Tag Archives: Sergei Lukyanenko

Pixel Scroll 7/31/23 Have Space Suit, Will Accessorize

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(1) SERGEY LUKYANENKO WILL BE WORKING ON THE RAILROAD. Starting tomorrow, Chengdu Worldcon GoH Sergey Lukyanenko will join a whistlestop tour of Russia “Book beacons of Russia. Reading August 2023”. The TASS publicity release says:

“Reading August” [is] a book expedition from Murmansk to Vladivostok, which will be held for the first time from August 1 to August 20. The book expedition will light up the “Book Beacons of Russia” in cities along its way.

… For the first time in history, a unique book expedition by train and other means of transportation will travel with a cultural program throughout Russia and cover more than 30 regions of the Russian Federation, including St. Petersburg, Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod, Kazan, Yekaterinburg, Tyumen, Omsk, Novosibirsk, Krasnoyarsk, Irkutsk, Ulan-Ude, Chita, Khabarovsk, Vladivostok….

In another news item, Sergey Lukyanenko, appointed by Putin to the Russian Federation’s Civic Chamber in April, was on hand when the group convened on June 20. He appears for about two seconds in the video report on the session here.

Sergey Lukyanenko, smiling, at left.

Finally, Lukyanenko is a judge in “The final of the literary competition ‘Project of Special Importance’ 2023”. What makes it “special” is that one of the entries was produced with ChatGPT and has made the finals.

The neural network reached the final of the literary competition for authors and readers of audiobooks “Project of Special Importance”. It is not yet known which text from among the finalists belongs to artificial intelligence, the [ChatGPT] neural network. The name of the laureate will be announced at the award ceremony in October in St. Petersburg.

The works of the participants are evaluated by science fiction writers Sergey Lukyanenko, Andrey Vasiliev, Vadim Panov, Max Glebov, professional audiobook readers and dubbing actors Kirill Golovin, Marina Lisovets, Dmitry Cherevatenko, Inga Brik and others. A total of 644 applications were received for the competition, 50 readers and 39 writers reached the final, stories in the genres of production novel, post-apocalypse, science fiction and cyberpunk were accepted for participation. The evaluation took into account the plot, intrigue, language style and emotional impact on the reader. The full list of finalists can be found on the website.

… The winner of the competition – the author of the text, who took 1st place, receives 250,000 rubles, 2nd place – 150,000 rubles, 3rd place – 100 thousand rubles. A prize fund of 400,000 rubles is distributed among the finalists. Among the readers, 10 winners are determined, who receive 50,000 rubles each.

(2) HELP SEATTLE IN 2025 WORLDCON BID RAISE FUNDS FOR CANCER RESEARCH. The Seattle in 2025 Worldcon Bid has formed a Base2Space team to climb the Space Needle on October 1 and raise funds for cancer research. The climb is 832 steps from street level to the observation deck, rising 0.1 miles high, or about 1/620 of the distance to space. They promise to take pictures from the top, showing the city which members of the science fiction community will have the chance to visit if Seattle wins the (so far uncontested) site selection vote to host the 2025 Worldcon. The black and white image shows what the Space Needle looked like in 1961, the last time Seattle hosted a Worldcon. 100% of donations go to the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center. Please give generously: Seattle in 2025 Worldcon Bid – Base 2 Space.

(3) ON THE STREET WHERE YOU LIVED. “Octavia Butler Avenue Designated in Lake Forest Park, Wash.” reports Publishers Weekly.

The city of Lake Forest Park, Wash., dedicated a section of 37th Avenue NE to science fiction and fantasy author Octavia E. Butler on Saturday, July 29. Admirers of the author, who died in 2006, can now walk a three-block stretch known as Octavia Butler Avenue, passing the midcentury modern home where the author lived from 1999–2006 and wrote her final novel, Fledgling.

Lake Forest Park city councilmembers Phillippa Kassover and Tracy Furutani led the initiative to establish the honorary landmark, which covers three residential blocks, from NE 162nd to NE 165th Street. In the shade of an oak tree at the dedication ceremony, Kassover explained that Butler had moved to the Seattle suburb because she “wanted a home with a garden from which she could walk to a grocery store and had access to a cultural center and a good bookstore via bus, as she did not drive.” (Third Place Books Lake Forest Park is a short walk away.)

