The Ugly Swans

The Ugly Swans
Cover from MacMillan edition
AuthorArkady and Boris Strugatsky
Original titleГадкие лебеди
TranslatorAlice Stone Nakhimovsky and Alexander Nakhimovsky
LanguageRussian
GenreScience fiction
PublisherMacmillan in U.S.,
unpublished in USSR until 1987
Publication date
in samizdat since 1968
Publication placeSoviet Union
Published in English
1979 1st in U.S.
Media typePrint (Hardcover)
ISBN0-02-615190-1 (US edition)
OCLC4593633
891.7/3/44
LC ClassPZ4.S919 Ug 1979 PG3476.S78835

The Ugly Swans (Russian: Гадкие лебеди) is a science fiction novel by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. In the USSR, it was published in 1987, in the Latvian magazine Daugava, with the title "The Time of Rains" (Russian: Время дождей).

Initially, the novel was written in 1966-1967 to be published in the Soviet literary magazine Molodaya Gvardiya, but the publication was rejected by censor due to prominent political and free-thought overtones in the novel. It circulated in samizdat, and in 1972 was published without the authors' permission abroad, in the Federal Republic of Germany.

In 2006, a loose film adaptation of the novel was made by Konstantin Lopushansky.