Overview
Ci z Dziesiątego Tysiąca (Those from the Tenth Thousand) is a young adult science fiction novel by Jerzy Broszkiewicz, published in 1962 by Nasza Księgarnia. The characters also appear in the sequel to the novel, Oko Centaura (Eye of the Centaur) from 1964. The novel presents an optimistic vision of the future, in which the young protagonists embark on numerous adventures in space, including rescuing older astronauts (including their parents) during malfunctions of their spaceships.
Plot
The novel is set in a future world where humanity has colonized the Solar System, utilizing friendly, intelligent robots.
Ci z Dziesiątego Tysiąca
The protagonists are three teenagers living in the year 862 of the early space era: Ion Soggo and twins Alka and Alek Roj. They meet during a vacation at the research station "First Scout", an artificial asteroid (a "mechanoplanet") where their parents work. The Rojs are Earthlings (Poles from Toruń), while Ion is a Saturnian. They are looked after by an android named Robik.
Oko Centaura
The plot centers around contact with aliens; characters from the previous volume reappear in the book. The protagonists embark on a journey to the star Proxima Centauri in the constellation of Centaurus, where they encounter an alien ship.
Ci z Dziesiątego Tysiąca
The novel was first published in 1962 by the Nasza Księgarnia publishing house and had seven editions by 1989. It was also reissued later (2021, Estymator Publishing, ). * Bulgarian (Trimata ot desatata chiljada, 1974) * Czech (Trosečníci v řece meteorů, 1977) * German (Die rot-weisse Sonne, 1973) * Russian (Трое с Десятой тысячи, 1969) * Slovak (Vesmírne dobrodružstvá, 1978 – combined edition with My Lunar Misfortune ) * Ukrainian (Ці з Десятої тисячі, 1965, 1974)
Oko Centaura
The novel was published in 1964 by the Nasza Księgarnia publishing house. It was translated into German in 1968 (Das Auge des Centaurus).
Analysis
In 1964, described both books for Kultura as a "two-volume novel" written "with a wink," "full of surprising ideas and wit," and at the same time "provoking thought." She praised the character of the robot (Robik) as a sympathetic and the most human character among the book's heroes, noting not only his behavior (carefulness, sense of humor) but also his evolution (increasingly human-like behavior, which Robik himself considers a "design flaw"), as well as his human-like appearance (wrinkles and freckles on his face). According to and , the novel contains a heroic vision of space conquest and addresses the common science fiction theme of contact with aliens. Niewiadowski noted in 1992 that both novels contain a frequent critique of the adult world found in Broszkiewicz’s works, where children must save it.
In Ci z Dziesiątego Tysiąca, he highlights the theme of children rescuing their parents, while Oko Centaura he described as "a story of contact with another civilization established through the extraordinary inventiveness, resourcefulness, and sincerity of children’s emotions." Maciej Wróblewski, writing in 2012, noted that Broszkiewicz avoids overt didacticism or idealization of relationships between adults and children in the novel. Instead, the relationship between generations in this novel is more partnership-oriented, partly forced by the dangers of space, which do not reward infantile rebellion of the young. The novels also praise taking reasonable challenges and critique conflict – in one scene in Oko Centaura, the heroine finds it unlikely that "people could have killed each other once, though historians claim so."