The Waves Extinguish the Wind

I agree with the previous reviewer. The Strugatskys are as good as Clarke and Asimov at their best. I was a little unsure about this book because the story is presented as a series of reports and memoirs (unlike Hard to be a God which I read first). However, the writing is top-notch throughout. It is a cerebral book. The ending is haunting. I continue to think about it.

This novel is a little-known classic by the Soviet Union's masters of political science fiction. It examines the paradox of a future human society whose leaders feel (with some justification) that they are justified in meddling with less fully-developed civilizations, but who fanatically resists any external interference with their own. How the Soviet censors failed to recognize the element of self-reference in the narrative boggles my mind. The story is a personal drama, too, though, of the staunch "anti-progressor" Toivo Glumov, who begins by suspecting that a race of super beings is messing with human history, and ends, paradoxically, by... ...well, better not blow the ending. But please drop everything and read this book as soon as you can. It's as good as anything by Asimov, Stapleton, Sterling or Stephenson.