"Descendants of the Sun" by Andrei Platonov, summary Automatic translate

This book is a collection of stories and short stories created between 1922 and 1945. Industrial technological progress is intertwined here with a profound exploration of the boundaries of the human spirit.

Engineers and Transformers

In the story "Markun," a young inventor lives in cramped quarters among scurrying cockroaches and sleeping brothers. He draws the coils of a super-powerful turbine. Markun dreams of finding a reliable fulcrum in man, transforming energy into infinity, and shifting worlds. During its first run, the turbine accelerates to destructive speed. The lower coil bursts, and the heavy machine crashes through the wall of a barn and burrows into the ground. The inventor realizes his own insignificance and dissolves his pride in the vastness of the world.

Engineer Vogulov from the fantasy "Descendants of the Sun" oversees the restructuring of Earth’s climate. Having lost his girlfriend, he transforms his grief into an intellectual hatred of unruly matter. Vogulov creates concentrated ultra-light. With this energy, he explodes the Carpathian Mountains and changes the direction of the winds. The hero plans the destruction of the entire old universe. He infects workers with energy microbes, forcing them to work to the point of exhaustion. The scientist strives to build a better world out of primordial chaos.

The story "Moon Bomb" describes the journey of Peter Kreutzkopf. After accidentally crushing a boy named Goga with his car, Peter falls into deep despair. He develops a design for an interplanetary bomb. During construction, the device’s radiation kills forty workers. Peter endures prison and brutal loneliness. He insists on personally participating in the space flight. An electric disk spins the bomb to enormous speed and ejects the capsule into space. Kreutzkopf hears symphonies of the stars, observes electromagnetic fields, and lunar gas eruptions. Tired of the projectile’s darkness, he opens the hatch and steps out into the void.

In the story "The Ethereal Path," Faddey Popov studies electrons. He proves that charged particles behave like living microbes, consuming dead ether. The scientist dies of exhaustion. His assistant, Mikhail Kirpichnikov, carries his teacher’s ideas forward through the years. Kirpichnikov oversees the drilling of a thermal tunnel in the tundra, where workers discover the incorruptible bodies of ancient Ayunites.

The scientist Matissen shows Mikhail a device that activates pumps with the power of thought. Having set off for America to unravel the etheric channel, Kirpichnikov dies when a space bolide crashes into the ocean. His son, Yegor, completes his work. The young man directs a stream of dead electrons at a piece of iron, causing the metal to grow artificially before his eyes.

Satire on bureaucracy

The story "City of Cities" transports the reader to the center of bureaucratic absurdity. Ivan Fedotovich Shmakov arrives in the provincial capital. He considers red tape the highest manifestation of socialist harmony. Local officials, led by Stepan Bormotov, squander millions of public funds on pointless projects, such as the construction of underground wells. The city desperately fights for its status as a regional capital.

The Gradovites send volumes of reports to the capital and plan local air routes. Moscow strips Gradov of its city status and turns it into a village. Shmakov dies over a treatise on the benefits of paperwork, having managed to write down the thought: "An eagle breathes in my heart, and a star of harmony shines in my head." Former director Bormotov wanders the village streets, refusing to believe the collapse of his paper empire.

Simple destinies and severe trials

The story "A Clay House in a Provincial Garden" tells the story of blacksmith Yakov Yerkin. He abandons his vagabond life and makes strange things, like cast-iron clocks, until the end of time. Yakov takes in an orphan boy. The child attempts to breed sparrows in a cage, but the birds die in captivity. The boy visits a bald old woman in a nearby clay house, helping her in her final days. After her death, the orphan leaves the provincial town forever. Yakov Yerkin dies in the civil war, fighting in the ranks of the Red artillery. The boy grows up to be an honest young man and builds a new homeland.

In "In the Beautiful and Furious World," Alexander Maltsev drives a powerful passenger locomotive. A sudden lightning strike blinds him. Maltsev continues to drive the train from memory, ignoring the red warning lights. His assistant, Kostya, manages to stop the train in front of a freight train. The blind engineer is put on trial. Kostya proves his comrade’s innocence by leading him through a physical lightning strike. The experiment blinds Maltsev again. The assistant takes his blind friend into the locomotive’s cab. The intense emotional shock of the ride restores the old engineer’s sight.

Loneliness and the search for truth

Little Yegor from the fairy tale "The Iron Old Woman" converses with the wind and the earth beetle. His mother frightens him with a terrifying iron woman who awaits the death of all. The boy goes into a ravine at night. He encounters a dark figure in the darkness, threatening to destroy him. Yegor boldly throws a lump of clay in the old woman’s face. In the morning, he promises to grow up an iron man and defeat the monster.

