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Life on the edge of fantasy
Two people - one writer - Arkady and Boris Strugatsky together created about 30 novels and short stories, more than two dozen stories. Their works were filmed by such directors as Andrei Tarkovsky, Alexander Sokurov, Alexei German.
The Strugatsky brothers were guides for readers to another, fictional world. And no matter what parallel universes they come up with, the focus has always been a person with his strengths and weaknesses. Because of this, fictional or predicted worlds suddenly became tangible, familiar and therefore relevant.
Arkady Strugatsky wrote the first literary texts before the Great Patriotic War. Unfortunately, all the manuscripts were lost in besieged Leningrad. The first completed story, How Kang Died, dates from 1946. It was published in 2001.
Fragment of an article by Alexander Mirer "The Continuous Fountain of Ideas", Dimension F magazine (No. 3, 1990):
“I met Arkady Natanovich Strugatsky in 1965. It was a time of storm and stress in science fiction, it was right after the story "It's Hard to Be a God" came out. Now it is hard to imagine that we lived without Lem, Bradbury, Azimov and without the Strugatskys. Today it seems to us that the Strugatskys have always existed, and now older people say to me: “But I grew up on the Strugatskys!” And when I ask: “Excuse me, please, but you are over fifty, how could you grow up on the Strugatskys?”, He calmly answers: “They turned me over!”
"It's hard to be a god" was something like a bombshell. Although we had already read "Solaris" and "Invincible". Then two names immediately stood side by side: Stanislav Lem and the Strugatsky brothers. I remember very well how I ran around my acquaintances then and shouted to everyone: “Did I tell you that the “Land of Crimson Clouds” is an application for great writers? Nate - read! Under this impression, I probably started writing science fiction. In a way, I'm the "godson" of It's Hard to Be a God.
Having started writing science fiction, I quickly got to the seminar - no matter how ridiculous it sounds - "Young Guard". Then there was an excellent editorial office of fiction under the direction of Sergei Zhemaitis, who, by the way, was the first to publish the Strugatskys in mass circulation, despite the stamping of their feet, party penalties and defeats. It was at this seminar that I met Arkady Natanovich.<...>Then I perceived him: “This is Strugatsky himself!”, “These are the Strugatsky brothers!” - that is, already at that time they were classics for us, for me, anyway. After years,<...>Arkady Natanovich and I became friends.
It must be said that it is obvious main feature Arkady Natanovich is chivalry. For many years, I somehow failed to find a better word. He is an amazingly gentle person, despite all the outward officer tricks and tricks.<...>
There is such a vile thing as a literary table of ranks. There is a completely different score on this scoreboard... let's just say: a phantom score. According to the number of millions of people, the Strugatsky brothers are a huge phenomenon in Soviet and partly in world literature. That is, I personally believe that they are at least among the top five prose writers of the second half of the 20th century.<...>
Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
People often ask how Arkady Natanovich and Boris Natanovich work together - do they come to the Bologoe station? The craft, like any other, has its challenges. The main difficulty is that this is an absolutely individual production, in which there is no QCD (technical control department. - Note. "Culture.rf"). One of the most important components of any creative person is the ability to self-criticism. See what happens: the Strugatskys are incredibly prolific writers, in the 60s they gave out books to the mountain one after another, one better than the other, because within this duo there is an absolutely wonderful distribution of roles. One of Arkady Natanovich's character traits is a constantly working imagination. He is constantly inventing. Kozma Prutkov had: “If you have a fountain, shut it up.” Arkady Natanovich is precisely the fountain that no one could ever "plug up". And when they began to work together, it turned out, obviously, that Boris Natanovich is precisely that critical component that the fountain plugs at the very moment when it is needed: “Stop. We are recording it."
