Hard to be a god

I felt worried as I read the prologue, not knowing where this was going or what was going on. In the end, I'm still not sure what the prologue and epilogue are doing, but I liked everything in between them.

The first 1/3rd is pretty slow, but as things start to ratchet up, the story and discussions become much more interesting. I was not expecting a translated piece of Soviet-era science fiction to be quite so funny, but I was frequently chuckling at Don Rumata's bristling against people. There's a scene around page 190 where he comes up against some bureaucracy and calls the bureaucrat a “blockhead,” which gave me quite a giggle. He does that a lot.

I feel like the satire or speculation, which sort of simmers throughout the first 2/3rds, shows itself plainly in the final third and does so quite well. I particularly enjoyed some of Rumata and Reba's back-and-forth. I think if this were summarized at all, the best selection of pages to communicate the core ideas are probably pages 214-218, the conversation between Rumata and another character where the book's title shows itself and those ideas are explored.

I think I would benefit from a re-read somewhere down the line, as I'm sure the pro/epilogues have significance, but I'm not sure what it is.

8/10

Hard to Be a God is a book with a pretty great premise and an execution that may not be the thing you immediately expect or want from that premise, but it's really good nonetheless. Much of the context is no longer obvious since it was written in the 1960s and was somewhat censored by the Soviets, but the Russian attitude feels very evident: strong opinions put forth with some grounded and slightly cynical thinking. It's a book of ideas.

Rumata and his cohorts were only to observe, as it was considered almost sacred to allow civilization to evolve on its own. This brought about most of the critical themes that this book explores. He does start interfering. This is all from an ethical standpoint based on the history of Earth itself. It's very much a commentary on the USSR back then.

It's about the fate of intelligentsia under totalitarianism. It examines an important question: if Marxism, which is called the “basis theory” in the novel, promised that the “capital mode of production” would be followed by communist paradise, how come the USSR ended up turning out the way it did?

There's more to it than that, but I'm not one for long reviews. It's a powerful story.

The book was adapted twice, once in 1989 by the German director Peter Fleischmann (starring famous filmmaker Werner Herzog) as a two hour movie, a largely forgotten work and fairly straightforward adaptation of the book. It was also adapted by the Russian director Aleksei German, his final film before his death. The film came out in 2013/2014/2015 (film festivals) and is notoriously one of the grossest, most uncomfortable and confusing movies in a long time.

It's black and white, it has an experimental narrative, it's more slice-of-life and doesn't really have a story. Most people who've seen it say that they didn't really get the story or that it was confusing, etc. I haven't seen either movies so I plan on watching them now that I've read the book. From what I've read, I think having read the book will definitely help watching the 2013 adaptation.