The short stories written by brothers Arkady and Boris Strugatsky confront issues such as differences between civilizations and the complexity of human encounters with diverse, far-flung species. The group exhibition Unexpected Encounters, organized by the Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art, took its title from a story collection by the Strugatskys and drew attention to concepts such as the “stalker” and the “zone,” among other science fiction concepts, appropriated from their once-banned novel Roadside Picnic (1971). This show primarily drew attention to the sociopolitical history of the literary community in Latvia and neighboring regions during the twentieth century, where the state and certain publishers were known to censor works or drastically edit the content of works before they reached the public. Yet, despite this general climate of censorship, literary science fiction publishers in Latvia and the Soviet Union were often successful in producing and supporting works that revolved around the...
University of California Press