This feature of Arkady Natanovich - the continuous generation of ideas by Arkady Natanovich - gives a lot of pleasure to the people around him. He can improvise in the most exciting way, for example, about his military past. I remember these stories - absolutely wonderful - he always acted in them in some kind of funny roles, by no means heroic. For example, there was a cycle of oral stories about how Strugatsky was forced to work as an adjutant and therefore he had to ride a horse. Accordingly, his horse threw off himself, respectively, she skinned him on the branches of trees. When he, the unfortunate one, got on the one-horse, the stallion on which he was riding rushed over the fence, because there was a mare behind the fence ... and the one-horse hung on the fence along with Strugatsky. When he was on duty at a military school - at that time all officers on duty were supposed to carry sabers and salute with them - then in the morning report he almost hacked to death his head of the school. And when Strugatsky went AWOL, the consequences were absolutely crushing... Some of these stories, obviously, were transformed from real incidents, and some were brilliantly and ramifiedly invented on the go.
irresistible writing start Arkady Natanovich is just felt in this fountain of ideas, which always works. Perhaps because of this Arkady Natanovich immediately became uninterested in what had already been written. I don't know about Boris Natanovich, but Arkady Natanovich always loves his last thing. He loves her for a while - until a new one appears. But he is no longer interested in it - because there is something new ahead, something else needs to be invented, and now this invention is going on. By the way, in my opinion, this trait is usually the death of a creative person. For example, because of this, Lem switched to reviews of the unwritten: the plot and the main idea, and that's all: invented and I won't bother with it! And thanks to the duet, the Strugatskys were able to realize all this business!
"The Glass Bead Game" with Igor Volgin. Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. "It's Hard to Be God"
Brothers Strugatsky. Children of Noon
A few years ago, the books of the Strugatsky brothers were already published in electronic form and freely distributed on the Runet. Then the writers' heirs closed the library as a protest against piracy. And now they changed their mind and returned the texts to free access on the official website.
Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, or ABS, wrote excellent social fiction - honest, straightforward. Their works have long been dismantled into quotes. After reading ABS, you can theatrically fall on the sofa, screaming: “The noble don is hit in the heel!”
The abbreviation ABS started the tradition of assigning abbreviations to every science fiction book. So PNS - "Monday starts on Saturday", TBB - "It's hard to be a god."
Many literary scholars and simply enthusiastic people advise reading the Strugatskys in chronological order. Lifehacker recommends starting with any book on this list.
1 and 2. NIICHAVO cycle
- Fantasy, satire.
- Publication year: 1965–1967.
- Place and time of action: Russia, 20th century.
- Reader age: any.
The cycle about the everyday life of the employees of the Research Institute of Witchcraft and Wizardry has only one drawback: it consists of only two books. But it is from them that many discover the Strugatskys.
We also recommend that you start with an easy one - with the story “Monday begins on Saturday” and “The Tale of the Troika”. Scientific can be satirical. And the everyday life of scientific workers is exciting (even if in the end they have to fight not with science, but with bureaucracy).
3. It's hard to be a god
- Social fantasy.
- Place and time of action: outside the Earth, the distant future.
- Year of publication: 1964.
- Reader age: any.
It's no longer funny. The story "It's hard to be a god" is considered one of the landmark works of the Strugatskys - the very embodiment of social fiction. Imagine a distant planet that is stuck in the Middle Ages. Now send historians from our time to this planet and consider how they will help this society achieve a brighter future.
Now imagine that you are the most powerful on the planet and will survive when the world around collapses. But despite all your strength, power and knowledge, ahead of time, it is not given to you to save everyone. Even the most loved ones. What would win in you - human or social?
... we know and understand men (...), but none of us would dare to say that he knows and understands women. Yes, and children, for that matter! After all, children are, of course, the third special kind of intelligent beings that live on Earth.
Boris Strugatsky
By the way, this is one of the few Strugatsky books that has a leading female character - a rarity for ABS books.
4. Roadside picnic
- Adventure fantasy.
- Year of publication: 1972.
- Place and time of action: Earth, 21st century.
- Reader age: any.
A heavy, dark, pessimistic book. Location - Earth after. People live a life in which mortal danger hangs over them every day, but everyone is already so used to it that they take it for a routine.
What if the aliens aren't friendly humanoids or giant cockroaches bent on destroying Orion's belt? What if anomalous Zones appear on your planet, into which everyone rushes? Dangerous. Scary. Deadly. But you can feel alive only by avoiding death.
That's right: a person needs money in order to never think about it.
Based on this story, Andrei Tarkovsky made the film "Stalker". Developers based on it later released a series of video games S.T.A.L.K.E.R. And now the American representatives of the film industry are making a series based on the story.
