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Attempting to Fulfill the Plan MNKh Edition
- Thread starter Blackstar
- Start date
- Alt. History Users' Choice!
Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
So, Zimyanin puts up a hard fight, but it looks like Bala will win, if narrowly. That'll have interesting consequences.
Looks like Gulyam has had a good year. Is this his best year ever? Anyway, much as I would have preferred we'd removed him from the board while we could, we dodged a bullet here. If Bala's 76 went up against Gulyam's 96, it probably wouldn't have been good.
This is a promising match up too...
The orbital operations roll is very promising! And should compensate a bit for the low roll on the upper stack.
And it is nice to get the launch pad out of the way in 1 turn...
Well, maybe the 2 is our people discovering a critical flaw in the last suit (or thinking they have) so that they have to start work on a new suit from scratch.
But at least we'll have a few years to dig out of whatever hole we fell into, so ya still the best program to get a 2 on.
Regards,
fasquardon
- Pronouns
- It/Its
Ashimov please, roll well just once, I beg you
I think we might have to purge Gulyam I am not letting that marketeer anywhere near power
I think we might have to purge Gulyam I am not letting that marketeer anywhere near power
Nervos Belli
Don't think this means you've won!
- Location
- Murica
Given we sided with the Stalinists, I think it is only fitting we blame any failures of the moon program on space wreckers.
We can make space gulag, where all space wreckers mine Moon rocks for export to fund progressively bigger rockets.
COMRADES, listen well, our top minds have found the moon to be made of capitalist cheese, so a landing is impossible. However, do not despair! For we shall land on and conquer the planet of the workers, Mars!
*millions of soviets lose their collective minds in excitement*
CMEA stays winning. sadly so does France and UK
who knows but it sure won't be fun.
For them
.one is tightening your diet to a strict meal plan and exercise
the other is sawing off your legs in a desperate attempt to lose weight.
Cannon Omake: Red Pioneers
plotvitalnpc
Once more walking the path of the catgirl.
Red Pioneers
3 Stars, Science Fiction, 151 Minutes, R, 1979
Roger Ebert, 14 Oct. 1981
I sometimes find myself torn two ways about a movie, enjoying it greatly while recognizing reasons I really shouldn't. Red Pioneers is, I think, an example of that experience. I rarely have any chance to watch films from the Soviet bloc - quite frankly, they didn't use to make many of them, and they hardly ever left the bloc. If it had only been that they weren't good, I would have been perfectly happy to let that be known, but the truth is that I'm simply not familiar with that body of film. I imagine I was of a common mind with many of you in assuming that anything filmed in the USSR would surely just be propaganda justifiably left within its borders. In this, Red Pioneers is only a partial surprise - the captioned edition that reached the big screen stateside is, assuredly, a propaganda piece. However, barring a few points where director Vasily Numerov allows for socialist political thought to override narrative logic and solve minor problems in its own right, I find it a captivating and worthwhile piece of near-future science fiction.
The film opens by welcoming us into the not-too-distant year of 1990, as a man takes morning tea not in any city on Earth, but in the habitats of a Soviet research station on Mars. He gazes out a window toward the distant blue dot of earth, where he will soon return home to see his wife and daughter while another team of researchers flies in for their stay on the Red Planet. An alarm goes off - the man, who we learn to be a biologist, goes to his intercom. Their return to earth has been postponed - the recently reported discovery of Martian microbial life has prompted an American embargo of returnees, supposedly to prevent a xenobiological plague. What's more, with the next research crew already well underway, the base will soon be drastically overstaffed. In this trying time, they must all muster their fullest efforts to expand the habitability of the base, preserve good order, and continue their research until such a time as they are allowed to return home. All of this is established in the first eight minutes of the movie, and with 143 more to go, there is plenty of time to deliver on the promise.
For all that the film asks us to accept that the Soviet Union will settle Mars by the end of the current decade, with a US competing colony nowhere in sight, the science fiction component of the movie is excellent, as are the practical and special effects. Eschewing fantastical technologies in favor of speculative forward developments, the martian colony feels like a real machine assembled through human industry and intelligent labor and straining as circumstance forces it beyond its specification, and the labors of its wardens to keep it functioning feel no less real. The red planet, the movie makes clear, is no natural home for humanity, and the only way to survive her surface is through hard work, teamwork, ingenuity, and in service to the film's originally propaganda oriented creation, Marxism, which one might assume if their only context were this film was something akin to the Force from Lucas' Star Wars.
If there is one thing which truly drags the film down, aside from the shoehorned in propaganda element, it would be the characters. Whereas the research base, Soyuz Station, could almost be seen as a fully fledged character with its own development arc, the actual actors in the movie are static, stoic, serious, and altogether not very interesting. In fact, none of the men and women of Soyuz Station are named beyond their vocation, seemingly for the specific purpose of cutting the audience off from investing in them as people. Perhaps this was a communist cultural mandate to glorify the collective rather than the original, or perhaps the screenwriter was simply more a scientist than conversationalist, but the result is that there are scant few moments where the characters are as interesting as what they're doing.
