Strugatsky, Arkady Natanovich & Boris Natanovich
Arkady was born in 1925, Boris in 1933. In the 1960s these
brothers became the most popular science fiction writers in the
Soviet Union. It's Difficult To Be A God (1964) is a tale
of life in a fascist state. Predatory Things of the Age
(1965) shows a future materialistic state where people are in
danger of turning into contented idiots. The Second Coming of
the Martians (1967) is a Gogol-esque satire of bureaucracy and
the xenophobe. Int The Snail on the Slope (1966-1968), a
giant forest is being studied by a state security agency. The
atmosphere is so oppresive that even the machines want to escape.
The Fairy Tale of a Troika (1968) is a fable in which the
universe is a skyscraper where the sewer cleaners have seized
power. In The Inhabited Island (1969) a government uses
transmitter stations to control men's minds. Spontaneous Reflex is about a robot that is so sophisticated, it develops a spontaneous reflex and decides to go on a walkabout.
Source: Terras, Victor. "Handbook of Russian Literature", Yale
University Press, 1985.
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