The Strugatsky brothers were often asked: “How do you write together?” Not only did they live in different cities, but they were also brothers, and each had more than enough ambition. Indeed, there were contradictions, but there was no quarrel. The secret is simple - the brothers initially came up with a scheme for how to “resolve” conflicts if the plots of one work by Arkady and Boris, so to speak, do not converge. They just cast lots. Whoever won is the truth.
Mikhail Weller about who the famous brothers were for a huge country:
Oh, and they were healthy guys! One hundred and ninety-two height and shoulders in size sixty. Rumor claimed that Arkady's norm was one and a half liters of cognac. After this, he could talk gracefully and sensibly about literature.
At one of the literary meetings in the Komarovo art house, when Arkady Strugatsky was speaking, a group of people smoking behind open doors suddenly muttered:
Let's be quiet, guys. Until Arkady drove into the snout. He can do it.
Arkady Natanovich Strugatsky was born in Leningrad in 1925. Boris - in 1933. Eight years difference is a natural reason for a younger brother, cared for by an older one in his boyhood, to be formed under his influence. And later, when the situation becomes equal with age, the way of thinking and the whole worldview turns out to be common.
At the same time, Arkady was a Japanese philologist, referent-translator and served in uniform for more than one year - on the easternmost borders. Let us note that elements of Japanese flavor, details and terms, rituals and weapons entered Russian literature in recent decades precisely with its light - heavy? - hands. Boris, on the contrary, is a stellar astronomer by profession and worked most of his life at the Pulkovo Observatory. Arkady was long-haired, mustachioed, husky and cool. What was set off by Boris’s slyly wise smile, friendly manners, sparse hair and protruding ears.
They dressed like ordinary Soviet engineers. These flannel shirts, these nylon jackets, these rabbit earflaps and worn trousers... Nothing from the celestial beings, from the sparkle of the stars. And apartments according to Khrushchev’s small-sized standards in residential areas. The Zaporozhets car will adequately complete the portrait of a genius in the interior. High style. To be, not to seem. A genius does not need paraphernalia and affectation. And it is not determined by the assessment of official authorities or their mirror image - the professional crowd.
Arkady and Boris Strugatsky on the balcony of A. Strugatsky’s Moscow apartment. 1980s In the already distant 1966, young people, who would now be called “advanced,” read three authors and were proud of them: Bradbury, Lem, Strugatsky. “It's Hard to Be a God,” a book unsurpassed in its purity and grace of ironic-romantic style, made them famous. “Monday begins on Saturday” turned the Strugatskys into the idols of countless research institutes and design bureaus, students and laboratory assistants. “Snail on the Slope” attracted aesthetic snobs and sophisticated intellectuals.
“The common intelligentsia” is how the Strugatskys’ main reader would have been defined a hundred years earlier. The cream of the middle class, the brains and conscience of the country. Those who are in opposition to the authorities, while believing in goodness and in their own strength.
What’s amazing is that generations change, time flows, but the Strugatskys find readers in every maturing generation, and stay with it, and do not disappear from the shelves.
And the artistic component is strong. Poetic beginning. The steel core of the plot, which they repeated so much about to their students. Transparent tongue, like pure crystal. Lively characters, savory phrases - and calm wisdom without arrogance.
“And then? When will you defeat your enemies? And establish a fair regime? What will you do then? Sweet to eat? - Yes! Then we will eat sweetly, and drink, and have fun, and enjoy life freely! We damn well deserve it! - That's it. And then what? - Sorry? I don't understand you, sir. What else?”
This dialogue was addressed to us - forty years later, stuck in this politically correct and civilized world - dying out without a goal and an idea. And don't say you weren't warned!
How do they work together? It was affirmed by a few initiates: one sits at a typewriter and taps on the keys, sometimes accompanying the appearance of the text by reading aloud. The second is lying on the sofa, or drinking coffee in an armchair, or walking around with a cigarette. Sometimes he inserts his own phrase or paragraph, continuing the thought and scene of the co-author. After a few pages or an hour and a half, they change places. The style, intonation, course of action are the same for both. The Strugatskys always avoided direct answers about the technology of co-authorship. They only said that they had previously discussed and agreed on everything over the phone for a long time: Arkady lived in Moscow, Boris lived in his native Leningrad.
Even under Soviet rule, their fan clubs arose in different cities and played their books. None of the other Soviet writers could boast of this.
Any of their books begins as a game. An easy convention, an entertaining fairy tale. Time passes, and you discover that that light fairy-tale world remains in you and has acquired rigidity: this is ours, the real world in one of its deepest essences, discovered by the Artist’s talent.
Not a single other Soviet writer of this era introduced a new word into the Russian language. Have you heard the word “stalker”? “Roadside Picnic” has become a fixture.
Not a single modern Soviet writer has been translated so much. Hundreds of publications in all civilized and less civilized languages of the world: the exact number was difficult to count (there were reasons for this). They could be rich - but the VAAP (All-Union Copyright Agency) of the USSR took 97 percent (!) of royalties to the state.
They did not exist for official criticism. Some envied their brilliance and glory, others believed that “real literature” was in the form of exclusively “critical realism” in defiance of “socialist” realism. For a piece of the government pie, writers ate each other alive, and the disgusting, mocking Strugatskys stayed away from the “literary process.”
There were never any other people's opinions or government enticements between them and their readers. And the readers included half of the entire young intelligentsia of the country. The half whose forehead was higher and whose eyes had smaller blinders. Then the young intelligentsia became middle-aged, and a new generation of mature schoolchildren was added to the readers.
Their language gave pleasure, the plot was addictive, and their thoughts made you think. Students, engineers and doctors, lawyers and journalists - the layer from which the elite is formed in normal countries - exchanged phrases of the Strugatskys like a password.
The Strugatskys never wrote science fiction (in the popular sense). The Strugatskys wrote harsh and piercing dystopias. They were the only ones in the dense and impenetrable Soviet empire who managed to be free among all writers.
Dystopia was a forbidden genre: no freethinking, the party itself will indicate and predict everything necessary! But... “fantasy”, youth, light genre, Jules Verne, you know...
...And the Strugatskys were always loved for their inflexibility, for their tough and active optimism. Their heroes always fought for what they believed in. They fought with such conviction that victory was inevitable. Even if it went beyond the scope of the book.
FACTS FROM THE LIFE OF THE STRUGATSKY BROTHERS:
Arkady and Boris Strugatsky are the only Russian writers whose novels are referred to by readers in their homeland using 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” - 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.
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. Boris Strugatsky:
“The Tale of Friendship and Unfriendship” is one of two or three of our stories that “would not have been necessary to write.” 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”.
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 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 clearly depicted: for example, Rada Gaal in “Inhabited Island”, Red Shewhart’s wife in “Roadside Picnic”, Kira in “Hard to Be a God”.
Boris Strugatsky:“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.”
Boris Strugatsky The Strugatsky brothers did not consider their work anti-Soviet, nor did they consider themselves dissidents.
Despite the fact that official Soviet authorities and censorship often regarded works 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:“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.”
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:“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.”
Many now famous science fiction writers are direct students of the Strugatskys.
Not all readers knew about the existence of a literary association under the leadership of Boris Strugatsky. This fact became widely known in 1996 after the release of the first issue of the collection of science fiction works “The Time of Students,” in which the works of members of the literary association were published.
Arkady Strugatsky, 1964, © ITAR-TASS Archive 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.
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.
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:“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.”
Arkady Strugatsky 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, E) or one year (classes E, F, I).
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.
17 films have been made based on the plot of their novels.
Among them are “Stalker” by Tarkovsky, “Days of Eclipse” by Alexander Sokurov, “Ugly Swans” by Konstantin Lopushansky, “Inhabited Island” by Fyodor Bondarchuk.
The Strugatsky Brothers Literary Prize is awarded on their “average birthday.”