Kassover acknowledged Butler’s visionary fiction, “her prescient warnings about authoritarian leaders, and her many accolades, including being the first science fiction author to receive a Macarthur Genius Award.” Furutani called Butler’s novels “more Orwellian than we might suppose,” noting Butler’s Afrofuturist and social justice vision. Butler wrote Kindred, Parable of the Sower, Parable of the Talents, and the Xenogenesis trilogy, and received Hugo, Locus, and Nebula awards.

Those honoring Butler at the ceremony included Kassover and Furutani, along with Lake Forest Park deputy mayor Tom French, councilmember Semra Riddle, Clarion West science fiction and fantasy workshop writer Caren Gussoff Sumption, scholar Sheila Liming, and musician Terry Morgan, who befriended Butler after she moved to the neighborhood.

(4) MEDICAL UPDATE. Sff author Michael Flynn, who was hospitalized with an infection early this month, was released from the hospital yesterday he announced on Facebook. Good news!

(5) CHENGDU AND UNCANNY MAGAZINE. Michael Damian Thomas and Lynne M Thomas, Editor-in-Chief/Publisher of Uncanny Magazine report that Uncanny Magazine was invited to send a representative to the Chengdu Worldcon “on the convention’s dime, but none of our team will be attending the convention.”

Of course, notes Michael, “In the case of Lynne and me, we are no longer able to attend any conventions that require flying or are too far away from a children’s hospital due to our daughter Caitlin’s palliative care.”

(6) SLIP-SLIDING AWAY. AV Club explains why “Loki can’t escape Jonathan Majors in season 2 trailer”.

…. After fracturing the Sacred Timeline at the end of the first season, Loki has lots of issues, including the fact that he’s “time slipping.” Unfortunately, the Time Variance Authority’s repairs guy (Ke Huy Quan) can’t fix it, although he does make for a delightful addition to the cast.…

(7) POOL PARTY FOR MICHIGAN FALSE ELECTORS. Michigan’s Grand New Party PAC announced a fundraising pool party in Oakland County this week for the false electors facing felony charges. There is no mention of Michele Lundgren by name in the publicity.

(8) ABOUT TODAY’S TITLE. [Item by Daniel Dern.] Heinlein’s Kip Russell wanted interoperable oxygen tank fittings, among other things. Larry Niven’s Belters [[IIRC, notes DPD]]] had designs painted on theirs. What would you add to yours?

(9) TROUBLE IN RIVER CITY. McSweeney’s Internet Tendency warns about “Dangerous Children’s Picture Books That Could Be Lurking in Your Home”. Like this one —

The Giving Tree
A story of handouts. Flat-out socialism. Not to mention the climate-thumper extremism of giving the tree feelings. “Oh no, a tree is sad. It turns into a pathetic little stump. Whatever will we do?” Ridiculous.

(10) PAUL REUBENS (1952-2023). Paul Reubens, the actor and comedian who gained fame in character as Pee-wee Herman, died July 30 of cancer.

An Instagram released after his death quotes him: “Please accept my apology for not going public with what I’ve been facing the last six years. I have always felt a huge amount of love and respect from my friends, fans and supporters. I have loved you all so much and enjoyed making art for you.”

The Los Angeles Times’ obituary describes his iconic character:

…Accompanied by a talking chair and pterodactyl named Pterri, Reubens established his place in the pop-culture zeitgeist with a maniacal laugh, form-fitting gray suit and red bow tie while embodying the man-child who ran amok on Saturday mornings during the TV run of “Pee-wee’s Playhouse.” The CBS series aired from 1986 to 1990 and then yielded the big-screen adaptations “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure,” directed by Tim Burton, and “Big Top Pee-wee” in the 1980s. Stage shows followed in more recent years., as did Netflix’s 2016 follow-up “Pee-wee’s Big Holiday,” produced by Judd Apatow….

However, Reuben’s’ career was derailed by criminal charges, first in 1991 — he ended up pleading no contest to a misdemeanor charge of indecent exposure — then in 2004, when he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor obscenity charge in a plea bargain with prosecutors who agreed to drop charges concerning child pornography.

