Excellent review, Alf, and I too prefer the book to the film, although Tarkovsky clearly has quite different motivations and interests, as well as a much more melancholoy tone. Although oddly, he arrives at a similar conclusion, even if he's using the aliens as a religious, rather than political, metaphor. Oddly, i've not come across the opinion that the Strugatskys were apolitical - it seems pretty obvious there's a political critique implied in all their work, though, as you say, they were adept at veiling it in order to escape censors (though some of their work was never published). Perhaps this misconception of apoliticism stesm from generations unfamiliar with the books' original context? ironic in any case, given the unsetttlingly similar state of world politics today...
Excellent review, Alf, and I too prefer the book to the film, although Tarkovsky clearly has quite different motivations and interests, as well as a much more melancholoy tone. Although oddly, he arrives at a similar conclusion, even if he's using the aliens as a religious, rather than political, metaphor. Oddly, i've not come across the opinion that the Strugatskys were apolitical - it seems pretty obvious there's a political critique implied in all their work, though, as you say, they were adept at veiling it in order to escape censors (though some of their work was never published). Perhaps this misconception of apoliticism stesm from generations unfamiliar with the books' original context? ironic in any case, given the unsetttlingly similar state of world politics today...