The fairy tale "The Unknown Flower" depicts a lonely plant. The flower struggles for life among dry clay and gray stones. It grows large leaves to collect the night’s dew. A girl, Dasha, smells a strange fragrance in the vacant lot. Pioneers bring manure and wood ash. The following summer, Dasha returns. She sees an overgrown field, and a new, even stronger flower sprouting from between the stones.

The story "Ulya" describes a girl with a prophetic gaze. People see their true souls in the depths of her eyes. The merchant Demyan notices his own greedy nature in Ulya’s eyes and flees the village in horror. Ulya is frightened by beautiful butterflies and kind neighbors, seeing their hidden flaws. Her birth mother comes for the girl in peasant bast shoes. Her mother’s kiss heals Ulya. Her prophetic gift fades, and the girl begins to perceive the world through ordinary vision.

The work "Love for the Motherland, or the Sparrow’s Journey" introduces the reader to an old violinist. The musician plays at the foot of a monument to Pushkin. A gray sparrow pecks crumbs from the violin case. A powerful winter storm carries the bird to a tropical land. The sparrow feeds on sweet berries but yearns for the sour Moscow bread. Another storm catches it and returns it to its homeland. The sparrow falls dead on the snow-covered stones. Boys sell the dead bird to the violinist. The old man places the sparrow in a box with a tame turtle. The musician plays a bright melody, mourning his fallen friend.

War years and exploits

The plot of the story "Armor" revolves around an old sailor, Semyon Savvin. He invents a recipe for an indestructible metal. During the Great Patriotic War, Savvin and the narrator cross the front lines to the Kursk region to retrieve the abandoned plans. In a burned-out village, they encounter a woman carrying dead children into a ravine. Savvin draws an ancient blade and single-handedly kills seven Nazis. Mortally wounded, the heavily breathing sailor bequeaths to a comrade the task of salvaging the formula for the perfect armor.

In "The Story of the Dead Old Man," Grandfather Tishka is left alone in the evacuated village of Otsovy Otverski. He boldly attacks a German detachment with an ordinary walking stick. A Nazi shoots the old man in the chest. Tishka regains consciousness in the dead of night. He sets fire to the straw, and the flames destroy the entire village, along with the sleeping enemy. The old man digs a dugout. Partisans, having heard of the invincible dead old man, come to him. Tishka assumes command of the combat unit.

"The Seventh Man" is the story of Minsk planner Osip Gershanovich. He loses his wife and five children. At the commandant’s office, the Nazis line up prisoners seven at a time to conserve ammunition. Gershanovich feigns death, standing seventh in the line of execution. He falls next to an old man whose bald head is covered with baby hair. Having deceived the officer, Osip survives in the basement and returns to the partisans.

The hero of the story "The Inanimate Enemy" regains consciousness underground after a concussion. Next to him, the German soldier Rudolf Waltz flounders. The Nazi repeats the Führer’s memorized slogans about world domination. The Russian soldier realizes that before him is an empty, mechanical executor of an alien will. The Soviet soldier resolutely strangles the enemy with his bare hands, leaving his body to be devoured by the steppe mosquitoes.

The fate of the Jan people

The story "Dzhan" describes the long journey of economist Nazar Chagatayev. Nazar’s wife, Vera, is expecting a child from her first husband, who died. Chagatayev sets out from Moscow for the Sary-Kamysh desert. The Party tasks him with finding the lost Turkmen tribe of Dzhan. Nazar meets old Sufyan and his mother, Gulchatay. The poor have long since lost the will to survive. They feed on dry roots and sleep on bare clay.

A young girl named Aidym stands out among the people. The local representative, Nur-Mukhammed, leads the tribe to Afghanistan. Along the way, the exhausted people collapse in the sand. Chagatayev engages in a brutal fight with the representative, shoots him in the legs, and forces him to flee. That night, Chagatayev is attacked by giant vultures. Bleeding to death, Nazar shoots the birds with a revolver. The eagles’ meat saves the people from starvation.

Aidym finds lost sheep in the desert. The tribe receives fresh food and reaches the Ust-Urt plateau. Old Gulchatay dies of exhaustion. Chagatayev makes adobe bricks and builds warm houses. He brings food and medicine from Khiva. The well-fed people suddenly scatter in different directions. They go to earn money, wanting to acquire their own property. Nazar remains in the valley only with Aidym.

After some time, the people, now stronger, return to Ust-Urt. They bring new families and livestock. Convinced of the people’s survival, Chagatayev travels to Moscow with Aidym. There, he learns that Vera died in childbirth. At the train station, Chagatayev is met by Ksenia, Vera’s grown-up daughter. Young Ksenia embraces Nazar and the Turkmen girl. Chagatayev finds a new family and hope for a long, happy life.