Roadside Picnic was really chilling. I'll definitely add this to my list as well. Do you know of any recommended reading lists for Soviet/Eastern Bloc scifi?
Memories of the Future by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky
"Written in Soviet Moscow in the 1920s—but considered too subversive even to show to a publisher—the seven tales included here attest to Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky’s boundless imagination, black humor, and breathtaking irony: a man loses his way in the vast black waste of his own small room; the Eiffel Tower runs amok; a kind soul dreams of selling “everything you need for suicide”; an absentminded passenger boards the wrong train, winding up in a place where night is day, nightmares are the reality, and the backs of all facts have been broken; a man out looking for work comes across a line for logic but doesn’t join it as there’s no guarantee the logic will last; a sociable corpse misses his own funeral; an inventor gets a glimpse of the far-from-radiant communist future."
As a Russian myself, I recommend Strugatsky brothers "The Doomed City", because firstly: it's a damn good book. Secondly, I think it gives great, subtle and wild representation
of soviet people minds. Also, this book is full of awesome philosophical ideas, for which it was hidden from general public for a lot of years.
And for pure aesthetic pleasure - Vadim Shefner: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vadim_Shefner His writings are so poetic, kind, ironic and alive. I still reread some of his works, despite not reading much those days.
I would recommend to read almost all of Strugatsky brothers books (which were translated to your language). They are all very interesting in different aspects. E.g. "Monday starts at Saturday" is a humorous story about programmer.
Though they dreamed of communistic future, keep that in mind. Their worlds probably will look foreign to the western reader. And there are some references to the russian culture. But translations probably should take that in mind.
>Though they dreamed of communistic future, keep that in mind. Their worlds probably will look foreign to the western reader.
except for may be the earliest works, their communist future isn't that different from for example the "self-betterment" world of StarTrek, and serves basically as just a setting.
Lem is excellent. GP, start with "Tales of Pirx the Pilot". Short stories with a great mix of interesting story lines, pragmatic view of the world and dry humor.
I like Lem's more serious books way more. "The Astronauts", his first SciFi is one of my favorites, because it starts out with a completely naive description of a happy communist world and gradually turns darker. It's an old book (and was probably written for adolescents), so the narrative style is pretty conventional, but I like how it causes chills in the second half.
Also "Solaris", although the descriptions of the various phenomenons on Solaris get a bit tedious over time.
And finally "The Invincible" if you like dystopian tales of artificial intelligence swarms going bad.
Of the serious ones "Fiasco" made a deep impression on me. The alien contact mystery is not bad, but the main theme is certainly human behavior and decision making.
