Strugatsky brothers - it’s hard to be gods! The Strugatsky brothers: bibliography, creativity and interesting facts. Language and style of the Strugatsky stories.

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Life on the edge of fantasy

Two people - one writer - Arkady and Boris Strugatsky together created about 30 novels and stories, more than two dozen short stories. Their works were filmed by such directors as Andrei Tarkovsky, Alexander Sokurov, Alexey German.

The Strugatsky brothers were guides for readers to another, fictional world. And no matter what parallel universes they came up with, the focus always remained on a person with his own strengths and weaknesses. Because of this, fictional or predicted worlds suddenly became tangible, familiar and therefore relevant.

Arkady Strugatsky wrote his first literary texts even before the Great Patriotic War. Unfortunately, all the manuscripts were lost in besieged Leningrad. The first completed story, “How Kang Died,” dates back to 1946. It was published in 2001.

Excerpt from Alexander Mirer’s article “The Continuous Fountain of Ideas,” Dimension F magazine (No. 3, 1990):

“I met Arkady Natanovich Strugatsky in 1965. It was a time of Sturm und Drang in fiction, it was right after the story “Hard to Be a God” was published. Now it is difficult to imagine that we lived without Lem, Bradbury, Asimov and without the Strugatskys. Today it seems to us that the Strugatskys have always been around, and now older people say to me: “But I grew up with the Strugatskys!” And when I ask: “Please excuse me, but you are over fifty, how could you grow up with the Strugatskys?”, he answers quite calmly: “They turned me around!”

“It's Hard to Be a God” was something of a bombshell. Although we had already read “Solaris” and “Invincible” by then. Then two names immediately stood side by side: Stanislav Lem and the Strugatsky brothers. I remember very well how I then ran around among my friends and shouted to everyone: “Did I tell you that “The Country of Crimson Clouds” is an application for great writers? Here, read it!” It was under this impression that I probably started writing science fiction. In a way, I am the “godson” of the story “It’s Hard to Be a God.”

Having started writing science fiction, I quite quickly ended up at a seminar - no matter how funny it sounds - of the Young Guard. Then there was an excellent science fiction editorial office under the leadership of Sergei Zemaitis, who, by the way, was the first to publish the Strugatskys in mass editions, despite stamping 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 in any case. After years,<...>Arkady Natanovich and I became friends.

It must be said that, obviously, the main feature of Arkady Natanovich is chivalry. For many years I somehow failed to find a better word. He is a surprisingly gentle person, despite all the external officer tricks and tricks.<...>

There is such a vile thing as a literary table of ranks. This scoreboard shows a completely different score... let's say: a phantom score. According to 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 five best prose writers of the second half of the 20th century.<...>

Arkady and Boris Strugatsky

They often ask how Arkady Natanovich and Boris Natanovich work together - do they meet at Bologoye station? The literary craft, like any other, has its difficulties. The main difficulty is that this is a completely individual production, in which there is no quality control department (technical control department. - Note "Culture.rf"). One of the most important components of any creative person is the ability to self-criticize. Look what happens: the Strugatskys are incredibly prolific writers, in the 60s they published books 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 continuously working imagination. He is constantly inventing. Kozma Prutkov said: “If you have a fountain, shut it up.” Arkady Natanovich is precisely the fountain that no one could ever “shut up.” And when they began to work together, it turned out that Boris Natanovich was precisely the critical component that shuts up the fountain at the very minute when it is needed: “Stop. We are recording this."

This trait of Arkady Natanovich - the continuous generation of ideas by Arkady Natanovich - brings a lot of pleasure to the people around him. He can improvise in a fascinating way, for example, about his military past. I remember these stories - absolutely wonderful - in them he always acted in some funny roles, not at all heroic. For example, there was a series of oral stories about how Strugatsky was forced to work as an adjutant and therefore had to ride a horse. Accordingly, his horse threw him off, and accordingly, she flayed him on the branches of the trees. When, unfortunate, he switched to a single-horse stallion, the stallion he was riding on rushed over the fence, because there was a mare behind the fence... and the single-wheeled 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 swords and salute with them - then during the morning report he almost hacked to death his head of the school. And when Strugatsky went AWOL, the consequences were absolutely devastating... Some of these stories, obviously, were transformed from actual incidents, while others were brilliantly and extensively invented on the fly.

The irresistible spirit of Arkady Natanovich as a writer is precisely felt in this fountain of ideas, which is always working. 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 latest piece. He loves her for a while - until a new one appears. But he is no longer interested in her - because there is something new ahead, he still needs to invent something, and now this invention is underway. By the way, in my opinion, this trait is usually the death of a creative person. Let's say, because of this, Lem switched to reviews of the unwritten: the plot and the main idea are absolutely concisely presented, and that's it: it's made up and I won't bother with it! And thanks to the duet, the Strugatskys were able to realize this whole thing!”

“The Glass Bead Game” with Igor Volgin. Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. "It's Hard to Be God"

The Strugatsky brothers. Children of the Noon

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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 gave him many wonderful works. On the occasion of 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 are 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.

2. The Strugatskys are the only Russian writers whose novels in their homeland are designated by readers with abbreviations

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 code, fans of science fiction writers avoided possible troubles with the official authorities. According to another, this is due to the fact that after the appearance of their first works, readers shortened the names 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 begins on Saturday” - PNS and others.

Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, 1965

3. The expression “No brainer” became popular thanks to the Strugatsky brothers

The source of the expression “It’s a no brainer” is a poem by Mayakovsky (“It’s even a no brainer - / This Petya was a bourgeois”). It became widespread first in the Strugatskys’ story “The Country of Crimson Clouds”, and then in Soviet boarding schools for gifted children. They recruited teenagers who had two years left to study (classes A, B, C, D, D) or one year (classes E, F, I).

The students of the one-year stream were called “hedgehogs.” When they arrived at the boarding school, the two-year students were already ahead of them in the non-standard program, so at the beginning of the 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

The Strugatsky brothers' story "Noon, XXII Century" mentions the Kasparo-Karpov system - 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 only 11 years old at the time, 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 jumping over high-voltage wires and other entertainment.
• Wikipedia— The World Book Depository in “Monday Begins on Saturday” and the Great Planetary Information Center in the 22nd century cycle, although the latter also served as a global telephone and address database.
• 5-D cinemas— “Mass olfactory and mass tactile”, uncontrollably copied from the dystopia “Brave New World!” Aldous Huxley (1932 AD), in the noonday world:

• Paintball gun- the blooper, described 17 years before the first paintball battle in "Predatory Things of the Century", 1964 and others.

Arkady Strugatsky

6. ​Arkady Strugatsky knew Japanese perfectly

Fantastic studied at the Military Institute of Foreign Languages, and later served as a divisional translator in the Far East. His specialties were English and Japanese. Even after demobilization, he did not give up his work of translating foreign literature.

Boris Strugatsky, 1960s

7. Science fiction without a computer

According to the recollections of his family and friends, Arkady Strugatsky was very conservative in technology. Even when 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. Brotherly lot decided the fate of the storyline

I. Introduction.

1.What is science fiction?

2. Science fiction and the fantastic in world and Russian literature.

II. Main part.

1.Themes and problems of the Strugatskys’ works.

2. Critics about the Strugatskys.

3.Some biographical information.

4. Characteristics of the Strugatskys’ creativity:

a) “It’s hard to be a god”

b) “Roadside picnic.”

5.Language and style of the Strugatsky stories.

III. Conclusion.

VI. Bibliography.

I. Introduction

1. What is science fiction?

More and more science fiction books are being published. Science fiction rules the hearts and minds of millions of readers. Now there are two worlds: real and fantastic - with time machines, with robots, with superluminal speeds. So what is fantasy? According to the Strugatskys, science fiction is a literary reflection of the world, highly flavored with human imagination.

Science fiction is ancestral literature, primary literature. Myths, fairy tales, beliefs, legends - fantasy of the infancy of humanity. Of course, mythology - this cute hypothesis about the existence of supernatural forces - tried to comprehend only nature, and not social conflicts. But the glacier crawled, sweeping away everything in its path, but fire and floods devoured the first creations of human hands, but hordes of barbarians sowed death and destruction - and man began to understand: life is not submission to the will of the gods, but rather a struggle with them. Thus arose the need for utopia (the literal translation of this Greek word is “a place that does not exist anywhere”). Utopia is one of the forms of criticism of the present in the name of the future. This means that the utopian project of Phileas of Chalcedon, and Plato’s “Republic”, and Thomas More’s “Utopia”, and Campanella’s “City of the Sun” - all these works, being a free play of fantasy, expressed people’s dissatisfaction with existing relationships.

2. Science fiction and the fantastic in world and Russian literature.

Gogol, Balzac, Dostoevsky, Hoffmann... Mikhail Bulgakov... Bradbury. Jules Verne was the first to understand that the influence of technology was making itself felt in the world. He realized: The Earth is slowly but inevitably being populated by machines. And he himself helped this “reproduction” of machines, although until the end of his days he feared that his iron pets could even become the cause of regression of society over time. Jules Verne - singer of technology. People and their relationships among themselves interested him only as an illustration of technical ideas. Talented descriptions of subsequent technical discoveries are the essence of any of his novels.

Some foreign literary critics called science fiction writers “twilight prophets of humanity. Discarding the epithet “twilight”, we can say: science fiction is constantly bombarding the Earth with logical models of a possible future. But when we are talking not about technology, but about social prospects, any artistic forecasts are amateurish. They should be dealt with only by major scientists - historians, sociologists, futurologists, etc.

Paradoxically, science fiction has almost nothing to do with the future, although it prepares people for the time of iron miracles. Its main task is to translate the ideas of science into the language of mere mortals in artistic form. When you read “45˚ Fahrenheit,” you are truly horrified, but then you realize that Bradbury is writing about the present! About the horror and defenselessness of the modern humanist before the movement of science and technology in the hands of scoundrels.

II. Main part.

1. Themes and problems of the Strugatskys’ works

It would seem that look around and think. It would seem that the world is huge and open to mental analysis. But it is too huge, it is easy not to see the main thing in it - the key, sore points. The Strugatskys, with incomprehensible persistence, year after year, book after book, highlight the main problems for us. The first is raising children. Desperate question; What should we do to prevent our filth from being passed on to future generations? The future of humanity depends on this; it worries Christians, Muslims, and atheists equally; a learned teacher and an illiterate old man abandoned by his grandchildren. The Strugatskys first wrote about this thirty years ago and even - contrary to their own rules - proposed a project for a new school system, a different status for the teacher, and an intelligent and humane approach to the child.

Another topic, another universal disease that we have been literally shouting about in recent years: the relationship between man and living nature. The writers raised it when no one in our country had heard or thought about the impending environmental catastrophe and the majority did not yet know the word “ecology”. They were perhaps the first in world literature to depict a biological civilization, that is, a civilization fused with living nature. And they were certainly the first to write a warning novel, in which, without equivocation and with amazing courage, they accused the notorious command-administrative system of destroying nature: “...In two months we will turn everything there into... uh... into a concrete area , dry and smooth."

Another painful problem: the individual and society. The topic is colossal and eternal; it, in essence, covers all other human problems, from individual freedom to government. In each book, the Strugatskys, like professional photographers, capture new angles on this topic and have long since found their own. Almost no one looked at the world this way before them. This desire for consumerism is not, of course, in the form that is written about in newspaper feuilletons. We're not talking about furniture sets. Writers clearly separate people's natural craving for comfort from the dull expectation of a gift, from the conviction that comfort should appear like manna from heaven - they say, society is obliged to bestow it. They also touched upon this topic a quarter of a century ago, when they told us from high stands: listen to your superiors, sit quietly and with your mouths open, manna will fall on its own...

The Strugatskys call us to think diligently and constantly. Thought combined with kindness and benevolence is their key to any Pandora box, no matter what is hidden there. This is one of the secrets of the Strugatskys’ charm for the intelligent reader, but there is also some danger here: a lazy mind will not understand everything or will understand it backwards.

Victoria Chalikova’s definition fits their utopian pictures very accurately: “Utopia is hostile to totalitarianism because it thinks about the future as an alternative to the present.” This hostility was captured by right-wing critics loyal to the regime back in the sixties. One of them declared that the Strugatskys “... devalue the role of our ideas, the meaning of our struggle, everything that is dear to the people.” Hundreds of thousands of “simple” readers caught it and perceived it in their own way - they turned out to be not so simple, now many of them are desperately fighting for a new life... But there are readers and critics, even the most intelligent and “left” ones, who do nothing not understood. As if hypnotized by labels and stickers, they consider the Strugatskys to be almost Stalinists and attribute corresponding sins to them.

Extremes meet. Well, this is in the Russian tradition - like fierce debates about literature. It is inseparable from the life of our people, the artist’s word means a lot, they respond to it joyfully and angrily, honestly and slyly.

