Strugatsky Brothers



Arkady and Boris Strugatsky are probably the best-known and most influential Soviet sci-fi writers. They started the most enduring trends in Russian sci-fi and many Russian sci-fi writers were heavily influenced by their work.

Their later books were very philosophical and subversive: many were heavily censored, others were banned. The banned books were printed unofficially (a practice known as samizdat and naturally a crime in the Soviet Union) and passed from hand to hand as subversive material. Averting True Art Is Incomprehensible, these books were read by people of all ages, inspired generations of idealists and are cited as an influence by prominent Russian intellectuals.

Unfortunately, English translations are few, lacking in quality and out of print. The fact that they are based on Soviet-era censored versions of the works doesn't help. Unfortunately, the chances of getting new English translations is close to nil since Boris Strugatsky refuses to take the original Russian texts off his website (something which is apparently a prerequisite for having his work translated in the West). Movie adaptations are not quite as scarce, but suffer from horrible Adaptation Decay. The most famous adaptation is that of Piknik na obochine, translated into English as "Roadside Picnic", which became a film under the title Stalker. (The film, in turn, would inspire a video game).

Arkady Strugatsky died on October 12, 1991, ending the collaboration. Boris Strugatsky has since published two novels (neither translated to English). He was quoted to describe solo writing as "sawing a log with a two-man saw, only alone".

Titles connect loosely to form the Noon Universe.


 * Noon Twenty Second Century (1962)
 * Far Rainbow (1963)
 * Hard to Be A God (1964)
 * Little One/Space Mowgli (1971)
 * The Kid From Hell (1974)
 * Maxim Kammerer's adventures:
 * Habitable Island/Prisoners of Power (1969)
 * Beetle in the Anthill (1980)
 * The Waves Quell Wind/The Time Wanderers (1986)

The rest are (mostly) standalone works: See more complete books and translations lists on on SF Encyclopedia and ISFDB.
 * Monday Begins on Saturday (1965)
 * Predatory Things of the Age/The Final Circle of Paradise (1965)
 * Tale of the Troika (1968)
 * The Doomed City (written 1970–75, published 1988–89)
 * Roadside Picnic (1972)
 * Billion Years Pre-End of the World/Definitely Maybe (1977)

Works by Boris Strugatsky include:
See more complete books and translations lists on on SF Encyclopedia and ISFDB.
 * The Powerless of This World (2003)

Time of Apprentices
The Time of Apprentices (Russian: "Время учеников") is a massive collaborative Strugatsky Fan Fiction project that began in 1991 and was sanctioned by Boris Strugatsky. Its participants, aspiring Russian science-fiction authors (the eponymous "apprentices" of the Strugatsky brothers), write short stories and novellas based on the brothers' works, which are then published in anthologies. Four volumes have been published as of 2011. Sergey Lukyanenko wrote two short stories in the first and second volumes, respectively.