Somewhere there is the Forest. It stretches out and over hills, fills valleys, chokes mountains. It is mysterious, nigh impenetrable, dangerous. Overlooking it, perched high on an obscure clifftop, sits the Forest Directorate, tasked by some distant government with uncovering the Forest’s secrets. Not that a lot of uncovering actually goes on; most of the time the workers there are busy telling each other dirty stories, or finding ways to shirk work, or attempting to understand the incomprehensible laws set down by the little-seen director. This irritates linguist Peretz to no end: he would like nothing better than to lead an expedition into the forest, and actually do some damn scientific work and make a discovery or SOMETHING useful, dammit. He is secretly jealous of Candide, a pilot who crashed in the forest months ago. Surely, thinks Peretz, Candide is having all SORTS of awesome adventures by now…
Meanwhile, in the forest, Candide is having something, but it’s certainly not an awesome adventure. There are swamps, and idle villagers, and a nagging wife, and someTHING is gradually encroaching from the trees, swallowing all in its path. How he wishes he were back at the directorate, where he might do SOMETHING useful, dammit.
This is a peculiar novel from the Strugatsky brothers, the super SF Russian writing duo. Feeling very much like two stories slammed together, it only barely works as a novel, with a theme of ‘the grass is always greener on the other side’ sorta tying things together. The Candide section reads more like a classic genre adventure, though filtered through the Strugatsky’s wry, melancholic lens of course. The Directorate section is a straight-up satire of bureaucracy and the ethos of ‘making work’ rather than investigating the incredible phenomenon that is there, RIGHT THERE. As such the book feels schizophrenic, a bit haphazard, which is a shame considering the strength of some of the Strugatskys’ other work. Me like books.
Me Like Books 