“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."
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.
The joke that became the title.
Writers believe that the true title of a novel often comes after it is written. But there are also exceptions. Boris Strugatsky said: back in the early 60s, one good friend played a prank on him, claiming that Ernest Hemingway’s new book “Monday Begins on Saturday” was being sold in the Leningrad House of Books. Boris Natanovich spent half a day searching for this novel. When the deception was revealed, the writer did not become indignant. But I remembered the invented name of a non-existent work. The Strugatskys liked it for its deep aphorism, and subsequently the brothers used it for their famous story.
Boris Strugatsky The principle of creativity
Every writer has his own signs. Boris Strugatsky never answered the question: “What are you working on now?” He found it almost offensive.
Never say: “I do.” Always just: “I did it,” he explained to everyone. - Excellent rule. I recommend it.
They came from another planet
The incredible popularity gave rise to many rumors and legends. Some romantically minded science fiction fans in the early 70s had an idea fix: their favorite authors, brothers Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, were in fact not people at all, but agents of a powerful extraterrestrial civilization. Things got funny. Science fiction writers received many letters offering them help, since they were “stuck in this time on Earth”, apologizing for the fact that modern technology is not so developed to repair their ship... Perhaps this was the highest form of recognition of the talent of science fiction authors .
After death, both brothers, according to their will, were not only cremated, but their ashes were also scattered from a helicopter over the Pulkovo Observatory, where BNS once worked.
Based on materials:
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 will 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 interpolitical 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, and 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 for 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 Mountaineer”: 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.
Summing up
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 works of the Strugatskys. 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.
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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” - 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 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, E) 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 sports— “Fishermen” with their jumping over high-voltage wires and other entertainment.
- Wikipedia— The World Book Depository in “Monday Begins on Saturday” and the Great All-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
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 (“bold traveler 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 in this way - 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 censors 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 clearly depicted: for example, Rada Gaal in “Inhabited Island”, Red Shewhart’s wife in “Roadside Picnic” (pictured - 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 issue of the collection of science fiction works “The Time of Students,” in which the works of members of the literary association 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, an amazing 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."
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The Strugatsky brothers, whose books are known and loved not only in our country, but throughout the world, are Soviet writers who created the best examples of Russian science fiction. Many of their novels have been filmed. A whole generation of authors working in the genre of science fiction and fantasy looked up to them. Today they do not lose their popularity. If you want to touch the history of the formation of this genre in Russia, then you should get acquainted with such writers as the Strugatsky brothers; books, a list of which you can find on the website and which have become almost a legend, are a must-read.
The Strugatsky brothers: biography of a creative duo
The Strugatsky brothers, whose biography is no less interesting than their books, were born in Moscow and Leningrad. The first literary experiments of A.N. Strugatsky were undertaken before the war, but his stories were not preserved due to the siege of Leningrad. Therefore, the first work is considered to be the story “How Kant Died,” written by Arkady. Boris began to compose his stories a little later - in the sixties. The brothers' joint book was published in 1959 and was called "The Country of Crimson Clouds."
The work of these writers has always reflected their ever-changing worldview. This is probably why their works are so diverse. Drawing the worlds of the future, they filled them with the best people. Optimism and faith in progress are one of the hallmarks of the Strugatskys' early works. Their novels fully met the requirements of socialist realism, but the authors avoided typical characters and clichéd plots. At the center of their novels are humanists and intellectuals, responsible people devoted to science. By and large, the brothers' novels were replete with original plot twists and bold techniques, which distinguished them favorably from other writers of a similar genre of that time. They also did not neglect the opportunity to expose the vices of society. Among their works are many satirical novels that ridiculed the problems of Soviet life.
The Strugatsky brothers: books on the KnigoPoisk website
If you are interested in the Strugatsky brothers, you can find the best books in this section. This rating is based on reviews from our users, so you can easily choose a novel from which to begin your acquaintance with the works of famous writers. Read with pleasure!