2. Critics about the Strugatskys.

Whatever they say about the writer’s work, it is always interesting and informative. Criticism recreates the atmosphere of the time objectively, despite sometimes biased assessments.

Here are a few excerpts from critical articles devoted to the work of the Strugatsky brothers.

“This work, called a fantastic story, is nothing more than a libel on our reality. The authors do not say in which country the action takes place, nor do they say what kind of formation the society they describe has. But throughout the entire structure of the narrative, from the events and reasoning that are in the story, it is clearly visible who they mean,” writes V. Aleksandrov in the newspaper “Pravda Buryatii” (May 19, 1968).

(V. Svininnikov. “The brilliance and poverty” of “philosophical” fiction” - “Journalist”, 1969, No. 9).

“In science fiction literature today, mass fiction predominates, which could be called rock fiction (see, for example: M. Dunaev, “Fatal Music,” “Our Contemporary,” 1988, No. 1 and 2). The main attention in rock fiction is paid to the entertaining nature of the plot, and the spiritual life of any stalker is indecently wretched and consists of doubts, confusion, forgetfulness of self-esteem and loss of the purpose of life.”

(A. Vozdvizhenskaya, “continuing the debate about fiction” - “Questions of Literature”, 1981, No. 8).

“I would like to hear the opinion of readers and critics about the story “Burdened with Evil,” as well as about the “communist” story “It’s Hard to Be a God,” in which there is not a single new idea, but there is a glorification of mass murder and bloody revenge.”

“The second story, “It’s Hard to Be a God,” like the first (“Distant Rainbow”), is more likely to disorient our youth than to help them understand the laws of social development. How much more humane and humane are we, citizens of today's socialist society, than the heroes created by the Strugatskys? We interfere in the course of history, we help peoples who are fighting for their freedom and national independence. And we will help as long as the revolutionary spirit lives in us.”

(Yu. Kotlyar. “Fiction and the Teenager” - “Young Communist”, 1964,

“For a quarter of a century I have been regularly re-reading this thing, and every time I am amazed at its strangeness. It had already been published, but not as a single whole, but in two halves: “Forest” and “Management”, and these halves were published literally in opposite ends of the country. Its subtitle reads “A Fantastic Tale,” yet this is one of the most intelligent and significant novels of the 20th century, and it is no more fantastic than “One Hundred Years of Solitude” or “The Master and Margarita.”

(A. Lebedev. “Realistic fiction and fantastic reality” - “New World”, 1968, No. 11).

“The Inhabited Island” resembles a well-made, professionally made movie. The plot is captivating. The reader is in suspense until the last page. The ending is unexpected. You can’t say about this story that the end is clear from the very beginning. And scene after scene is written as if you were watching them on a screen. Another advantage of the story is good humor.”

“A convincing example of this is the story “Roadside Picnic” by the Strugatsky brothers. The composition of the work allows us to get acquainted with only some individual episodes from the life of Redrick Shewhart - a stalker, a lawbreaker. And each of them adds another touch to the psychological portrait of the hero. A few episodes - and before us is the fate of a person, his ups and downs, the desire to defend his own place in the sun and an intense faith in goodness, not broken by any trials.”

(I. Bestuzhev-Lada. “This wonderful world...” - Literary Newspaper, 1969, September 3).

The Strugatskys strengthened the tradition of Russian literature. They are one of those “who, during the years of lawlessness... reminded their fellow citizens of the indestructibility of thought, conscience, and laughter” - this is what one not-so-kind critic said about them.

They pushed us to break with the Middle Ages and to leap into the future.

3. Some biographical information about the Sturgatskys.

There is an opinion that there is no need to report anything about the writer’s life: all the necessary information is contained in his work. Perhaps the reader should only know about the turning points in the writer’s life - those turns that cast a shadow on all the works created.

In the life of the Strugatsky brothers, such a turning point was the war, and especially the Hitler-Stalin atrocity, which is commonly called the Leningrad blockade. War and blockade are what shaped them. Now it’s hard to believe, half a century has passed, our cowardly memory has rejected the truth, which is difficult to bear even in the imagination, and it seems to us that others have also forgotten the past...

They were boys: Arkady was two months shy of his sixteenth birthday, Boris had just turned eight. They grew up calmly, evenly, in a quiet, intelligent family: mother was a teacher, father was an art critic. On Sunday afternoon, June 22, life collapsed. Arkady was sent to dig trenches near Leningrad, and he, along with other high school students, was covered by the wave of the German offensive. He left - fighting, shooting back... He returned home as an adult.

Then there was a blockade. The brothers carried it out and were saved, but the horror of what they experienced was so great that they remained silent about the blockade, did not put anything on paper, remained silent for thirty years - until the next turning point in their lives.

Just in 1972, when the seventh volume of the encyclopedia was published, a very difficult time had come for them, and the brothers wrote “The Doomed City”, not counting on publication, “on the table”, for themselves. There is a page and a half about the blockade: “In Leningrad there were no ripples, there was cold, terrible, fierce, and those freezing screamed in the icy entrances - quieter and quieter, for many hours...”

A compressed, cramped story, as if there was not enough air, with a constant refrain: “he was dying... he was also dying... he was also dying...” - the narration seems to come from the perspective of the youngest of the brothers. “I would definitely go crazy there. What saved me was that I was small. The little ones were simply dying...” And he also recalls: “Now my brother and father carried my grandmother’s body down the icy stairs and put it in a pile of corpses in the yard.” Then the father died, and it’s unclear how the mother and children survived...

In this way, life prepared them for literary work. And then, as if making a rule, she always led the brothers along the edge - she allowed them to survive, to jump out, but as if by a miracle. There were, of course, no miracles, there was a parental inheritance: health, and incredible performance, and talent.

In 1972, a collection of the Strugatskys’ works could already have been published, eighteen major works had already been written, and even translations, scripts... There was already great fame, the books were distributed all over the world. An article by Canadian literary critic Darko Suvin has just been published, where he called the Strugatskys “undoubted pioneers in Soviet science fiction.” But then they were “closed” - that was the expression. Of course, they didn’t close it overnight, they were allowed to frolic for seven or eight years, and then they began to turn the handle of the press, squeezing the best things of the Strugatskys out of the editorial plans. At the end of the sixties, “Snail on the Slope” and “Ugly Swans” were banned, and around 1971 - a complete “stop”, the lock clicked. Someone gave the command: Don’t print the Strugatskys! And then a miracle happened: not everyone stood up. Two magazines - "Aurora" in Leningrad and "Knowledge is Power" in Moscow - somehow made their way, proved something to someone and continued to publish the Strugatskys. Honor and praise to the editors, they took serious risks, but let us think: why did they take the risk? The charm of talent? Of course. You can do a lot for your favorite writers... But not only. It was in the early seventies that the Strugatskys' popularity reached its highest point. No, not like that: the highest level, at which it still remains. Clubs of Strugatsky lovers began to be created, samizdat began to work with all its might - books were photocopied, retyped on typewriters and computer printers, and copied by hand. Readers demanded the Strugatskys, and the name of these readers was legion: schoolchildren, students, engineering and scientific youth and scientists in general, and not humanists, whom the authorities had despised for centuries, but people important to the authorities, who invented nuclear weapons and calculated the trajectories of missiles and satellites. And the zone of silence did not close around the writers - with great reluctance, with delays and reservations, people from the authorities' offices allowed their works to be published.

It was a difficult decade: books are not published, but you need to live on something. Arkady Natanovich took up translations, Boris Natanovich worked part-time in Pulkovo. And, of course, they continued to write.

It is very difficult to talk about the Strugatskys: they are too complex a phenomenon in our culture. There is no coherent story coming out. For example, people often ask how they write together. There is even a legend that the brothers meet halfway between Moscow and Leningrad, at Bologoye station. In fact, they have developed a rather strict technology that is almost never violated. First, a thing is conceived - in its most general form - and a maturation process begins, which can last for years. Of course, the brothers think separately, each at home. At some point, they come together and make a complete outline of the future work: the general idea, plot, characters, breakdown into chapters, sometimes even key phrases. They work wherever it is most convenient: either in the Mother See, then in St. Petersburg, or in writers’ houses of creativity. Then, as a rule, they disperse and polish the outline one by one. At the next stage, they unsubscribe - this is a journalistic term. They write on a typewriter, using a carbon copy. One of the brothers types, the other dictates - alternately. They write almost completely and very quickly, for many hours. When they worked in one of the creative houses, fellow writers would creep up to their door and turn their heads in surprise: the machine rattled from morning to night non-stop, like a machine gun. After signing off, they each take a copy and then edit it at home. Usually the edits are minimal, but you still have to come together again to agree on it,

They are incredibly humble people. They categorically refuse to recognize their ability to write thoroughly and many pages a day as a gift from God and explain it as good craft training.

The dark seventies for the Strugatskys passed, and the invisible barbed wire with which they were surrounded began to break - the doors of the editorial offices opened, and in 1984 the writers were awarded the first collection book in the publishing house "Soviet Writer", in the "Favorites" category. This needs to be explained. In the barracks system of the Soviet literary world there was a rigid table of ranks and privileges. The publication of “The Chosen One” in “Soviet Writer” is a sign of recognition, like a medal, and the fee is increased.

But outside the narrow world of publishing, outside the important offices in which the fate of Soviet writers was decided, the works of the Strugatskys lived a life of their own. There were no downturns here. Readers stubbornly continued to worship their favorites, foreign publishers were happy to print their books. The Strugatskys were recognized as “the most famous tandem of world science fiction” - to date there are more than three hundred publications abroad. Here are the numbers: 18 works were published in 29 editions in the USA; Germany - also 18 works, 32 publications. The record was set by Czechoslovakia: 23 and 35, respectively.

4. Characteristics of the creativity of the Strugatsky brothers.

Incredible, but true - not a single serious article has yet been published about the Strugatsky brothers. That is, it cannot be said that there was a conspiracy of silence around their work. Their works were regularly mentioned and quickly discussed in reviews of current fiction; Some of them received magazine reviews; A sensible analysis of the work of the Strugatskys until the early 70s was given by A. Urban in the book “Fiction and Our World.” Let us also note that from time to time very interested judgments about writers appeared in periodicals, which, however, one cannot even call polemical - stricter definitions suggest themselves.

In general, the response of critics to almost thirty years of activity of the Strugatskys in literature looks discouragingly modest. But it is unnecessary to talk about the degree of popularity of these authors in the widest reader circles. Long queues line up for magazines where their stories are published and in libraries, and books disappear from store shelves in the blink of an eye.

So what's the deal? Perhaps, in the prevailing belief among critics that science fiction speaks of something distant, exotic, not connected with the pressing affairs and concerns of the current day? And if so, then it does not deserve a serious conversation between serious people, but should remain the property of high school students and individual eccentrics with an exaggerated imagination.

To refute this opinion, there is no need to disturb the shadows of the greats who actively turned to science fiction: Swift and Hoffmann, Wells and Capek, A. Tolstoy. The Strugatskys' prose can easily stand up for itself. And not only for myself, but also for the honor of the genre. It is not difficult to show that the Strugatskys always exposed their sails to the wind of time - both favorable and counter gusts - they were always at the epicenter of social passions and struggles.

The writers made their debut at the turn of the 50s - 60s. It was a time of social upsurge, fervent expectations and hopes, and enthusiasm. On the one hand, the decisions of the XX and XXII Party Congresses created a completely new spiritual atmosphere in the country. On the other hand, science has entered a new round of the evolutionary spiral: the first space flights, successes in harnessing atomic energy, stunning progress in electronics and computer technology. All this, taken together, gave rise at that time, especially among young people, a feeling of compression of spatial and temporal boundaries - the Universe became commensurate with man. It seemed that the planets, and then the stars, were just a stone's throw away, that a few more furious, daring efforts - and the depths of space would become accessible. At the same time, the future, which until recently appeared in an aura of fantasticality, has come closer and began to be seen as the result of today's works and achievements.

It was in this atmosphere, next to the works of Efremov, Kazantsev, Gore, that the first stories of the Strugatskys appeared: “The Country of Crimson Clouds”, “The Path to Amalthea”, “Noon, XXII Century. Return”, bearing clearly distinguishable marks of time. These books are filled with the pathos of pioneering, overcoming, and conquest. Their heroes - Bykov and Ermakov, Dauge and Yurkovsky - are true knights of space pioneering, brave, purposeful, ready to make sacrifices. As befits knights, they are clad in armor - the armor of their virtues, which makes them similar to each other, despite the conscientious attempts of the authors to individualize them. Only occasionally will a peculiar facial expression flash from under the visor - and then disappear. The commonality of the goal, the need to combine forces along one axis in order to achieve it, inevitably pushes psychological differences into the background and makes them insignificant.

