The Dead Mountaineer's

PRAISE FOR DEFINITELY MAYBE “Denitely Maybe, further proof that knowledge can be a dangerous game, is a work of towering wit and intelligence.” —NPR, BEST BOOKS OF 2014 “Like the best speculative ction, Denitely Maybe doesn’t show its age: the fundamental questions it addresses are timeless—and eectively and entertainingly framed by the Strugatsky brothers. It remains an intriguing, unsettling work.” —THE COMPLETE REVIEW “One of the Strugatsky brothers is descended from Gogol and the other from Chekhov, but nobody is sure which is which. Together they have now proved quite denitely that a visit from a gorgeous blonde, from a disappearing midget, from your mother-in-law, and from the secret police, are all manifestations of a cosmic principle of homeostasis, maybe. This is denitely, not maybe, a beautiful book.” — URSULA K. LE GUIN “Surely one of the best and most provocative novels I have ever read, in or out of sci-.” —THEODORE STURGEON “Provocative, delicately paced and set against a rich physical and psychological background, this is one of the best novels of the year.” — CHICAGO SUN-TIMES PRAISE FOR ROADSIDE PICNIC “It’s a book with an extraordinary atmosphere—and a demonstration of how science ction, by using a single bold central metaphor, can open up the possibilities of the novel.” — HARI KUNZRU, THE GUARDIAN “Gritty and realistic but also fantastical, this is a novel you won’t easily put down—or forget.” —IO9 “It has survived triumphantly as a classic” —PUBLISHERS WEEKLY PRAISE FOR THE STRUGATSKY BROTHERS “The Strugatsky brothers demonstrate that they are realists of the fantastic inasmuch as realism in fantasy betokens a respect for logical consequence, an honesty in deducing all conclusions entirely from the assumed premises.” —STANISŁAW LEM “[In writing Gun, with Occasional Music], I fused the Chandler/Ross MacDonald voice with those rote dystopia moves that I knew backwards and forwards from my study of Ballard, Dick, Orwell, Huxley, and the Brothers Strugatsky.” —JONATHAN LETHEM “Successive generations of Russian intellectuals were raised on the Strugatskys. Their books can be read with a certain pair of spectacles on as political commentaries on Soviet society or indeed any repressive society.” —MUIREANN MAGUIRE, THE GUARDIAN “Their protagonists are often caught up in adventures not unlike those of pulp-ction heroes, but the story line typically veers o in unpredictable directions, and the intellectual puzzles that animate the plots are rarely resolved. Their writing has an untidiness that is nally provocative; they open windows in the mind and then fail to close them all, so that, putting down one of their books, you feel a cold breeze still lifting the hairs on the back of your neck.” — THE NEW YORK TIMES THE DEAD MOUNTAINEER’S INN ARKADY (1925–1991) and BORIS (1933–2012) STRUGATSKY were the most acclaimed and beloved science ction 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 ction, and soon published their rst jointly written novel, From Beyond. They would go on to write twenty-ve novels together, including Roadside Picnic, which was the basis for Andrei Tarkovsky’s lm Stalker; Snail on the Slope; Hard to Be a God; Monday Begins on Saturday; Denitely Maybe; and The Dead Mountaineer’s Inn, as well as numerous short stories, essays, plays, and lm 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. 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 ction books of 2014, in addition to many other commendations. His ction 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 nonction for The Atlantic, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and The Guardian, among other publications. THE NEVERSINK LIBRARY I was by no means the only reader of books on board the Neversink. Several other sailors were diligent readers, though their studies did not lie in the way of belles-lettres. Their favourite authors were such as you may nd at the book-stalls around Fulton Market; they were slightly physiological in their nature. My book experiences on board of the frigate proved an example of a fact which every book-lover must have experienced before me, namely, that though public libraries have an imposing air, and doubtless contain invaluable volumes, yet, somehow, the books that prove most agreeable, grateful, and companionable, are those we pick up by