Arkady Strugatsky

In its first-ever unexpurgated edition, a sci-fi landmark that's a comic and suspenseful tour-de-force, and puts distraction in a whole new light: It's not you, it's the universe!Boris and Arkady Strugatsky were the greatest science fiction writers of the Soviet era: their books were intellectually provocative and riotously funny, full of boldly imagined scenarios and veiled—but clear—social criticism. Which may be why Definitely Maybe has never before been available in an uncensored edition, let alone in English. It tells the story of astrophysicist Dmitri Malianov, who has sent his wife and son off to her mother’s house in Odessa so that he can work, free from distractions, on the project he’s sure will win him the Nobel Prize.But he’d have an easier time making progress if he wasn’t being interrupted all the time: First, it’s the unexpected delivery of a crate of vodka and caviar. Then a beautiful young woman in an unnervingly short skirt shows up at his door. Then several of his friends—also scientists—drop by, saying they all felt they were on the verge of a major discovery when they got . . . distracted . . .Is there an ominous force that doesn’t want knowledge to progress? Or could it be something more . . . natural?In this nail-bitingly suspenseful book, the Strugatsky brothers bravely and brilliantly question authority: an authority that starts with crates of vodka, but has lightning bolts in store for humans who refuse to be cowed.

Anton is an undercover operative from future Earth, who travels to an alien world whose culture has not progressed beyond the Middle Ages. Although in possession of far more advanced knowledge than the society around him, he is forbidden to interfere with the natural progress of history. His place is to observe rather than interfere - but can he remain aloof in the face of so much cruelty and injustice ...?

When young programmer Aleksandr Ivanovich Privalov picks up two hitchhikers while driving in Karelia, he is drawn into the mysterious world of the Scientific Research Institute of Sorcery and Wizardry, where research into magic is serious business. Where science, sorcery and socialism meet, can chaos be far behind?

A brilliant and incisive satire of the Soviet pseudo-science research of the Cold War, with a new introduction by Adam Roberts. When young programmer Aleksandr Ivanovich Privalov picks up two hitchhikers while driving in Karelia, he is drawn into the mysterious world of the Scientific Research Institute of Sorcery and Wizardry, where research into magic is serious business. Where science, sorcery and socialism meet, can chaos be far behind?

'A beautiful book' Ursula K. Le Guin This mordantly funny and provocative tale from Soviet Russia's leading science fiction writers is the story of astrophysicist Dmitri Malianov. As he reaches a major breakthrough, he finds himself plagued by interruptions, from a mysterious crate of vodka to a glamorous woman on his doorstep. Is the Universe trying to tell him something? 'On putting down one of their books, you feel a cold breeze still lifting the hairs on the back of your neck' The New York Times

Picnic la marginea drumului este o nuvelă și un roman științifico-fantastic scris în 1971 de Arkadi și Boris Strugațki și publicat în 1972. Lucrarea a câștigat mai multe premii și este clasată pe locul 88 în lista Top 100 cărți științifico-fantastice. Romanul le-a adus fratilor Strugatki celebritatea mondiala. Cartea,aparuta cu mari dificultati in fosta Uniune Sovietica, este o alegorie politica cu conotatii filosofice si etice, scrisa in cheie science fiction, care depaseste cu mult modelul scrierilor de anticipatie sau al distopiilor sociografice. Prin consistenta sa narativa si inteligenta notarii detaliilor semnificative, prin atmosfera sa metafizico-fantastica si stilul bogat si fluent, cartea fratilor Strugatki e o opera epica in adevaratul sens al cuvantului.

Red Schuhart is a stalker, one of those young rebels who are compelled, in spite of extreme danger, to venture illegally into the Zone to collect the mysterious artifacts that the alien visitors left scattered around. His life is dominated by the place and the thriving black market in the alien products. But when he and his friend Kirill go into the Zone together to pick up a “full empty,” something goes wrong. And the news he gets from his girlfriend upon his return makes it inevitable that he’ll keep going back to the Zone, again and again, until he finds the answer to all his problems. First published in 1972, Roadside Picnic is still widely regarded as one of the greatest science fiction novels, despite the fact that it has been out of print in the United States for almost thirty years.

