One Billion Years to the End of the World

Description

A darkly funny satire from the most acclaimed and popular Russian science-fiction writers. Astrophysicist Dmitri Malianov is on the precipice of a major discovery - a Nobel Prize-worthy break though. Yet, home alone in his Leningrad apartment, his work is beginning to be stymied. Strange and improbable distractions are mounting around him - and he is not alone. Across the city, his scientific colleagues, all close to their own eureka moments, keep finding themselves subject to countless mysterious interruptions. Are they paranoid, or is a malign authority conspiring against them . . . ? A science fiction classic from two Russian masters, One Billion Years to the End of the World is at turns both hilarious and suspenseful, while at its heart hides a quiet yet biting critique of Soviet totalitarianism.

Arkady Strugatsky (1925 - 1991) and Boris Strugatsky (1933 - 2012) are Russia's most acclaimed and popular science-fiction writers. Their unique style - at once hilarious and pitch black - encompassed a remarkable variety of different genres- from space opera to alien invasion, from locked-room mystery to dystopian apocalypse. While their initial output was uncritical of Soviet life, over time their work became much more subversive - science fiction being the perfect vehicle to hide their critiques from censors. In 1981 they shared the Aelita Award, Russia's most prestigious science-fiction prize.

One of the Strugatsky brothers is descended from Gogol and the other from Chekhov, but nobody is sure which is which ... A beautiful book -- Ursula K. Le Guin One of the best and most provocative novels I have ever read, in or out of sci-fi -- Theodore Sturgeon They open windows in the mind and then fail to close them all, so that, putting down one of their books, you feel a cold breeze still lifting the hairs on the back of your neck. * The New York Times *