The Noon Universe is
The Verse where many of the
Strugatsky Brothers' works are set. The name comes from the first novel's title and refers to the "noon" (as in, "the high point") of human civilization in the 22nd century, which the novels describe, and its
looming dusk. Also, the title was a slight
Take That at
Daybreak 2250, a post-apocalyptic sci-fi novel by
Andre Norton that the brothers read and disliked with a passion.
The setting is a
future Utopia that gets gradually
deconstructed as the authors
become disillusioned with the Soviet Union. Intellectuals suffer from free time and idle hands
turn to dangerous experiments, the
Precursors may be guiding the course of events on Earth and it's driving the security services justifiably paranoid, attempts to help out
primitive alien civilizations frequently end in tragedy, and a general "Golden Age feeling the premonitions of its own decay" atmosphere pervades. The utopia is never truly deconstructed to the point of destruction (though
Word Of God says only Arkady's
Author Existence Failure prevented it).
The Noon Universe starts with a "Society of Plenty" that averts decadence through a well planned education system that respects the role of the Teacher and strives to teach pupils the values of Love of Labor, Camraderie and Goodness. If you ask a Russian intellectual for a vision of Utopia you're likely to get this as an answer.
Thanks to advances in medical science, Noon Universe Earthlings are capable of near super-human feats and can recover from potentially deadly injuries. As they explore the universe, they discover many Earthlike planets inhabited by
humanoids re-enacting various periods of Earth history in the most unpleasant ways possible. This allows for some seriously dark and gritty social satire and the posing of interesting questions: just what can a society of
Sufficiently Advanced Earthlings do to prevent the Holocaust or the Inquisition from recurring elsewhere without denying free will, and what effect will interacting with violent cultures have on the Earthlings themselves?
The eleventh novel in the series,
The White Queen (as in the chess piece), was planned but never completed due to
Arkady Strugatsky's death in 1991.
In addition to the core novels above, the following Strugatsky works
are considered to be set in the same universe, in a late 20th-mid 21st century:
- The Land of Crimson Clouds (1959, never translated from Russian)
- Destination: Amaltheia (1960)
- Space Apprentice AKA Probationers (1962)
- The Final Circle of Paradise (1965)
- ...and several untranslated short stories.
Adaptations in other media:
MoviesGamesComic Books
The Noon Universe cycle features these tropes in general:
- After the End / And Man Grew Proud / Scavenger World: The books explore a lot of civilizations whose social, economic and enviromental problems went off the rails in one way or another. However, Earth is not one of these (though there is mention of a few irradiated areas).
- Ascended Fanon: S.W.Pereslgin and co have constructed a time-line of the NoonVerse from the point of view of a 22nd century historian. Analysis of the series events from this perspective featured in the introduction and post-scripts of the entire "The Worlds of the Strugatsky Brothers" book series.
- Cerebus Syndrome: Starting from Escape Attempt and Probationers the characters tend to be deeper, the world more detailed and worked-out, the focus shifts from future technologies to future people. Many fans believe Hard to Be a God to be the pinnacle of the series (others prefer Prisoners of Power). Subsequent novels (from Space Mowgli onward) become less romantic and increasingly pessimistic and the Noon universe starts to stagnate. Which reflects authors losing battles against censorship and losing the desire to create.
- Cosmic Horror Story: Although this is hardly the series' main point, all instances where human characters have close encounters with the Wanderers' legacy are downright bone-chilling in their inscrutability. The encounters with Ark Megaforms also qualify. As you'd expect from them, the Strugatskys made good use of their signature Rule of Creepy writing style during the more horror-esque parts of the narrative.
- Fantastic Aesop / Some Anvils Need to Be Dropped : Lots of this. Arguably one of the main points of the whole series.
- Fantasy Counterpart Culture / Putting on the Reich : When Strugatskys introduce civilizations notable for extreme, but cold-blooded violence, they make them vaguely resembling Imperial Japan. This happens with the Island Empire in Prisoners of Power and the aboriginal civilization in Escape Attempt.
- Faster-than-Light Travel : Of the "jump drive" variety.
- Flying Car: "Gliders" and "fliers".
- Government Agency of Fiction : The Earth government's COMCON-1 and COMCON-2. The first one ("Committee for Contacts") is a fairly standard diplomatic institution for dealing with contacts and political relations between Earthlings and aliens. The second one ("Committee for Control") is a more shady organization, more akin to a professional secret service, and is dedicated to monitoring any research deemed as potentially dangerous. COMCON-2 might have been inspired heavily by the KGB. There's also a CIA Evil, FBI Good vibe going on between the two agencies.
- Grey and Gray Morality
- Green Rocks / Applied Phlebotinum : Yantarin (i.e. "amberin"), the enigmatic powersource and component of all Wanderer technology.
