Russiandirector Andrei Tarkovsky transformed Polish author Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris into a great film. Lem wasn’tthe only science-fiction writer published in the East Bloc, nor was he the onlySF author from the Soviet era whose work was turned into a movie.
Arkadyand Boris Strugatsky’s 1964 novel, Hardto be a God, was first filmed by Germany’s Peter Fleischman. The 1989version is remarkable for starring the noted director Werner Herzog. Morerecently, in 2013, a Russian version of Hardto be a God surfaced. Directed by Aleksei German, it was the final film by arule-breaking filmmaker from the Soviet period who clashed frequently withcensors and made movies with great difficulty under the old system.
ChicagoReview Press has republished Hard to be aGod in a new English translation. The setting is familiar from many similarscience-fiction stories from the English-speaking world; an observer from afuture Earth is sent to a planet whose inhabitants lived in a medieval society.Like the “Star Trek” crew, the observers are not supposed to interfere with thedevelopment of alien cultures, but sometimes things happen.
Onthe surface, there was nothing in the novel objectionable by the standards ofSoviet censors. The planet where the observer-protagonist is sent is a brutalplace and seems to confirm the Marxist-Leninist injunction that “progress” isinevitably cruel but necessary as humanity claws its way to Utopia. But thereactionary rulers of this world can also be seen as representatives of thetotalitarian mindset, hanging anyone who stands in the way of their notions ofa well-ordered society. The new translation by Olena Bormashenko is a quick, fun read.
