I mentioned this book last week; it is one of the lesser known science fiction novels written in the former GDR. My dad’s copy is a bit shabby already – or has lots of character and history, depending on how you look at these things – and I think it was that and the fact that the book was lying around in the lounge that intrigued me. When I initially picked it up I was wondering how, after years of living abroad, I would react to this kind of literature. I took to it really well, I think, considering how quickly I wolfed down this novel.
When I say ‘this kind of literature’, I mean socialist science fiction. It’s a peculiar genre: it’s very, very modernist, i.e. rationality always prevails. Our age is looked back on (quite funny really – Leitstrahl für Aldebaran was published in 1983) by the protagonists sometimes with compassion and understanding, much in the way that grandparents shake their heads about the folly of wee toddlers, or, on the other hand, with horror and disgust. Which is why I expected to feel quite put-off by this book, but I didn’t.
First of all, the plot was really intriguing. Leitstrahl für Aldebaran starts off aboard a star ship called Kundschafter, or Explorer, which, as the four protagonists find out by and by, has been gravely affected by a dangerous stellar anomaly that they have never encountered before. They were in anabiosis and only woke up when it was all over and now have to try and interpret the data that the ship, now greatly worse for wear, has collected to see what has happened. I liked this part; interpreting data and coming up with likely scenarios of what might have happened is basically my middle name right now, so I could relate.
The four protagonists work together as a team though each one of them has different skills and works to the maximum of their capabilities. This is socialist doctrine, of course, but it’s not exactly an alien notion; team work should function like that. An aspect of this that I really liked was the internal struggle of the person that awoke first from anabiosis, Toliman, who thereby automatically assumed the position of captain: he really struggles with the contradiction between being just one member in a team of four whilst also being the commanding officer. (Socialists have yet to work this one out.) Tuschel reveals his in-depth knowledge of social psychology in his description of Toliman’s struggle. On this point already I felt that the novel was doing more than I would have expected from one of its kind: it contributed something to my own understanding of contemporary society. A lot of socialist science fiction is plain propaganda, but this one here isn’t. So I kept on reading.
Due to what has happened whilst the Kundschafter was in the anomaly, the ship is forced to land on an unknown planet – very interesting stuff! Tuschel describes the planet nicely. The ship lands in the Großes Tal (Big Valley) which is named this way in distinction to the Kleines Tal (Small Valley). Not being explorers per se but sort of in an emergency situation, these are the names that the crew came up with – very practical. The Großes Tal is covered with a carpet of lush green grass of exactly the same height all over, and there isn’t one plant species to be found that is older than 3 months or so. What happened here? Where are the older specimens? The reader is intrigued and reads on. (I thought it was locusts but I was wrong.) It gets even better when a dinosaur kind of animal comes near the ship and eventually befriends the crew who name it – they’ve already proven that naming things isn’t their strong suit so this doesn’t come as a surprise – ‘das Biest’.
Being sort of stranded on the planet for some time gives a lot of room for the protagonists’ characters to develop before the reader’s eye. Toliman increasingly struggles to preserve his clout; everyone comes up with creative ideas about how to improve their situation (finding food, collecting solar energy etc.) but Toli is being conservative. The team begins to crumble. His partner Mira who is a cosmogonist starts turning away from him and eventually it becomes clear that something needs to be done to save the team: an exercise (it really is called that in the German version, too). Think team building exercise but more complicated; this one involves everyone bongo-drumming together.
This part was a bit strange but also beautiful. In the socialist world of the future that this novel is set in, no one really knows how and why drumming together creates strong social bonds but what they do know is that it works. So when things look awry, out come the drums! The most emotional and creative one in the team, Gemma the biologist, dictates the rhythm for the exercise; the point is that everyone submits to her rhythm somehow and that they together create a new rhythm. Gemma’s partner Rigel, the mechanic, falls in easily and together they form a comfortable rhythmic dyad. Then Toliman starts drumming – but with his own rhythm! Shock horror indeed, he can’t even let go for a minute! Mira, who is the last one to join in the drumming, tries her best to connect the two rhythms and thus save the collective but is stretching herself thin. Eventually, Gemma adapts the baseline a bit and all of a sudden Toli is part of the group too, yay! They drum on for a while and everything is good afterwards.
A bit of a different sort of climax than you find in most novels, huh.
I think it’s because of strange narrative events like this that I really liked this novel. And because of the Biest. Gemma tamed it and it let her ride on it! Ideologically, the novel was much less problematic than I had expected, but maybe that’s because it wasn’t a very ideological novel. I still chuckled a bit towards the end: the crew of the Kundschafter is finally rescued by the Kundschafter 2 who, hearing about some of the challenges that Toli & Co. had to overcome (which I didn’t mention here – good stuff), congratulate them on their bravery by saying “Communists overcome everything” (“Kommunisten bewältigen alles.”). Toli & Co. take this as a huge compliment which is precisely how it was meant.
Would I generally recommend this novel? Well yes, if you like science fiction or utopian novels I think you could like this one, too. I think you’d also like it if you have a knack for all things military and chains of command. Some imagination is required to go with the descriptions and ironicallya little bit of suspense of rationality too since a lot of the science questions are never actually answered satisfactorily. We never find out what the anomaly was, for example. But I think such oversights are acceptable in a novel that pleases with a Biest, some insightful social psychology, and a robust plot.
You wouldn’t want to read this if you have a huge problem with socialism, though, but you probably wouldn’t have made it down this line here if that was the case 
follow because his cat was running through the sunlit yard like crazy! The normally rather languid ginger was jumping up and down the trees like it was a work-out! (It was catching birds.) And because the table looks over the terrace and the garden I could watch the cat and its wild manouvres. So great! Eventually I caught up with the sociological argument at hand, and a tick later I thought:
