Stefen’s Bookclub – November

Hard to be a God by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky

So, this was my planned book for last month, we had some issues with it and I had to put it off. Well the issues are sorted, it’s back in stores (mine and others) so we’re back with the program. My interest in putting this book up was twofold.

Firstly, we read another book by the Strugatsky brothers,‘Roadside Picnic two years ago when we first started the club and we had a lot of fun discussing it. As a result I was keen to try another of their books for comparison.

Secondly, the premise of the book intrigued me. It’s a very familiar one to science fiction readers, a person from a high technology world living incognito on a planet populated by a more primitive society to study and observe them. It’s been done before, and multiple times, but I’m curious to see how a pair of writers in Russia in the nineteen seventies approach it.