(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born July 31, 1932 — Ted Cassidy. He’s best known for the role of Lurch on The Addams Family in the mid-1960s. If you’ve got a good ear, you’ll recall that he narrated The Incredible Hulk series. And he played the part of the android Ruk in the episode “What Are Little Girls Made Of?” on Trek and provided the voices of the more strident version of Balok in the “The Corbomite Maneuver” episode and the Gorn in the “Arena” episode. In The Man from U.N.C.L.E. “The Napoleon’s Tomb Affair” episode (SPOILERS), he was Edgar, who kidnapped, tortured, and repeatedly attempted to kill Napoleon and Illya. And failed magnificently. I watched a few months back. (Died 1979.)
  • Born July 31, 1950 — Steve Miller, 73. He is married to Sharon Lee, and they are the creators of the vast and throughly entertaining Liaden universe. (And where would one would start? And go from there?  Do tell.) I was surprised though they’ve won both a Golden Duck and Skylark that they have never been nominated for a Hugo. 
  • Born July 31, 1955 — Daniel M. Kimmel, 68. His essays on classic genre films were being published in The Internet Review of Science Fiction from 2005–2010 and are now in the Space and Time magazine. He is the 2018 recipient of the Skylark Award given by the New England Science Fiction Association. He was a finalist for the Compton Crook Award for Shh! It’s a Secret. And he was nominated for a Hugo for Best Related Work at Chicon 7 for Jar Jar Binks Must Die… and Other Observations About Science Fiction Movies.
  • Born July 31, 1956 — Michael Biehn, 67. Best known in genre circles as Sgt. Kyle Reese in The Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Cpl. Dwayne Hicks in Aliens and Lt. Coffey in The Abyss. He was also The Sandman in a single episode of Logan’s Run. Though not even genre adjacent, he was Johnny Ringo in the magnificent Tombstone film. Likewise he was in The Magnificent Seven series as Chris Larabee.
  • Born July 31, 1959 — Kim Newman, 64. Though best known for his Anno Dracula series, I’d like to single him out for his early work, Nightmare Movies: A critical history of the horror film, 1968–88, a very serious history of horror films. It was followed up with the equally great Wild West Movies: Or How the West Was Found, Won, Lost, Lied About, Filmed and Forgotten.
  • Born July 31, 1962 — Wesley Snipes, 61. The first actor to be Blade in the Blade film franchise where I thought he made the perfect Blade. (There’s a new Blade actor though their name escapes me right now.) I also like him as Simon Phoenix in Demolition Man. And he was Aman in Gallowwalkers, a Western horror film that is really, really bad. How bad? It gets an eleven percent rating by audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes.
  • Born July 31, 1976 — John Joseph Adams, 49. Anthologist of whom I’m very fond. He did The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Dead Man’s Hand: An Anthology of the Weird West. He was the Assistant Editor at The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction for nearly a decade, and he’s been editing both Lightspeed Magazine since the early part of the previous decade. He is the series editor of The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy. Nominated for the Hugo many times, he won for the Lightspeed prozine at Loncon 3 (2014) with Rich Horton and Stefan Rudnicki, and at Sasquan (2015) with Horton, Rudnicki, Wendy N. Wagner and Christie Yant. 

(12) HORROR WRITING GENERATIONS. Brian Keene hosts a panel sponsored by the Horror Writers Association, “Back in the Day (part 1)”.

Back In The Day (Part 1) hosted by Brian Keene, he speaks with panelists about what has changed in publishing and horror fiction over the years… and what hasn’t

He’s joined by David J. Schow, John Skipp, Chet Williamson, and Douglas E. Winter. 

(13) OPPOSITE OF OPPENHEIMER. “Where are the ‘violet hues’ and ‘bath of heat’? Australian scientists review what Oppenheimer gets wrong” in the Guardian.  

Australian nuclear experts have reviewed Oppenheimer and say it is epic, intense and compelling – but not always accurate.

Its portrayal of the first atomic bomb detonation, for example, lacked the “violet hues” and heat wave of the real thing.

“Some characters even made comments like ‘quantum mechanics is hard’, which I disagree with – it’s only hard if someone hasn’t explained it properly,” says Dr Kirrily Rule, an instrument scientist who works with the thermal triple-axis spectrometer Taipan at the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (Ansto).

Rule gives Christopher Nolan’s movie about the Manhattan project four stars, saying it’s exciting and suspenseful but the science is “brushed over”.

“As a physicist watching the movie, I think they could have been much clearer on the science involved … I believe Nolan used such high-level jargon as a confusing element to the film intentionally….

In an article where people complain about making science look too hard, it’s comical to see this as the last line:

This article was amended on 28 July 2023. An earlier version incorrectly stated that the sound wave boom resulting from the 1945 Trinity detonation travelled at the speed of light.

(14) REVISED OPINION. Robert J. Sawyer, author of The Oppenheimer Alternative, immediately went to see the movie and gave it an overall positive review.

