Russian Soviet writer, screenwriter, editor, translator, who co-authored with his brother Arkady Strugatsky several dozen works that have become classics of modern science and social fiction. After his brother and co-author A. N. Strugatsky died in 1991, he published two independent novels.
Laureate of the State Prize of the RSFSR and the Prize of the President of the Russian Federation.
Born on April 15, 1933 in Leningrad, where his father Nathan Zalmanovich Strugatsky had just been appointed a researcher at the State Russian Museum. Boris's mother, Alexandra Ivanovna Litvincheva, was a teacher, taught Russian literature in the same school where Boris studied, after the war was awarded the title "Honored Teacher of the RSFSR" and was awarded the Order of the Badge of Honor.
The family lived in a communal apartment at 4 Karl Marx Avenue. During the Great Patriotic War the Strugatsky family was in besieged Leningrad, and because of Boris's illness in January 1942 Arkady and Nathan Zalmanovich Strugatsky went to evacuation alone; the father died of exhaustion on the way to Vologda. Only in 1943, the older brother Arkady managed to take his mother and brother Boris to the village of Tashla in the Orenburg (then Chkalov) region. They returned to Leningrad in 1945. In 1950 Boris graduated from school with a silver medal and was going to enter the physics department of the Leningrad State University, but was not accepted. Then he applied to the Mathematical and Mechanical Faculty of LSU, which he graduated from in 1955 with a specialty in astronomy. In 1951 Boris Strugatsky passed summer internship before the second course in the Alma-Ata Observatory at the Academy of Sciences of the Kazakh SSR in the sector of astrobotany, organized by Academician G. A. Tikhov for the development of research on predicting the possibility of life on other planets of the solar system.
After graduation, Boris Strugatsky entered the graduate school of Pulkovo Observatory, but did not defend his dissertation, the topic of which was disclosed in 1942 abroad. Then B. Strugatsky worked at the counting station of the Pulkovo Observatory as an operating engineer for counting and analytical machines. In 1960 he took part in a geodetic and astroclimatic expedition in the Caucasus as part of the program to find a place to install the Large Telescope of the USSR Academy of Sciences.
Since 1964 - a professional writer, a member of the Union of Writers of the USSR. For several more years he worked part-time at the Pulkovo Observatory. Since 1974 he was the head of the Leningrad seminar of young fiction writers, which later became known as "Boris Strugatsky's seminar".
In 1974 he was involved by the KGB as a witness in the case of Mikhail Heifetz, who was incriminated under Article 70 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR (anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda).
Founder of the "Bronze Snail" award. Since 2002, editor-in-chief of the magazine "Polden. XXI century".
Was married to Adelaide Andreevna Karpelyuk (October 23, 1931 - December 20, 2013), daughter of Major General A. I. Karpelyuk, whom he met in his student years while studying at LSU. Son Andrei (born in 1959).
Boris Nathanovich was known as a passionate philatelist, which was reflected in his work.
In 1997, he was a member of the jury of the literary Internet contest "Tenyota", which played an important role in the formation of literary culture in Runet. His judging resulted in the "discovery" of the marginal writer Bayan Shiryanov, for which Strugatsky was criticized. However, in reality, the writer decided to award Shiryanov under pressure from the other organizers of the contest, primarily Anton Nosik, who seriously nominated Shiryanov on the joking advice of Maxim Kononenko. At the end of the contest, Boris Strugatsky declared that the level of the entries he reviewed was "professional (indistinguishable from the average level of a typical contemporary magazine)," rating it higher than the writer's workshop he heads. However, the writer believed that "Some special future for network literature, of course, there is not and cannot be by definition."
After a serious and long illness (lymphosarcoma) Boris Nathanovich Strugatsky died on November 19, 2012 in St. Petersburg at the 80th year of life. In accordance with the writer's will, his body was cremated, and on April 5, 2014, the ashes of Boris Nathanovich and his wife were scattered over Pulkovo Heights
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