Definitely Maybe - Afterword and Translator's Note
If you thought the novel itself was intense, wait until you read what was happening behind the scenes. The afterword and translator’s note turn Definitely Maybe from a great sci-fi story into something much more personal and much more real.
The Translator
Antonina Bouis translated this edition, and her note gives important context. The Strugatsky brothers were the best-known science fiction writers in the Soviet Union. Arkady lived in Moscow, Boris lived in Leningrad, and they wrote together by meeting in person. Every single book they published had to go through censors first.
This is also the first complete English text of Definitely Maybe. Previous translations had cuts and changes forced by Soviet authorities. This edition is based on the 2000-2001 canonical version that Boris edited himself, restoring everything the censors had removed.
So what you read in earlier chapters? That wasn’t even the full story until this edition came out.
Boris Tells the Real Story
Boris Strugatsky’s afterword is where things get wild. He gives us the backstory of how this book was born, and it reads like a chapter from the novel itself.
The book was conceived on April 23, 1973, in a single workday. The brothers threw around title ideas like “Faust, 20th Century” and started with a core concept: “Hell and Heaven try to stop the development of science.” From the very beginning, they listed all possible explanations for what’s happening in the book. Saboteurs. The Devil. Aliens. Spiridon Octopi. Union of the Nine. The Universe itself.
They wrote all those options down before writing a single page of the novel. That’s why the book feels so balanced between theories. None of them were added as an afterthought. All of them were built in from day one.
The KGB Connection
Writing was delayed by a year. And that delay changed everything.
In spring 1974, Boris got dragged into the Kheifets affair. A friend of his, Mikhail Kheifets, was arrested for “anti-Soviet propaganda.” His crime? Writing an introduction to a collection of Joseph Brodsky’s poems. That’s it. An introduction to poems.
Boris was called in as a witness. The KGB interrogated him. They asked if he’d seen the banned books. He denied it. He sat in that room and lied to protect himself and his friends, knowing exactly what could happen if they didn’t believe him.
This experience colored the entire novel. When you read about Malianov being pressured, about the force that knows exactly which buttons to push, about the impossible choice between your work and your safety, that’s not just fiction. Boris lived a version of that story.
The Homeostatic Universe is the Soviet State
Here’s the line from Boris that I keep coming back to. He describes the force in the novel as “a dull, blind, persistent force that knows neither honor, nor nobility, nor charity.”
He’s talking about the universe in the book. But he’s also talking about the Soviet system. The KGB. The censors. The whole apparatus that existed to prevent people from thinking too freely.
The “Homeostatic Universe” was always a metaphor. A system that detects any deviation from the norm and applies pressure until the deviation stops. It doesn’t hate you. It doesn’t have feelings about you at all. It’s just a mechanism. And that makes it worse, because you can’t reason with a mechanism.
What the Censors Did
Speaking of mechanisms. The censors had their own notes on the manuscript, and they’re almost funny in how petty they are.
They wanted the entire story moved to a capitalist country. Because apparently, mysterious oppressive forces could only exist under capitalism.
They cut Lidochka’s bra. The pink bra that Irina finds in Chapter 10. Too scandalous.
They fought hard to remove the telegram about “HOMEOPATHIC UNIVERSE.” They knew exactly what it was pointing at, even in its garbled form.
They replaced the word “homeostasis” with “Preservation of Structure.” Less threatening, apparently.
They even changed the type of investigator Zykov was, because the original version hit too close to how real KGB officers behaved.
Every one of these changes was a small act of the same force the book describes. The system detecting a threat and applying pressure to neutralize it. The novel was being censored by the very thing it was about.
Real People, Real Pressure
Boris reveals that all the characters have real prototypes. Real scientists and writers who inspired the fictional versions. Investigator Zykov is a mix of Porfiry from Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment and the actual KGB investigator from the Kheifets case. The same man who sat across from Boris and asked questions designed to trap him.
Boris ends his afterword with a line that’s both casual and heartbreaking: “There is nothing more pleasurable than recalling unpleasantness that has bypassed us successfully.”
He survived. The book survived. But you can feel the weight of everything that almost didn’t survive in every word of that sentence.
Why This Matters
Knowing the backstory changes how you read the novel. Every scene where Malianov hesitates, every moment where a character considers giving up, every time someone weighs their safety against their conscience. Boris wasn’t imagining those feelings. He was remembering them.
The Strugatsky brothers wrote a sci-fi novel about a universe that suppresses dangerous knowledge. But they wrote it while living inside a real system that did the exact same thing. And they got it published. Through the censors, past the KGB, into the hands of readers.
That’s its own kind of victory, even if it came with scars.
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