DO WE REALLY NEED OURSELVES FOR ANYTHING? was a poster that actually did hang in one of the laboratories of, I think, the State Optical Institute.
“Down the road there comes a ZIM, and that’ll be the end of him” is an inspired verse made up by my old friend Yuri Chistakov, a great expert in composing verses in the style of Captain Lebyadkin.
“A summer dacha is my aspiration. / But where to build? Although I try and try…” is a poem from the newspaper For a New Pulkovo.
And so on, and so forth…
To conclude, I cannot keep from mentioning that the censor did not assault this new story too much. It was a funny tale, and the cavils were funny as well. So the censor categorically demanded the excision of any mention of the Zavod imeni Molotova, or Molotov Auto Factory, from the text. (“Down the road there comes a ZIM, and that’ll be the end of him.”) The thing is, at this time Molotov was a marked man, condemned and excluded from the Party, and the auto factory that bore his name was rapidly transformed into the GAZ (Gorkovsky Avtomobilny Zavod, or Gorky Auto Factory), just as the ZIS (Zavod imeni Stalina, the Stalin Factory) had already been renamed as the ZIL (Zavod imeni Likhacheva, the Likhachev Factory). Laughing loudly, the two authors suggested that the poem should read, “Down the road there comes a ZIL, / And that’ll be the end of him.” And what do you think happened? To their great surprise, Glavlit[3] eagerly agreed to this ridiculous nonsense. And in this crude form the poem was printed and reprinted several times.
But there were lots of things we were unable to save. “The minister of state security, Malyuta Skuratov,” for example. Or the line from Merlin’s story: “In the midst of the lake Arthur was ware of a hand hardened by toil…” And several other little trifles, which someone thought were harmful…
Everything (or almost everything) that was lost at that time is happily recovered in this present edition, thanks once again to the friendly and self-sacrificing efforts of the ludens[4] who have gone through a heap of all kinds of earlier editions and drafts. Sveta Bondarenko, Volodya Borisov, Vadim Kazakov, Viktor Kurilsky, and Yuri Fleishman: thanks to you all!
Copyright
Copyright © 1964 by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
Illustrations copyright © 1964 by Yevgeniy Migunov
Foreword copyright © 2016 by Adam Roberts
Afterword copyright © 2000 by Boris Strugatsky
English language translation by Andrew Bromfield copyright © 2002, 2018 by Natalia Hull
All rights reserved
Published by Chicago Review Press Incorporated
814 North Franklin Street
Chicago, IL 60610
ISBN 978-1-61373-926-6
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Strugat?skii?, Arkadii?, 1925–1991, author. | Strugat?skii?, Boris, 1933–2012, author. | Bromfield, Andrew, translator. | Migunov, E., illustrator.
Title: Monday starts on Saturday / Arkady and Boris Strugatsky ; translated by Andrew Bromfield ; illustrations by Yevgeniy Migunov.
Other titles: Ponedel'nik nachinaetsi?a v subbotu. English (Bromfield)
Description: Chicago : Chicago Review Press Incorporated, 2017. | Description based on print version record and CIP data provided by publisher; resource not viewed.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017018448 (print) | LCCN 2017020595 (ebook) | ISBN 9781613739242 (PDF edition) | ISBN 9781613739266 (EPUB edition) | ISBN 9781613739259 (Kindle edition) | ISBN 9781613739235 (pbk. edition)
Classification: LCC PG3476.S78835 (ebook) | LCC PG3476.S78835 P6613 2017 (print) | DDC 891.73/44—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017018448
Cover design: Sarah Olson
Cover image: iStock.com/kevinruss
Typesetting: Nord Compo
Printed in the United States of America
5 4 3 2 1
This digital document has been produced by Nord Compo.
3
TRANSLATOR’S NOTE: Glavlit is Glavnoe Upravlenie po Delam Literatury i Izdatelstv, the Central Directorate for Literary and Publishing Matters.
4
TRANSLATOR’S NOTE: The