In these early stories, everything is clear: the goals, the paths to them, the personalities of the heroes, the difficulties that await them. These difficulties are numerous and serious - even “simple.” To overcome them, only knowledge and courage, speed of reaction and readiness for self-sacrifice are required. O blessed, romantic times!

But only a few years pass - and the tonality of the Strugatskys’ works begins to change. Rejoicing over the victorious march of scientific and technological progress is being replaced by thoughtful, questioning intonations. The subject of artistic research is becoming more complex. In “The Trainees,” “An Attempt to Escape,” and “It’s Hard to Be a God,” the writers approach the theme of the vicissitudes of historical development and its dramatic dialectics. The conflicts of all these works have a common basis: the clash of representatives of a communist civilization, spiritually mature and highly humane, with socio-historical evil, with a reality to which the standards and criteria of humanism are inapplicable.

In “Trying...” they didn’t seem to set their sights on much. Once again they spoke about the medieval essence of fascism and warned that the dark passion for violence is tenacious, that it cannot be overcome at once - centuries and centuries must pass before reason and humanity triumph. They didn’t swing at it - they didn’t hint that Stalinism is no better than Hitlerism and cannot be defeated at once - by a thaw or a decision of the party congress. Don't you dare? I think they just moved in their own sequence, as their heart led. They hated fascism from childhood, and only learned to hate Stalinism. They wrote about old pain, about what still ached, like old fractures.

a) “It’s hard to be a god”

They wrote about Stalinism in “It’s Hard to Be a God.” The same formal device as in “An Attempt to Escape”: people from a happy communist future, delegates of a clean and joyful Earth, find themselves in a dirty and bloody Middle Ages. But here, under the guise of a medieval kingdom, the Stalinist empire was brought onto the stage. The chief torturer, the “Minister of Crown Protection,” is given a significant name: Reba; in the original his name was Rebiya, but the editors asked that the hint be made less obvious. Moreover, the Strugatskys built their empire as a hybrid one, stitched together from the realities of medieval and united, Stalin-Hitler, realities of our time. The result was an unthinkable triple move, revealing the consanguinity of two totalitarian regimes of the 20th century and their monstrous medieval essence.

However, it is not only because of this that the novel created the impression of an explosion - and even now it amazes everyone who reads it for the first time. This is a first-rate adventure piece, written in a lush, fun, inventive way. The medieval setting, all these sword fights, over the knee boots and lace cuffs served as a magic wand, magically acting on the audience and forcing them to continuously read a philosophical novel, multi-layered and not too easy to understand.

The action takes place in the distant future on one of the inhabited planets, the level of development of civilization, which corresponds to the earthly Middle Ages. This civilization is monitored by messengers from Earth - employees of the Institute of Experimental History. Their activities on the planet are limited by the scope of the problem posed - the Problem of Bloodless Impact. Meanwhile, terrible things are happening in the city of Arkanar and the Arkanar kingdom: gray stormtroopers catch and beat to death anyone who somehow stands out from the gray mass; An intelligent, educated, and finally, simply literate person can die at any moment at the hands of eternally drunk, stupid and evil soldiers in gray clothes. The court of the King of Arkanar, which until recently was one of the most enlightened in the Empire, is now empty. The new minister of the king's security, Don Reba (an inconspicuous official who recently emerged from the offices of the ministry, is now the most influential person in the kingdom) created monstrous devastation in the world of Arkanar culture: who, on charges of espionage, was imprisoned in a prison called the Merry Tower, and then, confessing to all atrocities, hanged in the square; who, morally broken, continues to live at court, writing poems glorifying the king. Some were saved from certain death and transported beyond Arkanar by a scout from Earth, Anton, who lives in Arkanar under the name of the noble Don Rumata of Estor, who is in the service of the royal guard.

In a small forest hut, popularly nicknamed the Drunken Den, Rumata and Don Condor, the General Judge and Keeper of the Great Seals of the trading republic Soan, and the earthling Alexander Vasilyevich, who is much older than Anton, meet, in addition, he has been living on the planet for many years and better orienting himself in the local environment, Anton excitedly explains to Alexander Vasilyevich that the situation in Arkanar goes beyond the basic theory developed by the Institute’s staff - some new, systematically operating factor has arisen; Anton does not have any constructive proposals, but he is simply scared: here we are not talking about theory, in Arkanar there is a typically fascist practice, when animals kill people every minute. In addition, Rumata is concerned about the disappearance after crossing the Irukan border of Doctor Budah, whom Rumata was going to transport outside the Empire; Rumata fears that he has been captured by gray soldiers. Don Condor also knows nothing about the fate of Dr. Budach. As for the general state of affairs in Arkanar, Don Condor advises Rumata to be patient and wait, without doing anything, to remember that they are just observers.

Returning home, Rumata finds Kira, the girl he loves, waiting for him. Kira's father is an assistant scribe in court, her brother is a sergeant in the stormtroopers. Kira is afraid to return home: her father brings papers spattered with blood from the Merry Tower for correspondence, and her brother comes home drunk and threatens to slaughter all the bookworms up to the twelfth generation. Rumata announces to the servants that Kira will live in his house as a housekeeper.

Rumata appears in the king's bedchamber and, taking advantage of the ancient privilege of the Rumata family - to personally shoe the right feet of the crowned heads of the Empire, announces to the king that the highly learned doctor Budakh, whom he, Rumata, discharged from Irukan specifically to treat the king who was sick with gout, was apparently captured by gray soldiers Don Reba. To Rumata’s amazement, Don Reba is clearly pleased with his words and promises to present Budach to the king today. At dinner, a hunched elderly man, whom the puzzled Rumata would never have mistaken for Doctor Budakh, known to him only from his writings, offers the king to drink medicine, which he immediately prepared. The king drinks the medicine, ordering Budakh to first drink from the cup himself.

That night the city is restless, everyone seems to be waiting for something. Leaving Kira in the care of armed servants, Don Rumata goes on night duty to the prince’s bedchamber. In the middle of the night, a half-dressed man, gray with horror, bursts into the guardhouse, in whom Don Rumata recognizes the minister of the court, shouting: “Budach poisoned the king! There's a riot in the city! Save the prince! But it’s too late - about fifteen stormtroopers burst into the room, Rumata tries to jump out of the window, however, struck by the blow of a spear, which, however, did not penetrate the metal-plastic shirt, he falls, the stormtroopers manage to throw a net over him, they beat him with boots, drag him past the prince’s door, Rumata sees a heap of bloody sheets on the bed and loses consciousness.

After some time, Rumata comes to his senses, he is taken to the chambers of Don Reba, and then Rumata finds out that the man who poisoned the king is not Budakh at all: the real Budakh is in the Merry Tower, but the false Budakh, who tried the royal medicine, in front of Rumata dies screaming: “They deceived me! It was poison! For what?" Then Rumata understands why Reba was so happy with his words in the morning: it was impossible to think of a better reason to slip the false Budakh to the king, and the king would never have accepted any food from the hands of his first minister. Don Reba, who carried out the coup, informs Rumata that he is the bishop and master of the Holy Order, which came to power that night. Reba is trying to find out from Rumata, whom he has been tirelessly watching for several years, who he is - the son of the devil or God, or a man from a powerful overseas country. But Rumata insists that he is a “simple noble don.” Don Reba does not believe him and himself admits that he is afraid of him.

Returning home, Rumata calms down Kira, frightened by the events of the night, and promises to take her far, far away from here. Suddenly there is a knock on the door - stormtroopers have arrived. Rumata grabs the sword, but Kira, who came to the window, falls, mortally wounded by arrows fired from a crossbow.

The distraught Rumata, realizing that the stormtroopers came on Reba’s orders, uses his sword to make his way into the palace, disregarding the theory of “bloodless influence.” A patrol airship drops bombs with sleeping gas on the city, fellow intelligence officers pick up Rumata-Anton and send him to Earth.

The hero of the novel "It's Hard to Be a God" Anton-Rumata is one of the observers of the Earth on a planet experiencing a period of domination of obscurantism and fanaticism. With all his being, he longs to support and save from death the still timid and vulnerable sprouts of spirituality, the desire for social justice, and intellectual independence. But here’s the question: is it permissible to deeply interfere from the outside in the current situation, in the natural course of events - even if it seems completely unnatural to Anton’s heart and mind? Shouldn’t each nation suffer its own history to the end, go through all its circles, without relying on the help of the “gods”, in order to achieve an organic form of self-realization?

At the center of the conflict is one of the cardinal questions of the existence of modern humanity, which in the year of publication did not seem so acute and relevant; the question of the possibility and moral acceptability of any acceleration of the natural historical process. The tragedy of individual choice is emphasized by the mental anguish of Ch. the hero is an employee of the Institute of Experimental History of Anton-Rumata, a scout sent with the task not to interfere, but only to observe, on a planet where medieval barbarism rules the roost, reminiscent in some features of both fascism and the religious despotism of the Inquisition, and, as far as it turned out to be possible to show in the middle 1960s, Stalinist totalitarianism. The discrepancy between noble utopian ideals and historical reality, in a broader context - the inevitable collapse of any social doctrines aimed at “improving” humanity - shown with artistic force in the story, marked the stage of the authors’ internal evolution.

These are the curious questions that are not at all devoid of social relevance that the Strugatskys ask in their novel. After all, attempts to skip over the stages of natural development of society are familiar to us not only from literature.

In 1965, the Strugatskys published the story “Monday Begins on Saturday,” which effortlessly connects folklore tradition with the ultra-modern realities of the age of scientific and technological revolution. And in this, at first glance, absolutely frivolous “fairy tale for junior researchers,” important and characteristic motives arise. The Scientific Research Institute of Witchcraft and Wizardry - NIICHAVO - appears in the story as a symbol of a modern scientific institution, and its employees - magicians - clearly represent the young intelligentsia, which entered life so actively and victoriously at the turn of the 60s. This intelligentsia carried with them the spirit of absolute devotion to work, irreverence for any authority other than the authority of accurate scientific truth, the spirit of selflessness, independence, and optimism. There was a lot of naivety that did not stand the test of time in the hopes and declarations of this generation. But is it possible to deny his sincerity, conviction, and moral maximalism?

In the Strugatskys' story, this socio-psychological phenomenon acquired the expressiveness and completeness of an artistic image, and acquired a bright “image”. The young heroes of “Monday” are in love with their work, professing a somewhat rigoristic cult of work, and most importantly, they are convinced that the substance of human happiness is created in their test tubes and flasks, in their oscilloscopes. This does not prevent them from being relaxed, witty, and cheerful. The mischievous and victorious spirit of youth plays in the story.

And right there, next to these cheerful devotees of science, the figure of Professor Vybegallo, a demagogue and an ignoramus, appears. Vybegallo, speaking in a mixture of French and Nizhny Novgorod, is busy building a working model of the “ideal” human individual - a consumer, all of whose cultural needs should grow on the basis of reliably satisfied material needs. There, in the corridors in the offices of NIICHAVO, various kinds of administrators and clerical workers flash, still sporadically, in every possible way annoying the scientist-magicians, putting a spoke in their wheels.

Following this story, the Strugatskys created several works in a row, in which pressing issues of the social life of that time were interpreted in a polemical manner. Here a kaleidoscope of grotesque situations and a round dance of satirical stories arises.

In “The Tale of the Troika,” Sasha Privalov and Edik Amperyan, familiar to us from “Monday,” find themselves face to face with the raging elements of demagogic bureaucracy, threatening to devour all living things around. In the fantastic city of Darkness, the Commission for Rationalization and Utilization of Unexplained Phenomena meets. The head of this commission - one would like to call him Glavnachpups - Lavr Fedotovich Vunyukov and his associates Khlebovvodov and Farfurkis embody the style of purely formal management, soulless and thoughtless, devoid of any living connection with the managed objects, any understanding of their essence. The Strugatskys accurately capture here the features of the type of responsible employee - the product of an era that had just passed away: and reinforcement of any of their absurdity with references to the authority of the people, in whose name this administrator alone speaks; and declaring everything beyond his ideas harmful and unnecessary; and identifying the interests of society with one's own. The bureaucratic machine, operating on the principle of bad automatism, fueled only by scolding quotes and slogans, creaks and rumbles in the story.

The story “Snail on the Slope” is written in a similar manner of harsh social satire, reaching the point of grotesquery. Before us, eerie in its senselessly seething activity, is the world of a certain Institute, whose employees are busy studying the mysterious and incomprehensible Forest. The exact subject of the research, as well as its purpose, is not clear to anyone, which gives rise to general confusion and confusion, bashfully covered by the appearance of strict, almost barracks discipline.

