Definitely Maybe ─ A Manuscript Discovered Under Strange Circumstances

In its first-ever unexpurgated edition, a sci-fi landmark that's a comic and suspenseful tour-de-force, and puts distraction in a whole new light: It's not you, it's the universe!

Certain he is on the verge of a major scientific discovery, astrophysicist Dmitri Malyanov is happy that his wife has gone out of town so he can work home alone on the project he's sure will win him the Nobel Prize.

But then a beautiful woman shows up at his door, claiming to be an old friend of his wife's and saying she needs a place to stay. Then someone delivers a crate of vodka and caviar. Then his neighbor comes over and wants to tell him a personal secret. Then several of his friends—also scientists—show up, too. Their problem? They all felt they were on the verge of a major discovery when ... they got distracted ...

Is there some ominous force that doesn't want scientific knowledge to progress? Or could it be something more...natural?

In one of their most important works, offered here for the first time in an uncensored edition, the legendary Strugatsky brothers bravely and brilliantly question authority. It's a book that's not so much brilliant science fiction, as it is simply brilliant literature.

ARKADY STRUGATSKY (1925-1991) was a specialist in Japanese literature and a translator of numerous books from Japanese into Russian.

BORIS STRUGATSKY worked as an astrophysicist and computer expert until starting to write full-time in the 1960s, in collaboration with Arkady. The Strugatskys were the most acclaimed Soviet science fiction writers of the period, and their influence in both Russia and the rest of
the world has persisted. The asteroid 3054 Strugatskia, discovered by Nikolai Stepanovich Chernykh in 1977, was named after them.

ANTONINA BOUIS is the noted translator of many Russian writers, including Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Tatyana Tolstoya, Sergei Dovlatov, and Andrei Sakharov.