Voinovich's fiction as a whole reflects two main literary concerns. As a social critic and satirist, he wanted to create a world of caricatures and to develop his skill at building dialogue out of cliches and banalities. He also tried to create a new kind of hero, who would not only have the satirical function of contrasting with his predecessor, the Positive Hero, but whose behavior would also reflect a different morality. The responsibilities of the individual and the struggle of the free personality against manipulation by society emerge as major themes in Voinovich's most important works, and in these the characters are given clear moral tests.

These two sides of Voinovich, the satirical and the didactic, were difficult to synthesize artistically. To some extent he had tried out both approaches in We Live Here, but later he wrote two different types of stories. Those in which social...