Monday Begins on Saturday (Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, 1965)

Monday Begins on Saturday is yet another Science Fiction novel by Strugatsky Brothers I’ve read this year. It is also the weirdest one of those!

Aleksandr Ivanovich Privalov is a young programmer (warning: there no computers in the novel) on his way to his newly assigned position. His car breaks down, he meets strange fellows who recruit him to a nearby “Scientific Research Institute of Sorcery and Wizardry”. Yup - this is not run of the mill institute, as we’re not dealing with boring stuff, like physics. Instead we’ve got magic, magical beasts and the pursuit to define happiness. Nice combination, if you ask me.

Strugaccy stray from western tropes. Their adventure as writers started deep into praising socialism - we’ll go to space and show them all the nice things communism brings! With time, they’ve abandoned the hope. Monday… was released right after Hard to be God and they show striking similarities. The latter was a grim tale about the terrible nature of man, where happiness does not exist. This book is a funny novel about the terrible nature of the world, where happiness is as real as a Baba Yaga. It’s also a great critical analysis of soviet ideas, but for that I much preferred Moscow 2042.

What the authors managed to achieve to make all the magic elements mundane. Not by weaknesses of the plot (it’s not a YA novel), but on purpose. It’s studied, it’s analyzed, it’s understood. The characters analyze it without any emotion, much like things are thougt in school. The idea is great, but it may be confusing for western audiences as it’s rooted in Russian folklore. I am Polish, so I’ve been subjected to it quite early on. But would reading some classic folk tales help? No, not really. The fantastic elements are not treated with any seriousness. They simply are there to be studied. It’s the anti-Shrek where most of the jokes are based on you knowing who a magical beast is.

The actual subject of the story is great, but it requires some knowledge about Marxism to be seen. Deep in the USSR Scientific communism was te norm. Everything could have been analyzed and understood; proletariat’s domination was to be scientific fact. Here we see it put the limit - magical beast are to be analyzed, equated and understood. Monday… is too smart of it’s own good, as it may be very easily misunderstood.

Sadly, I have more gripes with how the novel is constructed, as we’re seemingly without a plot. The Institute and Privalov (aka Sasha, don’t ask me how it’s his nickname) who is slowly learning about magic is the only element connecting individual pages. The actual story is presented as series of disjointed stories, each with it’s own begging and end. Sure, some stories may conclude much later, but they don’t build on each other. The novel consits of three parts, and each following is less and less guilty of that, but it’s never a novel in a common sense.

The Institute is occupied by wonderfully mad characters, much like Invisible Institute from Discworld. We’ve got a former grand inquisitor in charge of the Department of Meaning of Life; a director who has two personalities which have no idea what the other one is doing. Some ideas are also amazingly creative - have you ever heard of using a genie as a a bomb? Each single part of the novel is great, but I had problem with the complete set. It’s a collection of short stories with overarching plot and nothing pushed me forward. Heck, I even incured a fine from the library, as it took me very long to get to reading and then (despite the small length) to finish.

Personally, I enjoyed the last part the most as the final mystery is revealed and it’s a very intriguing concept.

So, as I’ve praised and recommended all Strugasky Brothers novels up to this, I have a bit of problem here. As I’ve finished it a few months ago and had some time to digest it, I consider it another bullseye. But when I read it, I had much more problems, as the story-based structure is much less gripping that a full-on novel. I’m glad I’ve read it, but I will never re-read it.