- Human Aliens : Most of the alien species explored in the books, the most notable being the Cold War-esque Sarakshans, Space Amish Leoniders and Ruritanian Feudal Future Gigandans. All of them also subvert this trope by having lots of cultural and philosophical traditions that would seem pretty alien to Earth humans.
- The subversion is not that pronounced really. The Leoniders are somewhat alien, as are the Tagorians (see Intelligent Gerbil below), but the essentially human-analogue civilizations on planets such as Giganda, Saraksh, Arkanar, Saula, and the only passingly mentioned Hope are really versions of Earth in different times with other names. The humanoids of the Noon Universe for the most part are not really significantly different to humans. Now, for the Starfish Aliens...
- Humans Are Bastards : But this is often justified or played with in some way.
- Inscrutable Aliens : The Wanderers. Humanity finds traces of their presence all over the galaxy but has never encountered one in person.
- Intelligent Gerbil : The lizard-like Tagorians and Ugly Cute dog-like Golovans.
- No Export for You: The English translations aren't bad, but were often translated from the toned-down, censored Soviet versions. They're still a rather mild example, though, compared to non-Noonverse novels like Tale of the Troika (which became a completely different story) or The Doomed City (very possibly Strugatskys' magnum opus, but never translated into English). Of the listed Noon novels all the good ones were translated, and only Prisoners of Power has been noticeably altered and later restored. (The censor didn't like the similarity of planet Saraksh to Earth. Among other things he removed every mention of cats and renamed everybody.)
- The Paragon: Leonid Gorbovsky's reputation approaches that of Superman more and more throughout the series: a legendary heroic space explorer best known for his motto "Out of all possible solutions, always pick the kindest" and present at most significant events of the century (and over 150 years old in The Time Wanderers).
- Planet of Hats : Virtually any planet with a Human Aliens style civilization. Justified by the hat usually being a time period of Earth history and everything it entails.
- Starfish Aliens / Precursors / Higher Tech Species : The mysterious Wanderers and the Ark Megaforms.
- And they are indeed very, very alien. While there has been actual contact with the Ark Megaforms (read: they have been seen), nobody really knows just what they are, and communication with them is impossible, although the expedition members in Space Mowgli speculate that the titular character has been modified by the Megaforms to serve as an interface between humans and them. As for the Wanderers, no one has ever seen one, only remnants of their technology have been found and the sole two facts that are known about them is that they a) were/are astronomically more advanced than humans and b) are decidedly non-humanoid. No other conclusions at all can be drawn from their tech, hinting at how different they actually must be. It is explicitly stated by one of the Noon Universe "metaplot" characters (either Gorbovsky or Komov) that their non-humanoid nature renders any guess at their psychology useless. The suspicion that they might be progressing humanity, just as humanity is doing with the various Human Aliens, generally considering it a great thing, is downright terrifying to most.
- Teleporters and Transporters : Called "Zero transport" or "null-T" and used as an actual form of public transport. Apparently available only on Earth. The FTL device employed on starships is a variation of this trope, since it's basically a jump drive.
- The Federation : Earth and its global and interstellar organizations. But it's really more of a grand and pretty cynical Deconstruction of this trope, increasingly so with each installment of the series.
- The Unreveal: Because of the abrupt end of the series due to Author Existence Failure, there are quite a few loose threads - however, the true nature of the Wanderers is one thing that is completely cryptic. What are they? Why are they doing whatever they do - are they progressing humankind or trying to covertly destroy/destabilize it? Are they actually doing something or are both COMCON agencies paranoid? Do they even still exist? Did they ever? A lot of questions with not a single definite answer, although hints are dropped here and there with increasing frequency in virtually each one of the latter novels. Then again, probably there would have been no revelation even if the series had continued.
- We Will Have Perfect Health in the Future: In spades. For example, in Prisoners of Power, the protagonist is not only considered ridiculously strong by the Human Alien inhabitants of a Diesel Punk planet he is stranded on, but apparently can run for tens of miles without stopping, hold his breath for ten minutes, and survive several point-blank bullet shots. Not to mention that he seems completely impervious to most sorts of radiation, even the nuclear one.
- Justified in-universe by the procedure of "fukamization", which is performed upon fetuses shortly before birth to give them extraordinary health and "bioblockade" vaccine. In Time Wanderers, it is also revealed that fukamization has a side effect of preventing people from transforming into Transhuman Homo Ludens.
- What Measure Is a Non-Human?
- What You Are in the Dark
- World Building: The brothers never planned it as a continuous series, just reused the old characters and concepts in their new novels. This explains the many, many inconsistencies between individual novels, despite the rather good Canon Welding.
- X Meets Y : The series is essentially something like a Darker and Edgier Deconstructor Fleet version of Star Trek in literary form. With occasional Film Noir overtones...
- The very early prequel novels to the series (The Land of Crimson Clouds and Space Apprentice) as well as the titular first novel are actually very idealistic, celebrating a sort of Communist Federation (to keep the Trek analogue). However, afterwards, the mood rapidly darkens more and more with each passing novel.
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