Hard to Be a God (19) (Rediscovered Classics)

I didn't expect to love this book as much as I did. I blazed through almost the whole thing in a week. Picked up a copy after getting recommended the film by a friend. Comparing the two the book is nothing like the movie which is actually a shame because the book's so much more interesting than some grotesque tour through medieval Russia like the movie was. The characters are so loosely described yet so easily and vividly imagined with how they're presented throughout their scenes. Baron Pampa for example has to be some giant of a man able to take on entire crowds and slicing buildings practically in half with his massive sword that he effortlessly swings above his head. The noble Don Rumata sure knows how to pick em, curating the gems from the horde of mindless animals as he sees them, and they're all unique in their own right. Nobody is perfect, or even admirable, but they are very entertaining. Even Don Reba the clueless villain of the book gets his moment where even the "god" is surprised by some of his discoveries and observations.Seeing how quickly Rumata adapts to the ever-changing society as it drastically shifts from day to day reminds me of Greek heroes. So quick-witted and bold yet not without their faults that humanize them. You look up to this man, but also pity him for what he's going through. I'm instantly a fan of Strugatsky books and after this one and I'm gonna be collecting all of the books from the "Noon Universe" because I'm hooked. Hard to be a God was just that good.

I’ve read, so far, two books by the Strugatskys. I just finished Roadside Picnic, which inspired me to come back and review this one.For entertainment value, this is, to my taste, the better of the two. I wasn’t blown away, but I did enjoy reading it.In answer to my question, though, the only respect in which it is science fiction is offstage; we know that Don Rumata is an alien from an advanced culture off somewhere who is trying to uplift the benighted primitives of a society at a renaissance level of technology. However, in dealing with them, he does so at their level.He is an impossibly good swordsman, presumably due to advanced training techniques, not really described.As to the action, this is a swashbuckling story much of the sort that Rafael Sabatini did better, and Dumas did much better. It’s worth reading twice, but not as science fiction. It could have been relocated to 16th century Spain, and tweaked a bit to make the hero an Italian master swordsman trying to save victims of the Spanish Inquisition, and remained much the same story.

I found this book to be a real page turner. The conceit is that the protagonist is a visitor historian in this medieval like setting who can observe and participate but not really have any drastic life changing effect on the people in the world he is visiting. I like it because it really melds the idea of science fiction and fantasy in a way that is outside of the genre constraints I am used to as a western reader. The situation the authors create is interesting, the plot within that world is compelling, and the characters are fairly well fleshed out. This is a trifecta that is often not met in science fiction writing and I appreciate it.

I kept waiting for more from this book. It was all build up and setup. I found the last quarter of the book to feel like the author just needed to wrap it up.Some of the philosophizing on the nature of man, the unavoidable brutality through history, and so on was interesting and thought provoking. But overall I did not feel like this book deserved the title of being a “sci-fi classic”

Given as gift...

I saw Stalker, and something about it was compelling in many ways: the visuals and especially use of color, the plot, the characters, the deep, driven mood. I didn't know then that it came from Roadside Picnic but the Strugatskys. I liked that even better. I lacked the visual impact, but made the main character's compulsion deeper, stronger, almost a character in itself - and not always a friend to the protagonist.So, I want more. This work showed up with very little search effort, and I like it almost as much. Although written half a century ago, it's aged well. In some far future time (when the Soviet ideals have been achieved, of course), Our Hero goes to work as spy/provocateur on some distant planet. For reasons unspecified - convergent evolution, long lost colonization, or lack of imagination - Our Hero and his hi-tech backing gain him a high position in the feudal society. Since this was written and even published within the Soviet world, it examines the pre-Renaissance society in terms of Marxian inevitability (and Soviet superiority).But things don't actually go according to historical inevitability. Whatever in that world is nasty, brutish, and short appears contagious - agents have to take on things like hallway discussion in the torture school as a routine matter. This, and many other things (often modeled on the practices and even personalities of their own repressive regime) undermine his wall between "them" and "me," however tightly he tried to maintain it.Society degrades into something - maybe a stylized Fascism - that goes the wrong way. Far beyond any point I could make sense of, Our Hero continues to hold sway within this corrupt society of vindictive leaders as they hew their way through the citizenry. In the end, though, "... there was no one left to speak for me."But my summary over-simplifies the many acute observations written here, and the tone of word choice as it grays toward the end. It's not an easy read, and likely to push some buttons, and actually has two endings (the end, and the what comes after) that don't seem to support the nominal ideals of either society. A bit abrupt, perhaps, but possibly meaningful. I still haven't worked that out for myself.So, by raw chance, I saw a used DVD for sale, I had to grab it. It's long, a tad under 3hr, and I wonder how this will translate to imagery. But I plan to find out.-- wiredweird

I've loaned this book out twice and never gotten it back. So I bought a third copy to not loan out. There is a reason people do not bring it back. The movie(s) are awful, the book is amazing.

In the present era, this book would be artificially bloated into a four foot like of novels. Great humour and horror of the human condition is played out in the pages. I think the healer's narrative of his torture session will haunt me for a while -diabolical!!!

J'ai bien reçu le livre et je vous remercie.Dommage que je l'ai reçu ma commande 2 mois après l'achat, si non j'aurais donné 5 étoiles.Merci.

Good science fiction examining moral dilemmas of life. Role of fear in human life, state of ones mind during the revolutionary changes is conveyed especially strong

たいへん満足しております。これからもよろしくお願いいたします。

Written at the height of the cold war during the fight between the communist and capitalist empires the story is a return to the medieval times a visitor examines the atrocities and misgovernance of much of the world and in this medieval kingdom...we are seen an alternative to this decline in terran government..after all it is a science fiction novel dealing with future government..does the medieval world present a key to governing the earth..a better view and place to dispassionately see a way out of the world's malaise during the cold war hysteria...hard to be a god...to choose a way to govern the world find a system...MEDIEVALISM...it is one of the last books the writers wrote so the blurb suggests and may stem from discount with their view of earthly politics..all earthly politics and what is needed to reform government..a medieval source of purity. Recommended I enjoyed the book