We saw Christopher Nolan’s movie Oppenheimer last night as it was meant to be seen: in 70 mm IMAX.

It’s a very good film; I recommend it. That said, is it the best cinematic treatment of the subject? No, that’s still the 1989 movie Day One.

And is Cillian Murphy going to win the Academy Award for Best Actor? No, I don’t think so; his is an awfully one-note version of Oppie, who was much more complex (and much more charming) than Murphy’s portrayal would indicate….

However, a week later he told his newsletter subscribers that his enthusiasm has cooled:

…For all of Christopher Nolan’s posturing that his Oppenheimer is an important film, and how, in his own words, it “poses the most unsettling questions,” he completely cops out, showing us only the Trinity test explosion in New Mexico and not the dropping of the bombs on the living, breathing cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Yes, Nolan portrays the famous moment in which Oppenheimer says he fears he has “blood on his hands” to Harry S. Truman in the Oval Office, but, in his film, we never get any real sense of Oppenheimer’s regret or of the horrors of nuclear war. Sadly, despite the IMAX format, most scenes in Oppenheimer aren’t very memorable either visually or emotionally.

(15) EARLY DISNEYLAND. Shorpy recently posted “Moonliner: 1960”. Image at the link.

Circa 1960, the TWA “Moonliner” rocket at Disneyland’s Tomorrowland in Anaheim, California. (With Richfield Oil’s “Autopia” in the background.) At 76 feet, the Moonliner was the tallest attraction in the park. This medium format transparency is part of a recent donation to Shorpy from the family of California photographer Mary Baum (1925-2012). View full size.

I remember that rocket. And the ride — which was a circle of theater seats around a circular screen. The “launch” was b&w film taken by a camera on a V-2.

(16) SECOND SIGHT. “Queen legend Brian May helped NASA ace its asteroid-sampling mission” and Space.com tells how.

Queen guitarist Brian May and Dante Lauretta, the chief scientist of NASA’s asteroid-sampling OSIRIS-REx mission, have collaborated on a book about the asteroid Bennu — and it’s not a PR stunt.

OSIRIS-REx snagged a sample of Bennu in October 2020 and is currently speeding toward Earth with the precious space-rock material, which is scheduled to touch down here on Sept. 24.

Unbeknownst to the world, May, voted the greatest guitarist of all time by readers of Total Guitar magazine earlier this year, had actually been hard at work for years leading up to the sampling attempt, helping to process images captured by NASA’s flagship space rock explorer to find a suitable landing spot on the treacherous surface of asteroid Bennu. The work proved harder than Lauretta and May had expected, as the 1,722-feet-wide (525 meters) Bennu turned scientists’ understanding of asteroids upside down…. 

OSIRIS-REx wasn’t fitted with a stereo camera. May, however, knew a way around this limitation, as he had previously produced 3D images of Comet 67P, the target of the Rosetta mission, and of Pluto as seen by New Horizons, by carefully selecting and aligning images taken by a single camera from different angles. 

The OSIRIS-REx cooperation, however, put the musician’s commitment to science through a test. As data from OSIRIS-REx started pouring in, the scientists realized that Bennu’s surface was not at all what they had expected and designed their mission for. Instead of mostly smooth, beach-like plains of sand occasionally strewn with smatterings of bigger rocks, they found a body covered in boulders that sometimes rose against the asteroid’s barely existent gravity in formations tens of feet tall. Understanding what the researchers were truly facing from the two-dimensional snapshots captured by OSIRIS-REx’s cameras was nigh impossible. And so May quickly got to prove his scientific worth.

(17) STUCK TO THE FUTURE. “This Fusion Reactor Is Held Together With Tape” at IEEE Spectrum.

…What sets CFS’s technology apart is its use of high-temperature superconducting tape, which is layered and stacked to create extremely strong electromagnets that will shape and confine the unruly plasma and keep the bulk of the charged particles away from the tokamak’s walls. The company believes that this novel approach will allow it to build a high-performance tokamak that is much smaller and less expensive than would be possible with previous approaches….

Daniel Dern asks, “Yeah, but would it keep the Ringworld from breaking?”

[Thanks to Chris Barkley, Michael Toman, Daniel Dern, Kevin Black, Dann, Michael Damian Thomas, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]

Putin Appoints Sergey Lukyanenko to the Russian Federation’s Civic Chamber

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Sergey Lukyanenko, Chengdu Worldcon guest of honor, is one of the 40 members added to Russia’s Civic Chamber in April by President Vladimir Putin.

