by Margarita Mospanova

Imagine a picture, dear readers. It’s a rainy day, the light coming in from the windows dark and heavy. You have a day off work and there’s nothing requiring your immediate attention. You make yourself a cup of tea or a mug of coffee and drag your favorite chair to the nearest window. Turn to the bookshelf to grab that novel that you’ve been dying to read but couldn’t find the time to and… several minutes later realize that you’ve been stuck on the first page for a while. You sigh, take a sip of something tasty, and force yourself to muddle through. And yet, the magic of the day is gone, the perfect atmosphere is gone, the enthusiasm for a new book is gone. The novel lies half open on your knees, its pages crinkling softly in protest, and, unreasonably irritated by the whisper of the rain outside, you resign yourself to another wasted day.

Well. That got pretty dark pretty fast. But because that’s happened to me more than once in the past, I now keep a stack of perfect remedies right by the chair. Novels are too long, short stories are, as you might guess, too short, but novellas and novelettes are ideal for when you want to relax for an hour or two but have no desire to commit yourself to something really time-consuming.

And the latest novella I had the pleasure of reading came from the authors easily recognized by our most attentive readers. From Beyond by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky (From the Outside, Strangers, or whatever title the eventual translated edition will bear) started as a small short story and was later reworked into the novella first published in 1960.

Composed of three parts, the story follows professor Lozovsky, an archeologist leading an excavation site in Tajikistan. But each part has its own narrator: a military officer on a camping trip, a scientist from the excavation site, and finally the professor himself.

The structure of the novella deserves a separate mention because not only it is divided by characters and places, but it is also not set chronologically. Which, to my experience, does not happen as often as I would like, being a fan of experimental fiction myself. The first story actually deals with the very end of the professor’s journey and reads a bit like horror to boot!

And for each character the Strugatskys create a completely unique voice which adds a different mood for each chapter. The somewhat direct and down-to-earth officer leads us from a simple hiking trip on a sleeping volcano to a mysterious night encounter with a mad man. The scientist recounts the events in a dry and somewhat formal manner, sticking to facts and nothing but facts. And the professor is a bit naive and as enthusiastic as a child in a candy-shop, which makes his dedication and commitment to science all the more apparent.

All three parts of the novella deal with a first-contact scenario. Or rather a version of it, where humans are not supposed to be a part of the action, so to speak. The novella is fairly short and I do not see a reason to divulge all the details and completely spoil the plot for you, dear readers, but some things are just too good to ignore. As such I will allow myself to gush over one small, but still very much story-relevant part of the novella:

It has a space zoo in it! These two simple words are usually a surefire way for me to completely fall in love with whatever they appear inside. And this novella did not let me down. The zoo was probably my favorite part of it, if I have to choose. Yes, some of the details are a bit hard to believe. Yes, there are plenty of things to nitpick from the science side of things. But let’s be honest here. It’s a space zoo. Very little matters compared to that.

I have to admit that out of all the Soviet science fiction writers the Strugatsky brothers are fast becoming my favorites. So far, most of what I’ve read from them are short stories and I’ve been ready to move onto something bigger for a while now. As such, I am very glad I managed to get my hands on this novella.

No matter the subject, Strugatskys’ characters turn out alive and exceptionally well fleshed out. With just a few word strokes, they paint a picture so vivid, it is better than many a movie I had to suffer through in the past.

And so, it is my great pleasure to award From Beyond by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky five flying tigers out of five.

(Space zoo in zero gravity, dear readers. The tigers aren’t the only ones flying in this one.)

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