On Monday, famous Russian science fiction writer Boris Strugatsky, who created most of his works in co-authorship with his brother Arkady, died in St. Petersburg at the age of 79. He wrote only two novels after the death of Arkady.
In recent years, Boris Strugatsky experienced serious heart problems, writes the Novye Izvestia newspaper. He suffered two heart attacks, one of which was severe – in 2007, when doctors barely managed to save him. Since then, the writer lived in a special regime and did not attend any public events.
Boris Strugatsky who is an astronomer by education, started his literary career with his elder brother Arkady (died in 1991). The Strugatsky brothers began writing separately – with short stories and short novels. But they soon formed a creative union and most of their works created together. The brothers wrote dozens of novels and stories, which made the whole epoch in Russian literature. The most popular works with their readers include “Hard to be a God,” “Monday begins on Saturday,” “Roadside Picnic,” “Dead Mountaineer’s Hotel,” “Limping Fate,” “Beetle in the Anthill,” “The Inhabited Island,” “Space Mowgli,” “The Final Circle of Paradise” and many others.
Arkady and Boris Strugatsky are the iconic authors in the true sense of the word, the Kommersant daily writes. Intellectuals of the 1960-1970's were fond of making quotes from their books – only similar to Brodsky and Vysotsky. Film directors Andrei Tarkovsky, Fyodor Bondarchuk, Alexander Sokurov and Alexei German found in their books their own things: some – metaphysical pessimism and some – fervent scuffle.
Their great epoch ended with the stagnation period, the newspaper continues. Since then, Boris Strugatsky under the pseudonym S. Vititsky wrote the novels “Search for Designation, or Twenty Seventh Theorem of Ethics” and “The Powerless Ones of this World”; he also nurtured young visionaries, the competition will not make it, signed a collective letter Petersburg intelligentsia and corresponded with Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
The Vechernyaya Moskva newspaper called poet and writer Dmitry Bykov who knew Strugatsky personally. Bykov’s reaction was very emotional: “Boris Strugatsky died? When? How terrible! This is a disaster. I feel like an orphan. While he was with us, he set high standards of literature. He was an absolutely honest and brave writer. I think the Strugatsky brothers – they are the highest point of the Soviet literature. They knew everything about our country and could get a glimpse of the future. I’m shocked and cannot speak ... I’m sorry ...”