chance here and there; those which seem put into our hands by Providence; those which pretend to little, but abound in much. —HERMAN MELVILLE, WHITE JACKET THE DEAD MOUNTAINEER’S INN Originally published under the title U Pogibshyego Al’pinista Copyright © 1970 by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky Translation copyright © 2015 by Josh Billings Introduction copyright © 2015 by Je VanderMeer First Melville House printing: March 2015 Melville House Publishing 145 Plymouth Street Brooklyn, NY 11201 and 8 Blackstock Mews Islington London N4 2BT mhpbooks.com facebook.com/mhpbooks @melvillehouse Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Strugatskii, Arkadii, 1925–1991, author. [Otel’ “U pogibshego al’pinista”. English] The Dead Mountaineer’s Inn : (one more last rite for the detective genre) / Arkady and Boris Strugatsky; translated by Josh Billings; introduction by Je VanderMeer. pages; cm ISBN 978-1-61219-432-5 (pbk.) ISBN 978-1-61219-433-2 (ebook) I. Strugatskii, Boris, 1933–2012, author. II. Billings, Josh, 1980– translator. III. VanderMeer, Je, writer of introduction. IV. Title. PG3476.S78835O8413 2015 891.73’44–dc23 2014045420 Design by Adly Elewa v3.1 Contents Cover About the Authors Title Page Copyright Introduction by Je VanderMeer Prologue Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Epilogue Acknowledgments INTRODUCTION BY JEFF VANDERMEER 1. “Every man wears the face he deserves.” Or put another way, the mournful cry of “Luarvik L. Luarvik!” from within the besieged Dead Mountaineer’s Inn might as well be the mating call of some obscure species of Alps-dwelling penguin. Who is this Mr. Luarvik? Do we believe his version of dire events, or do we believe the hypnotist/motorcycle enthusiast? How about the physicist? Surely a scientist is more objective than a magician! But how can you be sure when dealing with preternatural events that might just be very imaginative lies? This is the dilemma facing the earnest but sometimes stumbling detective Peter Glebsky who narrates the novel you hold in your hands. Poor man—he just wanted a vacation away from the family, and instead has to not only solve a crime but also parse varying versions of reality. Back home, he’s a cop who covers “bureaucratic crimes, embezzlement, forgery, fraudulent papers.” Not exactly someone who deals with … murder. Much less metaphysics! Also: Avalanche! Ghosts! Pranks! A lot of creeping around at night! Confused? Don’t be. Think instead of the movie Clue or any number of British slapstick mystery-comedies. Perhaps with a hint of The Twilight Zone. Because not only does every man wear the face he deserves, but in The Dead Mountaineer’s Inn the Strugatsky brothers, creators of the Forbidden Zone in their classic science- ction novel Roadside Picnic, give every reader the farce they deserve—with possible infernal devices thrown in to spice up the recipe. I came to Russian literature through absurdism and dark humor; my encounters with Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita and Nikolai Gogol’s The Nose are two of the pivotal experiences of my early adulthood. The idea of a standard, garden-variety realism doesn’t gure into this sort of ctional equation. When the Devil’s cat in The Master and Margarita begins to talk to the corrupt businessman and the businessman argues with the cat for a while before realizing I am arguing with a talking cat!, what we’re seeing is not just interspecies communication at its most subtle, but one of the classic absurdist scenes in all of ction. Even in the work of Vladimir Nabokov, you can sometimes see this quality, and the reason it rises again and again in the work I admire—Russian and not-Russian—is that the absurd admits to the illogic of our lives. To the internal inconsistencies that we try to keep in check. When they pile up, that is when comedy or tragedy occurs, as well as the unpredictable. When, in ction, they spill over into the surreal or fantastical, this is just a psychological extension of what we know to be true in a more mundane sense in our daily lives. Whether we admit it or not. If Glebsky is upset that he must be “on the job,” then in part it may be that he had hoped that the irrationality and absurdity of his normal workweek might be suspended or kept in abeyance while on vacation.

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