Customer Reviews

Hard to be a God (A Continuum book)

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The most amazing thing about this book is that it's out of print... After all, it is their most famous one. In "Hard To Be A God" the human race has reached higher stages of development and a relative harmony. Now they are dispatching "progressors" to help out the bachward planets. The scary thing is that when you read this book, you seem more familiar with the inhabitants of the poor planet than with the people from the future Earth. Terrans despise the actions and qualities of the planet inhabitants, but are unable to turn away; they have to be gods and gods have to be above emotions like hatred. Strugatskii always offered a unique perspective of our society, by placing it in another time and place. This book should be recomended reading at schools. I cannot emphasise enough the fact that the wonderful books of brothers Strugatskii is ever so much more than your regular SiFi. I only wish American audience was familiar with their work. In my knowledge they changed the worlds of so many people, made them reevaluate themselves, helped them dream and see the ways of changing things.

This book has it all: adventure, excitement, a whole medieval world conjured up by pure genius. It also centers around a dilemma similar to that faced by various Star Trek captains: thou shall not interfere! But how does one not when so much is at stake? How can one be an equivalent of a god, but merely observe, forgetting the very notion of justice? If you like books that make you think, but do not serve up the answers, this is it! Written in a wonderful, crisp language, and one of the better Russo-English translations, this is one is a worthy undertaking!

The Strugatsky brothers wrote a large number of novels and from their covers and from the summary of their plots you will be forgiven for thinking they just produced regular vanilla sci-fi, albeit in a Soviet context. How frightfully wrong. While I've only read this book and Monday Begins on Saturday, it's enough to know that they made more than sci fi. Their novels are filled with such warmth, humour, philosophy, irony, historical and cultural knowledge that it's not really sci-fi in the traditional sense. The themes are broader. If you have sci-fi, chances are you'll still love Hard to be a God, and others.

Hard to be a God is set in the Noon Universe (along with many other of their books) on an unnamed planet where humanity is stuck in a fictionalised, exaggerated middle ages. Warts and all. Genocide, bad hygiene, poor nutrition, small-minded values and all. However earthlings have advanced beyond belief and even have a Historical Society that sends people to this planet, to live amongst the "savages" and learn about the course of history, and help the planet progress, if possible. This follows the story of don Rumata - one such observer. And it shows just how hard it is for a person with "our" mindset to live in such a vicious society. The book deals with censorship, persecution, justice and the notion of the progress of society. But it's done in a manner that's so gripping you can easily read it in one sitting. Oh, and of course the whole thing is *also* a satire on the Stalinist era. Of course.

The main drawback - I read the Russian not a translation - and I know that the Strugatsky books are harder to translate than most. They use so much colloquial language, allusions to Russian culture etc. that this book must lose twice as much in translation than most "regular" books. Even then, it should still be tremendously enjoyable.

I recommend reading this book to everyone. It is one of the best book that i've read. Actually, I read this book 5 times I think, and even when I was reading it for the 5th time, I found something that I hadn't seen before! This book has a lot of hidden information, and if you read it only once you might not understand it fully. But I promise you that if you were not amazed by this book the 1st time, its just you weren't paying attention.. read it again =)

I think this is a pretty good book. It's not the best by the Strugatsky Brothers, though. More than sci fi (which is there, but only as a very secondary element) it could be considered a historical fantasy. It obviously presents history in a soviet citizen's view, but it's a forgivable quirk for those who hate commies. What makes me be such a fan of the Strugatsky Brothers is the fact that they were able to put out such quality material aven though they had to deal with the hard soviet censorship.

I think this is a pretty good book. It's not the best by the Strugatsky Brothers, though. More than sci fi (which is there, but only as a very secondary element) it could be considered a historical fantasy. It obviously presents history in a soviet citizen's view, but it's a forgivable quirk for those who hate commies. What makes me be such a fan of the Strugatsky Brothers is the fact that they were able to put out such quality material aven though they had to deal with the hard soviet censorship.