Аркадий Натанович Стругацкий
Personal Information
Description
Arkady Natanovich Strugatsky was born in Batumi, Russia. While he was a child, he moved with his family to Leningrad. In 1942, Leningrad was under siege and he left with his father, who did not survive the trip to Vologda. Arkady was later drafted into the Soviet Army, and in 1949 he graduated from the Military Institute of Foreign Languages in Moscow. He worked as a teacher and interpreter for the military until 1955. From 1955 he began to work as an editor and writer. In 1958, he began his lifelong collaboration with his brother Boris.
Books
Sobranie sochineniĭ v odinnadt︠s︡ati tomakh
В первый том включены произведения: "Страна багровых туч", "Извне", "Путь на Амальтею", рассказы. Для широкого круга читателей.
Volny gasi︠a︡t veter
Завершилась эпоха "Обитаемого острова". Закончилась странная и трагическая история "Жука в муравейнике". Наступили времена новых вопросов и новых загадок - времена, когда "Волны гасят ветер".
Definitely Maybe
Roadside Picnic
[Comment by Hari Kunru in The Guardian]: > Soviet-era Russian science fiction deserves a wider audience in English. The Strugatsky brothers collaborated on numerous novels and stories, the best known of which is this, partly because it was filmed by Andrei Tarkovsky as Stalker, in 1977. The novel takes place 10 years after a mysterious alien visitation, which seems to have no rational explanation. No one saw the visitors. Their presence caused disease and blindness in the areas where they landed. Now, in the six "Zones", the laws of physics (and, seemingly, of reality) are disturbed by anomalies, and littered with inexplicable, deadly wreckage. Only a few brave "stalkers" risk their lives to enter the zones to gather alien artefacts for sale. Some of these artefacts offer the promise of extraordinary powers. Unlike Tarkovsky's film, which concentrates on the hallucinatory, vacated landscape of the zones, the novels portray a society adapting to an inexplicable, terrifying event, an eruption of the unknown. Though written in 1971 and published in English in 1977, the novel was heavily bowdlerised by Soviet censors, and an authoritative text wasn't available in Russian until 2000. It's a book with an extraordinary atmosphere – and a demonstration of how science fiction, by using a single bold central metaphor, can open up the possibilities of the novel. Original Title: Пикник на обочине
Hard To Be A God (S.F. Masterworks)
Monday starts on Saturday
Sasha, a young computer programmer from Leningrad, is driving through the forests of Northwest Russia to meet up with some friends for a nature vacation. He picks up a couple of local hitchhikers, who persuade him to come work with them at the National Institute for the Technology of Witchcraft and Thaumaturgy, or NITWiT. The adventures Sasha has in the largely dysfunctional Institute involve all sorts of magical beings and devicesa wish-granting fish, a talking cat who can remember only the beginnings of stories, a sofa that translates fairy tales into reality, a motorcycle that can zoom into the imagined future, a hungry dog-size mosquito along with a variety of wizards (including Merlin), vampires, and petty bureaucrats. First published in Russia in 1964, Monday Starts on Saturday has become the most popular Strugatsky novel in the authors homeland. Like the works of Gogol and Kafka, it tackles the nature of institutionshere focusing on one devoted to discovering and perfecting human happiness. By turns wildly imaginative, hilarious, and disturbing, Monday Starts on Saturday is a comic masterpiece by two of the worlds greatest science fiction writers.
The snail on the slope
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 complete and important" of their works.
Red Star Tales
The Dead Mountaineer's Inn
Policeman Peter Glebsky, heads on holiday to the Dead Mountaineer's Inn, a ski resort hotel in a small resort in a secluded valley in the Alps. On his arrival he meets the other guests: Mr. Moses, a rich old man with highly eccentric manners and his stunningly beautiful wife; Mr. du Barnstocre, an illusionist who is accompanied by Brun, his niece; Mr. Simonet, an obsessive physicist; Mr. Hinckus, a custodial attorney; and Olaf Andvarafors. Then an avalanche blocks them in and a dead body is discovered and it is up to Peter to find out who did it.
Град обреченный
В сборник известных писателей-фантастов входят произведения, философская основа которых показать модель поведения человека в чрезвычайных обстоятельствах. Если в романе «Град обрече́нный» рассматривается поведение человека в мире совершенно фантастическом, то в повести «За миллиард лет до конца света» авторы исследуют природу реальности, герои повести действуют в обыденной обстановке.