Sandwiched between the Prologue and Epilogue are ten chapters of adventure and historical romance, set in a land that is a skillful mixture of late-feudal Europe and medieval Japan. Yet in dramatic contrast to the swashbuckling epics of the Scott-Dumas tradition, the Strugatskys do not whitewash its dirty, hypocritical and conformist nature into another golden age of chivalry.

Their citizens and peasants are almost uniformly petty lowlifes whose civic concerns stop at their own selfish ends. Nor is the aristocracy any less contemptible, long ago having foregone aspirations to chivalric virtue in a scramble to get to the next hunk of roast, tankard of beer, nighttime frolic or duelling scrape.

In addition to the historical romance and science fiction, it is not difficult to detect in Hard to Be a God elements of another genre popular the world over. The plot is, after all, a variant on the...