Arkadii Strugatsky and Boris Strugatsky are well known within and outside Russia as authors of acclaimed works of science fiction. Together they wrote short stories, novels, and screenplays. Their novel Piknik na obochine (first published in 1972 in Avrora; translated as Roadside Picnic, 1977) was the basis for the 1979 movie Stalker, directed by Andrei Arsen'evich Tvarkovsky (with whom they also collaborated on the script). From the 1960s through the 1980s, most of the works by the Strugatsky brothers are strongly satirical in tone and were written in a disguised form of fantasy in order to avoid Soviet censorship. The brothers received several awards for their most popular works, including the Second Award of the Ministry of Education in 1959 for their novel Strana bagrovykh tuch (1959, Land of Crimson Clouds); the Aelita Prize (1981) for Zhuk v muraveinike (1979; translated as Beetle in the Anthill, 1980); the European Science Fiction Society Award; the Jules Verne...