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@make(letterhead,Phone"497-4330",Who "John McCarthy",Logo Old,Department CSD)
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@begin(address)
Mr. Gerald Jonas
c/o New York Times Book Review
229 W. 43 Street
New York, NY  10036
@end(address)
@greeting(Dear Mr. Jonas:)
@begin (body)
	In your review of various new science fiction, you identified
Arkady Strugatsky as a specialist in Japanese literature.  When I met
him in Moscow in the early 70s, he told me his work was translating
Japanese patents.  I suppose this may be counted as being a specialist
in Japanese literature or perhaps he has obtained a more academic
position, but it is also possible that whoever was the source of
your information was lying to keep in practice or that the occupation
of translating patents (about which there is nothing disgraceful) is
one which comes under the enormous blanket of Soviet secrecy.

	More interesting, however, is the tension between what the
Strugatsky's want to write and what the censorship permits and the
tidbits of meaning that get past the censors.  I remember noting
that the civilized republic on the barbarous planet of "Hard to
be a God" had a name whose letters were the initials of the Siberian
Division of the Academy of Science, then regarded as an oasis of
sanity in the general repressiveness of the Academy.  When I asked
him about it, he said that others had noticed the same coincidence,
but claimed it was just a co-incidence.

	I don't know whether it is possible or desirable in a review
aimed at American readers to take note of timid efforts to slip
something past the censors, but it isn't right to identify a
standard Soviet point of view in the Strugatskys' writing.  Some
of their contrasts between the good guys and the bad guys have
application in Soviet society, although it is often convenient
for such writers to attribute to capitalists bad qualities that
their readers often see as more applicable to certain domestic
phenomena.

	I am not a regular reader of Soviet science fiction any more,
but I am sure that there are many emigres in New York who could
give you a lesson in reading between the lines and would be happy
to do so.
@end(body)
Sincerely,
   
    
John McCarthy
Professor of Computer Science

@begin(body, indent 0)
P.S.  Should you ever have occasion to identify Arkady
Strugatsky as a patent translator, it would be best not
to attribute the information to him, since it might get
him in hot water.
@end(body)