed from the already existing sci-fi narrative, other details in the Red Star can be regarded as a novelty and original solutions predicting the later technological advances. They reveal the breadth of Bogdanov’s background, almost unique in science fiction writers of the beginning of the twentieth century.

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