It's the first novel I've read by Soviet authors. I'm interested to see how they got it past the censors.
There were quite a few critiques of Soviet society that got through with 'no, comrade, it is about how dehumanizing Capitalist Imperialism is'.
That's more or less how it was and has been sold in the West, though some literary scholars have recently been arguing that the Strugatskys were actually either neutral or pro-Soviet and that the book should be taken at face value as a critique of the capitalist system. If you read Boris' afterword to one of the more recent editions, he talks about how nothing in the book was explicitly anti-Soviet and the main trouble they had with the censors was their choice of language; the apparatchiks kept smoothing out the vulgarity and sexual content of the original manuscript because they thought it was inappropriate:
It doesn’t even take place in the US, merely a nondescript Continental European country that speaks English.
I could be wrong, but whenever Europe is mentioned, they speak as if they don't live there. I also thought I saw something saying it is in the US.
I meant they were eventually allowed to publish it, after the censors had had their way with it.
There's an old Q&A floating around on the internet somewhere where it's indicated that the Strugatskys intended the novel's setting to be a former British colony, either Canada or Australia. From what I've seen, most people online assume it's in Canada.
Maybe because the film version of Roadside Picnic was called Stalker?
Can't help with that list, But Larry Correia's Son of the Black Sword is a really good read. And the guy's politics are such that anyone covering for Bradley would want him strung up if he did a rolling stop at a red light, so nobody would if he ever did get up to that kind of crap.
Seconded. Also he hasn't let his politics get in the way of the story or anything so far as I've read.
David & Leigh Eddings actually went to prison for child abuse, but beyond them and as you mentioned MZB I'm not really aware of any Arthur C. Clarke types.
Somewhere I read claims they were locking the children in cages and starving them, though that isn't mentioned in the Wikipedia piece.
Things seemed to be unraveling a bit in the last book, but it still remains my second favorite Fantasy series started this century, beaten only by the First Law books.
Just going to volunteer this bit of info: the film did not bomb because of the politics or satire. No one, fucking NO ONE, got that it was a joke. Maybe a handful of big brain armchair critics are the only ones who got the joke. But no, the film didn't bomb because of that. It bombed because it was a crowded box office year and word of mouth was not great. We didn't get the joke at the time.
I saw it in the theater, and if you hadn't gotten the joke by the time Doogie Houser appeared in a black leather SS coat, you did then.
This is so accurate. I rarely read any fiction by authoresses but having said that, one of my favourite series is the Empire Trilogy, by Janny Wurts and Raymond E. Feist. Very obviously inspired by Mariko Akechi of Shogun, amongst others.
***** American alternate history versus the Chad rushing alternate history what confederate Adolf Hitler versus communist Abraham Lincoln how about comrade Adolf Hitler
I mean that that shit is top kek but, y'know, topic... But I guess we haven't had any SFWA news in a while.
I've always loved these and I'm terrified of rereading them.
Sorry I don't know where else to post it but a lot of the 90s fantasy after you reread it it's kinda trash except the gorka novels I will never stop finding those novels hilarious because people in the 90s just did not care about who they offended
