"Arkady & Boris Strugatsky - Prisoners of Power" - читать интересную книгу автора (Strugatski Arkady)

does) the reader has no recourse but to trust the authors -- and no author
could ask for more than that. Few, however, can command your trust so
deftly.
There is a great deal more in the Strugatsky bag of tricks. They will,
for example, build up a vertiginous altitude of suspense (as in the scene
where Maxim is sent to execute prisoners, one of them a woman) ending with a
shocking twist -- and then proceed with something else, happening to someone
else days later, joyfully refusing for the longest time to tell you just
what has happened to Maxim. And when they do, what has happened to him is
all over, part of his past, and we find him engaged in something quite new.
Yet the tapestry is ultimately done and hung, the authors having completed
certain panels while you weren't looking.
Then there's the matter of the shifting point-of-view. Any good
creative writing professor (though there are those who maintain there is no
such thing) will tell you that only one character permits the reader inside
his head, so that you know what he is thinking and feeling. All the other
characters act outact out what they are thinking and feeling. "Joe felt a
surge of anger and thought what a great joy it would be to smash that
smiling face," while "Sam turned white with rage and menacingly raised his
embroidery-hoop." Well, apparently the Strugatskys don't give a damn what
Teacher said. We repeatedly get inside the heads of many different people,
not all of protagonist stature; but, as in the authors' use of their other
tricks, we never enter through clumsiness, never by accident, never without
a solid reason.
So much for technique; any Strugatsky opus (I think particularly of
Hard to Be a GodHard to Be a God and Roadside PicnicRoadside Picnic) shows
them to be potent and resourceful tellers of tales. But fiction is composed
not only of manner, but of matter, and it is this that is most compelling,
most provocative about their work.
First of all, there is the matter of character development. Here the
Strugatskys obey one of the prime rules of lasting and important fiction:
the central character is changedchanged by the events of the narrative.
There are no exceptions to this in great literature; your protagonist grows,
gains, loses, perhaps dies, but he is not the same at the end as he was in
the beginning, and never can be again. Qt is this which dooms series
television to the minor niches of literature, no matter how beautifully
written; the central character must be the same next week as he is tonight,
no matter how drastic the action.) Maxim is without doubt a species of
superman, and in lesser hands he would sweep aside all obstacles and emerge
predictably triumphant. And Maxim, indeed, does perform many a superhuman
feat. Along with these, however, he commits some horrible blunders, and more
than a few laughable ones. His na(vet( is established early, as is his
humanity. He loses the former the hard way, wherever his innocence is shown
to be, in the matrix of action, just ignorance. The latter, his humanity, he
never loses at all, whether it is shown as falling face-first into a mud
puddle or grieving at the inexcusable death of a friend. His whole being,
however, is work-hardened as the story progresses; placing himself so often

file:///D|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry/D...20Strugatsky%20-%20Prisoners%20of%20Power.htm (2 of 205) [2/24/2004 10:35:38 PM]
 Arcady and Boris Strugatsky. Prisoners of Power