Arkady Strugatsky - Monday starts on Saturday. Monday starts on Saturday

The brothers Boris and Arkady Strugatsky are rightfully considered classics of Soviet science fiction. The humorous fantasy story "Monday Begins on Saturday", written by the authors in 1965, is a classic example of a Soviet utopia. The work is satirical in nature and ridicules the bureaucratic system and progressive opportunism.

Alexander Privalov is the main character of the story, on behalf of whom the whole story is being conducted. He is a programmer from Leningrad who, by chance, gave a lift to hitchhiking employees of the NIICHAVO institute, which stands for the Research Institute of Witchcraft and Wizardry, from the northern city of Solovets. As a thank you, they settle Privalov in a local hotel on Lukomorye Street with the name IZNAKURNOZH, which means Hut on Chicken Legs. Alexander gradually begins to get used to the miracles happening around him, and eventually becomes an employee of an extraordinary institute.

The events that develop in the work "Monday begins on Saturday" take place in the 60s of the last century, but they do not lose their relevance in modern times.

The story appeared on the Soviet screens in the form of the TV play "The Vanity Around the Sofa" and the feature film "Magicians", in which some fragments of the work were used.

Here you can download the book "Monday begins on Saturday" for free and without registration in fb2, ePub, mobi, PDF, txt format

I marvel at the imagination of science fiction. Their thinking, their ideas.

Sasha Privalov, a programmer, willy-nilly of fate, turns out to be an employee of NIICHAVO. And plunges into the world of magic, sorcery and madness (for me it is).

In the first part, the theme is well conveyed that there is a law in such a world. And it is required to comply. And you won't surprise police officers and ordinary people with all sorts of magical and magical things. Everyone is equal to the law. Law is law. And Alexander Privalov pesters a man who uses the magic that has fallen on him solely as an experiment and observation. He is wildly interested in understanding how this works, to figure it out. Perhaps these qualities allow him to become an employee of a miracle institute. He was interested and curious, to get to the point. He pretty quickly stopped being surprised at everything and tried to understand what and how.

The second part of the book deals with the topic of consumption, consumption by society. A person who only consumes ends up metaphorically exploding, although physically in the book. The idea is also conveyed that a person can begin to satisfy his spiritual needs only after satisfying his material values. And the more a person is satisfied materially, the more he has to master spiritual values. In that regard, I liked this idea. I sincerely believe that people who have earned a lot of money themselves are not sickly so developed and spiritually.
And in the same part, the topic of the media, which come to the news about the ideal consumer, is conveyed.
I also saw an interesting thing: many employees of the institute came to work on New Year's Eve, although it was strictly forbidden, that's what obsession and interesting work mean. People who are engaged in creative interesting work are ready to work on holidays for free, in the sense that they clearly do not evaluate their work solely as a means of earning money, but also as development, interest, goal, ambition. Some of the employees even sent their “double” to the family for a holiday, while he himself went to work, many would probably do the opposite. Also, these people did not like the resurrection, and saw the purpose and meaning of life in “work”, constant improvement, constant knowledge and worked for the benefit of society, tried to understand the meaning of life, tried to help people.

In the third part of the book, I was most surprised by how strong the imagination and thinking of the authors of the book work, and how primitive we all sometimes think. Alexander Privalov, whom everyone perceives as a newcomer to the institute, by the end of the book manages to understand and solve an interesting puzzle. He succeeded just because he could think so broadly and not be limited only by his experience. Bravo Alexander, bravo authors. By the end of the book, the authors suffered (in a good sense of the word) so much that they tried to explain their vision of the event of the “Tunguska meteorite”

In general, the book very well "accelerates" thinking and suggests that we are in our own closed space, we think and think very primitively. Everything is possible.

Title: Monday Starts on Saturday

About "Monday Starts on Saturday" Very bright book Brothers Strugatsky

For most of us, the word "Monday" is associated exclusively with the beginning of a new working week. Many of us, hearing this word, involuntarily frown, thinking about how much more remains to be done over the next few days ... But you really want to relax ... So, in the book by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky "Monday begins on Saturday" everything is just the opposite ! And today it seems even more fantastic than fiat nickel or talking animals. This book came in for a reason. However, you can see for yourself.

You can download "Monday starts on Saturday" at the bottom of the page in epub, rtf, fb2, txt format.

The protagonist is an ordinary person whose life at one moment turned into a real magic show. Personally, this world somehow reminds me of Bulgakov's works, because there is a talking cat and Vibegallo (the name reminds Azazello, doesn't it?), the witch Stella (and Mikhail Afanasyevich has Gella). The Strugatskys talk about everything magical as simply as if they were talking about the most mundane. And it drags on...