Unos extraterrestres hacen una breve parada en la Tierra y prosiguen el viaje sin mostrar ningún interés en la humanidad. Pero, como excursionistas displicentes, dejan restos y basura tras sus pasos, y los lugares así sembrados pasan a llamarse Zonas. Redrick Schuhart es ayudante de laboratorio en el instituto internacional que estudia el fenómeno, pero de noche es stalker: se juega la vida entrando en la Zona para sacar tecnología alien de contrabando. Con prólogo de Ursula K. Le Guin y posfacio de Borís Strugatski, la novela se presenta en su versión íntegra, libre de censura, y en traducción directa del ruso. Se la considera, junto con Qué difícil es ser dios y El lunes empieza el sábado, la obra cumbre de los hermanos Strugatski, y la fuerza y la crudeza de sus personajes la han convertido en la más popular. Con un desarrollo ágil y seductor, indaga en el extrañamiento más abstracto y hasta en los mecanismos de la búsqueda de la felicidad, y deja una huella profunda e indeleble a su paso.

When Inspector Peter Glebsky arrives at the remote ski chalet on vacation, the last thing he intends to do is get involved in any police work. He’s there to ski, drink brandy, and loaf around in blissful solitude. But he hadn’t counted on the other vacationers, an eccentric bunch including a famous hypnotist, a physicist with a penchant for gymnastic feats, a sulky teenager of indeterminate gender, and the mysterious Mr. and Mrs. Moses. And as the chalet fills up, strange things start happening—things that seem to indicate the presence of another, unseen guest. Is there a ghost on the premises? A prankster? Something more sinister? And then an avalanche blocks the mountain pass, and they’re stuck. Which is just about when they find the corpse. Meaning that Glebksy’s vacation is over and he’s embarked on the most unusual investigation he’s ever been involved with. In fact, the further he looks into it, the more Glebsky realizes that the victim may not even be human. In this late novel from the legendary Russian sci-fi duo—here in its first-ever English translation—the Strugatskys gleefully upend the plot of many a Hercule Poirot mystery—and the result is much funnier, and much stranger, than anything Agatha Christie ever wrote.

Arkady and Boris Strugatsky are widely considered the greatest of Russian science fiction masters, and their most famous work, Roadside Picnic, has enjoyed great popularity worldwide. Yet the novel they worked hardest on, the novel that was their own favorite, the novel that readers worldwide have acclaimed as their magnum opus, has never before been published in English. The Doomed City was so politically risky that the Strugatsky brothers kept its existence a complete secret even from their best friends for sixteen years after its completion in 1972. It was only published in Russia during perestroika in the late 1980s, the last of their works to see publication. It was translated into a host of major European languages, and now appears in English in a major new translation by acclaimed translator Andrew Bromfield. The Doomed City is set in an experimental city whose sun gets switched on in the morning and switched off at night, bordered by an abyss on one side and an impossibly high wall on the other. Its sole inhabitants are people who were plucked from twentieth-century history at various times and places and left to govern themselves under conditions established by Mentors whose purpose seems inscrutable. Andrei Voronin, a young astronomer plucked from Leningrad in the 1950s, is a diehard believer in the Experiment, even though his first job in the city is as a garbage collector. And as increasingly nightmarish scenarios begin to affect the city, he rises through the political hierarchy, with devastating effect. Boris Strugatsky wrote that the task of writing The Doomed City “was genuinely delightful and fascinating work.” Readers will doubtless say the same of the experience of reading it.

The story describes the adventures of Maxim Kammerer. Kammerer is an amateur space explorer from Earth. The novel starts when Kammerer accidentally discovers an unexplored planet Saraksh inhabited by a humanoid race. The level of technological development on the planet is similar to mid-20th century Earth. Recently, the planet had a nuclear and conventional war and the predicament of the population is dire. When Kammerer lands, the natives mistake his spaceship for a weapon and destroy it. At first, Kammerer does not take his situation seriously. He imagines himself a Robinson Crusoe stranded on an island inhabited by primitive but friendly natives. He is looking forward to establishing contact and befriending the population of the planet. However, the reality turns out to be far from glamorous. Kammerer finds himself in the capital of a totalitarian state, perpetually at war with its neighbors. The population is governed by an anonymous oligarchy of Unknown Fathers, with police and military omnipresent. The city is grim and polluted. The ordinary populace leads the life of privation and misery. What goes on around Kammerer does not make sense to him, since his own society is free from war, crime and material shortages.

The Snail on the Slope takes place in two worlds. One is the Administration, an institution run by a surreal, Kafkaesque bureaucracy whose aim is to govern the forest below. The other is the Forest, a place of fear, weird creatures, primitive people and violence. Peretz, who works at the Administration, wants to visit the Forest. Candide crashed in the Forest years ago and wants to return to the Administration. Their journeys are surprising and strange, and readers are left to puzzle out the mysteries of these foreign environments. The Strugatskys themselves called The Snail on the Slope “the most perfect and the most valuable of our works.”

