Vladimir Sadouski’s Alphabet: The Zombie Apocalypse as a Fear of Global Pandemics

Vladimir Sadouski: A Prominent Figure in Belarusian Culture

Vladimir Sadouski is a well-known figure in the Belarusian cultural sphere. You might have come across his articles on Belarusian regional studies. However, he gained widespread recognition with the release of his book “1813,” which delves into the world of zombies and the Belarusian composer Oginski.

The Alphabet of Vladimir Sadouski

A – Artifact

I first encountered the term “artifact” as a child while playing the cult computer game “Heroes III.” In the game, an artifact was a rare magical item that granted new abilities or enhanced existing ones. My mother, a doctor by profession, was surprised by this meaning, as she knew from her medical studies that an artifact was something seen on an X-ray. Such is the generational divide.

V – Virtuality

More and more aspects of human activity are moving into the world of computers and the internet. In my opinion, this is neither good nor bad; it is progress from which there is no escape.

G – City

I consider myself a city person, and I appreciate the benefits that urbanism provides. I would never trade a city apartment for a village house, although I am not particularly fond of very large, crowded cities like Moscow or New York.

Z – Zombie

As an author of zombie horror, it would be remiss of me not to mention them. Have you ever wondered why zombie themes are so popular nowadays? Over the past decades, hundreds, if not thousands, of films, books, and computer games about zombies have been released, and this trend shows no signs of slowing down. In my opinion, the modern image of a zombie apocalypse embodies one of humanity’s greatest fears—the fear of a global pandemic, which has been embedded in the mass subconscious since the medieval plagues. Modern mass culture exploits this fear to touch the nerves of the mass consumer.

I – Irkutsk

My grandfather was drafted into the army in the 1950s and sent to serve in the Transbaikal region. After completing his service, he moved to Irkutsk and even got a job at an aviation factory. My grandfather could have stayed there forever, found a girl, and started a family, but for some reason, he decided to return to his homeland. If Irkutsk had drawn my grandfather into its nets more strongly, I might not have been born. Irkutsk is a terrible city.

K – Local History

One of my passions is studying the history of my region, city, and district. Sometimes searching for information in pre-war magazines or scanning old photographs can occupy me for an entire day.

O – The Letter “O”

In the Belarusian language, there are very few words that start with the letter “O,” and those that do exist are borrowed. This is because the sound “O” in Belarusian is always stressed—a fact I learned in school, although I was not a very good student; I scored only 4 out of 10 in language studies.

P – Project

By profession, I am an energy engineer, designing electrical networks for new facilities. These projects must be done according to norms and standards, but in my creative work, I try to avoid such an approach.

R – Robot

The word “robot” is a term that science fiction as a literary genre has enriched in almost all the world’s languages. Few people know that the word “robot” is not even 100 years old; it first appeared in the sense of an artificial humanoid automaton in the pages of Karel Čapek’s book “R.U.R.” in 1920.

S – Notebook

I wrote my first stories by hand in a common notebook. Then, I typed them into a Word file on the computer (which I got in 2001). During this “digitization,” the text from the notebook sometimes changed radically; paragraphs were rewritten, new ones were added, and old ones were deleted. It can be said that this process was a kind of editing. Now I write everything directly on the computer; it is already difficult for me to write something long by hand. That notebook with the first handwritten stories is still preserved and lies somewhere in the attic.

Ў – The Letter “Ў”

The letter “Ў” is a symbol of the uniqueness and independence of the Belarusian language. It is not for nothing that it is depicted on the monument to the language in Polotsk.

F – Fantasy

Fantasy is the genre with which my love for literature began. I will never forget how I spent cold evenings during the winter shift in the children’s camp “Zubranya” with a collection of stories by prominent fantasy masters called “Planet for Sale.” Through this book, I fell in love with small literary forms. It is still in my library, and I reread the stories from it from time to time.

C – Circus

I have never liked the circus, neither in childhood nor now. Animals in captivity under the threat of a trainer’s whip, low jokes, and clown antics, and the unjustified risk of acrobats. In my opinion, these shows are a relic of the past century and are inappropriate in our time.

Ч – Time, Queues, and Reading

I did not experience the kilometer-long Soviet queues for products because I was too young when the USSR collapsed. But even now, you can encounter this phenomenon in polyclinics, banks, or even in stores during peak hours. I am not a fan of wasting my time in long queues, but if I have to, I always have something to read—a paper or electronic book, or at worst, a mobile phone with the internet. Time in queues flies faster when reading.

E – Elves

In school, I generally neglected many subjects, including Russian and Belarusian literature. When the curriculum included “War and Peace” or “People on the Marsh,” I read “The Lord of the Rings” by J.R.R. Tolkien, where hobbits from the marshy Shire, along with gnomes, elves, and humans, fought against orcs and goblins. You must agree that this sounds more interesting than the dry description of classics from the reader.

Prepared by Andrey Dichenko

Photo from personal archive