The abbreviation NIICHAVO, it seems, is nothing :). But under it lies the name of a scientific institution where real enthusiasts work. For them, Monday just begins on Saturday; in other words, they do not need rest, because work is their life. They love what they do, enjoying the very process of creating new knowledge. This is real fantasy, right?

Of course, in the world of hard workers there are simulators. But these are very easy to figure out: their ears give out. A kind of ideal world, more reminiscent of a bright dream of the Soviet era than today's realities. It’s even a pity that the future turned out to be completely different from what our parents and grandparents imagined it to be.

“Monday starts on Saturday” is also great humor. Believe me, such good jokes as in this book are rare today. Although the Strugatskys wrote not only to make the reader laugh. Their book is about what society will become if each of us stops thinking only about ourselves. The fact that real magic is created not with a wand, but with a kind heart and a bright mind.

“Monday starts on Saturday” is a book filled with positive and faith in people, in the future. Everyone should read it, and especially in difficult times, when you need to find a magical resource to recharge your soul.

On our site about books, you can download the site for free without registration or read the online book "Monday begins on Saturday." A very bright book by the Strugatsky Brothers in epub, fb2, txt, rtf, pdf formats for iPad, iPhone, Android and Kindle. The book will give you a lot of pleasant moments and a real pleasure to read. You can buy the full version from our partner. Also, here you will find the latest news from the literary world, learn the biography of your favorite authors. For novice writers, there is a separate section with useful tips and tricks, interesting articles, thanks to which you can try your hand at writing.

Quote from "Monday Starts Saturday" Very bright book Brothers Strugatsky

Communication with girls is a pleasure only in those cases when it is achieved through overcoming obstacles ...

Only those who d-reach the goal who do not know the s-word "fear"...

“What’s the point of buying a car to drive on asphalt? Where there is asphalt, there is nothing interesting, and where it is interesting, there is no asphalt.”

Ranks, beauty, wealth,
All the pleasures of this life
Flying, weakening, disappearing,
This is decay, and happiness is false!
Infections gnaw at the heart
And glory cannot be kept ...

In a deep niche, from which an icy stench was drawn, someone groaned and rattled chains. “You stop this,” I said sternly.

I felt stupid. There was something humiliating in this determinism, which doomed me, an independent person with free will, to completely certain deeds and actions that now do not depend on me. And it was not at all about whether I wanted to go to Kitezhgrad or not. Now I could neither die, nor get sick, nor be capricious (“even to the point of being fired!”), I was doomed, and for the first time I understood the terrible meaning of this word. I have always known that it is bad to be doomed, for example, to execution or blindness. But to be doomed even to the love of the most glorious girl in the world, to the most interesting trip around the world and to a trip to Kitezhgrad (where, by the way, I have been rushing for three months) can also be extremely unpleasant. The knowledge of the future appeared to me in a completely new light...

As soon as the appeal to "you" is out of harmony with your emotional rhythm, I am ready to be content with any rhythmic appeal to you.

And they accepted the working hypothesis that happiness is in the continuous knowledge of the unknown and the meaning of life in the same. Every person is a magician at heart, but he becomes a magician only when he begins to think less about himself and more about others, when it becomes more interesting for him to work than to have fun in the old sense of the word. And perhaps their working hypothesis was not far from the truth, because, just as labor turned a monkey into a man, in the same way, the absence of labor turns a man into a monkey in a much shorter time. Even worse than a monkey.

How wonderful it is when a person loves his work so much that he does not need days off, because he enjoys what he does. This idea is well reflected in the book of the Strugatsky brothers "Monday begins on Saturday", and this applies not only to its title. Writers transfer to an unusual world in which Soviet reality is combined with a fairy-tale world, it turned out interesting and non-standard. It has its own language, a dictionary of terms that may be incomprehensible to people from the real world.

During a trip to friends, the programmer Alexander meets two hunters. They can help him with an overnight stay. When Roman and Vladimir find out that Sasha is a programmer, they make him a strange but interesting offer - to work at NIICHAVO. In this place, they are engaged in the study of magic and the search for answers to the most difficult questions. Sasha learns about the existence of another world, where there are talking cats, huts on chicken legs, spells, movements, clones and much more. Most NII employees are completely immersed in the work they love, and those who do nothing are betrayed by their ears. Here experiments and experiments are carried out, some are looking for happiness, others are looking for the meaning of life, based on their centuries-old experience of communicating with people. And people, in fact, are always looking for the same thing.

