El mundo de «Ciudad condenada» es un mundo sobrenatural al que son transportados los protagonistas tras su muerte para formar parte de un enigmático Experimento: en él, todos hablan una lengua común que cada uno identifica como propia. «El Experimento es el Experimento», el leitmotiv que se repite a lo largo de la novela. El escenario está inspirado en la ciudad de un lóbrego cuadro de Nicholas Roerich cuya topografía es completamente fantástica: una pequeña franja de tierra habitable, limitada al oeste por un abismo por el que los objetos que caen vuelven a aparecer tras un tiempo: al este, un muro inaccesible en cuya base aparecen esporádicamente restos humanos destrozados: al sur, extensas marismas cuyos habitantes ganan lo justo para vivir una vida bañada en alcohol: y en el norte, páramos y ciudades en ruinas donde, más allá, se supone que se encuentra la Anticiudad. El sol se enciende y se apaga a voluntad. Además, existe un Edificio Rojo que aparece en diferentes lugares, que es descrito por diversos testigos pero que siempre se desvanece antes de que las autoridades puedan investigarlo: la gente que cruza su umbral desaparece

In its first-ever unexpurgated edition, a sci-fi landmark that’s a comic and suspenseful tour-de-force, and puts distraction in a whole new light: It’s not you, it’s the universe! Certain he is on the verge of a major scientific discovery, astrophysicist Dmitri Malyanov is happy that his wife has gone out of town so he can work home alone on the project he’s sure will win him the Nobel Prize. But then a beautiful woman shows up at his door, claiming to be an old friend of his wife’s and saying she needs a place to stay. Then someone delivers a crate of vodka and caviar. Then his neighbor comes over and wants to tell him a personal secret. Then several of his friends—also scientists—show up, too. Their problem? They all felt they were on the verge of a major discovery when… they got distracted… Is there some ominous force that doesn’t want scientific knowledge to progress? Or could it be something more… natural? In one of their most important works, offered here for the first time in an uncensored edition, the legendary Strugatsky brothers bravely and brilliantly question authority. It’s a book that’s not so much brilliant science fiction, as it is simply brilliant literature

This 1963 masterpiece is widely considered one of the best novels of the greatest Russian writers of science fiction. Yet until now the only English version (unavailable for over thirty years) was based on a German translation, and was full of errors, infelicities, and misunderstandings. Now, in a new translation by Olena Bormashenko, whose translation of the authors’ Roadside Picnic has received widespread acclaim, here is the definitive edition of this brilliant work. It tells the story of Don Rumata, who is sent from Earth to the medieval kingdom of Arkanar with instructions to observe and to save what he can. Masquerading as an arrogant nobleman, a dueler and a brawler, Don Rumata is never defeated, but can never kill. With his doubt and compassion, and his deep love for a local girl named Kira, Rumata wants to save the kingdom from the machinations of Don Reba, the first minister to the king. But given his orders, what role can he play? Hard to Be a God has inspired a role-playing video game and two movies, including Aleksei German’s long-awaited swan song. This long overdue translation will reintroduce one of the most profound Soviet-era novels to an eager audience. Arkady and Boris Strugatsky were famous and popular Russian writers of science fiction, with more than 25 novels and novellas to their names. Hari Kunzru is the author of highly praised novels including Gods Without Men and The Impressionist. Olena Bormashenko is the acclaimed translator of the Strugatskys’ Roadside Picnic

The 22nd Century. Mankind is free from the age-old misery and poverty that have kept it in bondage, free to create a new world, to explore the universe, to confront the mysteries of human existence. Russia’s greatest S-F writers, Arkday and Boris Strugatsky, have produced a futuristic masterpiece of epic proportions and breathtaking vision. Two interplanetary adventurers hurtle through space at a speed faster than light, and are flung a hundred years into the 22nd century. They find themselves on a planet both like and unlike the earth they abandoned so very long ago—and so recently. It is a planet ruled by wisdom, where automated farms feed tens million inhabitants, where a complete system of moving roads brings the farthest outposts into close communion, where an advanced science in mechanization approaches the mysterious complexity of life itself. Here all effort is bound to the exhilarating art if discovery—way below the planet’s waters, deep into the endless reaches of space and far beyond the boundless zones of the human mind