The Civic Chamber (sometimes translated as Public Chamber) is a consultative institution with 168 members that has a role similar to an oversight committee. It analyzes draft legislation and monitors the activities of the parliament, government, and other government bodies in Russia.

A Parlamentskaya Gazeta interviewer asked Lukyanenko about his new role. (Translation by Google.)

Literature on a state basis
– Sergey Vasilyevich, do you already have any thoughts on the subject of what you will do in the Public Chamber? Maybe developments or concepts of proposals?

– There are no specific ideas – I’m just thinking about this topic. But I would like to deal with issues of literature, cinema, culture in the broad sense of the word. These are still the areas where I am the most professional, understand the deepest and can bring the most benefit.

– Have you already been to the meetings?

– Not yet – we will only have the first meeting in the updated composition in the summer. Now there is only a preparatory stage.

He received a brief mention in the Civic Chamber’s official article about the additions posted on April 6. (Translation by Google.)

…40 Russian citizens who have special merits to the state and society agreed to the proposal of the head of state to become part of the Civic Chamber of the Russian Federation. Their candidacies were determined by the President of Russia based on the results of consultations with public associations, non-profit organizations, and Russian academies of sciences….

…According to Irina Velikanova, director of the Museum of Contemporary History of Russia, right now, taking into account the global threats that Russia has faced in the XXI century, the role of the cultural factor in ensuring state sovereignty and national security is steadily increasing, since it is culture that plays the role of the guardian of the civilizational code of the nation, its value basis.

“At the same time, the basis of the cultural sovereignty of the nation is historical memory. Together with our colleagues, we will continue to work on the protection of historical truth, we will be engaged in the popularization of the history and culture of Russia among young people,” she shared her plans.

In this activity, Irina Velikanova will be supported by the rector of GITIS Grigory Zaslavsky, who is a member of the seventh composition of the Civic Chamber of the Russian Federation, and science fiction writer Sergei Lukyanenko, who entered the Public Chamber for the first time….

The Parlamentskaya Gazeta interview also probed Lukyanenko’s opinion about ways to use his position in the Chamber to promote sff.

– Nevertheless, how to popularize domestic science fiction? One gets the feeling that publishers, for example, have little interest in this.

– Publishing houses are absolutely commercial, capitalist, profit-oriented structures. It is clear that, first of all, they focus on ratings so that the maximum number of people buy the published book, select literature as simple and massive as possible. Therefore, it is quite problematic to demand that they publish some unusual, bright, risky things. But this is where the state could get involved. I see two ways – either subsidizing publishers, or the establishment of some kind of federal structure that would publish books that are niche, but useful, educating the reader in the right values and the ability to think. But this, of course, will be a long and difficult work. You need to be able to look for diamonds. You remember the textbook story of J.K. Rowling, who, with the manuscript of the first Harry Potter, went around eight publishers before she was told in the ninth: “Well, let’s try to publish your fairy tale, although we do not understand who will read it.” Plus, you need to think through and organize some kind of advertising campaigns, spend money on it – and serious money. But there is no other way.

– Do you plan to raise this issue in the Public Chamber? And, perhaps, could they themselves lead such a publishing house, if it appears?

– As for the Public Chamber – yes, I think the idea is sound, and it should at least be discussed. But as for my candidacy for the post of head – no, probably not. So far, I have more pleasure in writing books than in administrative activities. If I ever get tired of it, then I can talk.

In an interview on another topic, “Who should write books about the special operation”, published by Moscow Region Today on May 10, Lukyanenko was asked about the literary treatment of Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine, always referred to there as the “special operation”.  

…We talked to one of the most popular Russian writers, science fiction writer Sergei Lukyanenko. He told exactly how to transfer the history of the special operation to paper.

“It would be completely wrong to invent. There are a lot of good writers who have been at the front, participated in hostilities. It’s probably more their job to write about it. Because it is not entirely reasonable for the author to write about what he himself did not directly participate in,” Lukyanenko said in an interview with the correspondent of the online publication Podmoskovye Segodnya.

The writer clarified that the theme of patriotism is not alien to him.

“The action of my works takes place, as a rule, not in our days. But in my books, the topic of patriotism and Russia is almost always raised,” the source said….

Lukyanenko, the best known writer who signed a 2022 open letter defending the invasion, has been an outspoken proponent of Russia’s aggressive policy towards Ukraine for years. His statements sparked passage of a resolution at the Chicon 8 Business Meeting calling for the 2023 Worldcon to refuse him as a guest. Two months after Chicon 8 while Lukyanenko was being interviewed on television an RT presenter responded to one of his anecdotes by calling for the drowning of Ukranian children.