The book has no more than 180 pages. Read it before the release of the series to understand what abyss separates modern commercial projects from completely non-commercial Strugatsky.
5. Doomed city
- Social fantasy.
- Place and time of action: another world, indefinite time.
- Year of publication: 1989.
- Reader age: adult.
Precisely doomed, not doomed. ABS named their novel after the painting by Nicholas Roerich, which struck them with "its gloomy beauty and a sense of hopelessness emanating from it."
roerich-museum.org You agree to the experiment and go to an artificially created world. This time the alien is you. And around you is Babylon, overflowing with the same people who have their own vices, knowledge and hidden motives. The world resembles an anthill, into which occasionally someone great pokes a wand to stir up the movement. What happens when the experiment gets out of control? And if this is not the first experiment?
The Strugatsky brothers are excellent at combining complex socio-psychological motives and dynamic action in one work. Therefore, they are equally interesting to read for both a schoolboy and a professor of social psychology. But if you want to understand what the book is really about, grow up. And then take on the "Doomed City".
How they did what they foresaw, what they did not like, how they treated religion and why the most famous science fiction writers in Russia did not make women the main characters
Boris Strugatsky survived his older brother Arkady by 21 years, but during this time he released only two of his own novels - all the main works were created by the brothers together. Of all domestic science fiction writers, the Strugatskys are the most famous and recognizable - just like among all the writers who worked in collaboration. The books of the Strugatsky brothers shaped the worldview of more than one generation of residents, first of the USSR, and then of Russia, and their work was especially popular among Soviet dissidents. Forbes has chosen 15 interesting facts from the life and work of Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. Boris Strugatsky himself spoke about many of them in his permanent offline interview on the official website: over 14 years, he managed to give 7583 answers to readers' questions.
Arkady and Boris Strugatsky are the only Russian writers whose novels in their homeland are abbreviated by readers.
According to one version, the reason for this was the negative attitude of the Soviet authorities towards the work of the Strugatsky brothers after the publication of the novel "Ugly Swans" - allegedly with the help of such a simple cipher, fans of science fiction writers avoided possible troubles with official bodies. According to another, this is due to the fact that after the appearance of their first works, readers shortened the designations to ABS for convenience, and then transferred this principle to the titles of novels.
"Land of Crimson Clouds" - SBT
"Attempt to Escape" - PkB
"Distant Rainbow" - DR
"It's Hard to Be a God" - TBB
"Monday starts on Saturday" - PNS
"Predatory things of the century" - HVV
"Snail on the slope" - US
"Ugly Swans" - GL
"The Second Invasion of the Martians" - VNM
"Inhabited Island" - OO
"City doomed" - GO
"A Billion Years Before the End of the World" - ZMLdKS
"The Tale of Friendship and Non-Friendship" - PoDiN
"Beetle in the anthill" - ZhvM
"Lame Fate" - XC
"The waves extinguish the wind" - VGV
"Weaved Down with Evil, or Forty Years Later" - OZ
Very few of the things and phenomena previously described in the Strugatsky novels later appeared in reality.
Most foreign science fiction writers created the worlds of their works, saturating the description with many fantastic technical details, and thereby guessed the appearance of many real inventions in the future. For example, Robert Heinlein "predicted" the air hand dryer, and Ray Bradbury predicted the "smart" home. Unlike them, the Strugatsky brothers used a different creative method, because of which their works are classified as "social fiction". Nevertheless, some works describe technical devices and social phenomena that later appeared in reality. In particular, the Big World Informator, the Delivery Line, and Null Link, repeatedly mentioned in the novels, turned out to be the actual foresight of the emergence of the Internet and Wikipedia. The most full of predictions that have come true is Predatory Things of the Age (1965), which describes “fishermen” (extreme athletes), “sick” (strong synthetic drugs), “droshka” (rave discos). In the novel "Ugly Swans" the appearance of the generation of "indigo children" is actually predicted, and in the novel "Burdened by Evil" - the anti-globalization movement and aggressive environmental groups.
The Strugatsky brothers unwittingly predicted at least one scientific discovery.