The book consists of three parts that are equivalent in meaning and complement each other. There is a lot of non-standard humor in the novel, and the fantastic component captivates from the first pages. Thanks to the author's terminology, detailed descriptions, the reader, along with the hero, learns more and more about the new world. It seems that gradually you yourself become an employee of NIICHAVO. The novel contains both satire and allegories, ridicules bureaucracy and the consumerist attitude to life and people. Thus, the book will become a good fairy tale with deep meaning for both teenagers and adults.

On our website you can download the book "Monday begins on Saturday" by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, Dimitri Churakov for free and without registration in fb2, rtf, epub, pdf, txt format, read the book online or buy the book in the online store.

A. Strugatsky, B. Strugatsky

MONDAY BEGINS ON SATURDAY

But what is strangest, what is most incomprehensible of all, is how authors can take such plots, I confess, this is completely incomprehensible, that’s for sure ... no, no, I don’t understand at all.

N.V. Gogol

HISTORY ONE

The fuss around the sofa

CHAPTER ONE

TEACHER: Children, write down the sentence: "The fish was sitting on a tree."

STUDENT: Do fish sit in trees?

TEACHER: Well... It was a crazy fish.

School joke

was approaching my destination. Around me, clinging to the road itself, the forest was green, occasionally giving way to clearings overgrown with yellow sedge. The sun had been setting for an hour now, still could not set and hung low over the horizon. The car rolled along a narrow road covered with crisp gravel. I threw large stones under the wheel, and each time empty canisters clanged and rumbled in the trunk.

On the right, two people came out of the forest, stepped onto the side of the road and stopped, looking in my direction. One of them raised his hand. I let off the gas as I looked at them. They were, it seemed to me, hunters, young people, maybe a little older than me. I liked their faces and I stopped. The one who raised his hand stuck his swarthy hook-nosed face into the car and asked, smiling:

Will you give us a lift to Solovets?

The second, with a red beard and no mustache, was also smiling, peering over his shoulder. On the positive side, they were nice people.

Let's sit down, I said. - One forward, the other back, otherwise I have junk there, in the back seat.

Benefactor! the hawk-nosed one said delightedly, took off his gun from his shoulder and sat down next to me.

The bearded man, looking hesitantly through the back door, said:

Can I have a little of that here?

I leaned over the back and helped him clear the space occupied by the sleeping bag and the rolled-up tent. He sat down delicately, placing the gun between his knees.

Close the door, I said.

Everything went on as usual. The car started off. The hawk-nosed man turned back and spoke animatedly about the fact that it was much more pleasant to ride in a car than to walk. The bearded man vaguely agreed and slammed and slammed the door. “Pick up the raincoat,” I advised, looking at him in the rearview mirror. “Your coat is pinched.” Five minutes later, everything finally settled down. I asked: “Ten kilometers to Solovets?” "Yes," answered the hawk-nosed one. - Or a little more. The road, however, is unimportant - for trucks. “The road is quite decent,” I objected. “I was promised that I would not pass at all.” “You can drive along this road even in autumn.” - "Here - perhaps, but here from Korobets - unpaved." - "This year the summer is dry, everything dried up." - "Under Zatonya, they say it's raining," the bearded man in the back seat remarked. "Who is speaking?" asked the hook-nosed one. Merlin speaks. For some reason they laughed. I pulled out cigarettes, lit a cigarette and offered them a treat. “The factory of Clara Zetkin,” said the hawk-nosed one, looking at the pack. - Are you from Leningrad? - "Yes". - "Are you traveling?" "I'm traveling," I said. - Are you from here? “Indigenous,” said the hook-nosed one. "I'm from Murmansk," the bearded man said. “For Leningrad, probably, Solovets and Murmansk are one and the same: the North,” said the hawk-nosed one. "No, why not," I said politely. “Are you going to stop in Solovets?” asked the hook-nosed one. “Of course,” I said. - I'm going to Solovets. “Do you have relatives or friends there?” “No,” I said. I'll just wait guys. They go along the coast, and our Solovets is a rendezvous point.

