An incredibly cynical and unique look at first contact – the idea that Alien life is so beyond our comprehension that we cannot tell what they are doing/were doing/are going to do, but that all we can do is build a disfuctional society around their footfalls.

SPOILERS

Cannot be untangled from the Soviet decay it was published during – the afterword is literally a diatribe against everyone who prevented it from being published. The attempt to have it set in some "unamed english speaking country" is laughable because of how Soviet every character acted. I started imagining it being set in Outback Australia or the wops of my native New Zealand, and while the chronic societal alchoholism tracked, it didn't quite fit.