I said similar things of Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, but because of their greater prevalence and particularly in light of the clearly political message of the film, the overall experience of watching this movie is just good, not great. It certainly has great parts, but characters who sometimes feel more robotic than their rovers and the moments where political pressure pushes easy solutions to hard problems hold them back. I'm sure to the audiences in Moscow, this will be seen as one of the greats, but for an audience stateside it's best saved for those who prefer their Science Fiction richer than usual in science and don't know where else to look or those who can find humor in the moments of contrived non sequitur and appreciate it as something it wasn't meant to be: a satire about the near-religious elevation of ideological conflict.
3 Stars, Science Fiction, 151 Minutes, R, 1979
Roger Ebert, 14 Oct. 1981
I sometimes find myself torn two ways about a movie, enjoying it greatly while recognizing reasons I really shouldn't. Red Pioneers is, I think, an example of that experience. I rarely have any chance to watch films from the Soviet bloc - quite frankly, they didn't use to make many of them, and they hardly ever left the bloc. If it had only been that they weren't good, I would have been perfectly happy to let that be known, but the truth is that I'm simply not familiar with that body of film. I imagine I was of a common mind with many of you in assuming that anything filmed in the USSR would surely just be propaganda justifiably left within its borders. In this, Red Pioneers is only a partial surprise - the captioned edition that reached the big screen stateside is, assuredly, a propaganda piece. However, barring a few points where director Vasily Numerov allows for socialist political thought to override narrative logic and solve minor problems in its own right, I find it a captivating and worthwhile piece of near-future science fiction.
The film opens by welcoming us into the not-too-distant year of 1990, as a man takes morning tea not in any city on Earth, but in the habitats of a Soviet research station on Mars. He gazes out a window toward the distant blue dot of earth, where he will soon return home to see his wife and daughter while another team of researchers flies in for their stay on the Red Planet. An alarm goes off - the man, who we learn to be a biologist, goes to his intercom. Their return to earth has been postponed - the recently reported discovery of Martian microbial life has prompted an American embargo of returnees, supposedly to prevent a xenobiological plague. What's more, with the next research crew already well underway, the base will soon be drastically overstaffed. In this trying time, they must all muster their fullest efforts to expand the habitability of the base, preserve good order, and continue their research until such a time as they are allowed to return home. All of this is established in the first eight minutes of the movie, and with 143 more to go, there is plenty of time to deliver on the promise.
For all that the film asks us to accept that the Soviet Union will settle Mars by the end of the current decade, with a US competing colony nowhere in sight, the science fiction component of the movie is excellent, as are the practical and special effects. Eschewing fantastical technologies in favor of speculative forward developments, the martian colony feels like a real machine assembled through human industry and intelligent labor and straining as circumstance forces it beyond its specification, and the labors of its wardens to keep it functioning feel no less real. The red planet, the movie makes clear, is no natural home for humanity, and the only way to survive her surface is through hard work, teamwork, ingenuity, and in service to the film's originally propaganda oriented creation, Marxism, which one might assume if their only context were this film was something akin to the Force from Lucas' Star Wars.
If there is one thing which truly drags the film down, aside from the shoehorned in propaganda element, it would be the characters. Whereas the research base, Soyuz Station, could almost be seen as a fully fledged character with its own development arc, the actual actors in the movie are static, stoic, serious, and altogether not very interesting. In fact, none of the men and women of Soyuz Station are named beyond their vocation, seemingly for the specific purpose of cutting the audience off from investing in them as people. Perhaps this was a communist cultural mandate to glorify the collective rather than the original, or perhaps the screenwriter was simply more a scientist than conversationalist, but the result is that there are scant few moments where the characters are as interesting as what they're doing.
I said similar things of Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, but because of their greater prevalence and particularly in light of the clearly political message of the film, the overall experience of watching this movie is just good, not great. It certainly has great parts, but characters who sometimes feel more robotic than their rovers and the moments where political pressure pushes easy solutions to hard problems hold them back. I'm sure to the audiences in Moscow, this will be seen as one of the greats, but for an audience stateside it's best saved for those who prefer their Science Fiction richer than usual in science and don't know where else to look or those who can find humor in the moments of contrived non sequitur and appreciate it as something it wasn't meant to be: a satire about the near-religious elevation of ideological conflict.
Semi-Cannon Omake: And on Mars there will be apple blossoms
And on Mars there will be apple blossoms
Soviet 'Zine culture and homoeroticism.
