The fact that the operatives have sex shows that their observation of society goes beyond recording for scientific study. The central figure to this novel, Anton, only removes his when he has sex his partner assumes it is out of some religious conviction. Operatives spend years observing from within, recording behaviour through a circlet on their foreheads. Rather like the crew of the Enterprise in Star Trek they are banned from intervening in the human societies they encounter, but they do immerse themselves. The book is set in a future time when humans from Communist Russia are exploring the galaxy. Banks and I am certain Banks must have had it in mind when he wrote one of his more neglected SF works, Inversions. Hard to be a God has similarities to a number of other more contemporary works, in particular the Culture novels by Iain M. This is a really clever and original piece of science fiction that could only have been written by the brothers Arkady and Boris Strugatsky from their vantage point within the Soviet Union.
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