In all these works, the main target of the writers is an archaic, costly management style that is incompetent and undemocratic in its essence. But in the story “The Second Invasion of the Martians” the Strugatskys turn to the study of the type of consciousness that is largely generated by such deformations of social structures and mechanisms. The atmosphere of a provincial town is accurately recreated here, the inhabitants of which spend their days in gossip, gossip, discussing real incidents and fantastic rumors. The “anti-hero” of the story, retired high school teacher Apollo, is not an evil person and not even completely immoral. He is simply convinced that everything in his fate is determined by reasons beyond his control. Apollo served the government without question or doubt. But the situation has changed, something has happened - there are rumors either about a coup, or about the landing of Martians. The Strugatskys achieve a vivid comic effect, demonstrating the elasticity and mobility with which philistine common sense adapts to the most unimaginable circumstances. The idea of ​​​​the need to obey aliens, whom, moreover, no one has ever seen, without hindrance takes possession of the consciousness of the town’s residents, accustomed to unreasoning obedience. Moreover, almost nothing has changed in their daily existence, and the standard of living of the townspeople has even increased.

As for such matters as human dignity, conscience, freedom, historical and cultural values, for Apollo and others like him this is a luxury, a spiritual dessert that one can afford in prosperous times. But if these abstractions require a person to act with even minimal risk, they should be immediately discarded. Apollo and his fellow citizens are guided by this simple rule in the current situation. As we see, in the mid and late sixties, the Strugatskys in their works raised issues that were relevant for that time, but resonate especially loudly today - issues of democratization of public life, emancipation of the creative energy of the people. They fight against the most diverse manifestations of inertia and social routine. They take the “social integral” of conformism, egoism, irresponsibility, they consider these qualities “under the sign of eternity” and expose their incompatibility with the ideals of communism, with the generic interests of humanity. And it is no coincidence that the opponents of everything living, honest, and thinking dealt the Strugatskys several tangible blows at this time - not with a polemical sword, but with a club. In 1969, the story “The Second Invasion of the Martians” was subjected to widespread criticism in two periodicals: “Journalist” and “Ogonyok”. In Ivan Krasnobryzhy’s feuilleton “The Two-Faced Book” and Ivan Drozdov’s article “With the Most Biased Love,” the set of accusations, the method of substantiating them, and even individual formulations coincide.

Now, of course, there is no need to give detailed answers to such accusations. I mention them only to confirm my thought: the work of the Strugatsky brothers had a highly relevant meaning in those years.

However, it's time to stop here. The reader may get the impression that the Strugatskys limit their tasks to sharp fencing attacks aimed at the negative phenomena of our social life, only draped - for greater allegory - in fantastic robes. This is, of course, not true. Writers have always understood relevance much more broadly. The epigraph to the story “Predatory Things of the Century” is the words of Saint-Exupery; “There is only one problem - the only one in the world - to return spiritual content, spiritual concerns to people...” These words accurately express the direction and scale of the Strugatskys’ creative efforts. However, it is easy to say - to return the spiritual content. Here, alas, the best intentions, the most sublime instructions and sermons do not help. It is not without reason that the bitter question about the effectiveness of literature has recently been increasingly heard in discussions and debates.

It would be too bold to say that it is the Strugatskys who are better than others at coping with uplifting tasks. And yet, the constant readership in their books indicates that the writers’ efforts were not without success. What special means of influence did they call upon to help themselves? You can’t do this without taking a look at their creative laboratory. After all, the laboratory of “magicians” is an interesting place.

First of all, the Strugatskys encourage the reader to be surprised, interested, and shake off the inertia of perception - be it the perception of literature or life itself. And here a fantastic “chronotope” comes to their aid - a combination of circumstances of time and place of action. The cabin of a spaceship, exotic alien realities, the distant future of the Earth - all these integral accessories of the science fiction genre in themselves mobilize the reader's imagination. But the merit of the authors here is undoubted. They have the gift of especially expressive transmission of the atmosphere of the unusual. And they achieve this by no means in an “extensive” way, not by mechanically pumping up the fantastic, which is often found in trivial literature.

Let us remember the novel “Roadside Picnic.” The image of the Zone - the supposed place where aliens from outer space will visit the Earth - is created primarily by a visible description of amazing phenomena; encountered there at every step. But this image has such a strong effect on our imagination also because the Zone is located next to the provincial town of Harmont, the everyday features of which are recreated in a romance in a good realistic manner.

The second “stone” underlying the Strugatskys’ artistic world is a secret. Few of the recognized masters of the detective genre can compete with them in the art of mastering all the levers of mystery. An inexplicable event or situation, an information “failure,” a break in the chain of cause and effect are indispensable attributes of almost every work of writers since the mid-sixties. The Strugatskys are well aware of how deeply rooted in our souls the need for the mysterious is, and they generously satisfy it. However, for the Strugatskys, mystery is also one of the essential aspects of our existence, one of the dimensions of our world. It concentrates the unknown, the unknown, which is diffused in the surrounding life. In mature works of writers - such as Roadside Picnic. “A billion years before the end of the world”, “A beetle in an anthill” - the mysterious situation also turns out to be ethically significant. Here it is important not only to reveal the secret, but also to determine which line of behavior in conditions of uncertainty is the most worthy, meeting the criteria of humanistic morality.

The record for the “specific gravity” of the mysterious probably belongs to “The Beetle in the Anthill.” The mystery there is multi-contour, multi-layered. Gradually, removing one veil of the mysterious after another, we are getting closer to understanding the true meaning of the drama playing out on the pages of the story. At the center of this drama is the personality and fate of Lev Abalkin. Its plot moves in such a way that in the finale the last ring of the mystery remains unopened, the last question mark remains a thorn in the reader’s mind, prompting him to return again and again to the semantic collisions of the story.

One more thing. The main text of the story includes excerpts from a report written by Abalkin after participating in Operation Dead World.

The hero's adventures in a dilapidated, almost deserted city on a distant planet tease the reader's imagination with numerous and unresolved mysteries. The words of Tynyanov come to mind when he wrote that omitting chapters and other fragments of text is “a frequent technique of compositional play” aimed at semantic complication” and “strengthening the verbal dynamics” of the narrative. Since this word has been mentioned, let's talk about the game - another essential element of the Strugatskys' poetics. The game in their work is present in a variety of forms and guises, at different levels of narrative organization. First of all, the beginning of the game is embodied in the characters themselves, especially the young ones. Excess strength, joy of life, pleasure from doing what you love - all this translates into absolute relaxed behavior, into a constant readiness for a joke, a pun, a funny prank. The tragic story “An Attempt to Escape” begins, for example, with a scene of carefree fun; “The Most Structural Linguist” Vadim, before traveling to Pandora, actually walks on his head, fools around and sings songs of his own composition.

The same spirit of looseness, cheerfulness, and inventiveness is also inherent in the Strugatskys’ narrative style. A combination of elements taken from different cultural and historical layers, different semantic and stylistic series, often used by writers, is clearly of a playful nature. In “Snail on the Slope,” the consciousness of a twentieth-century man, a scientist, is confronted with the carefully constructed phantasmagoric reality of the Forest, where everything is unsteady, changeable, illogical, as in a dream (here involuntarily associations arise with Kafka’s bizarre visions).

The figurative system of the stories “Monday Begins on Saturday” and “The Tale of the Troika” is organized according to the principle of collage. Here, fairy-tale and mythological motifs, fantastic phenomena collide with the terms and concepts of the scientific and technological revolution era, with details of everyday life, sometimes realistic, sometimes satirically pointed.

Writers love to tease purists, guardians of purity and the hierarchical division of genres. Hence - masquerades, dressing up, reshaping stable genre patterns and stereotypes. In the novel “It's Hard to Be a God,” costumes, props, and the entire background of the action are borrowed from knightly and musketeer novels. “The Inhabited Island,” a novel of education, also filled with interesting and poignant reflections on the methods of social action, is dressed up in the clothes of an adventurous, “spy” narrative, filled with chases, fights, sudden changes in scenery, and so on. And how much intraliterary play there is in the Strugatskys’ works - graceful and mischievous! Writers do not hide their passion for good literature and do not miss the opportunity to intersperse “someone else’s word”, lines and phrases from their favorite authors into their text. Open and hidden quotes, reminiscences, sly references to sources enrich the narrative fabric with new semantic “capillaries” and activate the literary memory of readers.

One of the last publications of the Strugatskys, the story “Lame Fate,” is entirely built on the exposure of the technique, on the demonstration of “technology.” A number of unusual incidents happen to the main character, writer Felix Aleksandrovich Sorokin, each of which could be developed into a separate fantasy or adventure story. However, these tantalizing possibilities remain unrealized in the story. She herself ate a string of amusingly caustic episodes depicting relations in the writing community and the order in the Writers' Club, switching to the plane of serious reflections on the nature and psychology of creativity, on evaluation criteria, on the motives driving the writer in his work. And the shadow of Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov, appearing on the pages of the story, gives these reflections a special poignancy and ambiguity.

Well, all this is very good, another reader will exclaim, but what do spiritual interests and values ​​have to do with it? After all, any ordinary reading of fantastic or detective content is also seasoned with the salt of unusual circumstances and the pepper of mystery, and also draws the reader into the game according to certain rules. The activity of the Strugatskys’ artistic world, its “aggressiveness” in relation to the reader’s consciousness is subordinated to a clear goal - to liberate the energy of perception of this consciousness, to free it from the downward chains of empiricism, from idle contemplation. But the matter is not limited to this. The artistic structure of the Strugatskys’ prose expresses the author’s concept of existence, to which the writers strive to introduce us. Under the flowery covers of fantastic convention, the elastic matter of life, full of drama and internal tension, is clearly noticeable here. This life excites and attracts with its mystery and incompleteness; it poses its eternal challenge to a person, requiring him to strain all his essential forces in search of a worthy answer. The Strugatskys seem to be telling us: yes, life is complex, the Universe is immeasurable, nature is not disposed towards man, the path of socio-historical development is replete with painful contradictions, a successful outcome is not predetermined. But only by perceiving the intractability of the substance of existence, overcoming its resistance, do we gain the meaning of existence and affirm our human dignity. The Strugatskys infect us with their insatiable interest in the multi-faceted nature of life, in its unpredictability, in the immensity reflected in the pupil of the human eye. Their heroes - true heroes - live a life full of struggle, physical and moral effort, they experience the joy of action, the pain of loss, shame for mistakes, they acutely feel - and make us feel - the reality and necessity of their presence in the world. The alternative to this is a painful, routine existence of life or its fragmentation into fragments of individual acts, not connected together, not justified by a high goal. A similar mode of being is inherent in an “uneducated person,” as the Strugatskys call him, a bearer of social irresponsibility, conformism, and spiritual laziness.

In the story “Predatory Things of the Century,” a creative person and an “ill-mannered person” are called to a confrontation. Here the writers created an expressive and repulsive image of a society that abandoned daring and searching, from struggles, which sacrificed all this for the sake of well-being and comfort, for the sake of the opportunity to work a little and relax a lot, with taste. This is the dream of the average person come true, the triumph of the psychology of consumerism. And what? Residents of the city where the story takes place are poisoned by severe boredom and experience “unhappiness without desires.” The ineradicable - in spite of everything - longing of the human spirit begins to take shape in ugly forms: orgies, acts of vandalism, a meaningless game with death.

The hero of the story, Ivan Zhilin, sent to the city by the World Council with the task of understanding this mysterious scourge, is limited by plot conditions in discovering the creative possibilities of his nature. However, his entire personality, way of thinking and acting are in clear contrast with the pitiful existence of the “aboriginals”. Zilina combines complex work of thought, rich reflection - and the aspiration of this spiritual energy outward, beyond the boundaries of the individual, into the surrounding world.

b) “Roadside picnic.”

The “man-world” relationship is viewed from a different angle in the novel “Roadside Picnic.” Here, with merciless socio-psychological authenticity, the life story of stalker Red Shewhart, who makes a living by carrying all sorts of outlandish objects from the Zone, is presented. The semantic tension in the novel is created by the contrast between the grandeur of the very fact of aliens visiting the Earth and the play of petty passions, possessive instincts, and the thirst for “not missing out” that arises around it. And we see how the handsome and fearless guy Red is gradually pulled under the Ferris wheel of private interest, how it squeezes out the humanity from his nature.

Visit again! Aliens again! Another variation of one of the most favorite (which in decoding means one of the most annoying) plots of modern science fiction.

But it’s a strange thing: although the fact that some guests from outer space visited the Earth serves as the starting point of the plot of the new science fiction story by the Strugatsky brothers, there is no feeling that everything has already been read somewhere. Perhaps this is precisely why it does not arise that the Visitation is just a starting point, and not the content of the book.

So why did aliens come to our sinful planet this time, who, however, do not appear to readers and people in general, leaving only material traces of themselves at the places of their landing? (These places became known as Visitation Zones; the action of “Roadside Picnic” takes place near one of these Zones, in the non-existent city of Harmont.)