Pixel Scroll 3/10/22 No Pixels Were Harmed In The Production Of This Scroll

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(1) ANALYZING SANDERSON’S KICKSTARTER SUCCESS. Kristine Kathryn Rusch has an in-depth commentary about a seismic event in self-publishing, “Business Musings: Brandon’s Kickstarter”.

… If the past is any indication, however, these big Kickstarters increase the people who watch  the category and, to use the cliched phrase, they will become the rising tide that will lift all boats.

That’s the small picture.

The larger one? Smart traditionally published bestsellers should be looking closely at this. Smart unpublished writers should use this as a wake-up call.

Traditional publishing will never pay its writers tens of millions for unnamed projects. Traditional publishing can barely afford the million-dollar advances these days.

And please, remember, the Kickstarter numbers are only the beginning of the earnings on these books. These books will live for decades. Brandon will earn money on them for decades—without licensing any of the copyright to some gigantic corporate entity that does not have his best interest at heart.

Also, remember that this Kickstarter is advertising. It’s introducing millions of readers to Brandon Sanderson. These new readers are asking Who is this guy and why is he getting so much money? What are these new readers going to do? Why, they’re going to buy a backlist book and try to read it before the Kickstarter ends.

His published book sales are going to increase dramatically. So the tens of millions he’s earning on the Kickstarter does not count the other ways this Kickstarter is benefitting him financially. Nor is it counting the promotion value that he’s getting from projects that he felt inspired to write.

There’s a lot more to unpack—from some of the innovations he’s doing to the impact on the fantasy and science fiction field. But for the moment, I’m stopping here.

If you’re one of the sour grapes people, perhaps you should ask yourself why you’re being so very negative. Are you jealous? Or scared?

The rest of you should watch what happens next. This is a very big deal. For all of us.

(2) KDP WTF. Philip Beaufoy, author of the Lochwood Series, is another casualty of a sudden and unexplained Kindle Direct Publishing account closure.

https://twitter.com/PhilipJBeaufoy/status/1502016704037240835

(3) LOVE IS ALL AROUND. The SFWA Blog’s “Romancing Sci-Fi & Fantasy” series begins with Alex Chantel’s “I See Romance … Everywhere!”

… I see romance everywhere, on all levels, and it makes me love the books I read even more. There are books without romance, that don’t need romance, and readers that are perfectly happy without it. But borrowing from the romance genre can strengthen a story and the readers’ connection to the characters. 

We all want to craft memorable characters, and the strong ones can become more enduring with a partner—two are stronger than one, as the adage goes. Princess Leia and Han Solo from Star Wars—closely followed by Ben and Rey. Paul and Chani from Dune. Nahri and Ali from S.A. Chakraborty’s Daevabad Trilogy. K and Chloe from Terry Miles’s Rabbits. Euthalia and Conrí from Jeffe Kennedy’s Forgotten Empires series. Niko and Petalia from Cat Rambo’s You Sexy Thing. Some of those names may strike a romantic chord within you?…

(4) DISNEY RECORD ON LGBTQIA+ SET STRAIGHT. Deadline reports a “Internal Pixar Letter Disputes Disney’s Support Of LGBTQIA+ Employees & Questions Company’s Commitment to Change”. (The full text of the letter is quoted at the end of Variety’s coverage.)

Shortly after Disney CEO Bob Chapek spoke out publicly against Florida’s so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill today, a very pointed response began circulating internally at the studio. A letter signed by “The LGBTQIA+ employees of Pixar, and their allies” took Chapek to task. It refuted, point by point, an internal memo Chapek sent to employees on Monday and also criticized the fact that the company “did not take a hard stance in support of the LGBTQIA+” at the shareholder meeting.

“Monday’s email, ‘Our Unwavering Commitment to the LGBTQ+ Community,’ rang hollow,” read the LGBTQIA+ letter. It said Chapek’s communication “began with the claim that Disney has a long history of supporting the LGBT community, but Disney Parks did not officially host Pride until 2019, in Paris alone. Disney has a history of shutting down fan-created Pride events in the parks, even removing same-sex couples for dancing together in the 1980’s.”

The letter goes on to say the corporation is “capitalizing on Pride” through merchandising, specifically The Rainbow Mickey Collection.

