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Trees felled by the 1908
Tunguska event
The
Tunguska event —an enormous explosion in a remote region of
Siberia on 30 June 1908—has appeared in many works of fiction.
The event had a long-lasting influence on
disaster stories featuring comets .
[1]
While the event is generally held to have been caused by a
meteor air burst , several alternative explanations have been proposed both in scientific circles and in fiction.
[2]
[3]
[4] A popular one in fiction is that it was caused by an
alien spaceship , possibly first put forth in
Ed Earl Repp 's 1930 short story "
The Second Missile ".
[3]
[5] It gained prominence following the publication of
Russian science fiction writer
Alexander Kazantsev 's 1946 short story "
Explosion ";
[3]
[4]
[6] inspired by the similarities between the event and the
nuclear bombing of Hiroshima , Kazantsev's story posits that a
nuclear explosion in the engine of a spacecraft was responsible.
[4]
[7]
[8] An alien spacecraft is also the explanation in
Polish science fiction writer
Stanisław Lem 's 1951 novel
The Astronauts and its 1960 film adaptation
The Silent Star ,
[4]
[6]
[9] while a human-made one is to blame in
Ian Watson 's 1983 novel
Chekhov's Journey .
[2]
[3]
[4] Additional variations on the spaceship theme appear in
Rudy Rucker and
Bruce Sterling 's 1985 short story "
Storming the Cosmos " and
Algis Budrys 's 1993 novel
Hard Landing , among others.
[3] Another proposed explanation is that the cause was the impact of a
micro black hole , as in
Larry Niven 's 1975 short story "
The Borderland of Sol " and
Bill DeSmedt 's 2004 novel
Singularity .
[4]
[10]
In
Donald R. Bensen 's 1978 novel
And Having Writ... ,
the course of history is altered by the arrival of
aliens to Earth in 1908, which also causes the Tunguska event.
[3]
[11] The 1996
The X-Files episode "
Tunguska " revolves around the impact possibly having introduced alien
microbial life to Earth.
[4] Ice from the impact turns out to have peculiar properties in
Vladimir Sorokin 's 2002 novel
Ice and
Jacek Dukaj 's 2007 novel likewise titled
Ice .
[12]
^ Caryad; Römer, Thomas; Zingsem, Vera (2014).
"Moderne Mythen zu Kometen" [Modern Myths about Comets]. Wanderer am Himmel: Die Welt der Planeten in Astronomie und Mythologie [Wanderers in the Sky: The World of the Planets in Astronomy and Mythology ] (in German). Springer-Verlag. p. 308.
ISBN
978-3-642-55343-1 .
^
a
b
Pringle, David , ed. (1996).
"Cosmic collisions" . The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Science Fiction: The Definitive Illustrated Guide . Carlton. pp. 39–40.
ISBN
1-85868-188-X .
OCLC
38373691 .
^
a
b
c
d
e
f
Stableford, Brian (2006).
"Meteorite" .
Science Fact and Science Fiction: An Encyclopedia . Taylor & Francis. pp. 301–303.
ISBN
978-0-415-97460-8 .
^
a
b
c
d
e
f
g May, Andrew (2017).
"Tunguska" . Pseudoscience and Science Fiction . Science and Fiction. Cham: Springer International Publishing. pp. 32–35.
doi :
10.1007/978-3-319-42605-1_2 .
ISBN
978-3-319-42604-4 .
^
Bleiler, Everett Franklin ;
Bleiler, Richard (1998).
"Repp, Ed[ward] Earl (1900 or 1901–1979)" .
Science-fiction: The Gernsback Years : a Complete Coverage of the Genre Magazines ... from 1926 Through 1936 . Kent State University Press. p. 340.
ISBN
978-0-87338-604-3 .
^
a
b Determann, Jörg Matthias (2020).
"Missions and Mars" . Islam, Science Fiction and Extraterrestrial Life: The Culture of Astrobiology in the Muslim World . Bloomsbury Publishing. pp. 68–69.
ISBN
978-0-7556-0129-5 .
^ Britt, Robert Roy (2004-08-12).
"Russian Alien Spaceship Claims Raise Eyebrows, Skepticism" .
Space.com .
Archived from the original on 2023-12-05. Retrieved 2024-04-04 .
^
Randles, Jenny (1995). "1908: The Siberian Spacefall". UFO Retrievals: The Recovery of Alien Spacecraft . London: Blandford. p. 21.
ISBN
978-0-7137-2493-6 . Post-World War 2, aerial photos of the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were compared with photos of the flattened Siberian taiga. They were stunningly similar. It took less than six months for someone to draw the obvious conclusion. A. Kasantsev, a science-fiction author, published a short story in January 1946 in which he offered serious speculation that an alien spacecraft powered by nuclear motors had blown up above Tunguska.
^
Westfahl, Gary ; Stevens, Geoffrey (2023).
"Schweigende Stern, Der" . In
Clute, John ;
Langford, David ;
Sleight, Graham (eds.).
The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (4th ed.). Retrieved 2024-04-04 .
^
Clute, John (2022).
"DeSmedt, Bill" . In
Clute, John ;
Langford, David ;
Sleight, Graham (eds.).
The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (4th ed.). Retrieved 2024-04-05 .
^
Clute, John (2022).
"Bensen, D R" . In
Clute, John ;
Langford, David ;
Sleight, Graham (eds.).
The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (4th ed.). Retrieved 2024-04-05 .
^ Petzer, Tatjana (September 2013).
"Re-Writing the Tunguska Event: The icy imagination of Vladimir Sorokin and Jacek Dukaj" . Archives of the Arctic. Ice, Entropy and Memory .