The story creates a certain model of “Western” society, which is faced with extraordinary circumstances and, to the best of its ability and also in accordance with its morals and philosophy, adapts to them. The model is quite closed; we hardly learn about the world that surrounds the fictional and non-fictional country.

Let's take a closer look at the main character of the story. Red Shewhart, Red Shewhart, is a man without definite occupations and a definite profession, in legal terms, although he has definite occupations and a definite profession. Red Shewhart is a stalker. “That’s what we call in Harmont desperate guys who, at their own peril and risk, penetrate the Zone and steal from there everything they manage to find. This is a real new profession,” explains the Kharmont radio correspondent.

The fact is that there are a lot of technical wonders in the Zone; for the time being, science is not able to get their hands on them, primarily because penetration into the Zone threatens to be fatal, and besides, the authorities, although unsuccessfully, are trying to protect it. And one more thing may await self-proclaimed researchers of interstellar civilizations - stalkers have children They are born differently from other people. Apparently, their bodies are subject to some undetected influence.

It is clear that such a high level of risk must be paid very highly. If you like, the phrase can be constructed the other way around: when in the “free” world there is an opportunity to make good money on something, then there is no such madness, such a risk, such a crime for which there would not be volunteers.

But who pays for these expensive toys, who provokes desperate guys like Red Shewhart? It's clear who. The same ones who are not satisfied with international control over the Zones. They don’t care much about the fact that something stolen by stalkers can disappear without a trace for humanity, for science; they don’t care about the fact that another unearthly object can turn into unexpected disasters for people. Buying stolen goods, they try to adapt the aliens' technology for their own evil purposes. Shewhart understands perfectly well who he works for. “Shewhart,” he turns to himself. “What are you doing, an infection?” You're carrion, they'll strangle us all with this thing...”

We feel sympathy for this guy, but it's a bitter sympathy. After all, Shewhart could be a great person - he is not only brave and smart, he is kind, he has a sense of justice, you can rely on him. He pulls his partner with broken legs out of the Zone, although he has no doubt: if he weren’t lucky, this same partner would have abandoned him without a second thought. He loves his wife and daughter very much. He is not greedy, and, as he himself says, he only needs money so as not to think about it.

In a word, there is a lot of good in Red, and it is not at all innate depravity that explains the path along which he goes to his last, cruel crime.

We cannot help but sympathize with Shewhart also because he constantly burns hatred for those successful types among whom he lives. He does not want to work for this society, he does not want to live honestly in this company.

And Shewhart’s fate was so unfortunate that even his meeting with the only person who was able to turn his life around could not save him. This man was the young Russian physicist Kirill Panov, who worked at the international institute for the study of traces of visitation, one of those enthusiasts and heroes of science of whom humanity can be proud. Red feels and understands that Kirill is from a completely different world, that only people like him they know why they live on earth and why, at mortal risk, they climb into this very Zone. But Kirill passed away too early, destroyed by the Zone, and Shewhart’s unstable soul could not withstand the test of this death. He became even more angry at the world and at himself, because he was partly to blame for the death of Kirill.

It took the death of another very good person, a death for which Shewhart was already completely to blame, for him to finally look into his soul, be horrified and renounce himself, or rather, the abomination that had accumulated in him for so many years.

But before moving on to the last chapter, the most important in the story, we need to take another look at the Zone around which the Harmont round dance revolves. What is this - a service scientific and technical idea or, perhaps, the image of the Zone carries a more serious load? It is clear that without a positive answer it was not worth asking this question.

Earthly science not only had no idea about most of the carelessly thrown remnants of the space picnic: scientists are not able to understand their structure, even if they were placed on a laboratory table. The stalkers gave all these concentrates of gravity, colloidal gases, magnetic traps figurative nicknames, which reflected their superstitious, almost pagan fear of the unknowable - “damn bald spot”, “witch’s jelly”, “explosive napkin”... At first glance, it really is the Zone seems to be something creepy, mysterious and actively hostile to humans. In fact, she, the Zone, is nothing - neither good nor bad. Like a nuclear reaction - it is also nothing in itself, And there is no blinding laser beam.

And here's the most important thing. It is known that some of the foreign ideologists of the scientific and technological revolution have too high hopes for it. All it takes, they say, is to curb cheap thermonuclear energy, it’s all it takes to transfer all control into the “hands” of infallible computers, it’s all it takes to introduce a “green revolution” in the fields everywhere - and this will automatically make the life of mankind easy and happy. And now people are presented with “gifts” from aliens, representing a degree of scientific and technological progress that no earthly scientist has ever dreamed of. And the point here is not only about individual miracles, as one of the heroes of the story says, what is most important is the very fact of the Visit, it has a cardinal ideological significance. So, did all this make people, at least the same Redrick Shewhart, at least a little happier? No, everything remains the same - the same wolfish relationships, evil squabbling for share and prey, the triumph of the strong and the bullying of the weak.

With each turn of the plot spiral, the Strugatskys make the image of the Zone more and more generalized, it takes on almost mythological outlines. As an extreme expression of hopes, disappointments, joys, sorrows, revelations of dreams of a better life, the Golden Ball appears in stalker legends, which supposedly fulfills any desires. But in order to express your request to him, you must overcome, in addition to many terrible obstacles, also a “meat grinder”, which - just like in an ancient fairy tale - requires the sacrifice of one person so that the second can pass.

And now Redrick Shewhart goes on his last route through the Zone. Why is he coming, what does this seasoned stalker, who has lost faith in everything, want to beg from the newly minted cosmic god? This time, not for profit. His goal is both sublime and selfish at the same time - to save his daughter. And for this, he takes with him a romantically inclined young man, who, of course, suspects nothing. Shewhart personally has nothing against the boy; on the contrary, along the way he begins to experience more and more friendly feelings for his fellow traveler, but he tramples human impulses into himself, he previously put the fate of his daughter on one side of the scale, and the life of Arthur on the other. And I chose. In addition, he has no doubt that Arthur is also going to the Golden Ball to ask it for something equally personal, most likely even much more selfish. But, taking his last fatal step, the young man manages to shout out his innermost desire, for the sake of which he went to his death: “Happiness for everyone!.. For free!.. As much happiness as you want!..”

These same words, coming face to face with the Golden Ball and as if fulfilling the last will of the deceased, will be spoken by the shocked, broken and too late revived Redrick Shewhart, a professional stalker, 31 years old, who at that moment had forgotten about both his daughter and himself.

But even in this insight, in this last impulse, Shewhart remains the son of the society that the ego formed. And the dead boy too. They have been taught for a long time to believe in various idols, and don’t their prayers remind them of primitive hunters who ask the stone idol for a successful hunt for the whole tribe? Perhaps, on a personal level, for this hunter this is a serious victory over selfish aspirations to seize everything for himself, but why, in fact, should people beg for happiness from good guys from outer space? This is how, it seems to me, the unexpected and dramatic final scene should be interpreted, but perhaps it would be easier for readers to understand what was planned if the authors somehow expressed their assessment of what was happening...

In “Picnic” the Strugatskys reached the level of the best pages of their prose. True, the nasty living dead don’t seem like such a find, and most importantly, some of the peculiarities of the heroes’ speech,

In essence, the authors of “Roadside Picnic” were in the difficult position of a translator who must convey to the Russian reader the peculiarities of the slang speech of some foreign gangsters, find the optimal option in which this vocabulary will be understandable to the Russian reader and at the same time will not lose its national and social identity. The Strugatskys, of course, do not translate anything; they create a completely definite image: the country in which Shewhart lives is conventional, but this conventionality also has its own certainty. And suddenly the hero of “Picnic” begins to express himself in the language of “our” dudes and “thieves”, which, of course, violates the integrity of this complex instructive character.

The Strugatskys know how to give abstract and abstract categories at first glance - the future of humanity, the fate of civilization, the moral independence of the individual - living flesh, transforming them into the life practice of their heroes. And the means of “conceptualizing” plot material in mature prose of writers is increasingly becoming a situation of choice. Of course, choice was always present in their works, but at first only on an auxiliary “everyday” level. A turning point in this sense was the story “The Snail on the Slope” (that part of it that was published in the collection of fiction “The Hellenic Secret” in 1966), where the situation of choice acquires psychological tangibility and determines the semantic perspective of the story.

So, Candide, an employee of the biological station, which monitors the mysterious Forest from the outside, as a result of an accident found himself in the Forest itself, among its inhabitants. A strange world opens up to his gaze: here plant and animal forms have increased biological activity, but people are lethargic, apathetic and, obviously, are on the verge of extinction. The forest is tightening its rings around their wretched villages.

Its representatives solved the problem of the continuation of the human race with the help of parthenogenesis, a method of same-sex reproduction found in nature. These women - the Mistresses of the Forest - learned to command different biological forms, put animals and insects, herbs and trees at their service. But one of the goals of their rational and dynamic civilization was to eliminate species that were “unpromising” from an evolutionary point of view from the path of progress, and to correct “nature’s mistakes.” They include the male part of the Forest population among these mistakes. That's why they are gradually attacking villages...

It would seem that it is easier for Candide to find a common language with the Mistresses of the Forest, whose mindset is much closer to his own than the primitive mental mechanisms of the inhabitants of the village that sheltered him. In addition, contact with them will give hope of returning to one’s own. But Candide, almost without hesitation, chooses the path of fighting on the side of his “compatriots,” who are almost certainly doomed. And not only out of gratitude to them for their salvation. Candide decides: he is not on the path with natural law, even with progress, if they have to be paid for at the cost of the death of intelligent beings, albeit weak and poorly adapted. The civilization of the Mistresses of the Forest may initially lack humanistic foundations, which are “not valid” here. But he, Candide, is a man, and must make his choice based on the system of human values ​​and norms.

In “Snail on the Slope” the Strugatskys of the seventies begin - if not chronologically, then essentially. The major notes in their voice noticeably decreased, their view of the world became more sober and tougher. Reality turned out to be not very receptive to the imperatives of reason and morality and revealed its “opacity” and inertia. Social evil demonstrated amazing vitality and capacity for mimicry. Moreover, it was precisely at this time that the insufficiency of the spiritual baggage with which the generation of “junior researchers”, the “storm and stress” generation, set out into life, began to clearly become apparent. Its moral foundations were too easily eroded by the waves of the sea of ​​everyday life; many of its representatives turned out to be too susceptible to entropic tendencies: reconciliation with circumstances, withdrawal into private life, submission to routine patterns of behavior. And the Strugatskys’ creativity responds in its own way to this change in the socio-psychological atmosphere. It is increasingly focused on the search for reliable ethical guidelines in a contradictory world where the laws of relativistic mechanics apply. The pathos of pioneering, the polemical fervor is replaced by the energy of persistent, unfussy reflection, and a tendency to model complex moral conflicts.

The works of the 70s are very different from each other: “Roadside Picnic” and “Baby”, “The Guy from the Underworld” and “A Billion Years Before the End of the World”. And yet there is an underlying semantic overlap between them. The heroes of all these stories are placed in conditions of acute internal conflict, competition of value systems, they are torn apart by conflicting motives and motivations. Choice appears here as an ordinary property of human nature, almost synonymous with rationality: you need to be reasonable in order to choose, you need to choose in order to be reasonable.

The theme of moral choice reaches maximum tension and at the same time crystal transparency in the story “A Billion Years Before the End of the World.” After the deceptively phantasmagoric and bravura tempo of the exposition and plot, a situation of experimental, laboratory purity arises. Its essence is as follows. Several scientists conducting research in various fields of science suddenly encounter opposition from some powerful force that prevents them from continuing their work. The Strugatskys deliberately bracket the nature of this force: either it is an extraterrestrial civilization, or Nature itself has rebelled against the human mind, which dares to penetrate the innermost structure of the universe. Something else is important. In Tvardovsky’s “Vasily Tyorkin,” the soldier is asked to determine his line of behavior when “a thousand German tanks are rushing toward him.” The characters in Malyanov's story, Weingarten, Gubar and Vecherovsky, find themselves in a similar position. The force opposing them is faceless and ruthless. And most importantly, in relations with her, everyone can rely only on themselves - no external authority, no government body will come to the rescue. Something must be sacrificed - either loyalty to one’s work, scientific and human duty, or well-being, health, and perhaps life itself, moreover, the safety of loved ones.

As we can see, the experimental conditions are set with excessive rigidity and are designed for multiple overloads. And the Strugatskys do not imagine their heroes as supergiants. Almost all of them give up one after another, finding one or another excuse for themselves. Only the mathematician Vecherovsky persists - his image is set as a hero - Much more interesting is the analysis of the state of the main character of the story, astronomer Malyanov. He, almost broken, cannot take the last step, cross the line...