In 2008, the journal Science published a paper that reported the discovery of a bacterium called Candidatus Desulforudis audaxviator ("daring traveler to the center of the Earth," pictured) that is powered by the decay of radioactive uranium. In the novel The Land of Crimson Clouds (1959) there is this episode:
Yurkovski mutters:
“Listen, Alexey... In case I still don't get there... About the riddle of Tahmasib, about the Red Ring... I think... I'm sure... It's bacteria. colonies of bacteria. But not our bacteria. Another life... non-protein life. They live on radiation. They absorb radioactive radiation and live off their energy... Do you hear, Bykov?
Yes, he hears. "Bacteria and radiation..." But that's useless. We need water, not bacteria.
“They are gathering around the place where the atomic explosion is supposed to take place,” Yurkovskiy continues. “They gather in a ring... the Red Ring... and wait. "Boy" got to such a place. And underneath it is an explosion. Underground nuclear explosion. And they sense where the explosion should be, they gather and wait... The decay products are very active... they regale themselves... Do you hear? I'm pretty sure..."
Photo by RIA Novosti
The Strugatsky brothers guessed the Karpov-Kasparov pair a year before the birth of Kasparov
The novel "Noon, XXII century" (1962) mentions the "Kasparo-Karpov method" - a system of hard coding on a crystalline quasi-biomass of a biological code (in fact, a technology for transferring a personality to another medium). Before the start of the famous chess match for the title of world champion between Anatoly Karpov and Garry Kasparov, there were still 22 years left. Anatoly Karpov was then in his eleventh year, and Garry Kasparov was born a year after the release of the novel.
The Strugatsky brothers did not like some of their works
"The Tale of Friendship and Enemies" is one of two or three of our stories that "could not have been written." Written under the pressure of circumstances that have nothing to do with the creative process. We ourselves did not love her - as well as “Country” (“Country of Crimson Clouds”), “Guy” (“Guy from the Underworld”) and “Baby”.
Photo by Fotobank/Getty Images
The world of predatory things turned out to be the most real of the worlds of the Strugatsky brothers
The World of Consumption (among the admirers of the Strugatsky brothers and the writers themselves, it is mentioned in this way - with capital letters) - a reality that is most thoroughly described in the novel "Predatory things of the century". During the release of the work and for a long time after, it was perceived as an antithesis to the Noon World - a utopian reality, which the authors themselves called "The world in which we would like to live." Contemporaries saw in the description of the World of Consumption an exaggerated image of Western society, concentrated on the satisfaction of momentary material needs. The writers themselves, as it turns out, perceived it differently.
Boris Strugatsky (from an offline interview on the official website):
“This world is miserable, conservatively homeostatic, morally hopeless, it is ready to repeat itself again and again, but! But he retains freedom, and above all - freedom creative activity. This means that, at least, scientific and technological progress still has chances for development, and there, you see, the need for an Educated Man will arise in the end, and this is already a hope for moral progress ... In any case, from all really possible worlds that I can imagine, the World of Consumption is the most human. He is with a human face, if you will, unlike any totalitarian, authoritarian or aggressively clerical world.”
“... The most probable future of mankind is the Consumer Society, described in the Predatory Things of the Century and now observed with a “simple eye” on the territory of a third of modern states. The course towards such a Society, apparently, coincides with the very "resultant of millions of wills" that determines the course of history and is controlled by the Law of Freebies - the desire of a human individual to receive maximum benefits at the cost of a minimum of effort.
Photo ITAR-TASS
The Strugatsky brothers did not call the world of the future they created communist
The world in which many of the Strugatsky brothers' early novels and works of the middle period are set is the utopian World of Noon, in which most researchers and readers saw an idealized communist future. This idealization, which over time transformed into a denial of many real features of "developed socialism", became the reason why the works of the second half of the writers' work began to be perceived as anti-Soviet (this became especially noticeable after the story " Ugly Swans, rejected by Soviet censorship in 1968).
Boris Strugatsky (from an offline interview on the official website):
“The society that you call communism, and we call the World of Noon, can arise only under one extremely important condition: a High System of Education will be formulated and implemented, capable of shaping an Educated Man, a personality whose main pleasure in life will be successful creative work. The World of Noon is theoretically possible. People of the named type are not something fantastic, they have always lived among us, and today they are very often united in creative groups that solve serious problems - these are islands of a Bright Future, and now it’s up to the small thing: to learn how to increase the number of such people and the number of such " islands" until they merge into a single continent. But this, just, seems unlikely. Neither the High System of Education, nor the Educated Man is needed by anyone today, neither by any social groups, nor by parties, nor by religions. Everyone is completely satisfied with the current Man, Skillful, Consuming.
