Boris Strugatsky

A darkly funny satire from the most acclaimed and popular Russian science-fiction writers. Astrophysicist Dmitri Malianov is on the precipice of a major discovery - a Nobel Prize-worthy breakthrough. Yet, home alone in his Leningrad apartment, his work is beginning to be stymied. Strange and improbable distractions are mounting around him - and he is not alone. Across the city,...

The Strugatsky brothers' poignant and introspective novel of first contact that inspired the classic film Stalker. Red Schuhart is a stalker, one of those strange misfits who are compelled by some unknown force to venture illegally into the Zone and, in spite of the extreme danger, collect the mysterious artefacts that the alien visitors left scattered around. His life is...

It is a mysterious city whose sun is switched on in the morning and switched off at night, bordered by an abyss on one side and an impossibly high wall on the other. Its inhabitants are people who were plucked from twentieth-century history at various times and places and left to govern themselves, advised by Mentors whose purpose seems inscrutable....

Hard To Be A God follows the story of Anton, an undercover operative from future Earth, who journeys to an alien world where the culture remains entrenched in the Middle Ages. Despite possessing knowledge far more advanced than the society that surrounds him, Anton is bound by strict orders to refrain from interfering with the natural progression of history. His...

When Maxim Kammerer, a young space explorer from twenty-second-century Earth, crash-lands on an uncharted world, he thinks of himself as a latter-day Robinson Crusoe. Eager to establish first contact with the planet's humanlike inhabitants, he finds himself increasingly entangled in their primitive way of life. After his experiences in their nightmarish military, criminal justice, and mental health systems, Maxim begins...

When young programmer Alexander Ivanovich Privalov picks up two hitchhikers while driving in Karelia, he is drawn into the mysterious world of the National Institute for the Technology of Witchcraft and Thaumaturgy, where research into magic is serious business. And where science, sorcery, and socialism meet, can chaos be far behind? Monday Starts on Saturday is a captivating exploration of...

Roadside Picnic follows Red Schuhart, a stalker, one of those strange misfits compelled by an unknown force to venture illegally into the Zone. Despite the extreme danger, he collects mysterious artefacts left scattered by alien visitors. His life is dominated by the Zone and the thriving black market in alien products. Even the nature of his daughter has been determined...

ENTER THE ADMINISTRATION Peretz spends his days navigating the bureaucracy of the Administration, the institute tasked with governing the Forest below. Except no one ever seems to go there, and his attempts only trap him further within the workings of this strange organisation. ENTER THE FOREST Candide cannot remember how he got to the Forest, and he is certain he...