One Billion Years to the End of the World (Penguin Science Fiction)

Book came in good condition. Easily travel with. Less than an Inch thick, large-ish text, and about the size of the biggest phone on the market.Content review: The authors did a good job in making you feel as annoyed and confused as all the characters. I had to pause a few times because some things felt too real or just made me laugh a bit too hard. Read it in one sitting. However, the disjointed nature easily allows you to read bits and understand where the story it.

This is the same translation as the book Definitely Maybe published by Collier books in 1978. Given there are a lot of new translations of Strugatsky books recently and the retitling, I was expecting a new one. Don’t be fooled. If you already own the Collier edition, you don’t need to buy this unless you are a completist and want to own it for the cover. Hopefully this won’t dissuade another publisher from offering a new translation. This is still a good book, though. If you don’t have a copy yet, I would get it.

The front cover was dirty on arrival, the package was sealed and the front cover had dirt baked in was difficult to clean

Another book imitating Kafka. But the character's speculations soon become silly and the feeble plot becomes tedious. A bit like Gravity's Rainbow but without the gratuitous sex or Pynchon's poetic prose. What I learned from this book: don't try to imitate Kafka. I will now read Philip K Dick's magnificent "Ubik" again to restore my faith in Science Fiction.

This work, along with others by the Strugatskys, deserves to be better known in the West.

Slim book. Maybe it works better in Russian but I found it a bit limited and the story went nowhere (slowly) despite some promising bits (swap to 1st from 3rd person, description of neighbour as a “Martian”). As others have said, what’s the hype over this?