Boris

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Lore & Background

Boris Strugatsky remained in Leningrad with his mother during the siege of the city during World War II. He graduated from high school in 1950 and applied to the physics department at Leningrad State University, but studied astronomy instead. After graduating in 1955, he worked as an astronomer and computer engineer at the Pulkovo Observatory. In 1960 he participated in a geodetic and astronomical expedition in the Caucasus. From 1972 he acted as the head of the Leningrad seminar of young speculative fiction writers, which subsequently became known as the "Boris Strugatsky Seminar". He established the "Bronze Snail" literary prize. He was an agnostic. After the death of his brother, he published two more novels under a pseudonym.

In Their Own Story

Boris Strugatsky's formative years coincided with the war, the blockade, and evacuation, which predetermined negative memories of his childhood and youth and a skeptical attitude toward the country and its political system. After returning to Leningrad, he led the ordinary life of an intellectual schoolboy and student. His life-meaning orientations converged with his brother Arkady's under the influence of constant correspondence and rare meetings during Arkady's leaves. After the elder brother's demobilization in 1956, Arkady settled in Moscow, and meetings and correspondence with his brother became much more frequent, though their main circles of friends and acquaintances remained different until the end of their lives, despite belonging to the Soviet scientific-technical and artistic elite (including Naum Korzhavin and Vladimir Vysotsky).

Reader's Guide

Boris Strugatsky co-authored with his brother Arkady from 1958 until Arkady's death in 1991. Their working method involved not only joint discussion of ideas but also the oral rehearsal of every sentence. The writing process followed a detailed plan, which was developed in advance and discussed multiple times. Starting with works in the synthetic genre of adventure and scientific-technical fiction, they quickly transitioned to social prognostics and modeling in the form of "realistic fiction." Most of their books explore the establishment of contact with alien intelligence, the question of the permissibility and justification of intervention or non-intervention in the natural evolution of civilizations, and the study of various forms of utopia and dystopia. Significant attention in their work was devoted to the problem of the ideologization and de-ideologization of society and the role of culture in the state. In the first half of the 1960s, they created the Noon Universe. From the 1980s, B. N. Strugatsky began to reassess their joint creative path in the context of liberalism and dissidence.

Did You Know?

• Boris Strugatsky worked at the Pulkovo Observatory as an astronomer and computer engineer after graduating from Leningrad University in 1955.
• He participated in a geodetic and astronomical expedition in the Caucasus in 1960.
• From 1972 he acted as the head of the Leningrad seminar of young speculative fiction writers, which became known as the 'Boris Strugatsky Seminar'.
• He established the 'Bronze Snail' literary prize.
• After his brother Arkady's death in 1991, Boris published two more novels under a pseudonym.