“It feels terrible to be a part of a company that makes money from Pride merch when it chooses to ‘step back’ in times of our greatest need, when our rights are at risk,” the letter asserts.

The “step back” bit is likely a reference to Chapek’s assertion at a shareholders’ annual meeting today that “we chose not to take a public position on [the bill] because we felt we could be more effective working behind the scenes, engaging directly with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.” It later came out that Chapek had only reached out to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis very recently….

… Finally, the letter damningly addresses Chapek’s repeated insistence that the best way for Disney to make change is through creating “powerful content that changes hearts and minds.”

It reads [in part]:

“We at Pixar have personally witnessed beautiful stories, full of diverse characters, come back from Disney corporate reviews shaved down to crumbs of what they once were. Nearly every moment of overtly gay affection is cut at Disney’s behest, regardless of when there is protest from both the creative teams and executive leadership at Pixar. Even if creating LGBTQIA+ content was the answer to fixing the discriminatory legislation in the world, we are being barred from creating it.”

(5) CALL TO REMOVE A 2023 WORLDCON GOH. SF² Concatenation has tweeted the link to an editorial comment ahead of its next seasonal edition (slated for April). Read it here.

Science fiction is far more than a genre, it enthuses science and warns of possible futures, among much else. More, many of its aficionados are part of a community: a community that crosses nations. Sometimes that community needs to nail its colours to the mast. Now, at this moment in time, due to circumstances up-to-now unthought-of in the early 21st century, those colours are blue and yellow….

On Wednesday, 2nd March (2022), the UN moved to condemn Russia’s war on Ukraine. 141 nations supported that call: only Belarus, Syria, North Korea and Eritrea supported Russia, while China, Cuba and Venezuela abstained. And here’s the thing, if China is abstaining then arguably the 2023 SF Worldcon should dis-invite Sergei Lukyanenko as a Guest of Honour: Lukyanenko has repeatedly and publicly proclaimed his support for his nation’s war against Ukraine…

In particular, there is one person in the west who is currently due to share the platform at the 2023 Worldcon with Lukyanenko. Is that something he really wants to do?…

(6) REVIEWING SFF. Strange Horizons hosts “The Author and the Critic I: Christopher Priest and Paul Kincaid”, featuring the two named figures discussing the present and future of sff criticism. They begin at the beginning.

Christoper Priest: Before I wrote and published my first novel I had already written several amateurish book reviews. I was young and inexperienced, unguided, learning slowly as I went along. I was writing for fanzines published by Peter Weston and Charles Platt, and others. It was a way of writing something and seeing it in print—or at least, typed out by someone else, which at the time felt almost as good because after the process of being retyped, with bits cut out or changed or just got wrong, it looked different. By looking different it made me read it again and look at it with some objectivity. Overall, it was much easier and quicker to write an opinion piece on a new book by Brian N. Ball or Ken Bulmer than write a novel of my own. None of this counted in the long run, of course, although I still think for a beginning writer it was a good way to learn.

Paul Kincaid: Personally, I can’t remember a time when I didn’t read reviews. This goes back to a time when newspapers used to publish things like book reviews and film reviews. But I never thought about writing them until I started getting involved in fandom…. 

(7) MORE FROM THE WORLDCON. Morgan Hazelwood posts her notes about another DisCon III panel: “The Nuts and Bolts of Chapters”. (She also presents the material in a YouTube video.)

The panelists for the titular panel were: Ada Palmer, Aparna Verma, Elle E. Ire, Nancy Kress, and Patricia A. Jackson, with Delia Sherman as moderator.

The panel description was as follows:

Do you even need chapters? How long should they be? Should you title your chapters or just number them? Where do you break a chapter, and how do you write a good cliffhanger? How do you write chapters with multiple character points of view? So much to discuss for such a small topic!

While the panelists didn’t address all of these, they shared some valuable tips.

(8) UNMADE HITCHCOCK PROJECT. “Alfred Hitchcock once planned a sci-fi epic, which he envisaged as ‘a projection into the life of a generation ahead’” – BFI looks back at “Hitchcock’s sci-fi movie, ‘a forecast of days to come’”.

… News of Hitchcock’s sci-fi project broke in October 1926, a month after The Lodger was first shown to the press. P.L. Mannock of the Kinematograph Weekly, who had spoken to Hitchcock about his “film laid in the future”, wrote that “If we except ‘Metropolis,’ it will be the first screen forecast of days to come,” the last words being a deliberate reference to a novella by one of Lang’s inspirations, H.G. Wells. “Television will be used dramatically, and Sir Alan Cobham will probably be consultant on big episodes of the air.”…

(9) MEDIA BIRTHDAY.

