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 Beetle in the Anthill reintroduces Maxim Kammerer, the main
character of their novel The Inhabited Island. Once an intrepid young
space explorer, Kammerer is now an investigator with COMCON-2, the
covert agency in charge of countering threats to the homeworld. He is
tasked with tracking "progressor" Lev Abalkin, who has returned to Earth
after a routine mission went tragically wrong. Do the secrets of
Abalkin's past pose a grave danger to humanity--or is he an innocent
caught up in a deadly misunderstanding?
This new edition by lauded translator Olena Bormashenko joins updated
translations of Hard to Be a God, The Inhabited Island, and The
Waves Extinguish the Wind to continue the ever-deepening saga of the
Noon Universe.