“I read Lenin, and I admired Stalin, but my communist worldview was formed, after all, not by them, but by the entire ideological situation of the 40s and 50s. And this worldview was destroyed not by philosophy, but again by the real political events of the 50s and 60s.
The total circulation of the works of the Strugatsky brothers exceeds 40 million copies.
In addition to Russian editions, their books have gone through more than 620 editions in 42 languages in 33 countries around the world.
In the novel Lame Fate, one of the few that directly addresses the problem of the relationship between the writer and the system that is responsible for ensuring that literary works reach readers, there is an episode where main character- the writer Felix Alexandrovich - hears such a question from the lips of an unnamed scientist who admits the possibility of publishing his main novel, which is written “on the table”, in a huge circulation: “... My machine will reward you with a six-digit, or even seven-digit number, as if you really declare to the world a kind of New Apocalypse, which by itself will break through to the reader through all sorts of obstacles.
Boris Strugatsky (from an offline interview on the official website):
“90 thousand is the standard (of those times) circulation of an adventure or science fiction novel, as well as a production novel, but approved by the authorities. 100,000 or more is a rarity, one could get one only for special merits: this meant a quadruple fee (as opposed to 90,000 with their double fee).
In the works of the Strugatsky brothers, there are practically no main characters - women
The vast majority of the main actors Practically all novels, stories and short stories by the Strugatskys are men. Women, if they appear on the pages of works, turn out to be much less prominently written out: for example, Rada Gaal in "Inhabited Island", Red Shewhart's wife in "Roadside Picnic" (in the photo - Alisa Freindlich as the wife of a stalker in Andrei Tarkovsky's film "Stalker" ), Kira in "It's Hard to Be a God".
Boris Strugatsky (from an offline interview on the official website):
“We did not know how, and even, in my opinion, were afraid to write women and about women. Why? Don't know. Maybe because they professed an ancient principle: women and men are creatures of a different breed. It seemed to us that we know and understand men (men themselves), but none of us would dare to say that he knows and understands women. Yes, and children, for that matter! After all, children are, of course, the third special kind of intelligent beings that live on Earth.
Despite the fact that official Soviet bodies (primarily ideological ones) and censorship often regarded works dedicated to the World of Noon or related to it as slanderous, and the work of the Strugatsky brothers was especially popular among dissidents, the writers themselves never considered themselves anti-Soviet or dissidents. The foreign publication of the story "Ugly Swans" only strengthened this attitude, despite the fact that after it the authors had to officially deny the release of the work in the West by publishing a letter on the pages of the Literary Gazette.
Boris Strugatsky (from an offline interview on the official website):
"They (the works of the Strugatsky brothers) are permeated with the rejection of totalitarianism and bureaucracy." But since the USSR was a true triumph of totalitarianism and bureaucracy, such our stories as "The Snail on the Slope", "The Tale of the Troika" and even "The Inhabited Island" were perceived by the especially zealous ideologists of the regime precisely as "anti-Soviet".
Photo by Fotobank/Getty Images
The Strugatsky brothers did not believe in the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence
Direct indications of the existence of other civilizations are contained in such novels by the Strugatskys as It's Hard to Be a God, The Kid, The Inhabited Island, Roadside Picnic, and The Dead Climber's Hotel. At the same time, the authors themselves considered the presence of extraterrestrial intelligence precisely as a fantastic idea.
Boris Strugatsky (from an offline interview on the official website):
“I don’t believe in the existence of a “other mind” - on Earth, or even in the Universe: I have no reason for this. And although you can still somehow count on the Universe - it is too huge in space and time for at least something (for example, Mind) to exist in it in a single copy, then our Earth, on the contrary, is too small to be so huge, almost dimensionless, incredible active thing, like Reason, could exist here, remaining unnoticed.
“And with Hawking (claiming that the human mind is alone in the universe) I almost agree. And I agree even more with Iosif Shklovsky - this is our wonderful astrophysicist, back in the late 1960s he spoke in the sense that another mind exists in our universe, but is extremely rare. I think he's right. After all, our Universe is so huge in space and time that it would be strange if at least something existed in it in a single copy.
