Books

London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1980. First British and first hardcover edition. A fine copy in a fine dust jacket. (29153). Octavo, boards. Signed on the title page by both Strugatsky's. 20 page introduction by Darko Suvin. The novel concerns two protagonists in a world of "The Forest" and "The Directorate" which looks over the Forest, told from alternating viewpoints. In a review written (October 18, 2017) Rachel Cordasco writes: "The Directorate and the Forest stand as two poles of human experience: the former reveals a hyper-bureaucratized state filled with people who have become like robots, while the latter encompasses many forms of constantly-evolving and fluctuating life that is mystical in its mysteriousness. As the Strugatskys themselves have said of Snail: 'The Forest is to be taken as a symbol of the unknown and the alien, a symbol of necessity simplified, of all that is at present hidden from mankind because of our incomplete scientific, philosophical and sociological…

Snail on the Slope is a novel by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky, known for its complex narrative structure.