Chronotope functions in Arkady and Boris Strugatskys’ novel “Disquiet”

A chronotope of the novel “Disquiet”, written by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, is studied. In March of 1965, when the book was already finished, the authors decided to put aside the manuscript and write a new story called “Snail on the Slope”. Chapters from the book “Forest” remained unchanged. A thorough analysis of the story’s spatio-temporal structure shows that a fantastic beginning of the novel “Disquiet” goes far beyond the frames of science fiction genre. Eventually, it turns into a method instrumental in highlighting the most dangerous tendencies of the present. In the middle of the twentieth century, Strugatsky created a dystopia, which defined a particular direction of the society’s subsequent development. The relative time of space discovery is associated with the recently recognized historical past. Concentration of time (when the real past and present are filled with “creative opportunities of further infinite reality formation and development”) provided an opportunity of creating a book, which became even more relevant half a century after the time it was written.