 Cover from DAW Books edition | |
| Author | Arkady and Boris Strugatsky |
|---|---|
| Original title | Хищные вещи века |
| Language | Russian |
| Genre | Science fiction |
| Publisher | DAW Books in US, originally published in the USSR 1965 |
Publication date | 1965 |
| Publication place | Soviet Union |
Published in English | 1976 |
| Media type | |
The Final Circle of Paradise (Russian: Хищные вещи века, romanized: Khishnye veshi veka, lit. 'Predatory Things of the Century') is a science fiction novel by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. It was first published in the Soviet Union in 1965, and the first English edition, translated by Leonid Renen, was published by DAW books in 1976. The literal English translation of the original Russian title is "Predatory Things of Our Times", which is a line from Andrei Voznesensky's poem "Beatnik's Monologue. Machine Riot" (1961).[1]
The novel, which depicts the Society of Entertainment, belongs to the early period of Strugatsky's activities while they were faithful followers of communist ideology.
The main ideas of the novel are:
- The Society of Entertainment causes human degradation and degeneration.
- The "advanced" entertainments, the "circles of paradise", are actually the steps down the ladder of personal (and social) degeneration.
- The "final circle of paradise" is the potent hallucinogen, which converts people to hallucinating idle bodies in the bath tubes and then causes death from heart failure.
Another major idea of the novel is the idea of "makeshift evil stuff", something alike to cooking potent drugs (or chemical weapon poisons, or explosives) from the components that are freely purchased in the "home chemistry" part of the supermarket store. These items are the "predatory things", thus the original Russian title.
In early 2000s, Boris Strugatsky, who was still alive, commented on the old book to his Internet fans.
In his comments, he said that even though sci-fi writers always try to predict some features of the future, most of their attempts fail. However, for the Predatory Things of the Century, most of this book's predictions are just plain "direct hits" since most of them came to reality within 40-50 years, especially in rich Western countries and also to some degree in Russia.
For instance, the book predicted raves under the name of "shakery" (Russian: drozhka). The book predicted life-threatening extreme entertainment under the name of "fisherists" (Russian: rybar, an intentionally incorrect version of rybak, which means "fisherman"). The book predicted philosophers like Karl Popper and Jean Baudrillard under the name of "Dr. Opir" and so on.
Therefore, Predatory Things of the Century is now probably the most prophetic book by Strugatsky.
The novel is a sequel of sorts to the earlier Strugatsky novels Space Apprentice (1962) and The Way to Amalthea. At the end of Space Apprentice, the flight engineer Ivan Zhilin gives up space travel for Earth, where "the most important things are to make the Solar System a better place for the young people of the world. The Final Circle of Paradise takes place a little less than ten years after Space Apprentice, in a large seaside resort city somewhere in Europe with an abandoned subway. Meanwhile, he has been working for the security service of the World Council, an international governing body similar to but far more powerful than the United Nations. A few years earlier, Zhilin fought as part of an international brigade to put down a fascist uprising in the same city in which the story is set, which is reminiscent of the 1930s Spanish Civil War except that the communists won unlike in Spain. That was supposedly one of the "final" wars before universal disarmament in which the last of the fascists were finally defeated. Like other Strugatsky novels, the setting is an internationalized future of advanced technology and world peace. There is no Iron Curtain, Cold War, or arms race. Most of the world is permanently at peace, with the rest on the verge of being forcibly demilitarized.