Articles
Talking with the late Valentin Berezhkov,
former personal
interpreter for Iosif Stalin, at a 1998 conference in Riverside, CA
(Zamira and Selim in background)
30 articles on world literature, science fiction and other topics, including:
"Ivan the Worker" (Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich), published in Modern Fiction Studies No. 1, Spring 1977, 4-30. One way to maintain dignity within a brutal system.
"News vs. Fiction: Reflections on Prognostication," published in Storm Warnings: Science Fiction Confronts the Future, ed. by George Slusser, Colin Greenland & Eric Rabkin (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1987), 211-231, 261-264. About how we can't predict the future.
"The Triumph of Teen-Prop: Terminator II and the End of History," published in Nursery Realms: Children in the Worlds of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1999), 48-69. A dissection of the teen-propaganda film.
"How Uncle Joe Bugged FDR," published in Studies in Intelligence, vol. 47, No. 1, 2003, 19-31. About President Roosevelt's insecure visits to Teheran (Nov. 1943) and Yalta (Feb. 1945), with inside info from Stalin's interpreter, Valentin Berezhkov.
"Bjørneboe's Great Failure: The History of Bestiality," published in Genre At the Crossroads: The Challenge of Fantasy, edited by George Slusser and Jean-Pierre Barricelli (Riverside: Xenos Books, 2003), 198-222. A survey and commentary on the Norwegian novelist's trilogy decrying man's inhumanity to man.
"Ivan
Yefremov and the Strugatsky Brothers: Models and Anti-Models of Russian
Science Fiction,"
originally written for a collection of articles on the Strugatsky brothers,
which was never published. Contrasts the monistic and pluralistic visions
of the authors in question.