Mikhail Afanasevich Bulgakov is one of the favorite Russian writers, and more than one generation of people. A bright and diverse writer who is good in all his genres. Everyone remembers his famous novels “The Master and Margarita” and “The White Guard”, the novels “Dog Heart” and “Fatal Eggs”. Bulgakov works can be taken literally by quotes.
The story "Fatal Eggs" Bulgakov wrote back in 1924. And already next year it was already published. What does its summary say? Fatal Eggs is a work that even from the point of view of a short story can surprise anyone. And especially those who lived in those years.
Fatal Eggs: Analysis
The source for this fantastic work was the novel by the English science fiction writer Herbert Wells “Food of the Gods” (1904), which describes miraculous food that accelerates human growth and turns him into a giant, as well as developing his intellectual, spiritual and physical capabilities. Bulgakov made The Fatal Eggs more exotic and used aggressive reptiles rather than giant human individuals in his plot.
And the poet Maximilian Voloshin, resting in the Crimea, in Koktebel, sent Bulgakov a clipping from a local newspaper from 1921, which said that a huge reptile had appeared in the Kara-Dag mountain region, and fighters of the Red Army were sent to catch him.
The work “Fatal Eggs” also recalls Wells' second novel, “War of the Worlds” (1898), in which the Martians who conquered the Earth die from terrestrial microbes. At Bulgakov, his exotic reptiles become victims of fantastic summer frosts.
Summary. “Fatal eggs”
It all started with the fact that in 1928, the Soviet professor of zoology and director of the Moscow Zoo Institute Persikov Vladimir Ipatievich once made an unexpected scientific discovery, which was of great importance for zoology.
Working with a microscope, with a random shift of the mirror, he suddenly saw in the eyepiece the “ray of life", as he was later called by the assistant professor, scientist Ivanov Petr Stepanovich.
The essence of the scientific discovery was that unicellular organisms such as amoeba, when exposed to this beam, began to behave in a very incomprehensible and strange way. Their behavior contradicted all the natural laws of nature. Amoeba suddenly began to multiply, pounce on each other and bitchily tear one another. The strongest won in this fight. All these surviving individuals are terrible and restless in their special agility and anger.
Dangerous experience
After a while, the scientific assistant Ivanov uses several more cameras, creates a powerful beam and goes on an experiment with frog caviar. For two days, very voracious and angry cold-blooded animals grew up, which also began to devour each other. And those who survived began to multiply in countless numbers.
In general, all these unique experiments of Professor Persikov could not fail to leak into print. However, not only this news drove scientists mad, but also the fact that, for some strange circumstances, a chicken disease completely unknown to science began to spread. And therefore, Professor Persikov was invited to head the recently created emergency commission, which was supposed to expand its activities in the fight against the chicken epidemic, because all the chickens had died out in just two weeks.
Tropical animal eggs
And then Alexander Semyonovich Rokk came into the office of the scientist Persikov. He was only recently appointed chairman of the Red Ray farm, where he received a letter of special importance from the Kremlin. It proposed to transfer to the use of Rocca designed chambers that would help to increase the kurovodstvo in the country. But Persikov warns the chairman that this unique device has not yet been fully explored. However, Rocke is sure that in a rather short period he will be able to increase the number of chickens by several times.
So it seems to be very simple to twist the summary. The Fatal Eggs then, however, become truly exciting.
Rokka's assistants take away all three camera installations, except for his very first small camera, which remained with Professor Persikov. It was he who continued his study from abroad, he received an order in the form of eggs of tropical animals, pythons, anacondas, crocodiles and ostriches for his experiments.
Substitution
In turn, Rokk writes chicken eggs from the same foreign country for his state farm breeding goals. And then something terrible happens, as it turned out later, orders were mixed up on the road, and the eggs of terrible animals fell under the experiment of the Smolensk state farm.
Unsuspecting Rocke places strange-looking eggs in a special pressure chamber. And what is surprising, after some time, frogs suddenly fell silent on the state farm, all the birds flew away, even the sparrows, and dogs began to howl everywhere.
Creepy attack
After some time, snakes and crocodiles begin to appear in the light. One of the snakes reached an incredible size and attacked Manya - the wife of Rocca. All this happened before his eyes, and from what he saw, he was simply numb with horror. Rokk immediately rushed to the GPU department to tell about his misfortunes, but no one believed his stories and everyone thought that he was haunted by hallucinations. But when the experts nevertheless arrived at the state farm, they saw with their own eyes a myriad of huge and terrible animals. Two GPU employees die.
Fire artillery battle began all over the neighborhood, the whole forest, where there were egg deposits, was fired. And in the area of ​​the city of Mozhaisk, battles were fought with huge hordes of reptiles and ostriches, which were approaching Moscow from all sides. Human casualties grew every minute. In the capital, evacuation began. Refugees from the Smolensk region also arrived in Moscow. Martial law was introduced in the city .
Poor Professor Persikov was literally torn apart by a crowd of furious people who felt that he was responsible for all the troubles in the country.
All this very vividly and impressively describes the summary. Bulgakov's “fatal eggs” end with the fact that severe frost saved the catastrophic situation, which at the end of August reached minus 18 degrees Celsius. He stayed in the capital for two days and thereby helped to overcome this impending horror.
Victory
After that, eggs were scattered across all fields, forests and swamps, in which the shell was covered with some colored and very strange patterns that resembled embryos, only already harmless. The corpses of huge snakes, crocodiles and ostriches lay all over the earth.
In the spring of 1929, the military cleared the area, burned the corpses, in general, everything was put in order. All over the world they talked and wrote about what happened for a long time, but no one has succeeded and will not succeed in getting this “ray of life,” even the assistant Ivanov himself, Peter Stepanovich.
And so Bulgakov’s “Fatal Eggs” ended, which would be a pleasant surprise for science fiction fans.