Earth & Elsewhere

Soviet SF treats many of the same subjects as its American counterpart but, because of its different cultural and political context, themes which suggest conformism in the U.S. are often charged with a subversive tinge in the U.S.S.R. While the five novelettes and novellas in this collection include a standard ecological protest and the Strugatsky Brothers' SF rendering of the siege of Leningrad, there are also such lively, thought-provoking pieces as Sever Gansovsky's ""A Part of the World,'' describing a vast mechanical city, isolated and unusable, but fully supplied and running smoothly while other Russians go without. Best of all is Kir Bulychev's complex and evocative ``Another's Memory,'' about an aging biologist whose choice of himself for the first human clone has an odd side effect when the clone starts questioning the selectiveness of his maker's memory in skirting areas of guilt. Foreign rights: VAAP. February 3