Alien places in late Soviet science fiction : the "Unexpected Encounters" of Arkady and Boris Strugatsky as novels and films

In the Soviet Union a shift in cultural paradigms occurred between the 1960s and the 1970s. Interest was displaced from a scientific-technologically oriented optimism about the future to art, religion, philosophy and metaphysics. Concomitant with this shift in interests was a shift from the future to an elsewhere or, reformulated in exclusively spatial terms, from utopia to heterotopia. The dissertation consists of an analysis of three novels by the Strugatsky brothers (Arkady, 1925-1991 and Boris 1933-2012): Inspector Glebsky’s Puzzle (Otel’ U pogibšego al’pinista, 1970), The Kid (Malyš, 1971) and Roadside Picnic (Piknik na obočine, 1972) and two films: Dead Mountaineer’s Hotel (Hukkunud alpinisti hotell/ Otel’ U pogibšego al’pinista, Kromanov, 1979) and Stalker (Tarkovsky, 1980). In the novels an earlier utopia has given way to a considerably more ambiguous heterotopia. A persistent strain of literary Gothic runs through the novels, indicating how the authors here seem to look back towards history rather than forward towards the future. Markers of the Gothic resurface in the films as well. The films reflect how tendencies only discernable in the novels have developed throughout the decade, such as the budding Soviet consumer culture and the religious sensibilities of the artistic community.