Lame Fate

Lame Fate (Russian: Хромая Судьба) is a novel by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, a representative of realistic fantasy in their work, although it includes mystical elements. It was written during 1982, with the magazine publication following in 1986.

Both plot lines of the novel are dedicated to the relationships between an artist and the omnipotent state. The hero of the "Moscow" chapters (Felix Sorokin) is a not-so-young "writer of military-patriotic themes", many details of whose biography are inspired by the life path of Arkady Strugatsky. The hero of Sorokin's manuscript —writer Viktor Banev —lives in a state unknown historically and territorially and is unwelcome to the authorities. Felix Sorokin is mainly occupied with drinking with his writer friends and working on a tedious commissioned script; however, in that January week of 1982 when the action takes place, he encounters people and situations that seem to have come straight from the pages of his old manuscripts. First, he is forced to obtain an elixir of life for a neighbor; then he is mistaken for an extraterrestrial; and finally, in a café, the writer encounters a fallen angel offering to buy the score for the trumpets of the Last Judgment. Each of the numerous plots breaks off and in principle cannot have a resolution, but all these events prevent Sorokin from reaching the Institute of Linguistic Research, where he is obliged to present his manuscripts for study. In the evenings, Felix invariably returns to the Blue Folder—his main, most intimate text, not intended for publication.

In Banev's world (Blue Folder) — endless rain and a city populated by common folk, whose children are alienated from their parents by the "wet ones". These beings in masks are said to have a genetic disease, and yet they are supervised by military intelligence. Viktor Banev finds himself in this city essentially in exile, since the president himself has suggested to him to "stop strumming". Banev reasons extensively about the value of creativity and tries to actively figure out what is happening in the mysterious city. When Sorokin finally reaches the Institute, it turns out that an electronic machine capable of measuring the value of a writer's labor is installed there. The computer is operated by a certain Mikhail Afanasievich, who declares that his main mission is to ensure that the Blue Folder is completed and finished, and reads a finale that does not yet exist. Banev becomes a witness to the end of the old world and the onset of the new, sunny and bright one, in which alcohol and drugs turn into spring water, concrete fortresses collapse, and weapons rust. Banev is happy to witness all this, but the new world does not belong to him, and he must "not forget to return".

The main plot line —objective measurement of the writer's mastery— appears in the Strugatsky' work diary in 1971. However, the further ideas that led to the creation of Lame Fame were gradually developed starting from 1977. Work on the text was carried out in 1982. At the first stage, the content of Felix Sorokin's Blue Folder was the novel The Doomed City. In 1985, the co-authors decided to use the standalone novella Ugly Swans, created back in the 1960s but not published in the USSR, as the Blue Folder. The first publication in the magazine Neva (1986, Nos. 8 and 9), however, contained references to The Doomed City and had numerous censorship excisions due to the Gorbachev anti-alcohol campaign. Ugly Swans (under the title Time of Rain) was published in the magazine Daugava in 1987. The full edition, including the text of Ugly Swans alternating with chapters about Felix Sorokin and Banev, came out in 1989 and has been repeatedly reissued. In the "Worlds of the Strugatsky Brothers" series, Lame Fame and Ugly Swans were published separately. In the complete 33-volume collected works, both variants are presented: with inserts from The Doomed City and the final text.