The success of the Strugatskys was precisely the psychologically reliable transfer of the painfulness of this act of surrender, rejection of the best in themselves, from the core of their personality. How scary it becomes for Malyanov, who has looked into his future “on the other side,” how dreary and devalued life seems to him, in which he will cease to be himself. Therefore, Malyanov, sitting in Vecherovsky’s room, repeating words full of hopeless bitterness: “Since then, crooked, deaf, roundabout paths have been stretching before me.” He, who is tormented by indecision, is much worse off than the owner who has already made his choice...

It seems, however, that the Strugatskys do not feel too comfortable in the rarefied, transparent space of a pure parable with its rigid, somewhat formalized logic. In any case, in their next work - “The Beetle in the Anthill” - the writers again turn to a sharp and twisting plot, and complicate the topic of choice with numerous and multidirectional arguments, considerations for and against.

Professor Lev Abalkin, who was performing an important task on the planet Saraksh, suddenly and under mysterious circumstances returns to Earth. Security officer Maxim Kammerer is tasked with finding out his whereabouts. As the search progresses, Kammerer penetrates into the essence of the “Abalkin incident” and understands its true meaning. Abalkin is one of thirteen people whose birth was allegedly caused by the mysterious and powerful extraterrestrial civilization of the Wanderers. On one of the asteroids, an earthly expedition discovered a “sarcophagus” left by the Wanderers with thirteen human eggs. The fate of the unborn “foundlings” was discussed by a commission composed of the best minds on Earth. It was decided to give them life, but to place them under strict secret surveillance - after all, it is possible that the Wanderers will try to use them for purposes hostile to humanity.

Measures were taken to direct the fate of each of the “adopted” along a carefully thought-out course. And for a long time everything went well. But Abalkin began to do strange, unpredictable things. How to deal with him now? On one side of the scale is the fate of Lev Abalkin, his right to a decent, normal - by the standards of the society that raised him - life. On the other is the potential well-being of the entire earthly civilization.

The story shows the contours of life in a communist society of the 22nd century; the important thing is that the solution to the conflict is not predetermined, that the value of an individual human life turns out to be commensurate with the common good. Is it possible to better identify the measure of humanity of this society, the measure of its “disposition” towards the individual?

But writers are not content with this. Their intentions are least of all to create blissful pictures of the “golden age” awaiting our descendants. Quite the opposite: the Strugatskys want to show that problematic, dramatic inconsistency is inherent in life at any level of its social organization. Behind the specific “Abalkin incident” the contours of pressing and generally significant issues emerge. Is the implementation of all conceivable scientific ideas always beneficial to humanity? How to carry out the functions of control, and sometimes coercion (this is what the heroes of the story, COMCON employees Sikorsky and Kammerer do) in a stateless, self-governing social system? Finally, how can one combine in practice the interests of the social whole with the rights and freedoms of each individual? These questions, as we see, are no less relevant for us than for people of the distant future.

The ending of the story is tragic and unusual - even for the Strugatskys - “open”. The head of Sikorski's security service kills Abalkin. It remains unclear what guided Abalkin’s actions: the program of the Wanderers or the offended dignity of a person who feels that someone is trying to control his destiny from the outside. One can, perhaps, blame the authors for the fact that the dynamic “investigative” plot of the story and its complex internal theme turned out to be too far apart. In any case, “The Beetle in the Anthill” caused conflicting responses among the reading public and critics.

5. Language and style of the Strugatsky stories

Science fiction is a difficult genre. He demands from the author not only a rich imagination, but also the ability to make the reader believe in the incredible. At the same time, this genre is very exciting and very popular; The circle of readers of science fiction works cannot be determined by either social or age characteristics. For the author, this is a genre of great opportunities, but even greater demands. “Detective” authors and “science fiction” authors face the same danger: neither a dashingly twisted plot nor a frantic invention will help if the language is poor. After all, the language of fantastic works is subject to conditions specific to all fiction.

Of course, the richness of a language is not determined by the variety of existing and non-existent terms. On the contrary, an abundance of terminology is generally harmful to any work of art. The abuse of words that are incomprehensible, but marked with the stamp of “scientific” in some science fiction stories is parodied by A. and B. Strugatsky: “Another young man said his own: “I found how to use here indelible tires made of polystructural fiber with degenerate amine bonds and incomplete oxygen groups. But I don’t know yet how to use a regeneration reactor using subthermal neutrons. Misha, Mishok! What about the reactor? Having looked closely, I easily recognized the bicycle” (Monday starts on Saturday).

A. and B. Strugatsky themselves relatively rarely use words that require reference to a technical encyclopedia. But the authors of the social direction in science fiction (as opposed to the technical direction). The fantastic in their works usually depends on a temporary situation - the action is transferred to the future, and conflicts are created by the collision of people of different worldviews. In this sense, the Strugatsky stories are modern; Fantasy turns out not to be a literary artistic genre, but a technique that in some of its applications can be regarded as allegorical, Estonian. It is not for nothing that the authors themselves, in the preface to the story “Monday Begins on Saturday,” write: “a fairy tale, as you know, is a lie, but there is a hint in it.”

Afraid of being boring, the Strugatskys strive to make maximum use of such means of language that, in their opinion, reflect colloquial speech. Here, apparently, another goal is being pursued: to emphasize the reality of what is happening, to make what is described more reliable. True, you rarely hear such a speech in life; most often it sounds in the mouths of participants in some unsuccessful KVN programs - lively, abundantly equipped with witticisms, this speech quickly evokes not fun, but boredom: “Paul Rudak! - one of those hauling yelled. “Our luggage is heavy!” Where are your strong hands? - Oh, careless ones! - exclaimed Rudak. “My strong arms will carry my hind leg!” “Let me carry the back leg,” said Zhenya. “I tore it off, I’ll carry it” (Noon, 22nd century. Return). The phrase “I tore it off, I will carry it” is based on the model of Taras Bulba’s remark, which became popular, “I gave birth to you, I will kill you.”

A modification of the stable phrase is often used in the language of the feuilleton, but its excessive use in fiction - unless a satirical goal is pursued, and such a goal was not set for the authors of "Midday" - is not justified. The attraction to this technique can be confirmed by another example from the named work: “Wanderer, are there any new jokes? “Yes,” said Paul. - Only the unwitty ones. - We ourselves are not witty... - Let him tell. Tell me a joke and I’ll tell you who you are.” The phrase “Tell me a joke and I’ll tell you who you are” clearly echoes the saying “Tell me who your friends are and I’ll tell you who you are.” ».

But modifications to sustainable turnover are not always carried out for the sake of a catchphrase. They carry an undoubted ideological load and serve as one of the active means of creating an image. Sometimes the following happens here: a combination that was widely used in a certain period (in the press, radio language, etc., that is, in the sphere that is usually called the sphere of mass communication) is pronounced by a negative character and is a kind of demagogic device in his speech . But behind this combination there is also a certain content, and the reader quite clearly gets the idea that this combination is only demagoguery, and nothing more, and that it was used by people like Vibegalla (one of the characters in the story “Monday Begins on Saturday”), about in which the authors write: “He was a cynic and he was a fool.” Let's give an example: “... Of course, Comrade Junta, as a former foreigner and church worker, is allowed to make mistakes at times, but you, Comrade Oira-Oira, and you, Fyodor Simeonovich, you are ordinary Russian people! - And S-stop the d-demagoguery! - Fyodor Simeonovich finally exploded. “How are you ashamed to talk such nonsense?” What kind of a simple person am I to you? These are simple d-takes for us!.. “I can only say one thing,” said Cristobal Josevich indifferently. “I am a simple former Grand Inquisitor, and I will close access to our autoclave until I receive guarantees that the experiment will be carried out.” at the training ground" (Monday starts on Saturday).

Playing on an adjective simple migrated to the story “Trainees”: “ - Well, what are you talking about! - Yurkovski said complacently. - I'm just... uh... a simple scientist... - You were a simple scientist! Now you are, excuse the expression, a simple inspector general.”

The image of a character is created not only by speech characteristics. Going beyond the scope of direct linguistic analysis, let us dwell in some more detail on the image of Vibegalla. We must pay tribute to the Strugatskys: the character is depicted very colorfully. Professor Vybegallo is a swindler in science. But Vybegalla’s demagoguery is associated with such details as reading popular lectures and contacts with the press. Whether the authors want it or not, it turns out that both lecturing and publishing popular articles on scientific issues are determined by one thing - the desire to gain cheap laurels.

A. and B. Strugatsky are deeply mistaken when they write (in the same “Monday”); “The fact is that the most interesting and elegant scientific results often tend to seem abstruse and drearily incomprehensible to the uninitiated.” But the property of genuine scientific discoveries is precisely that they can be presented in a variety of forms, even those that are accessible to the “uninitiated.” An imaginary discovery, on the contrary, requires only a scientific presentation, since a description in ordinary literary language has shown its inconsistency. A one-sided assessment of individual phenomena of social life leads to the very demagoguery that the Strugatskys seem to be trying to expose.

The Strugatsky characters joke in a variety of situations and circumstances. Even when a dangerous and responsible experiment is being carried out, the hero is not left with a sense of dubious humor: “You could hear someone shouting in a loud, cheerful voice: “Sixth!” Sashka! Where are you going, crazy? Have pity on your children! Move a hundred kilometers away, because it’s dangerous there! Third! Third! It was told to you in Russian! Stay in the pack with me! Sixth, don’t grumble at your boss! The bosses showed concern, but he’s already bored!..” (Trainees). But it becomes “boring” not only for the “sixth”, but also for the reader when he gets acquainted with other statements and orders of Kostya’s boss: “Don’t tell me that you didn’t understand! - Kostya shouted. - Otherwise I will be disappointed in you. The blue-eyed man swam up to him (this is happening in zero gravity) and began to whisper something. Kostya listened and plugged his ear with a shiny ball. - May this make him feel better. – he said and shouted loudly: “Observers, listen to me, I’m in command again!” Everyone is standing well now, like the Cossacks in Repin’s painting! Just don’t touch the controls anymore!..”, etc.

It is in the mouth of the dashing Kostya that a neologism is put, created on the model of Odessa jargon: “..I will tell you everything briefly and clearly, as to a beloved girl: these recited some kackers from our dear MUKS they are complaining about something.” So that the word does not somehow pass by the reader’s attention, the authors return to it again at the end of the chapter: “Here they are, people, Yura! – (this is already said by Yurkovsky, “Thunderer” and “Zeves”, as one of the characters in the story “Trainees” characterizes him) – Real people! Workers. Clean. And none some kackers they will not be disturbed."

Wit is usually the lot of positive characters. But in general they are expressed in literary language. Only at a moment of particularly strong excitement will a positive hero risk saying “fool”, and in the most extreme case, “bastard”. But a positive hero can maintain a conversation in a tone that is, to put it mildly, very playful. At the same time, A. and B. Strugatsky use this technique: a character is introduced who participates in some separate scene, a separate episode - neither before nor after this character appears in the work in any way, and has not the slightest connection to the plot line . His task is to give remarks to the hero and provoke him to make such statements that in no way enhance the artistic merits of the work. Finding himself in an ambiguous position, the hero, with all his undoubted high qualities, while maintaining a conversation, completely remains at the “appropriate level.”

The story “Predatory Things of the Century” conveys a conversation between the main character Ivan Zhilin and a certain Ilina: “She flicked the lighter and lit a cigarette... - What are you doing here? - Waiting for Rimayer. - No. What brought you to us? Are you saving yourself from your wife? “I’m not married,” I said modestly. “I came to write a book.” - A book? Well, this Rimayer’s acquaintances... He came to write a book. The problem of gender among impotent athletes. How are you dealing with the gender problem? “It’s not a problem for me,” I said modestly. And for you?". Here, semi-decent statements take the form of literary vocabulary, but in the speech of negative characters there are words and phrases that are obviously alien to the literary language: “The golden youth returned to the bar, and soon the usual was heard from there: “I'm tired... We have boring things here. Martians? Nonsense, baldness... What should we chop off, eagles? (Second invasion of the Martians).

If there is some monotony in terms of witticisms in the works of the Strugatskys, then in terms of swearing the authors are more inventive. Again, the characters who swear are negative or with a backward worldview: “Break off the horns of these stinkers,” he thundered. “Give this shit some soot and polish the bastards’ brains” (The Second Invasion of the Martians); “Shameless nits,” he growled, “pr-r-prostitutes... pig dogs... For living people! Stinking hyenas, filthy rubbish... Educated bastards, bastards...” (Predatory things of the century. Let us explain what the word slagachi (slegach) It fully corresponds to all the main selected vocabulary in the above passage and is the most terrible curse in the country described and indicated in the story).

Of course, swearing in a work of fiction is allowed not only for negative characters, but also for positive ones. And joke too. But every technique in fiction must be assessed both from the point of view of functional justification (how smart it is in the speech of a given character, under given circumstances), and from the point of view of “proportionality and consistency” in the entire structure of the work. A writer cannot justify himself by saying that “that’s what they say in life.” Colloquial speech is only the material from which the author creates dialogues and monologues.

