With his doubt and compassion, and his deep love for a local girl named Kira, Rumata wants to save the kingdom from the machinations of Don Reba, the first minister to the king. Masquerading as an arrogant nobleman, a dueler, and a brawler, he is never defeated, but yet he can never kill.

The novel's core idea is that human progress throughout the centuries is often cruel and bloody, and that religion and blind faith can be an effective tool of oppression, working to destroy the emerging scientific disciplines and enlightenment.ĭon Rumata has been sent from Earth to the medieval kingdom of Arkanar with instructions to observe and to save what he can. The novel follows Anton, an undercover operative from the future planet Earth, in his mission on an alien planet, that is populated by human beings, whose society has not advanced beyond the Middle Ages. In this nail-bitingly suspenseful book, the Strugatsky brothers bravely and brilliantly question authority: an authority that starts with crates of vodka, but has lightning bolts in store for humans who refuse to be cowed. Is there an ominous force that doesn’t want knowledge to progress? Or could it be something more . . .

Then several of his friends-also scientists-drop by, saying they all felt they were on the verge of a major discovery when they got . . . Then a beautiful young woman in an unnervingly short skirt shows up at his door. It tells the story of astrophysicist Dmitri Malianov, who has sent his wife and son off to her mother’s house in Odessa so that he can work, free from distractions, on the project he’s sure will win him the Nobel Prize.īut he’d have an easier time making progress if he wasn’t being interrupted all the time: First, it’s the unexpected delivery of a crate of vodka and caviar. Which may be why Definitely Maybe has never before been available in an uncensored edition, let alone in English.

In its first-ever unexpurgated edition, a sci-fi landmark that's a comic and suspenseful tour-de-force, and puts distraction in a whole new light: It's not you, it's the universe!īoris and Arkady Strugatsky were the greatest science fiction writers of the Soviet era: their books were intellectually provocative and riotously funny, full of boldly imagined scenarios and veiled-but clear-social criticism.

Arkady strugatsky