Cunoscut şi apreciat mai ales datorită fascinantei ecranizări a regizorului Andrei Tarkovski — Călăuza —, acest roman le-a adus fraţilor Strugaţki celebritatea mondială. Cartea, apărută cu mari dificultăţi în fosta Uniune Sovietică, este o alegorie politică cu conotaţii filosofice şi etice, scrisă în cheie science-fiction, care depăşeşte cu mult modelul scrierilor de anticipaţie sau al distopiilor sociografice. Prin consistenţa sa narativă şi inteligenţa notării detaliilor semnificative, prin atmosfera sa metafizico-fantastică şi stilul bogat şi fluent, cartea fraţilor Strugaţki e o operă epică în adevăratul sens al cuvântului

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

La novela de madurez más sugerente de los maestros de la ciencia ficción rusa. Un vívido retrato del totalitarismo y la alienación del individuo en manos del poder. La ciudad se extiende en una franja limitada al este con un muro que cubre el horizonte y al oeste con un abismo insondable. Nadie sabe desde cuándo existe y sus habitantes, procedentes de distintas épocas y culturas, han resucitado en ella después de morir. Al sur se hallan los cultivos que la alimentan y al norte los yermos que, según cuentan, ocultan la anticiudad. Rica y cargada de simbolismo, Ciudad maldita no pudo ver la luz hasta la llegada de la perestroika. En esta obra, los hermanos Strugatski reflexionan sobre la aplicación de los experimentos sociales sobre el individuo, a la par que satirizan la estructura misma del sistema impuesto, que abarca desde la burocracia anquilosada a la paranoia intervencionista y policial, tal como denunció Orwell en 1984

A satirical science fiction novel that criticises both Soviet bureaucracy and somewhat the Soviet scientific environment. Although the novel itself is not directed against state per se and a number of points underlined are true of modern day bureaucracy and science, it met with a cold reaction during Soviet times and was quite difficult to obtain, therefore achieving a “forbidden fruit” status

When Inspector Peter Glebsky arrives at a remote ski chalet, he intends to ski, drink brandy, and loaf around in blissful solitude. But the chalet’s other vacationers—a famous hypnotist, a physicist with a penchant for gymnastic feats, and a large handful of others—are a nuisance, and so is the avalanche that soon cuts the inn off from civilization. And then there’s the dead body, which may not even be human… In this genre-bending novel, the Strugatskys gleefully upend the plot of many a Hercule Poirot mystery, and the result is much funnier, and much stranger, than anything ever written by Agatha Christie. “If Russian sci-fi can be said to have a soul, it resides with the Brothers Strugatsky… Delightful, and a must-read for a new generation of sci-fi fans everywhere.” “This is the Strugatskys at their best, at once silly and dead serious… It’s a ripping good yarn, which translator Josh Billings has rendered with great energy and wit.” “Does for science-fiction/detective hybridization what *Hard to Be a God* has done for sci-fi/fantasy.”

Arkady and Boris Strugatsky are widely considered the greatest of Russian science fiction masters, and their most famous work, Roadside Picnic, has enjoyed great popularity worldwide. Yet the novel that was their own favorite, and that readers worldwide have acclaimed as their magnum opus, has never before been published in English. The Doomed City was so politically risky that the Strugatsky brothers kept its existence a complete secret even from their best friends for sixteen years after its completion in 1972. It was only published in Russia in the late 1980s, the last of their works to see publication. It was translated into a host of major European languages, and now appears in English in a major new translation by acclaimed translator Andrew Bromfield. The Doomed City is set in an experimental city bordered by an abyss on one side and an impossibly high wall on the other. Its sole inhabitants are people who were plucked from Earth’s history and left to govern themselves under conditions established by Mentors whose purpose seems inscrutable. Andrei Voronin, a young astronomer plucked from Leningrad in the 1950s, is a diehard believer in the Experiment, even though he’s now a garbage collector. And as increasingly nightmarish scenarios begin to affect the city, he rises through the political hierarchy, with devastating effect