Since the dawn of the Space Age, when the Soviet Union launched the first artificial satellite and sent the first human into the cosmos, science fiction literature and cinema from Russia has fascinated fans, critics, and scholars from around the world. Informed perspectives on the surprisingly long and incredibly rich tradition of Russian science fiction, however, are hard to come by in accessible form. This critical reader aims to provide precisely such a resource for students, scholars, and the merely curious who wish to delve deeper into landmarks of the genre, discover innumerable lesser-known gems in the process, and understand why science fiction came to play such a crucial role in Russian society, politics, technology, and culture for more than a century.

Contributors include: Mark B. Adams, Anindita Banerjee, Lynn Barker, Eliot Borenstein, Aleksandr Chantsev, Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, Stephen Dalton, Dominic Esler, Elana Gomel, Andrew Horton, Yvonne Howell, Asif A. Siddiqi, Robert Skotak, Michael G. Smith, Vlad Strukov, Darko Suvin.