The Beetle in the Anthill

Today, Russian authors Arkady and Boris Strugatsky are counted among the best science fiction writers of the twentieth century. In their Noon Universe novels, they imagined twenty-second-century Earth as a space-faring communist utopia, devoted to guiding the progress of civilization on alien worlds. But as the authors became increasingly disillusioned with life in the Soviet Union, their Noon Universe stories grew darker and more complex as well. The Beetle in the Anthill reintroduces Maxim Kammerer, the main character of their novel The Inhabited Island. Once an intrepid young space explorer, Kammerer is now an investigator with COMCON-2, the covert agency in charge of countering threats to the homeworld. He is tasked with tracking "progressor" Lev Abalkin, who has returned to Earth after a routine mission went tragically wrong. Do the secrets of Abalkin's past pose a grave danger to humanity—or is he an innocent caught up in a deadly misunderstanding? This new edition by lauded translator Olena Bormashenko joins updated translations of Hard to Be a God, The Inhabited Island, and The Waves Extinguish the Wind to continue the ever-deepening saga of the Noon Universe.