Twenty-odd agents from post-capitalistic Earth oversee the development of civilization in a “medieval” period on a colony planet. Planet's inhabitants superstitiously regard agents as gods. If you're human, being a god is impossible. Manipulating backward civilization for its own good is beyond human wisdom. Compare de Camp's Rogue Queen [4-196] and Robert's Pavane [4-481].

4.688. Path into the Unknown: The Best of Soviet Science Fiction. Delacorte, 1968.

In an introduction, Judith Merril cites as the first Soviet SF anthology which suits current American tastes. Certainly an improvement on the likes of Soviet Science Fiction and More Soviet Science Fiction (both Collier, 1962) with its (as Asimov terms it in an introduction) “technology dominant” SF, but still a little old fashioned by F&SF, let alone New Worlds, standarts. Some of the translations seem weak. Of the eight stories (original publication date not given), Krapivin's “Meeting My Brother” and A.Strugatsky's “Wanderers and Travellers” are especially strong. A more recent anthology of a similar nature is The Ultimate Threshold: A Collection of the Finest in Soviet Science Fiction, edited and translated by Mirra Ginsburg (Holt, 1969), which contains such Analog-type stories as Altov's “Icarus and Daedalus” and Dneprov's “When Questions Are Asked.”

// Barron Neil. Anatomy of Wonder: Science Fiction. – New York; London: R.R.Bowker Company; A Xerox Education Company, 1976. – P. 261, 297.