Photo by Photoxpress
Many now famous science fiction writers are direct students of the Strugatskys.
Not all readers knew about the existence of a literary association under the leadership of Boris Strugatsky. This fact became widely known in 1996 after the release of the first issue of the collection of fantastic works “Time of Students”, in which the works of the members of the literary association were published.
Boris Strugatsky (from an offline interview on the official website):
“The only Leningrad LITO I ever dealt with was our seminar for young science fiction writers at the science fiction and science fiction section. It was created in 1972 at the suggestion of the then chairman of the section, Yevgeny Pavlovich Brandis, and was headed by our initially remarkable science fiction writer Ilya Iosifovich Varshavsky ... For 35 years, excellent names have passed through the seminar, now widely known and constituting the glory of Russian science fiction. Vyacheslav Rybakov ( in the photo on the left) and Svyatoslav Loginov. Andrey Stolyarov and Andrey Izmailov. Alexander Shchegolev and Alexander Tyurin. Natalia Galkina and Mikhail Veller. Andrey Lazarchuk and Sergey Pereslegin. Sergei Berezhnoy and Nikolai Yutanov. Nikolay Romanetsky and Anton Pervushin…”
In the works of the Strugatsky brothers, the Bible is very often quoted, although they themselves have never been believers.
Numerous quotations from the Gospel and the fame of dissidents forced many readers to see religious overtones in the books of the Strugatsky brothers, and classify their authors as secret believers. In particular, a common interpretation of the image of Maxim Kammerer in the novel "Inhabited Island" was a comparison of his story with the story of Christ, who appeared in the world to atone for his sins by his death. However, the Strugatsky brothers themselves never considered themselves believers or religious people.
Boris Strugatsky (from an offline interview on the official website):
“The fact is that we both highly valued the Gospel (the Old Testament - to a lesser extent), as a brilliant Literary work: an impeccable plot, painfully beautiful intrigue, a hero that boggles the imagination. To quote this text, or paraphrase it, or freely refer to it, or incorporate it into some new story of ours, gave us real pleasure and seemed very fruitful. At the same time, the religious ideas of the Bible remained intellectually and emotionally alien to us, while ethics, on the contrary, were understandable and close. Curious situation. In a sense, even implausible.
Photo by RIA Novosti
The Strugatsky brothers did not like to write their drafts by hand.
Boris Strugatsky (from an offline interview on the official website):
“Until there was a typewriter, they wrote by hand. Without any pleasure. And then, years later, when for some reason they stuck with a draft, they used this technique. Someone took a pen and a piece of paper and began to scribble a “draft” of a draft. For some reason, it turned out better and faster with a pen, now I myself wonder why.
Photo by Photoxpress
The Strugatsky Brothers Literary Prize is awarded on their "average birthday"
International Literary Prize. A. and B. Strugatsky was established in 1998 and has been awarded since 1999 in two categories: “For the best piece of art(novel, story, short story)" and "For the best critical and journalistic work about science fiction or on a fantastic theme (article, review, essay, book)". More often than others - three times - the poet, writer, journalist Dmitry Bykov became the laureate in the nomination "Fiction Prose", twice - the writers Mikhail Uspensky and Vyacheslav Rybakov (both from the Leningrad LITO, led by Boris Strugatsky). The most titled winner of the award in the nomination "Criticism and journalism" is the writer Kir Bulychev - he received the award twice.
Boris Strugatsky (from an offline interview on the official website):
“June 21 is “an average birthday (between August 28 and April 15)”, a date that is not “official”, of course, but according to tradition, it is on this day that the annual literary prize them. A. and B. Strugatsky.
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On August 28, the literary world celebrates the 89th anniversary of the birth of the writer who looked into the future, Arkady Strugatsky, the eldest of two famous brothers. Together with his younger brother Boris, he glorified Soviet science fiction throughout the world and presented him with many wonderful works. For the birthday of the great science fiction writer, Babr recalls some Interesting Facts from the life and work of the ABS brothers
1. Arkady and Boris Strugatsky - one of the most famous Russian writers abroad
At the beginning of the 1991s. about 320 of their works were published in 27 different countries. In total, their works were published in 42 languages in 33 countries of the world.
