[The Noon Universe 01] • Noon · 22nd Century

Summary (From the publisher):

The 22nd Century. Mankind is free from the age-old misery and poverty that have kept it in bondage, free to create a new world, to explore the universe, to confront the mysteries of human existence. Russia's greatest S-F writeres, Arkday and Boris Strugatsky, have produced a futuristic masterpiece of epic proportions and breathtaking vision.

Two interplanetary adventurers hurtle through space at a speed faster than light, and are flung a hundred years into the 22nd century. They find themselves on a planet both like and unlike the earth they abandoned so very long ago--and so recently.

It is a planet ruled by wisdom, where automated farms feed tens million inhabitants, where a complete system of moving roads brings the farthest outposts into close communion, where an advanced science in mechanization approaches the mysterious complexity of life itself. Here all effort is bound to the exhilarating art if discovery--way below the planet's waters, deep into the endless reaches of space and far beyond the boundless zones of the human mind.

Contents:

Night on Mars

Almost the Same

Old-timer

The Conspirators

Chronicle

Two from the Taimyr

The Moving Roads

Cornucopia

Homecoming

Langour of the Spirit

The Assaultmen

Deep Search

The Mystery of the Hind Leg

Candles Before the Control Board

Natural Science in the Spirit World ilgrims and Wayfarers

The Planet with all the Conveniences

Defeat

The Meeting

What You Will Be Like