ПРОМЕНЛИВОТО БЪДЕЩЕ В ДВАТА ВАРИАНТА НА РОМАНА „АТОМНИЯТ ЧОВЕК“ НА ЛЮБЕН ДИЛОВ
CHANGEABLE FUTURE IN THE TWO VERSIONS OF LYUBEN DILOV’S THE ATOMIC MAN

Summary/Abstract: This study focuses on the differences between Lyuben Dilov’s The Atomic Man (1958) and the revised version of the book, which was published twenty-one years later. In The Atomic Man (1979), key changes were introduced, such as the bulgarianization of the American Jimmy Cook, who becomes Mitko Kukov. Neither version of the character assimilates into the communist society of the 22nd century, where it finds itself, but the nationality of the character in the second novel allows for a reading in which the compatibility between the (20th-century) Bulgarian and the dreamed communist future is subverted. Differences in the very notion of utopia between the two works are also traced and are argued to be indicative of common processes in Bulgarian science fiction’s imaginings of the future (for example, the transformation in communist attitudes towards nature). The comparison between The Atomic Man (1958) and The Atomic Man (1979) also attempts to highlight the gradual but limited emancipation of Bulgarian science fiction from the ideologically driven predetermination of the future as an nevitable communist utopia.This study focuses on the differences between Lyuben Dilov’s The Atomic Man (1958) and the revised version of the book, which was published twenty-one years later. In The Atomic Man (1979), key changes were introduced, such as the bulgarianization of the American Jimmy Cook, who becomes Mitko Kukov. Neither version of the character assimilates into the communist society of the 22nd century, where it finds itself, but the nationality of the character in the second novel allows for a reading in which the compatibility between the (20th-century) Bulgarian and the dreamed communist future is subverted. Differences in the very notion of utopia between the two works are also traced and are argued to be indicative of common processes in Bulgarian science fiction’s imaginings of the future (for example, the transformation in communist attitudes towards nature). The comparison between The Atomic Man (1958) and The Atomic Man (1979) also attempts to highlight the gradual but limited emancipation of Bulgarian science fiction from the ideologically driven predetermination of the future as an inevitable communist utopia.

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