2. The Strugatskys are the only Russian writers whose novels in their homeland are abbreviated by readers.
According to one version, the reason was the negative attitude of the Soviet authorities towards the work of the Strugatsky brothers after the publication of the novel "Ugly Swans" - allegedly with the help of such a simple cipher, fans of science fiction writers avoided possible troubles with official bodies. According to another, this is due to the fact that after the appearance of their first works, readers shortened the designations to ABS for convenience, and then transferred this principle to the titles of novels.
"Land of Crimson Clouds" - SBT
"It's Hard to Be a God" - TBB
"Monday starts on Saturday" - PNS and others.
Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, 1965
3. The expression "And a no brainer" became popular thanks to the Strugatsky brothers
The source of the expression “And a no-brainer” is a poem by Mayakovsky (“It is clear even to a hedgehog - / This Petya was a bourgeois”). It became widespread first in the Strugatsky story "The Land of Crimson Clouds", and then in Soviet boarding schools for gifted children. They recruited teenagers who had two years left to study (grades A, B, C, D, E) or one year (grades E, F, I).
The students of the one-year stream were called “hedgehogs”. When they came to the boarding school, two-year students were already ahead of them in a non-standard program, so at the beginning school year the expression "no brainer" was very relevant.
4. The Kasparo-Karpov system was mentioned in the Strugatskys' story long before Kasparov and Karpov became known to the world
In the story of the Strugatsky brothers "Noon, XXII century" the Kasparo-Karpov system is mentioned - a method that was used to make a "copy" of the brain and build its mathematical model. The story was published in 1962 - Anatoly Karpov was then only 11 years old, and Garry Kasparov had not yet been born.
5. Some modern realities were predicted by the Strugatskys in their works
- Extreme sport- "Fishermen" with their jumps over high-voltage wires and other entertainment.
- Wikipedia- The World Book Depository in "Monday begins on Saturday" and the Great Planetary Informatorium in the cycle of the XXII century, although the latter also served as a global telephone and address database.
- 5-D cinemas- "Mass smells and mass touches", unrestrictedly accumulated from the anti-utopia "O marvelous new world!" Aldous Huxley (AD 1932), in noon world:
- paintball gun- a flopper described 17 years before the first paintball battle in Predatory Things of the Century, 1964 and others.
Arkady Strugatsky
6. Arkady Strugatsky was fluent in Japanese
Fantast studied at the Military Institute foreign languages, and later served as a divisional translator in the Far East. His specialization was English and Japanese. Even after demobilization, he did not leave the job of translating foreign literature.
Boris Strugatsky, 1960s
7. Fantast without a computer
According to the recollections of relatives and friends, Arkady Strugatsky was very conservative in technique. Even when his brother Boris got his own personal computer, Arkady Natanovich was not tempted by the electronic novelty and until the end of his days he typed his works on a typewriter.
8. Fraternal lot decided the fate of the storyline
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Director of NIICHAVO. One in two persons. An administrator slowly becoming a great scientist. He tends to start a conversation with the word: "So."
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Projectionist NIICHAVO.
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Born in 1938, Russian, member of the Komsomol. Wear glasses. At the first meeting, he was dressed in a gray GDR jacket, jeans, streaked with "lightning bolts". Smokes. Drives a car. In NIICHAVO he holds the position of head of the computational laboratory. Lives in the dormitory of the institute. Shares a room with Viktor Korneev. Already working at the institute, he grew a beard. At the time of the events described, he was not married.
1 3 0
Specialist in nuclear-powered transport vehicles who worked for many years in the Gobi Desert. Receives an offer to participate in the planned expedition to Venus, agrees and becomes a member of the crew of the experimental photonic planetary ship Khius-2. After the expedition, he returns to Earth and enters the Higher School of Cosmogation. Passes a way from the specialist-transporter to the glorified captain of interplanetary ships. One of the main characters of the story "The Land of Crimson Clouds" and other works of the "pre-noon" cycle.
0 0 0
Underground worker, former psychiatrist professor, former prisoner, repressed by the regime.
0 0 0
Plenipotentiary agent of the Bureau of Emigration. He agitated the Harmontians to leave the vicinity of the Zone.
0 0 0
A freed ghoul. Vivarium caretaker NIICHAVO.
