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Russian Influences (Chernevog/Yvgenie and Union/Alliance Universe)

>Date: Fri, 11 Jun 93 23:54:42 +0200
>From: arg@prosun.first.gmd.de (Arnulf Guenther)
>Subject: cherryhlist

H'llo!

In my (hopefully futile) attempts to clean the local book shops of all works written by C.J. Cherryh (those I not already possess) I picked up _Chernevog_ and _Yvgenie_. Obviously the plots of these two take place in ancient Russia/Ukraina. Regarding the russian references from Cherryh's Union related novels I wonder, if she has special relations to the slavic part of (our ;) world. Does someone have an explanation to this?

There is an interesting quotation on the last page of _Chernevog_. (As part of a short biography.) But I suppose, I'm not allowed to reproduce it here, am I? And my inadequate writing skills make a proper rendition of it quite unintelligible. (Please excuse those stilted words, currently I'm using an incomplete online dictionary. ;) Anyway my reading skills in English almost suffice to enjoy Cherryh's books. Since the german translations are so few.

-Arnulf

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>From: nancy ott <ott@ansoft.com>
>Subject: cherryhlist
>Date: Mon, 14 Jun 93 11:17:03 EDT

(...)

I'm not sure that there's a direct connection between the Russian novels ("Rusalka", "Chernevog", "Yvgenie") and the Russian influences in the Union/Alliance novels -- other than Cherryh's general interest in the region. Instead, I suspect that she realized that there was almost no fantasy based on Russian history or Russian fairy tales, and decided to use them as the basis for a few novels.

(...)

nancy ott (...)
ott@ansoft.com (...)

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>Date: Tue, 15 Jun 93 07:02:50 -0500
>From: bjgaed@ccmail.monsanto.com
>Subject: cherryhlist followup

> I'm not sure that there's a direct connection between the Russian
> novels ("Rusalka", "Chernevog", "Yvgenie") and the Russian influences
> in the Union/Alliance novels -- other than Cherryh's general interest
> in the region.  Instead, I suspect that she realized that there was
> almost no fantasy based on Russian history or Russian fairy tales, and
> decided to use them as the basis for a few novels.

Cherryh's general interest in the region? What about everyone's general interest in the region on a river near Kiev?

(Do we warn about spoilers in this mailing list? If so, then consider yourself warned.)

When I read _Chernevog_ I was struck by the geographical location. It could hardly be coincidence that the "dead" forest caused by the influence of Chernevog corresponds to the contaminated zone surrounding present-day Chernobyl. I know very little about slavic languages and was not able to detect any specific wordplay. The "Chern-" part of the names probably refers to the color "black", but I could not figure out what the roots of the two names were.

A comment on the mixed dangers and benefits of technology? An extended allegory about nuclear power where technology=magic? Technology gives rise to some good and some bad just as magic begets both wizardry and sorcery?

Bruce Gaede