Péter Zsoldos | |
|---|---|
| Born | (1930-04-20)20 April 1930 |
| Died | 26 September 1997(1997-09-26) (aged 67) Budapest, Hungary |
| Nationality | Hungarian |
| Genre | Novels, Short stories |
| Notable works | The Viking Returns,Distant Fire,The Mission,Counterpoint,The Last Temptation |
Péter Zsoldos (April 20, 1930 – September 26, 1997) was aHungarian science fiction author who largely wrote about themes common in US/UKscience fiction likespace travel androbots. His best known work is probablyEllenpont, which translates asCounterpoint. The book explores the attempts ofartificial intelligences abandoned by Man to uncover their origins and, ultimately, to rediscover mankind.
Influenced byAldous Huxley andAleksey Tolstoy, his ambition had been to become a writer since the age of fifteen. He was interested inastronomy,geography,geology and later inarcheology. Despite all these interests he obtained a degree inmusic education and choir leading in 1956. Subsequently, he became a music editor and reporter atRadio Budapest from 1963 to 1967. His career inscience fiction literature started in 1963. The majority of his works are science fiction novels, but he also published articles in music. In his works he examines the progression of human relations in conditions different from today's circumstances. He freely travels among the possible ways of future seeking human-like intelligence and the contact with it. This contact can lead to successful co-operation (Distant Fire), but also to involuntary tragedy (Counterpoint).In his first book,The Viking Returns, the first part of the later"Viking Trilogy", he tells the story of astronauts landing on anextrasolar planet and making contact with the inhabitants of the planet, similar to humans of the earlyBronze Age. InThe Mission, he describes an even closer contact: the dead astronauts' personalities revive in the brains of inhabitants of the distant planet, thus creating an exciting coexistence of differently evolved intellects sharing one body. Later,Counterpoint leads to an age after the annihilation of human civilization where self-developing robots attempt to find their origins, relying on faint memories and doubtful speculations.
LikeStanisław Lem, he became critical of the perceived negative impact of the popularity of science fiction in the mid-1980s, of what he saw as the dilution of the genre and the subculture that appeared with it, which he said were, among other things, "smuggling in horror and pornography and making pseudo-scientific myths".
Of the relationship between his two professions (musician and writer), he wrote in the preface to the third edition ofThe Mission: "The laws of musical form and structure, stricter than those of any other art, and at the same time the freedom of imagination which results from the very strictness of these laws, were a great school." His novelCounterpoint reflects this relationship in its very title.
The Viking Returns,Distant Fire andThe Last Temptation are together also known as"Viking Trilogy" or"Avana Trilogy".
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