Boris and his mother, Aleksandra Litvinchova, remained in Leningrad, while Arkady and their father, Natan Strugatsky, headed east, toward Vologda, where Natan died. Arkady and Boris, who were 16 and 8 respectively, and the family made some drastic measures to ensure their safety. On September 8, 1941, the Siege of Leningrad began as the German military moved in on the city. In a few short years, however, the family would be torn apart as World War II erupted throughout Europe and the Soviet Union. Boris Strugatsky was born on April 15, 1933.

Petersburg) on the Baltic Sea, where, eight years later, they welcomed another member of their family. The family eventually moved from the balmy shores of the Black Sea to the frigid north of Leningrad (now St. The best known science fiction authors from the USSR are a pair of brothers: Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, who enjoyed an enormous amount of popularity in Russia and beyond her borders.Īrkady Strugatsky was born on August 28, 1925, in Batumi, Georgia.

Throughout the Cold War, a number of other authors were putting words to paper across Europe, and especially in the Soviet Union. Looking at his career is an excellent starting point for examining how science fiction existed outside of the North American and British marketplaces. Le Guin is the author of A Wizard of Earthsea, The Left Hand of Darkness, and other science-fiction classics.Last column, we looked at the life of Polish author Stanislaw Lem, who's best known for his novel Solaris. Their books have been widely translated and have been made into a number of films. And the news he gets from his girlfriend upon his return makes it inevitable that he’ll keep going back to the Zone, again and again, until he finds the answer to all his problems.Īrkady and Boris Strugatsky are the most famous and popular Russian writers of science fiction, and the authors of over 25 novels and novellas.

But when he and his friend Kirill go into the Zone together to pick up a “full empty,” something goes wrong. His life is dominated by the place and the thriving black market in the alien products. Red Schuhart is a stalker, one of those young rebels who are compelled, in spite of extreme danger, to venture illegally into the Zone to collect the mysterious artifacts that the alien visitors left scattered around. Le Guin and a new afterword by Boris Strugatsky explaining the strange history of the novel’s publication in Russia. This authoritative new translation corrects many errors and omissions and has been supplemented with a foreword by Ursula K. First published in 1972, Roadside Picnic is still widely regarded as one of the greatest science fiction novels, despite the fact that it has been out of print in the United States for almost thirty years.

Roadside picnic by arkady strugatsky