Hard to Be a God
By Arkady and Boris Strugatsky (translated by Olena Bormashenko)
The great dividing line between the modern and medieval world is the Enlightenment and the twin revolutions of the end of the eighteenth century. In Marx’s terms this was also the transformation from a feudal to a thoroughly capitalist economy. The dramatic nature of this shift is why medieval times are so often invoked in SF time travel stories, from Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court to Connie Willis’s Doomsday Book.
That watershed moment is clearly what’s in play here, as communard historians from a future Soviet Earth visit a planet stuck in the Dark Ages in order to record (but not interfere with) its transition through the historical dialectic of Marxist theory. Along the way, however, a direct comparison is made to the Nazi state, with grays and blacks taking the place of Brownshirts and the Gestapo.
The Strugatskys originally wanted to tell a straight-up adventure story along the lines of Dumas’ The Three Musketeers, but there’s something in the idea that necessarily draws us into deeper waters. Dangerous waters too for the Strugatskys, who managed to slip in some criticism of Stalin’s war on the intelligentsia and the corruption of the communist dream. The creeping shadow of darkness that Don Rumata sees overtaking Araknar camouflages the colour of many different shirts and flags.