Arkady and Boris Strugatsky

The brothers Arkady (Russian: Аркадий; August 28, 1925 – October 12, 1991) and Boris (Russian: Бори́с; April 14, 1933 – November 19, 2012) Strugatsky (Russian: Струга́цкий; alternate spellings: Strugatskiy, Strugatski, Strugatskii) were Soviet-Russian science fiction authors who collaborated on their fiction.

Life and work

The Strugatsky brothers (Бра́тья Струга́цкие or simply Струга́цкие) were born to Natan Strugatsky, an art critic, and his wife, a teacher. Their early work was influenced by Ivan Yefremov and Stanisław Lem. Later they went on to develop their own, unique style of science fiction writing that emerged from the period of Soviet rationalism in Soviet literature and evolved into novels interpreted as works of social criticism.

Their best-known novel, Piknik na obochine, has been translated into English as Roadside Picnic. Andrei Tarkovsky adapted the novel for the screen under the title of Stalker (1979).

Several other of their fiction works were translated into English, German, French, and Italian but did not receive the same magnitude of critical acclaim granted them by their Russian audiences. The Strugatsky brothers, however, were and still are popular in many countries, including Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria, the former republics of Yugoslavia, and Germany, where most of their works were available in both East and West Germany. Nowadays, they are arguably the best-known Russian science fiction writers, with a well-developed fan base.

Virtual International Authority File

The Virtual International Authority File (VIAF) is an international authority file. It is a joint project of several national libraries and operated by the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC). The project was initiated by the German National Library and the US Library of Congress.

The aim is to link the national authority files (such as the German Name Authority File) to a single virtual authority file. In this file, identical records from the different data sets are linked together. A VIAF record receives a standard data number, contains the primary "see" and "see also" records from the original records, and refers to the original authority records. The data are made available online and are available for research and data exchange and sharing. Reciprocal updating uses the Open Archives Initiative protocol.

The file numbers are also being added to Wikipedia biographical articles and are incorporated into Wikidata.

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