What is not generally known to the readers of science fiction in English is that the most widely read science-fiction writer in the world is not Heinlein or Bradbury or Clarke, but Stanislaw Lem, a Pole; that the largest science-fiction section of a writers' union is in Hungary; that excellent science fiction is being produced in East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and especially in the Soviet Union. Some of this—far too little—is beginning to trickle into the English-speaking world, and, sad to say, a certain portion suffers from execrable translation. Some works have had the hazards of translation more than doubled by passing from the original to a second language before being rendered from that into English, a process in which the style and character of even a laundry list could hardly be expected to survive. Keeping that in mind, however, the discerning reader will find, even in the most brutalized of translations, a strength and inventiveness marvelous to behold.

In the highest echelon of Soviet science-fiction writers stand the names of Boris and Arkady Strugatsky. I first encountered these talented brothers in a novel called Hard to Be a God. Remarkable, purely as a novel, for structure, characterization, pacing, and its perceptive statements of the human condition, it touches also on almost every single quality most avidly sought by the science-fiction reader. It has space flight and future devices; it has that wondrous “what if … ?” aspect in its investigation into sociology; by its richly detailed portraiture of an alien culture it affords a new perspective on the nature of ours and ourselves; it even has that exciting hand-to-hand conflict so dear to the hearts of that cousin of science fiction called swords-and-sorcery. And among its highest virtues is this: though there are battles and fights and blood and death where the narrative calls for them, the super-potent protagonist never kills anybody. Writers everywhere, keeping in mind in these violent times their responsibility for their influence, should take note. It can be done, and done well, at no expense to tension and suspense.