The Waves Extinguish the Wind

By Boris Strugatsky and Arkady Strugatsky

Book Overview

Today, Russian authors Arkady and Boris Strugatsky are counted among the best science fiction writers of the twentieth century. In their Noon Universe novels, they imagined twenty-second-century Earth as a space-faring communist utopia, devoted to guiding the progress of civilization on alien worlds. But as the authors became increasingly disillusioned with life in the Soviet Union, their Noon Universe stories grew darker and more complex as well. The Waves Extinguish the Wind provides the epic conclusion to the Noon Universe saga, as eighty-nine-year-old Maxim Kammerer looks back at his most earth-shattering investigation, which brought an entire era of human civilization to an end. Searching for evidence that the mysterious alien Wanderers were interfering in Earth's development, Kammerer and his young trainee Toivo Glumov discovered a deeper and more disturbing secret within humanity itself. This new translation by Daniels Umanovskis joins updated editions of Hard to Be a God , The Inhabited Island , and The Beetle in the Anthill to bring the saga of the Noon Universe to its fitting end: a search for truth and answers in a universe that provides only questions.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1641606266
• ISBN13: 9781641606264
• Release Date: April 2023
• Publisher: Chicago Review Press
• Length: 184 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Haunting

I agree with the previous reviewer. The Strugatskys are as good as Clarke and Asimov at their best. I was a little unsure about this book because the story is presented as a series of reports and memoirs (unlike Hard to be a God which I read first). However, the writing is top-notch throughout. It is a cerebral book. The ending is haunting. I continue to think about it.

Russia's Finest

This novel is a little-known classic by the Soviet Union's masters of political science fiction. It examines the paradox of a future human society whose leaders feel (with some justification) that they are justified in meddling with less fully-developed civilizations, but who fanatically resists any external interference with their own. How the Soviet censors failed to recognize the element of self-reference in the narrative boggles my mind. The story is a personal drama, too, though, of the staunch "anti-progressor" Toivo Glumov, who begins by suspecting that a race of super beings is messing with human history, and ends, paradoxically, by... ...well, better not blow the ending. But please drop everything and read this book as soon as you can. It's as good as anything by Asimov, Stapleton, Sterling or Stephenson.