Criticism has repeatedly pointed out the Strugatskys' innovation in the genre of science fiction. As for language, this innovation consists not so much in the creation of new techniques of artistic representation, but in the assimilation of techniques that already existed in Soviet fiction. In many texts and contexts of their stories, one can discern both the style of L.N. Tolstoy (especially syntax), and the style of I. Ilf and E. Petrov (in the almost literal use of some combinations with a certain expressive-emotional coloring, compare: “absolutely not on something to sit with taste" at I. Ilf and I . Petrov - “there is absolutely nothing to look at with taste” by A. and B. Strugatsky), and the style of A. Schwartz (in particular, the speech characterization of the stupid Arkanar king in the story “It’s Hard to Be a God” is very close to the replicas of the “naked king” in the play by L Schwartz "The Naked King").

Many stories by A. and B. Strugatsky are characterized by a sharp plot and flexibility of style; they also have successful images. But the popularity of the genre obliges the science fiction writer to do a lot: his work is judged by the language, and by the content, and by the ideas contained in the work.

III. Conclusion

Well, polemics, disputes, and the frank expression of differing opinions have recently become commonplace phenomena in our life, not only literary, but also social. And isn’t this the merit of the Strugatsky brothers, whose books have always inspired us that thinking is not the right, but the duty of a person? And even at today’s difficult and promising stage of our development, the work of the Strugatskys remains highly relevant. After all, their books, among other things, are excellent “trainers” of thought, social imagination, and a sense of the new. They remind us again and again of the “inevitability of a strange world” and help us prepare for meetings with the future, which comes with every new day.

Bibliography

Essays

1.Collected cit.: In 12 vols. M., 1991-93; Where should we go?: Sat. journalism. Volgograd, 1991;

2. The Strugatskys about themselves, literature and the world: Collections for 1959-66, 1967-75, 1976-81, 1982-84. Omsk, 1991-94;

3. Strugatsky B. Sore point: Useless notes//3star. 1993, no. 4;

4. Attempt to escape. Baby. The waves extinguish the wind: Pov. Stalker: Lit. film recording M., 1997.

Literature

5. Chernaya N. Through the future about the present // Friendship of Peoples. 1963, No. 4;

6.Revich V. Artist. “soul” and scientific “reflexes” // Young Guard. 1965, No. 4;

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9. Britikov A. F. Rus. owls science fiction novel. L., 1970;

10. Shchek A. V. About the originality of the Strugatskys’ science fiction. Samarkand, 1972;

11. Urban A. A. Science fiction and our world. L., 1972;

12. R e vich V. Late epiphany of Red Shewhart / Book Review. 1976, no. 6;

13.Serbinenko V. Three centuries of wanderings in the world of utopia/New World. 1989, no. 5;

14. Amusin M. In the mirrors of the future Lit. review. 1989, no. 6;

15. Snegirev F. [Kazakov V. Yu.] Time of teachers // Sov. bibliography. 1990, no. 1;

17.K a j t o s h W. Bracia Strugacky: Zarys tworczosci. Krakow. Universitas, 1993.

18. V. Svinnikov “The brilliance and poverty” of “philosophical” fiction // Journalist 1969, No. 9.

19. A. Vozdvizhensky “Continuing the debate about science fiction” // Questions of literature, 1981, No. 8.

21. Yu. Kotlyar “Fiction and the Teenager” // Young Communist, 1964, No. 6.

How they worked, what they foresaw, what they didn’t like, how they treated religion and why the most famous science fiction writers in Russia didn’t make women the main characters.

Boris Strugatsky survived his older brother Arkady by 21 years, but during this time he published only two of his own novels - all the main works were created by the brothers together. Of all the Russian science fiction writers, the Strugatskys are the most famous and recognizable - just as among all the writers who co-authored. The books of the Strugatsky brothers shaped the worldview of more than one generation of residents of first the USSR and then Russia, and their work was especially popular among Soviet dissidents. Forbes selected 15 interesting facts from the life and work of Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. Boris Strugatsky spoke about many of them himself in his ongoing offline interview on the official website: over 14 years, he managed to give 7,583 answers to readers’ questions.

Arkady and Boris Strugatsky are the only Russian writers whose novels in their homeland are designated by readers by abbreviations

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” - supposedly, with the help of such a simple code, fans of science fiction writers avoided possible troubles with the official authorities. According to another, this is due to the fact that after the appearance of their first works, readers shortened the names of writers to ABS for convenience, and then transferred this principle to the names of novels.

“Land of Crimson Clouds” - SBT

“Attempt to escape” - PkB

“Distant Rainbow” - DR

"It's hard to be a god" - TBB

“Monday begins on Saturday” - PNS

“Predatory things of the century” - ХВВ

“Snail on the Slope” – US

"Ugly Swans" - GL

“The Second Invasion of the Martians” - VNM

"Inhabited Island" - NGO

“Doomed City” - GO

“A billion years before the end of the world” - zMLdKS

“A Tale of Friendship and Unfriendship” - PoDiN

“The Beetle in the Anthill” - ZhvM

“Lame Fate” - HS

“Waves extinguish the wind” - VGV

“Burdened 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 descriptions with many fantastic technical details, and thereby guessed the subsequent appearance of many real inventions. For example, Robert Heinlein “predicted” the air hand dryer, and Ray Bradbury predicted the “smart” home. In contrast, the Strugatsky brothers used a different creative method, which is why their works are classified as “social fiction.” Nevertheless, some works describe technical devices and social phenomena that later appeared in reality. In particular, the Great World Information Center, the Delivery Line and the Null Connection, repeatedly mentioned in the novels, turned out to be an actual prediction of the emergence of the Internet and Wikipedia. The most rich novel with fulfilled predictions is “Predatory Things of the Century” (1965), which describes “fishermen” (extreme athletes), “sleg” (strong synthetic drugs), and “droshka” (rave discos). The novel “Ugly Swans” actually predicted the emergence of a generation of “indigo children,” and the novel “Burden with Evil” predicted 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 announcing the discovery of a bacterium called Candidatus Desulforudis audaxviator (“brave voyager to the center of the Earth,” pictured) that feeds energy from the decay of radioactive uranium. In the novel “The Country of Crimson Clouds” (1959) there is the following episode:

“Yurkovski mutters:

- Listen, Alexey... In case I still don’t get there... About the riddle of Takhmasib, about the Red Ring... I think... I’m sure... These are bacteria. Colonies of bacteria. But not our bacteria. Another life... non-protein life. They live off radiation. They absorb radioactive radiation and live off their energy... Do you hear, Bykov?

Yes, yes, he hears. “Bacteria and radiation...” But this is of no use. We need water, not bacteria.

“They gather around the place where the atomic explosion is about to occur,” Yurkovski continues. - They gather in a ring... Red ring... and wait. The “boy” ended up in such a place. And there's an explosion underneath. Underground atomic explosion. And they sense where the explosion should be, gather and wait... The decay products are very active... they feast on... Do you hear? I'm almost sure..."

Photo by RIA Novosti

The Strugatsky brothers guessed the pair Karpov - Kasparov a year before Kasparov was born

The novel “Noon, XXII Century” (1962) mentions the “Kasparo-Karpov method” - a system of hard coding of biological code onto crystalline quasi-biomass (in fact, a technology for transferring personality to another medium). There were still 22 years left before the famous chess match for the world title between Anatoly Karpov and Garry Kasparov began. Anatoly Karpov was eleven years old at the time, and Garry Kasparov was born a year after the novel was published.

The Strugatsky brothers did not like some of their works

“The Tale of Friendship and Unfriendship” is one of two or three of our stories that “we might not have written.” Written under the pressure of circumstances that have nothing to do with the creative process. We ourselves didn’t like it - just like “Country” (“Country of Crimson Clouds”), “Guy” (“Guy from the Underworld”) and “Kid”.

Photo: 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 fans of the work of the Strugatsky brothers and the writers themselves is referred to as such - with capital letters) is a reality described in most detail in the novel “Predatory Things of the Century”. During the publication of the work and for a long time after, it was perceived as the antithesis of the World of Noon - 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 satisfying immediate 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 wretched, conservatively homeostatic, morally unpromising, it is ready to repeat itself again and again - but! But he retains freedom, and above all, freedom of creative activity. This means, at least, scientific and technological progress still has a chance to develop, and then, you see, the need for an Educated Person will eventually arise, and this is already hope for moral progress... In any case, from all the really possible worlds that I can imagine, the World of Consumption is the most human. It has a human face, if you like, unlike any totalitarian, authoritarian or aggressively clerical world.”

“... The most likely future of humanity is the Consumer Society, described in “Predatory Things of the Century” and now observed with the “simple eye” on the territory of a third of modern states. The course towards such a Society apparently coincides with that very “resultant of millions of wills” that determines the course of history and is governed by the Law of Freebies - the desire of the human individual to obtain maximum benefits at the cost of a minimum of effort.”

Photo by ITAR-TASS

The Strugatsky brothers did not call the future world they created communist

The world in which many of the Strugatsky brothers' early novels and works of the middle period take place is the utopian World of Noon, in which most researchers and readers saw an idealized communist future. This idealization, which over time transformed into the 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 forming a Well-Educated Person, 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 the Bright Future, and now it’s just a matter of small things: learn 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 Well-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 Skillful, Consuming Man.”

“I read Lenin and admired Stalin, but my communist worldview was shaped, 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 real political events of the 50s and 60s.”

The total circulation of the Strugatsky brothers' works exceeds 40 million copies

In addition to Russian publications, their books have gone through more than 620 editions in 42 languages ​​in 33 countries.

In the novel “Lame Fate” - one of the few that directly touches on 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 the main character - writer Felix Alexandrovich - hears such a question from the lips of an unnamed scientist , which allows for the possibility of publishing his main novel, written “on the table”, in a huge edition: “...My machine will reward you with a six-digit, or even seven-digit number, as if you really are declaring to the world some kind of New Apocalypse, which will automatically break through to the reader through everything and all sorts of obstacles."

Boris Strugatsky (from an offline interview on the official website):

“90 thousand is the standard (at that time) circulation of an adventure or fantasy novel, as well as a production novel, but approved by the authorities. 100 thousand or more is a rarity; one could get one only for special merits: this meant a quadruple fee (as opposed to 90 thousand with their double fee).”

In the works of the Strugatsky brothers there are practically no main characters - women

The overwhelming majority of the main characters in almost all of the Strugatskys’ novels, novels and stories are men. Women, even if they appear on the pages of works, turn out to be much less prominently depicted: for example, Rada Gaal in “Inhabited Island”, Red Shewhart’s wife in “Roadside Picnic” (in the photo - Alisa Freundlich as the stalker’s wife 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 didn’t know how and, in my opinion, we were even afraid to write about women and about women. Why? Don't know. Perhaps because they professed an ancient principle: women and men are creatures of different breeds. It seemed to us that we knew and understood men (men themselves), but none of us would dare to say that he knew and understood women. And children, for that matter! After all, children are, of course, the third special type of intelligent beings living on Earth.”

Despite the fact that official Soviet bodies (primarily ideological) and censorship often regarded works dedicated to the World of Noon or associated with it as slanderous, and among dissidents the work of the Strugatsky brothers was especially popular, 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 disavow the publication of the work in the West, publishing a letter on the pages of Literaturnaya Gazeta.

Boris Strugatsky (from an offline interview on the official website):

“They (the works of the Strugatsky brothers) are permeated with rejection of totalitarianism and bureaucracy.” But since the USSR represented a true triumph of totalitarianism and bureaucracy, our stories such as “Snail on the Slope,” “The Tale of Troika,” and even “Inhabited Island” were perceived by especially zealous ideologists of the regime as “anti-Soviet.”

Photo: 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 “Hard to Be a God”, “Baby”, “Inhabited Island”, “Roadside Picnic”, “Hotel “At the Dead Climber”. At the same time, the authors themselves considered the presence of extraterrestrial intelligence as a fantastic idea.

Boris Strugatsky (from an offline interview on the official website):

“I don’t believe in the existence of “another 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, Reason) to exist in it in a single copy, then our Earth, on the contrary, is too small for such a huge, an almost dimensionless, incredibly active thing like Intelligence could exist here, remaining unnoticed.”

“And I almost agree with Hawking (who claims that the human mind is alone in the Universe). And I agree even more with Joseph Shklovsky - this is our wonderful astrophysicist, back in the late 1960s he spoke out in the sense that other intelligence 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 edition of the collection of science fiction works “The Time of Students,” in which the works of the literary association’s participants were published.

