Book Review: Definitely Maybe by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky (Soviet Sci-Fi Novel)

Arkady and Boris Strugatsky brothers are Soviet science fiction writers. Most of the works they wrote together. Definitely Maybe (the literal translation of the original title is “A Billion Years Before the End of the World”) counts as one of the best science fiction novels.

Book Review: Definitely Maybe by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky (Soviet Sci-Fi Novel): A Mind-Bending Tale of Science, Paranoia, and the Nature of Reality

The protagonist of the book is Dmitry Alekseyevich Malyanov. He is a Soviet scientist living in Leningrad (now the city is called St. Petersburg) and on the edge of making a very important discovery about space. This discovery will be a milestone for the whole of science history. But Malyanov can’t concentrate on his studies. There are strange and unexpected things happening to him. It is like an invisible force trying to prevent him from working on his theory and making a discovery.

And his old friend Weingarten also keeps calling him and asking meaningless questions. He is also a scientist. There is definitely something wrong going on. Malyanov is on leave and staying at home so he can concentrate on his work. But things keep happening to him, and there is no way that he can continue his theory about space.

Soviet science fiction literature 

Malyanov is not the only person that strange things happen. And all of them are scientists. Other scientists who are on the verge of a big discovery also experience some strange things in their lives. And Weingarten is one of them and this is how he explains what happened to him:

“Without any preamble he announced that a certain extraterrestrial civilization had been watching him, V. A. Weingarten, for quite some time, following his scientific work with attention and anxiety. That the latest work of the aforementioned Weingarten was making them very anxious. That he, the redhead, was empowered to ask V. A. Weingarten to immediately drop the project and destroy all his papers relating to it.” 

“Weingarten, continued the red-haired man, should in no way think that he was the only earthling being watched by the supercivilization. There were at least three people among Weingarten’s friends whose work was about to be nipped in the bud. He, the redhead, could name such names as Dmitri Alekseevich Malianov, astronomer; Zakhar Zakharo-vich Gubar, engineer; and Arnold Pavlovich Snegovoi, physicist. They were giving V. A. Weingarten three days, starting right now, to think it over, after which the supercivilization would feel that it had the right to employ the rather harsh “measures of the third degree.”

From what he described, we can assume that there is an extraterrestrial civilization, we can also call them aliens, and watch closely scientific developments on Earth. As the novel also mentions, like Martians from Wells’ novel, this extraterrestrial civilization doesn’t want humanity to make these very important scientific discoveries. So they pressure the scientist and try to distract them from their work. But this is only Weingarten’s side of the story. The others have different stories.

Another scientist who experienced similar distractions from his work is telling a completely different story. According to him, there is no extraterrestrial civilization but there is an old and secret organization. They are the ones trying to stop these discoveries. Another version of what is happening is like this:

“According to her (in Gubar’s interpretation) it seemed that since ancient times there was this secret, semimystical Union of the Nine on Earth. These were monstrously secretive wise men, either very long-lived or immortal, who were concerned with only two things: first, that they gather and master all the achievements of every single branch of science, and second, that they make sure that none of the new scientific-technological advances be used by people for self-destruction. These wise men are almost all-knowing and practically all-powerful. It was impossible to hide from them, and it was no use fighting them.”

Aliens or mystical organization? 

So which one of these versions is true? These scientists are dealing with aliens or a semimystical Union of the Nine? So they came together to discuss what happened to all of them and what they could do. They are really successful in their field of study and these studies can let them even win a Nobel Prize.

They also ask for help from another brilliant scientist, who is also Malyanov’s neighbor. His name is Vecherovsky. After a long discussion, he has a theory about what happened to them. It is neither aliens nor a mystical union. He explains:

“And just as stubbornly, you return to the hypothesis about the super civilization. You are prepared to forget—and have already forgotten—your own feeble objections to this hypothesis. I can understand why this is happening to you. Somewhere in the back of your mind you have the idea that any supercivilization is still a civilization, and two civilizations can always come to an accord, find some sort of compromise, feed the wolves and save the sheep. And if worse comes to worse, there is always sweet surrender to this hostile but imposing power, noble retreat before an enemy worthy of victory, and then—how the devil does play tricks—maybe even get a reward for your reasonable docility. Don’t bug your eyes out at me, Dmitri. I said this was all subconscious. And do you think you’re the only one? It’s a very, very human trait. We’ve rejected God, but we still can’t stand on our own two feet without some myth-crutch to hold us up. But we’ll have to. We’ll have to learn. Because in your situation, not only do you not have any  friends, you are so alone that you don’t have any enemies, either! That’s what you refuse to understand.”

Another explanation: Homeostatic Universe

For centuries we studied nature, the environment we live and the universe. While we do this we always think about these as non-conscious things. Some science fiction literature chooses to give nature some kind of consciousness. So while we observe, study, and do experiments on nature, nature or the universe also studies us. Can it be?

We see a similar idea in the novel Solaris by Polish author Stanislaw Lem. A planet with suns gave some kind of reaction to the experiments people made on it.

In this novel, Vecherovsky came up with a theory he calls the Homeostatic Universe. According to his theory, the universe is trying to stop these discoveries. Because these discoveries, maybe not right away but eventually, will lead to the destruction of the earth or universe, to some kind of apocalypse. The approximate time left for the end of the world is a billion years. So the universe is trying to stop the end of the world by trying to stop these scientists. So the title of the book comes from this idea. The literal translation of the original title is “A Billion Years Before the End of the World” (Russian: За миллиард лет до конца света)

So did these scientists abandon their studies after so much pressure they saw? In fact, some of them took their studies and gave it to Vecherovsky. Because he is the one willing to continue their work. And after they were surrounded they got peace. But Vecherovsky wants to fight it until the end. But how about protagonist Malyanov?

Malyanov also took his work to Vecherovsky and gave it to him. In one way he also gave up. But from his actions, we can see that he is not ready to give up. The ending of the novel is that we can’t really understand what Malyanov decided. At first, he gave his work to Vecherovsky and after a while, he took the papers and was holding them tight.

Last but not least. Before the book was published in the Soviet Union, it had some problems with censorship. And when we say Soviet it is very normal to have censorship when it comes to science, literature, and media. Authors also were inspired to write this book after they saw another Soviet author being investigated by the authorities.


Definitely Maybe
by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
Original Russian title: За миллиард лет до конца света
First published in 1976
143 pages
Soviet / science-fiction / novel / Russian