The premise of James Cameron’s Avatar — a wheel-chair-bound man controlling a genetically engineered creature — comes from Poul Anderson’s classic novella, Call Me Joe, while the trite story of a white messiah going native comes from any number of movies, Dances with Wolves most notably. What I did not realize was that the names of the lush planet and its inhabitants both come from a Russian science-fiction series, The World of Noon:
Cinema audiences in Russia have been quick to point out that Avatar has elements in common with The World of Noon, or Noon Universe, a cycle of 10 bestselling science fiction novels written by the Strugatskys in the mid-1960s.It was the Strugatskys who came up with the planet Pandora — the same name chosen by Cameron for the similarly green and lushly forested planet used as the spectacular backdrop to Avatar. The Noon Universe takes place in the 22nd century. So does Avatar, critics have noticed.
And while there are clear differences between the two Pandoras, both are home to a similarly named bunch of humanoids — the Na’vi in Cameron’s epic, and the Nave in Strugatskys’ novels, read by generations of Soviet teenagers and space-loving scientists and intellectuals.