Boris Strugatsky (from an offline interview on the official website):

“The only Leningrad LITO with which I had any dealings was our seminar of young science fiction writers in the section of science fiction and scientific fiction literature. It was created in 1972 at the suggestion of the then chairman of the section, Evgeniy Pavlovich Brandis, and was initially headed by our wonderful science fiction writer Ilya Iosifovich Varshavsky... Over 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 Weller. Andrey Lazarchuk and Sergey Pereslegin. Sergei Berezhnoy and Nikolai Yutanov. Nikolai Romanetsky and Anton Pervushin..."

The Bible is often quoted in the works of the Strugatsky brothers, although they themselves were never 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 to classify their authors as secret believers. In particular, a common interpretation of the image of Maxim Kammerer in the novel “The Inhabited Island” was to compare his story with the story of Christ, who appeared in the world to atone for its sins with 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, a painfully beautiful intrigue, a striking hero. Quoting this text, or retelling it, or freely referring to it, or integrating it into our some new plot 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, was understandable and close. A curious situation. In some ways, it’s 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):

“While there was no typewriter, we wrote by hand. Without any pleasure. And then, years later, when for some reason the draft got stuck, they used this technique. Someone would take a pen and a piece of paper and start scribbling a “rough” draft. For some reason it worked better and faster with a pen, now I wonder why.”

Photo by Photoxpress

The Strugatsky Brothers Literary Prize is awarded on their “average birthday”

International Literary Prize named after. A. and B. Strugatsky was established in 1998 and has been awarded since 1999 in two categories: “For the best work 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 category "Fiction", twice - the writers Mikhail Uspensky and Vyacheslav Rybakov (both from the Leningrad LITO, headed by Boris Strugatsky). The most titled winner of the award in the “Criticism and Journalism” category is the writer Kir Bulychev - he received the award twice.

Boris Strugatsky (from an offline interview on the official website):

“June 21 is the “average birthday (between August 28 and April 15),” a date that, of course, is not “official,” but according to tradition, it is on this day that the annual literary prize named after. A. and B. Strugatsky."

The names of the Strugatsky brothers are Arkady and Boris. Born on August 28, 1925 and April 15, 1933, respectively. The brothers are Russian and Soviet writers who have also dabbled as screenwriters and co-authors with other writers. The Strugatskys are considered classics of modern social science fiction in the world of literature.

Family

The brothers' parents are Nathan Strugatsky and Alexandra Litvincheva, an art critic and teacher. The name of the father of the Strugatsky brothers speaks of his Jewish origin. Alexandra married against the wishes of her parents: because of her marriage to a Jew, her relations with her relatives were severed. The father of the Strugatsky brothers served as a commissar of a cavalry brigade during the Civil War, and later as a political worker for the Soviet commander Frunze. After demobilization, he became a party functionary in Ukraine. There he met his future wife. In January 1942, the commander of a people's militia company and an employee of the Saltykov-Shchedrin Public Library died tragically, while his wife died in old age, shortly after receiving the title of Honored Teacher of the Russian Federation and Knight of the Order of the Badge of Honor.

First attempts

The Strugatsky brothers began creating their first fantasy worlds even before the war. More precisely, Arkady was the first to try the pen. According to Boris, it was a prose work, “The Find of Major Kovalev,” which, unfortunately, was lost during the siege of Leningrad. Arkady's first story that has survived to this day was “How Kang Died.” In the 50s, he continued his writing attempts, and soon the story “The Fourth Kingdom” appeared. Arkady Natanovich's first real publication was the story “Bikini Ashes,” which he co-authored with Lev Petrov while serving in the army. Its author dedicated it to the sad events during the hydrogen bomb tests on Bikini Atoll.

Boris began trying to write in the early 50s. The brothers did not lose contact and shared ideas for works in written correspondence and in personal meetings during Arkady's holidays from military service.

First collaboration

The first common creation of the two Strugatsky brothers was the science fiction story “From the Outside,” which they later reworked into a story. This story was published by the publication “Technology for Youth” in 1958.

In 1959, the brothers published their first book, “The Land of Crimson Clouds.” According to rumors, this work was created as a bet with Arkady’s wife, Elena Ilyinichna. By 1957, a draft of the work was prepared, but the editors delayed publication for a long time. Other works connected with this work by common characters are “The Path to Amltea”, “Trainees” and stories from the debut joint collection of the Strugatsky brothers “Six Matches”. Thus began a long series about the fantastic world of the future, which was called the World of Noon. According to the authors, they themselves would like to live in this universe.

For many decades, the Strugatsky brothers were the best authors of Soviet literary fiction. Their multifaceted creations reflected the gradual development of the writing skills and worldview of the authors. Each work written by the brothers initiated new debates and lengthy discussions. More than once critics compared the world of the Strugatskys with the fantastic world of the future by Ivan Efremov, which he described in his famous work “The Andromeda Nebula”.

Heyday

The brothers' first works corresponded to all the frameworks of socialist realism, but at the same time they retained their unique characteristics: their heroes were not “sketchy” - they were endowed with individual traits and character, and at the same time remained humanists, intellectuals and brave researchers pursuing ideas for the development of the world and scientific and technological progress. In addition, their heroes are distinguished by their individual language - this simple but expressive technique made the heroes alive and close to the reader. Such characters very well coincided with the “thaw” period in the USSR, thereby reflecting desperate hope for a better future and technological progress in science, as well as for a warming in inter-political relations.

A particularly significant book at that time was the story by the Strugatsky brothers “Noon, XXII Century,” which successfully depicted an optimistic prospect for the future of the human race, in which enlightened and happy people, intelligent and brave space explorers, creative individuals inspired by life live.

But already in “Distant Rainbow” tense motives begin to sound: a disaster on a distant planet, which occurred as a result of scientists’ experiments, raised the question of the moral choice of a person in a difficult situation. It is a choice between two bad outcomes, one of which is worse than the other. In the same work, the Strugatsky brothers raise another problem: how will those who cannot think creatively live in the World of Noon?

The characters in the story “An Attempt to Escape” had to confront their own past and think about whether it was possible to get rid of the “Paleolithic in the mind,” and then the authors puzzled the workers of the Institute of Experimental History with this problem in the work “It’s Hard to Be a God.” The brothers also touch on pressing issues of our time, painting a grotesque picture of a futuristic consumer society in the story “Predatory Things of the Century.” This work became the first dystopia within a utopia in Russian literature, which became very specific to Soviet literature.

In the 60s, the brothers wrote other extraordinary works. For example, the work of the Strugatsky brothers, “Monday Begins on Saturday,” sparkling with good-natured but topical humor, was so liked by readers that they soon wrote a sequel, which they called “The Tale of Troika,” where humor had already given way to direct satire. This work turned out to be so scandalous that soon the Angara almanac, where “The Tale” was published, ceased publication, and the story itself was inaccessible to readers for a long time. The same fate awaited the story “Snail on the Slope,” in which the action takes place in the Forest and in the Forestry Administration: the whole situation described in the book was very reminiscent of the bureaucratic situation in the Administration. Soviet criticism did not discern much more important thoughts about the impending progress, which sweeps away everything that prevents it from rushing even faster.

The Second Martian Invasion: Notes of a Sane Man is also a satirical work that was not well received by critics. Even the names of the characters, borrowed from the heroes of Greek legends, could not veil the allusion to the current situation. The authors raise a serious question about the honor and personal dignity of man and all humanity. A similar theme is heard in the story “Hotel “At the Dead Climber”: is a person ready to meet an alien race? The same work became an experiment by the Strugatsky brothers in mixing a science fiction novel and a detective story.

Summarizing

With the beginning of the 70s, the Strugatskys returned to the Noon universe and invent “Inhabited Island”, “The Guy from the Underworld” and “The Kid”. Soviet censorship closely monitored the brothers' work. In preparation for printing The Inhabited Island, they had to make more than 900 edits before the work was published in 1991. In the 70s, the brothers practically did not publish books.

The famous story by the Strugatsky brothers “Roadside Picnic” was published in a magazine, after which it did not appear in book publications for 8 years. The story voiced the theme of the Zone - the territory where, after the Visitation of Aliens, mysterious events began to happen, and stalkers - brave men who secretly climb into this Zone. It was developed in Andrei Tarkovsky’s film “Stalker,” which was filmed in 1979 based on the script by the Strugatskys. Only after the Chernobyl disaster actually happened, history was reflected in the game S.T.A.L.K.E.R., as well as in numerous works based on it. Only in 1980 did the Strugatsky brothers include “Roadside Picnic” in the collection “Unassigned Meetings,” but in an abbreviated format. The strict censorship of that time did not allow young authors to breathe freely.

The main theme of the Strugatsky brothers' work was the problem of choice. It was this that became the foundation for the story “A Billion Years Before the End of the World,” where the characters faced a difficult choice between a peaceful life, abandoning their own principles and beliefs, and the threat of death while trying to preserve their identity. At the same time, the brothers wrote the novel “The Doomed City”, where the authors attempt to create a dynamic model of consciousness typical of wide sections of society, as well as to trace its fate against the backdrop of changing social realities, exploring its changes. The heroes of this novel, like the heroes of the novel “Lame Fate,” are endowed with autobiographical details.

Peak of creative thought

The brothers return to the World of Noon in the novels “The Beetle in the Anthill,” “The Aelita Prize,” and “The Waves Quench the Wind.” These works brought the final line under the utopian theme in the Strugatskys’ works. In their opinion, technological progress is not able to bring happiness to a person if he cannot abandon his animal nature, burdened with anger and aggression. It is education that can turn a monkey into a real Man with a capital “H” - a reasonable and intellectual result of human development, according to the Strugatsky brothers. The theme of self-growth and personal development is heard in the novel “Burdened with Evil, or Forty Years Later.”

The last common work of the Strugatskys was the play “The Jews of the City of St. Petersburg, or Sad Conversations About Candlelight,” which became a kind of warning to the overly zealous optimistic hopes of people of recent times.

Separate works

Arkady, in parallel with his general work, also wrote independently under the pseudonym S. Yaroslavtsev. Among such works are the story “Details of the life of Nikita Vorontsov”, the burlesque fairy tale “Expedition to the Underworld”, the story “The Devil Among Men”. In every work of Arkady, the theme of the impossibility of changing the world for the better is heard.

After Arkady's death in 1991, Boris continued his literary work. He takes the pseudonym S. Vititsky and publishes the novels “The Powerless of This World” and “The Search for Destiny, or the Twenty-Seventh Theorem of Ethics.” With these books, he continues to explore the phenomena of the future and explores ideas of influence on the surrounding reality.

Other activities

In addition to writing books, the Strugatsky brothers also tried their hand at screenplays. Several films were made based on their works and with their editing.

The brothers also translated from English novels by Hal Clement, as well as Andre Norton and John Wyndham. For translation activities they took the pseudonyms S. Pobedin, S. Berezhkov, S. Vitin. In addition, Arkady Strugatsky translated the stories of Akutagawa Ryunosuke from Japanese, as well as Noma Hiroshi, Kobo Abe, Sanyutei Ente and Natsume Soseki. The medieval novel “The Tale of Yoshitsune” was also not spared from translation.

Boris did not lag behind his brother, also being vigorously active: for the complete collection of their joint works, he prepared extensive “Comments on the Past,” which were later published as a separate book. A video interview was even published on the Strugatskys’ official website in which Boris answers more than 7,000 questions from readers and critics. The brothers were open to dialogue with their reader.

• Fans often use the abbreviation “ABS”, which denotes the names of Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. It is used not only in oral references to brothers, but even in printed publications.
• At Sotskon in 1989, a banknote called “Two Strugatskys” was issued. Shortly before the death of Arkady, “One Strugl” was presented at Volgakon.
• In St. Petersburg in 2014, a square in the Moskovsky district was given the name of the Strugatsky Brothers.
• There are no graves of the Strugatskys, because according to the will, their ashes after cremation were ordered to be scattered over precisely indicated places: Arkady wished for his ashes to be scattered over the Ryazan highway, and Boris wished to remain over the Pulkovo Observatory.
• In 2015, enthusiasts planned to create a museum in the brothers’ St. Petersburg apartment, but discussions on this matter with the authorities of the Moskovsky district are still ongoing.
• The Strugatsky brothers are the only Russian writers whose works are called by abbreviations: for example, “The Land of Crimson Clouds” - SBT.
• The expression “no brainer” became known precisely thanks to the Strugatskys, although its creator was V. Mayakovsky. The expression became widespread after the story “The Country of Crimson Clouds”, and later - in Soviet boarding schools, in which children were recruited into classes A, B, C, D, D - those who study for two years, and E, G, I - those to whom one.

This is what a short biography of the Strugatsky brothers looks like. The brothers' contribution to the fantastic literature of the Soviet Union and Russia is immeasurable: they devoted almost all their free time to creativity and reflection. Each of their works is imbued with subtle thought and deep research not only on technological innovations, but also on the emotional vicissitudes of man.