The Dead Mountaineer's Inn: (One More Last Rite for the Detective Genre)

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

ARKADY (1925–1991) and BORIS (1933–2012) STRUGATSKY were the most acclaimed and beloved science fiction writers of the Soviet era. The brothers were born and raised in Leningrad. Arkady was drafted into the Soviet army and studied at the Military Institute of Foreign Languages, graduating in 1949 as an interpreter from English and Japanese. He served as an interpreter in the Far East before returning to Moscow in 1955. Boris studied astronomy at Leningrad State University, and worked as an astronomer and computer engineer. In the mid-1950s, the brothers began to write fiction, and soon published their first jointly written novel, From Beyond. They would go on to write twenty-five novels together, including Roadside Picnic, which was the basis for Andrei Tarkovsky’s film Stalker; Snail on the Slope; Hard to Be a God; Monday Begins on Saturday; Definitely Maybe; and The Dead Mountaineer’s Inn, as well as numerous short stories, essays, plays, and film scripts. Their books have been translated into multiple languages and published in twenty-seven countries. After Arkady’s death in 1991, Boris continued writing, publishing two books under the name S. Vititsky. Boris died on November 19, 2012, at the age of seventy-nine. The asteroid 3054 Strugatskia, discovered in 1977, is named after the brothers.

JOSH BILLINGS is a writer and translator who lives in Rockland, Maine. His translations of Alexander Pushkin’s Tales of Belkin and Alexander Kuprin’s The Duel were published by Melville House. His recent writing has appeared in The Collagist and The Literary Review. He blogs at http://begborrowstijl.blogspot.com.

JEFF VANDERMEER is an award-winning novelist and editor. His New York Times–bestselling Southern Reach Trilogy was named one of Entertainment Weekly’s ten best fiction books of 2014, in addition to many other commendations. His fiction has been translated into twenty languages and has appeared in the Library of America’s American Fantastic Tales and multiple year’s-best anthologies. He writes nonfiction for The Atlantic, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and The Guardian, among other publications.