Science Fiction Author Boris Strugatsky Dies

The St. Petersburg Times

Published: November 21, 2012 (Issue # 1736)

Prominent science fiction author Boris Strugatsky died in a St. Petersburg hospital late Monday after a serious illness, media reports said.

Strugatsky, who was 79 at the time of his death, wrote several dozen books with his late brother Arkady between the 1960s and 1980s. Their books were printed in 321 editions in 27 countries, according to the website of the Strugatsky Brothers Foundation.

President Vladimir Putin called Strugatsky “one of the brightest, most talented and popular writers of the [present and past] time” and the “ruler of the dreams of many generations” in a telegram to the writer’s relatives posted on the Kremlin’s website.

Arkady Strugatsky died in 1991.

Boris Strugatsky had accused film director James Cameron of taking the plot for the hit movie “Avatar” from his novel “World of Noon.”

In the 2000 presidential election, Boris Strugatsky voted for Putin’s first term, but in a February 2010 interview with the opposition-minded Novaya Gazeta newspaper he condemned Putin’s rule as “authoritarian.”

In 2005, he signed an open letter calling on the international community to recognize Yukos founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky a political prisoner, according to the writer’s biography on Ekho Moskvy.

Strugatsky’s family hasn’t yet decided on the place and time of the funeral.