Brothers Arkady and Boris Strugatsky are notable writers of the 20th century; together they created true masterpieces of sci-fi contributing to the world fame of Russian literature.

Their thought-provoking fiction works that ponder upon serious social, philosophical and psychological issues were translated into dozens of languages and endured over 500 editions abroad. In Russia the authors’ collected works were published three times. Books by the Strugatsky brothers have inspired many other sci-fi writers and their scripts have served as a basis for some notable movies, Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker (filmed in 1979) after the Roadside Picnic being the most illustrious screen-version.

Releases of new screen-versions, such as Gadkie Lebedi directed by Constantin Lopushansky, and Hard to Be a God for six long years created by Alexei German are near at hand. By 2008 American studio Columbia Pictures promises to come out with its own version of Roadside Picnic. The Strugatsky brothers are laureates of numerous Russian and foreign awards, and astronomers even named small planet № 3054 discovered in 1977 after them (1977 RE7 STRUGATSKIA).

ARKADY

Arkady Natanovich Strugatsky (28.8.1925 - 12.10.1991). Writer, translator, editor.

Arkady Strugatsky was born on August 28, 1925 in Batumi city and later lived in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg). After the war broke out he took part in building fortifications and then worked at a grenade works. Arkady studied at Actyubinsk Art College. Before the very graduation in spring 1943 he was detached to Moscow, the Military Institute of Foreign Languages which he graduated in 1949 as an interpreter from the English and Japanese languages. Later he was as a teacher at Kansk School for military interpreters and then served as divisional interpreter in the Far East. In 1955 he got discharged and moved to Moscow. Arkady Strugatsky was a member of editorial boards of various periodicals and collected works.

He started writing stories and translating foreign authors when in the army (and it was there where he wrote his first fiction narrative ‘Ashes of Bikini’ (1956) jointly with Lev Petrov. Arkady Strugatsky also wrote several works on his own under the pen-name S. Yaroslavtsev. However, most fiction works were written in co-authorship with his brother Boris Strugatsky.