In 1967 a nation-wide poll among Soviet readers rendered an unequivocal verdict.

Asked to rank the most popular science fiction works of all times and nations, the discerning Russian respondents placed the Strugatskys' books in the first, second, sixth and tenth places. The undisputed winner was the novel which may yet prove to be one of the enduring classics of twentiethcentury Russian literature: Hard to Be a God.

This moment of triumph solidified the Strugatskys' fame as cultural heroes and prophets, one that in a few short years had circulated far beyond the science fiction, or even the high-brow literary community.

Arkady, a wartime interpreter and translator of Japanese, and Boris, an astrophysicist, launched their joint literary career in the late 1950s, shortly after Ivan Yefremov's 1957 utopia, The Andromeda Nebula, paved the way for a revival of Soviet-era scientific fiction. With the genre enjoying an incomparably higher...