Prince of Central Planning
Принц Госплана
By Victor Pelevin - Виктоp Пелевин
In 1992 a famous Russian author Victor Pelevin wrote a short story called "Prince of Central Planning" which shows a Soviet bureaucratic organisation in which everyone plays computer games for all the time (using for this entertainment American computers which were in a very short supply in the Soviet Union in the end of 1980-s). Nobody really works but everyone actually lives in the world of the game he plays in the moment. The protagonist Alexander (or Sasha as this name shortened in Russian) lives in the world of Prince of Persia (i.e. meets red potions, guardians, spikes and blades in streets and subway in his daily life). The story was a heavy satire on Soviet bureaucracy and resembles stories of Philip K. Dick.
Illustration for the novel
By artist E. Matskevich
Awards
The short novel has won the following awards:
The Great Ring - 1991 (Великое Кольцо-91)
Interpresskon - 1993 (Интерпресскон-93)
Download the story
Document format: pe-princ.doc
Or read it online from the author's website: http://pelevin.nov.ru/pov/pe-princ/1.html (scroll down to change pages.)
Audio version
You can download the story in audio format.
Виктоp Пелевин «Принц Госплана»
Victor Pelevin - Prince of Central Planning (The Prince Gosplana)
Quality of writing: 32 kbps, 32 kHz, stereo
Record Format: Windows Media Audio (wma)
Running time record: 104 minutes, 20 seconds
File size: 25.2 MB (25849969)
Copyrights on the record: http://www.mds.ru/
Download: http://pelevin.org/audio/index.php?dir=&file=prince.wma
Victor Pelevin's official website
Click here to visit the site: http://pelevin.nov.ru/
The author
English Version
It seems only "Sigmund in a cafe" and "Omon Ra" (two other stories by V. Pelevin) are translated into English, not this one.