0 0 0
Secretary and mistress A.M. Voronin.
1 0 0
Doctor of Sciences, Professor. Scientific consultant of Troika. He cuts his hair under the pot so that no one can see his ears.
0 0 0
"A short, slender man, very pale and completely gray-haired, although in his face, thin, with clear, regular features, he could not have been more than thirty-five years old." Commander of the planetship "Khius" and head of the first expedition to Venus in search of "Uranium Golconda".
0 0 0
Scavenger, policeman, editor, senator, member of Operation Zigzag; V real life- star astronomer.
1 0 0
School friend of Anton and Pashka.
0 1 0
Revolutionary and professional rebel, leader of many uprisings. Previously rescued by Rumata using a helicopter. One of the few who knows Anton's true identity.
1 0 1
Son of Vulture Burbridge. He was "begged" by his father from the Golden Ball.
2 1 0
Friend of Don Rumata. Full name Pampa don Bau no Suruga no Gatta no Arkanara. Wealthy aristocrat from the province.
0 0 0
Worker in Richard G. Noonan's glove compartment.
1 2 0
One of the heroes of the story "The Land of Crimson Clouds".
Pilot, one of the best astronauts in the world. Member of the first expeditions to the asteroid belt.
0 0 0
Head of all criminal forces across the Strait. Collaborated with both Don Rumata and Don Reba.
0 0 0
Janitor in the City.
3 3 0
Employee of the Department of Universal Transformations. Master. "Healthy kid." "Rude". Lives in the dormitory of the institute. Shares a room with Alexander Privalov.
1 2 0
Employee of the Department of Inaccessible Problems. Works in the laboratory of Roman Oira-Oira. Master. A native of the city of Murmansk. Red-bearded, beardless. Smokes.
2 6 0
"A remarkable geologist and experienced interplanetary traveler." The hero of the works of the "pre-noon" cycle. Planetologist. Bykov's friend.
0 0 0
Senior of the null-transport test brigade.
0 1 0
The protagonist of the story by the Strugatsky brothers "The Boy from the Underworld", a resident of the planet Giganda, a cadet of the third year of the "School of Fighting Cats" - a military school located in the capital of the Alai Duchy, which trains special forces soldiers.
5 1 0
One of the characters in the story "Inhabited Island".
Private Combat Guard in Saraksha.
0 0 0
Born in 2104. While studying at the Anyudin boarding school in 2118, he conceived a flight to Venus together with his friends: Mikhail Sidorov (Athos), Paul Gnedykh and Alexander Kostylin (Lin), but Teacher Tenin revealed their plan in time. Received a PhD in xenopsychology. In 2133 he was the head of the expedition to Leonida, which established the first contact with the Leonidyans. However, having discovered the first signs of intelligent life on the planet, Komov decided to immediately leave the planet and provided an opportunity to establish contact with COMCON workers. Around 2162, he became the head of COMCON, personally coordinating the Golovany in Space project. Participated in the "Big Revelation". In 2199, together with Leonid Gorbovsky, he represented people in negotiations with the people.
0 0 0
Professional boxer in real life, adviser to the President of the Glass House.
0 0 0
Real name is Digga. Senior mentor, officer. The commander of the unit in which Gag serves. Appears in the story "The Boy from the Underworld".
0 0 0
Bug. Inhabitant of the Colony of Unexplained Phenomena at NIICHAVO.
0 0 0
One of the characters in the story "Inhabited Island".
One of the highest officials of the regime of the Unknown Fathers, the head of the justice system, weaving intrigues against the Stranger.
0 2 0
One of the heroes of the story "The Land of Crimson Clouds".
Bykov's friend, a geologist, had previously worked on expeditions with Bykov, a participant in the first flight to Venus in search of the semi-mythical Uranium Golconda.
0 0 0
Found in the story "Interns".
Son of Alexei Bykov.
0 3 0
Red Shewhart's wife and the object of his constant concern.
0 0 0
Negro, friend of Red, coordinator of the Militant Angels society.
0 0 0
Orderly of Colonel St. James, a member of Operation Zigzag.
0 0 0
A young man from Gigandy, is fond of mathematics. Civil. Pacifist. The hero of the story "Guy from the Underworld".
