Hard to Be a God (Russian: Трудно быть богом, romanized: Trudno byt' bogom) is a 1964 science fiction novel by the Soviet writers Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, set in the Noon Universe.
The novel's core idea is that human progress throughout the centuries is often cruel and bloody, and that religion and blind faith can be effective tools of oppression, working to destroy the emerging scientific disciplines and enlightenment.
The book pays a lot of attention to the internal world of the main character, showing his own evolution from an emotionally uninvolved 'observer' to the person who rejects the blind belief in theory when confronted with the cruelty of real events.
The prologue shows a scene from Anton's childhood (but real names of Arkanar people and locations pronounced allow to speculate that it is not childhood, but just a vacation in preparation to departure to the planet), in which he goes on an adventure with his friends Pashka (Paul) and Anka (Anna) and plays a game based on melodramatic recreations of events on the unnamed medieval planet.
Anton decides to go further and discovers remnants from World War II – a skeleton of a German gunner chained to his machine gun (or so he says to his friends).
He has the current task of investigating the disappearance of a famed scientist, Doctor Budach, who may have been kidnapped by Don Reba, the Prime Minister of Arkanar.
Rumata feels alarmed, as the kingdom is changing into a fascist police state which would never have developed in equivalent medieval societies on Earth.
After confessing that he, in fact, kidnapped Dr. Budah, fearing that the man is not to be trusted with King's life, Don Reba apologizes.
Don Reba then calls in the Holy Order's army, which quickly dispatches the criminals and the guardsmen alike, seizing the defenceless city with minimal losses.
Rumata returns to his home to discover his most loyal servant killed during a fight with a squad of Reba's stormtroopers who had gained entrance into the house; a unit of the Holy Order then saved the rest of the household.
Feeling confident in his superior abilities and contacts in the military and the criminal world alike, Rumata plans to escape with Kira to Earth.
In the epilogue Pasha summarizes subsequent events to Anka while waiting for Anton in some recovery medical institution: the space station went on alert when the house was attacked.
Remembering the events of the prologue, Pashka wonders whether the episode when Anton decided to disobey the "Wrong way" sign and found 'a skeleton of a fascist', had a deeper meaning about the course of history.
According to Boris Strugatsky, the concept behind Hard to Be a God started as a "fun adventure story in the spirit of The Three Musketeers" while the brothers were writing Escape Attempt, which mentions a character who is a spy on another planet.
After that meeting, the brothers shifted the novel to be a "story about the fate of intelligentsia, submerged in the twilight of the middle ages", and finished writing in June 1963.
[2] Theodore Sturgeon praised Hard to Be a God as "one of the most skillfully written, heavily freighted sf novels I have ever read," saying "The writing is well paced and the narrative is beautifully structured.
"[3] Publishers Weekly wrote "The unadorned prose cloaks rich ideas, illustrating the ability of imaginative literature to probe troubling moral questions.
Without Weapons (Без оружия, Bez oruzhia) also known as A Man from a Distant Star (Человек с далёкой звезды, Chelovek s dalyokoy zvezdy) was a play created by the Strugatsky brothers themselves in 1989.
A role-playing video game of the same title, Трудно быть богом [ru], loosely based on the book, was developed by Burut Entertainment and Akella studios for the PC in 2007.