Final Thoughts on the Kid From Hell by Strugatsky Brothers
We made it. Eight chapters, one introduction, and a whole lot of Gack being confused, angry, and stubborn. The retelling of “The Kid from Hell” is done.
Boris strugatsky
The Kid From Hell Chapter 8 - Coming Home
Back to Giganda
Chapter 8 is short. Maybe the shortest chapter in the book. And it hits the hardest.
Gack pushes through the last thickets and steps out onto a road. It’s raining. Not a light drizzle, a downpour. There’s a stench coming from a ditch where something that used to be a person is rotting in clayey slime. A burnt-out tank sits half-sunk in a quagmire, its flamethrower barrel pointed uselessly at the clouds.
The Kid From Hell Chapter 7 - Breaking Free
This is it. Chapter 7 is where everything breaks and everything begins. If you’ve been following Gack’s story, you know this has been building. The kid from another planet, the child soldier who worshipped his duke and his generals, finally gets hit with the full truth. And what he does with it is the entire point of this novella.
The Kid From Hell Chapter 6 - The Truth Hurts
The Perfect Trench
Chapter 6 opens with Gack inspecting a mortar position that Dramba just finished digging. Two hours and ten minutes. Perfectly smooth walls, regulation slope, tamped-down floor, beam-covered dugouts. Gack is proud. His Highness’s Engineer’s Academy would approve.
The Kid From Hell Chapter 5 - Weapons and Walls
Chapter 5 is where Gack hits a wall. Several walls, actually. Some invisible, some emotional, and one that nearly breaks him.
The Kid From Hell Chapter 4 - Private Dramba
A Walk Through an Empty World
Chapter 4 switches to third person and takes us outside, into the open. Gack and Dramba are walking along a deserted road on Earth’s plains. The sun is up, grasshoppers are screaming, and the road stretches from one horizon to the other in a perfectly straight line.
The Kid From Hell Chapter 3 - Life on Another Planet
Gack vs. Earth Technology
Chapter 3 is told entirely from Gack’s perspective, and it’s honestly hilarious and sad at the same time. The guy has been on Earth for five days and he’s completely overwhelmed.
The Kid From Hell Chapter 2 - Waking Up on a New World
Naked in a Strange Room
So here’s what happened. Gack wakes up completely naked on a hospital bed. Two men are sitting next to him. One is a rosy-faced doctor beaming at him like a saint from an old icon. The other is a skinny, tanned guy with grey hair and a straw sticking out of his mouth. He says nothing. Just watches.
The Kid From Hell Chapter 1 - Welcome to the War Zone
Chapter 1 hits you like a punch. No slow setup, no worldbuilding lectures. You are dropped straight into mud, smoke, and a young soldier named Gack who has zero patience for the mess he just walked into.
The Kid From Hell by Strugatsky Brothers - A Chapter by Chapter Retelling
Who Are the Strugatsky Brothers?
If you grew up in the USSR or any post-Soviet country, you know Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. They were THE science fiction writers. Not just popular, but genuinely brilliant. Think of them as the Soviet version of Arthur C. Clarke meets Philip K. Dick. They wrote dozens of novels and short stories, and most of them still hold up today.