Daw, November 1974, 1st paperback printing.  Daw SF Book No. 126.  UY1141.  Translated by Wendayne Ackerman.  MMPB, 205 pages plus ads.  Cover art by Kelly Freas.  Wraps show edge and cover wear, reading creases on spine and along front spine edge; some colour transfer on rear wrap.  Binding cracked at pp. 62/3 with all pages secure and binding still quite tight.  Interior clean and unmarked with tanned pages; touch of soil on bottom page block.  ‘The story the Strugatski brothers have to tell is profligate and wildly generous.  Beginning with a rather Marxist premise (that history must follow a course through feudalism to some sort of democracy before the brown-shirt, black-shirt, Red Guard phenomenon can occur) we have a situation in which the bad guys turn up at the wrong time – in the feudal stage.  What to do, if you are an observer sent from a distant Earth to observe, to save what is worth saving, but not to interfere?’ (Theodore Sturgeon-from rear wrap)