Published and distributed by hand in early 1980, the Zine Reddest Pioneers featured a number of fanworks in a mimeographed format, including several hand-drawn sketches of the actors, speculative articles on technology shown in the movie, and it's most famous or infamous work, the early Soviet fanfic 'And on Mars there will be Apple Blossoms.' The author of Apple Blossoms, who was never identified, opens the story with two cosmonauts who are identified only by their patronyms, though these map onto the names of the actors who played the characters (The Biologist and The Machinist) in the movie. The two cosmonauts receive a message that their wives, as per the tradition of their friendship, have taken the children on vacation, back on earth. The two men grouse a bit about how their wives have forgotten them, before the subject turns to how they would always arrange to get laid on these fishing vacations, often with the cooperation of the other man to keep a cabin clear of children. Alas, there are no wives on mars, but there is the best friend who has been steadfast, loyal and true.The story then takes a rather odd diversion, concerning two problems with the men's new plans. Firstly, can they be arrested for Martian Sodomy upon return to Earth, and secondly, can they find a safe lubricant? The answer to the second question is yes, but takes some rummaging through supplies while they discuss the first question. For legality's sake, the two men agree that they should do the deed 'outside of any structure that could be considered an aircraft, sent from earth, as those spaces are aircraft in international airspace, and under the laws of the Soviet Union.' The only place they can do this, obviously, is the Martian-built greenhouse, where three pages of intimate and affectionate pornography ensue. The young plants in the greenhouse are repeatedly used throughout the passage as an image of the hopeful and delicate romance of the two cosmonauts and their feelings. The story concludes with the men considering their wives, and hoping that the women on earth are enjoying their company as much as the men on Mars.
Reddest Pioneers was distributed mainly at conventions and a second printing in 1981 was made from evidence of surviving copies. While it was also censored in 1981, no effort was made to recover perviously sold copies. Digitized versions show up with file dates on soviet computer networks as early as 1984, and survive down to this day, with at least three extant manuscript traditions typed up at different universities. Even today, the majority of Red Pioneers ship-fic follows the tradition of Bio-Machinery, with their not-appearing-in-the-film wives being the largest F/F pairing in the fandom on modern archives.
Hopefully the US picks the psycho version of the balance budget amendment. This means the US will be stuck in a middle income trap. Imagine the US only having $3 trillion by 2020.
People talking about us suffering as a result forget that our main trading partners are still CMEA and that this would only lead to US allies turning towards us for trade.
Capitalism is being left behind comrades!
People talking about us suffering as a result forget that our main trading partners are still CMEA and that this would only lead to US allies turning towards us for trade.
Capitalism is being left behind comrades!
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D'awwww. So cuuute!
Now I am imagining "fishing" or "greenhouse" fiction as the Soviet equivalence of "slashfic"
Maybe fishing fic for F/F pairings and greenhousefic for M/M pairings.
Regards,
fasquardon
Would it manage to make it past censhorship in great enough numbers ? we are coopting stalinists so i dont know.
plotvitalnpc
Once more walking the path of the catgirl.
This timeline's USSR legalized being gay and doing gay stuff back in the 60s, and we don't personally control the ministry of culture, so it shouldn't be any worse off than any other fanzine abut a work of propaganda.
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Ebert you hack, it's obviously Incisive Commentary that snuck past the censors about this machine state full of machine men assigning value solely to your "useful" mechanical function, where if you cannot effectively be The Engineer or The Biologist then you might as well not exist.
The thread has been consistent that it uses such options to make fun of the politicians trying to do that.
This is pretty unlikely since such a psycho amendment would have to be passed by a majority of the Senate. So while some nut job could propose it I can't see it actually making it through the legal process.
Never for Capitalism is immortal and undying.
From that interpretation it seems that while legal it isn't seen as widely socially acceptable, and a notable percentage of people are actively against it.
So just like IRL.
- Location
- UTC+0
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We decriminalized homosexuality and sodomy in 69, but its still not socially acceptable and that was done by treating it as a "illness" as was common in the era. Thus material "promoting" it would be frowned upon and occasionally censored if it threw up enough of a controversy I figure.
But at this point, I am pretty sure our censorship is less preemptive and more reactive, so things like this would slip by. The Minister of Culture is a Ryzkhovite as well.
But at this point, I am pretty sure our censorship is less preemptive and more reactive, so things like this would slip by. The Minister of Culture is a Ryzkhovite as well.
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plotvitalnpc
Once more walking the path of the catgirl.
It's either that or a result of the American release of Red Pioneers being a retranslation of the Japanese translation of the movie.
Spacebattles might have gone for that, but the last time it was offered folks that were in favor of it were shouted down pretty quickly. Thread is influenced by modern brainworms and this isnt thing where @Blackstar has the ground to punish us like with our Railroad fetish, where we accidentally create "Big Rail" lobby.
Nothing is going to go wrong with progresive social stuff, hell nothing CAN go wrong with social progress stuff. We are immune to that. even @Blackstar shall fail.
Is the Big Rail lobby still a force in the USSR?
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- Lost in the internet
It's a non-official publication, so if the numbers are small enough, it would not need to go through the larger printing organization (like Mir) to get paper and printing press
I don't think it was ever a thing. That's just the in-universe reasoning for why Malenkov was so allergic to building roads, despite the need for a modern road system, and consistently expanding the rail infrastructure.
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This is actually really popular and somewhat widely seen as a good idea, the Senate can very much pass this, states are more of a question and even then it's a flip flop. Brown is prioritizing the Equal Rights Amendment but if the US rolls low enough it will pass a balanced budget one.