
How the Strugatsky brothers’ science fiction went from utopian to dystopian - lermontov
http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/05/11/give-me-that-old-time-socialist-utopia/
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ivanhoe
How much is their work really known outside Eastern Europe? I lived on
outskirts of the SSSR cultural influence (in Yugoslavia), but their books were
mostly unknown to us. I discovered them as a kid by a pure chance. I was in a
city library, bored (no Internet back then), and had no idea which book to
rent... and the title "Hard to be a God" caught my eye. Story seemed
interesting enough and it was marked as sci-fi, so I got it to see if it's any
good. And well, yes it was, very good, one of my fav books to this day, in
matter of fact.

~~~
stewbrew
In German, some of their novels were published by a major publisher, Suhrkamp.
The movie Stalker is well known, which is based on one of their novels. I'd
say they probably were the most prominent USSR SF writers of their time.

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timnic
I just noticed in the article the passage from "The Dead Mountaineer’s Inn"
("Haven’t you ever noticed how much more interesting the unknown is than the
known?") which is missing in the german translation from "edition
wunschmaschine". I did a rough comparison based on the amazon preview of the
english translation and found some other paragraphs missing in the german
translation. This specific german translation was licensed from the former GDR
publishing company "Verlag Volk & Welt".

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abruzzi
Roadside Picnic, and Stalker the Tarkovsky film based on it, are very high on
my list favorites. Roadside Picnic is kind of parallel to Clark's Rendezvous
with Rama. They're both about a chance encounter with alien life, or more
specifically, the technological trappings of alien life. And both stress out
insignificance and ultimately irrelevance to the more highly developed aliens.
Rendezvous with Rama strikes me as more optimistic, I think because the
protagonists are all high up the ladder--chosen astronauts. The protagonists
of Roadside Picnic are akin to black market smugglers, and that creates a
dirtier world, and makes our position relative to the never seen aliens seem
so much more puny and underdeveloped.

~~~
narrator
Roadside Picnic was well written and fascinating, but a really depressing
read. There is so much poetic melancholy in that book.

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dschiptsov
It seems like neither Inn nor even Piknic (which is a true masterpiece) is the
their most profound work. I would suggest "Snail On a Slope" (which I have
read at least 10 times) and especially "Ugly Swans" \- these novels, it seems,
has the brother's philosophy fully developed and refined.

The Roadside Piknic is the first enlightenment, so to speak, the bold
conclusion that there is no way out, but selfless wish for happiness to
everyone as the only way to hypothetically change the world (the way of the
East - to focus on inner rather than social development, in hope that a proper
social system will naturally follow, at least to some extent - the way of Gita
or Spinoza, the way of India, and some Buddhist countries).

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wordbank
> the way of the East - to focus on inner rather than social development

I think it's not the way of the East but more like an image created by
westerners.

You will break this illusion by simply visiting Thailand, India, Korea or
Japan. And it's hard to imagine more materialistic culture than Chinese.

I'm not saying the ideas of Hinduism or Buddhism are bad but look how people
actually interpret them:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Muslims_in_Burma](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Muslims_in_Burma)

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dschiptsov
There are huge differences between India and Burma. And, of course, the
context here is these thousands of years of development of Indian civilization
before British.

Of course, every good insight about the proper way of living, be it of
Upabishads, of Buddha or of Christ has been ruined by social institutions made
by its "followers" to get a decent living out of it.

Nevertheless, the emphasis on inner rather than social development is an
essence of the Indian culture.

As for China - it is too complicated. In times of the early dynasties they
cultivated the same virtues - like statesmanship only for the best educated,
etc but China is too big and too diverse and too dynamic to speak about it as
one entity.

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Florin_Andrei
> _Near the beginning of The Dead Mountaineer’s Inn, a 1970 novel by the
> Russian science-fiction writers Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, the innkeeper,
> Alek Snevar, proposes to his guest, police inspector Peter Glebsky, that
> mystery is always preferable to explanation._

That's the characterization of their whole work. The single thread running
through all their books. They don't explain everything. They always leave
something there to marvel at.

Arthur C. Clarke also did this. It's the hallmark of the best science fiction.

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vasilipupkin
"It's Hard to Be a God" is an awesome book, too

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kitsune_
Another great science fiction author from the USSR's sphere of influence is
Stanislaw Lem from Poland - Tarkovsky also adapted a book of his - Solaris,
which I personally find to be one of Lem's weaker works.

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wazoox
_The futurological congress_ is probably the most incredible SF book I've
read. Absolutely fantastic. And don't spoil it by reading the Wikipedia entry,
just run read it.

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guard-of-terra
It's really promising that they are translated and published again. They are
clearly underappreciated globally.

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sweedy
The were widespread known in bulgaria in the 80´, and we even got "Понедельник
начинается в субботу" in russian classes at this time.