Ahead, I saw a large scattering of stones, slowed down and said: "Hold on tight." The car shook and jumped. Hook-nosed bruised his nose on the barrel of a gun. The engine roared, stones hit the bottom. "Poor car," said the hook-nosed one. “What to do…” I said. “Not everyone would drive down such a road in their car.” “I would go,” I said. The spill is over. “Ah, so this is not your car,” the hook-nosed one guessed. “Well, how do I get a car! It's a rental." - "Understood," said the hook-nosed one, as it seemed to me, disappointedly. I felt hurt. “What’s the point of buying a car to drive on asphalt? Where there is asphalt, there is nothing interesting, and where it is interesting, there is no asphalt.” "Yes, of course," the hook-nosed man agreed politely. "It's stupid, in my opinion, to make an idol out of a car," I said. “Stupid,” said the bearded man. But not everyone thinks so. We talked about cars and came to the conclusion that if we were to buy anything, it would be the GAZ-69, an all-terrain vehicle, but, unfortunately, they are not sold. Then the hawk-nosed one asked: “Where do you work?” I replied. “Colossal! exclaimed the hawk-nosed one. - Programmer! We need a programmer. Listen, leave your institute and come to us!” - "What do you have?" - "What do we have?" asked the hook-nosed one, turning around. "Aldan-3," said the bearded one. “Rich car,” I said. “And does it work well?” - “Yes, how can I tell you ...” - “Understood,” I said. “Actually, it has not yet been debugged,” said the bearded one. - Stay with us, debug ... "-" And we will arrange the translation for you in no time, "- added the hook-nosed one. "What are you doing?" I asked. “Like all science,” said the hawk-nosed one. - Human happiness. “Understood,” I said. "Something with space?" - "And with space too," said the hook-nosed one. “They don’t look for good from good,” I said. “A capital city and a decent salary,” the bearded man said softly, but I heard. “No need,” I said. “You don’t have to measure for money.” “No, I was joking,” said the bearded man. “He is joking like that,” said the hawk-nosed one. “More interesting than ours, you will not be anywhere.” - "Why do you think so?" - "Sure". - "I'm not sure." The hawk-nosed chuckled. “We will talk about this again,” he said. “Will you stay in Solovets for a long time?” - Two days maximum. - "We'll talk on the second day." The bearded one said: “Personally, I see the finger of fate in this - we were walking through the forest and met a programmer. I think you are doomed." - "Do you really need a programmer?" I asked. "We desperately need a programmer." "I'll talk to the guys," I promised. “I know those who are dissatisfied.” “We don't need just any programmer,” said the hawk-nosed one. “Programmers are a scarce people, they are spoiled, but we need an unspoilt one.” "Yeah, it's harder," I said. The hook-nosed one began to bend his fingers: “We need a programmer: a - not spoiled, be - a volunteer, tse - to agree to live in a hostel ... " - "De," the bearded man picked up, "for one hundred and twenty rubles." “What about wings? I asked. - Or, say, lights around the head? One in a thousand!" “But we only need one,” said the hawk-nosed one. “And if there are only nine hundred of them?” “Nine-tenths agree.”

The forest parted, we crossed the bridge and rolled between the potato fields. "Nine o'clock," said the hawk-nosed one. - Where are you going to spend the night? - I'll sleep in the car. What time are your stores open until? “Our stores are already closed,” said the hawk-nosed one. “It is possible in a hostel,” said the bearded one. “I have an empty bed in my room.” - "You can't drive up to the hostel," said the hawk-nosed man thoughtfully. “Yes, perhaps,” said the bearded man, and for some reason laughed. “The car can be parked near the police,” said the hawk-nosed one. “Yes, this is nonsense,” said the bearded man. - I'm talking nonsense, and you follow me. How will he get into the hostel? “Yes, yes, hell,” said the hawk-nosed one. “Really, if you don’t work for a day, you forget about all these things.” - "Or maybe transgress it?" “Well, well,” said the hawk-nosed one. - This is not your sofa. And you are not Cristobal Junta, and neither am I ... "

Don't worry, I said. - I'll spend the night in the car, not the first time.

I suddenly felt like sleeping on sheets. I've been sleeping in a sleeping bag for four nights now.

Listen, - said the hook-nosed one, - ho-ho! Out of the knife!

Correctly! exclaimed the bearded man. - On Lukomorye it!

By God, I'll sleep in the car, - I said.

You will spend the night in the house, - said the hook-nosed one, - on relatively clean linen. We must thank you somehow...

Don't give you fifty kopecks, - said the bearded man.

We entered the city. Ancient strong fences stretched out, powerful log cabins made of giant blackened logs, with narrow windows, with carved platbands, with wooden cockerels on the roofs. I came across several dirty brick buildings with iron doors, the sight of which brought the semi-familiar word "storage" out of my memory. The street was straight and wide and was called Mira Avenue. Ahead, closer to the center, one could see two-story cinder-block houses with open little gardens.

Next alley to the right,” said the hawk-nosed one.

I turned on the turn signal, braked and turned right. The road here was overgrown with grass, but a brand new "Zaporozhets" stood crouching at some gate. House numbers hung over the gates, and the numbers were barely visible on the rusty tin of the signs. The lane was elegantly called: “St. Lukomorye. It was not wide and was sandwiched between heavy old fences, probably put up in those days when Swedish and Norwegian pirates roamed here.