The Anthology 1 is open the series of the writings of a group of the most popular SF writers in the former USSR. There seem to be two basic problems which these writers are exploring: man in society, and man and the passing of time. Time and its interpretation indeed form the basis of stories by the brothers Abramov, Boris Smagin, and Andrei Gorbovskii. Mirer, of whose works two excerpts from a cycle of stories entitled Artificial Jam are included here, is much more concerned with the position of man, weak and irrational, in a machine-ridden world. The brothers Strugatskii are concerned essentially with people in a society which has us under some kind of mysterious threat. They explore the actions of their characters against a background which is fictional yet has tantalizingly pervasive echoes of a kind of reality. The collection is followed by an excellent analysis of the position of contemporary SF. The writer, Ariadne Gromova, is adept at presenting Soviet attitudes in a precise and readable manner. Her sociological analysis of SF in East and West is unique arid highly provocative.