Book review: One Billion Years to the End of the World (Best of Soviet SF), by Arkady Strugatsky and Boris Strugatsky

A superb science fiction fantasy idea but set in the context of the characters’ turgid lifestyles, which properly reflects the period of history they live in and the background looming shadow of a controlling state (which acts like another character just off-stage, but aware). The idea is a really bright diamond in this. The language is perhaps less poetic in translation, with hum-drum short sentences, laundry and cornflake domestic drama.

The aliens appear to run everything through some sort of allowable intervention committee which never gets mentioned because their actions have a polite complexity to them, with excellent mimicry of man, rather encouraging and leading people away from areas of study rather than simply dealing death by blast rays. These authors don’t present us with Cowboys vs Indians, as American authors of the time would do, preferring instead to portray a more intelligent adversary that you could probably negotiate with, understand the position of and come to relate to. They give you several chances to comply before upping the pressure.

This is an outstanding scenario that I really like, but told by a race of people with frowns and heavy boots on. Clomp.

Has anyone else noticed that Matt Haig’s sci-fi novel The Humans (2013) copied the main theme of ‘One Billion Years to the End of the World’ (1977); intervention by an alien civilisation to prevent a human making a mathematical break-through? JG Ballard, newspaper reviewers etc. believed Matt Haig’s story was original but they probably hadn’t read widely enough.