Soviet science fiction novel by the Strugatsky brothers.

Today, Russian authors Arkady and Boris Strugatsky are counted among the best science fiction writers of the twentieth century. In their Noon Universe novels, they imagined twenty-second-century Earth as a space-faring communist utopia, devoted to guiding the progress of civilization on alien worlds. But as the authors became increasingly disillusioned with life in the Soviet Union, their Noon Universe stories grew darker and more complex as well.The Waves Extinguish the Wind provides the epic conclusion to the Noon Universe saga, as eighty-nine-year-old Maxim Kammerer looks back at his most earth-shattering investigation, which brought an entire era of human civilization to an end. Searching for evidence that the mysterious alien Wanderers were interfering in Earth’s development, Kammerer and his young trainee Toivo Glumov discovered a deeper and more disturbing secret within humanity itself.This new translation by Daniels Umanovskis joins updated editions of Hard to Be a God, The Inhabited Island, and The Beetle in the Anthill to bring the saga of the Noon Universe to its fitting end: a search for truth and answers in a universe that provides only questions.

Вървят двама по горския път и спират програмист в москвич. "Страшно ни трябва програмист: а - неразглезен; бе - доброволец; це - да е съгласен да живее в общежитие..." Така Александър Привалов като по заповед на щуката попада в Научноизследователския институт по чародейство и вълшебство към Академията на науките на СССР. Там е в сила трудовото законодателство, управлява научен съвет, а целта на експериментите в деветомерното магопространство с методи на авангардната наука е - разбира се! - постигане на пълно човешко щастие. Исторически личности, митологични образи и приказни герои функционират под диктата на знайни и незнайни атрибути на магията, абсурдно вплетени в бит и взаимоотношения от соцтип. Привалов свиква с невъобразими за хора "чудоголямовисти" същества и явления. Дори му възлагат съботното дежурство, когато живите души не трябва да влизат, а другите не трябва да излизат. Но за маговете няма неделя. Навън на тях им е скучно. Те знаят разни заклинания, умеят да превръщат водата във вино и никой от тях не би се затруднил да нахрани с пет хляба хиляда души. Те са магове, защото знаят толкова много, че количеството у тях най-после е преминало в качество. И техният девиз е: ПОНЕДЕЛНИК ЗАПОЧВА В СЪБОТА

"Понедельник начинается в субботу. Сказка для научных работников младшего возраста" - под таким заголовком в 1965 году вышла книга, которой зачитывались и продолжают зачитываться все новые и новые поколения. Герои ее, сотрудники НИИЧАВО - Научно-исследовательского института Чародейства и Волшебства, - маги и магистры, молодые энтузиасты, горящие желанием познать мир и преобразовать его наилучшим образом. На этом пути их ждет множество удивительных приключений и поразительных открытий. Машина времени и изба на курьих ножках, выращивание искусственного человека и усмирение выпущенного из бутылки джинна - читатель не заскучает!

1968 година. В разгара на чехословашките събития Аркадий и Борис Стругацки публикуваха в провинциалното (сибирско!) списание „Ангара“ продължението на „Понеделник започва в събота“. Скоро броят бе инкриминиран за цели 20 години. Докато превеждах през 1988 г. „Приказка за Тройката“, в „Огонёк“ излезе ново, вече преработено издание. Може би защото бях влюбен в ксерокопията на публикацията в „Ангара“, преработката не ми допадна. Писах на Аркадий Натанович, че според мен блестящата гротеска на тоталитарната система, достойна за перото на Суифт, е позагубила от остротата си. Помолих ги да представя на българските читатели оригиналното издание. И, слава богу, те се съгласиха напълно с мен. Пловдивските издатели обаче се отказаха да публикуват превода през 1989 г. и той остана да лежи в чекмеджето ми вече не по политически, а по икономически причини. Щастлив съм, че най-сетне дойде време и за „Приказка за Тройката“ да види бял свят у нас. Милан Асадуров

В очередной том собрания сочинений классиков отечественной и мировой фантастики братьев Стругацких вошли знаменитые романы «Гадкие лебеди» и «Отягощенные злом», а также другие произведения, созданные ими в восьмидесятые годы. Содержание Отягощенные злом, или Сорок лет спустя Экспедиция в преисподнюю Повесть о дружбе и недружбе Гадкие лебеди