1964 — [Item by Cat Eldridge]

“My specialty is wisdom. Do you know what wisdom is?””- Dr. Lao

“No sir.” – Mike 

“Wise answer.” – Dr. Lao

Fifty-eight years ago, 7 Faces of Dr. Lao premiered. It was George Pal’s last directorial effort. As you well know, it’s based off of Charles G. Finney’s The Circus of Dr. Lao. (There is now a Kindle edition of The Circus of Dr. Lao though it won’t be mistaken for a Meredith Moment.) It was nominated for a Hugo at Loncon II, the year Dr. Strangelove won. 

The screenplay was by Beaumont, who wrote twenty-two Twilight Zone episodes which given he died at 38 is quite astonishing, and Ben Hecht (originally uncredited), whose most notable work was Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound and Notorious, though he did have a genre credit writing The Thing from Outer Space, an early Fifties film. He also did uncredited work on Casino Royale.

Tony Randall played myriad roles in the 7 Faces of Dr. Lao including of course Dr. Lao, the Mysterious Visitor. And if you look carefully, you spot Randall simply as himself sans any makeup as a silent audience member. He also voices the Serpent, a stop-motion animated snake which has the face of another actor. Quite a performance indeed. 

Pal originally wanted Peter Sellers for the role of Dr. Lao and Sellers very much wanted to do the role. However, MGM had Randall under contract who was far cheaper than Sellers would’ve been. 

Pal also saved quite a bit of money here by reusing footage from Atlantis, the Lost Continent and The Time Machine. The Woldercan spectacular that Dr. Lao does as his grand finale of his circus is drawn entirely from the former. 

Pal has stated that it’s only film that he lost money on. It made just one million and I can’t find any mention of how much the production costs were but they were obviously higher than the very small box office was.

So how was it received? The Hollywood Reporter at the time said Randall’s performance was “a dazzling display of virtuosity, in some stunning makeup created by Bill Tuttle.” Audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes give a very strong rating of seventy-eight percent.

I don’t believe it’s streaming anywhere but you can rent it pretty much everywhere. Or you can buy it for little more than a Meredith Moment. 

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born March 10, 1891 — Sam Jaffe, His first role was in Lost Horizon as the High Lama and much later in The Day the Earth Stood Still playing Professor Jacob Barnhardt. Later on we find him in The Dunwich Horror as Old Whateley, voicing Bookman in Bedknobs and Broomsticks, playing The Old-Man in The Tell-Tale Heart, and in his last film, appearing in Battle Beyond the Stars as Dr. Hephaestus. John Sayles wrote the script for the latter surprisingly enough. (Died 1984.)
  • Born March 10, 1905 — Richard Haydn. Actor who appeared in a number of genre undertakings including voicing the Caterpillar in the early Fifties Alice in Wonderland, Professor Summerlee in the early Sixties version of The Lost World and Herr Falkstein in Young Frankenstein. I’d be very remiss not to note his appearance on The Twilight Zone as Bartlett Finchley in the chilling “A Thing About Machines”. And he had one offs on Bewitched, Shirley Temple’s Storybook and The Man from U.N.C.L.E., in the “The Mad, Mad Tea Party Affair” an unusual episode as it takes place almost entirely within U.N.C.L.E headquarters. (Died 1985.)
  • Born March 10, 1918 — Theodore Cogswell. He wrote almost forty science fiction stories, most of them humorous, and was the co-author of a Trek novel, Spock, Messiah!, with Joe Spano Jr. He’s perhaps best remembered as the editor of the Proceedings of the Institute for Twenty-First Century Studies in which writers and editors discussed theirs and each other’s works. A full collection of which was published during 1993 except, as EoSF notes “for one issue dealing with a particularly ugly controversy involving Walter M Miller.”  Having not read these, I’ve no idea, what this details, but I’m betting one of y’all know. (Died 1987.)
  • Born March 10, 1921 — Cec Linder. He’s best remembered for playing Dr. Matthew Roney in the BBC produced Quatermass and the Pit series in the later Fifties, and for his role as James Bond’s friend, CIA agent Felix Leiter, in Goldfinger. He also appeared on Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, the Amerika series, The Ray Bradbury Theatre and The New Avengers. (Died 1992.)
  • Born March 10, 1938 — Marvin Kaye. Editor of Weird Tales, he also edited magazines such as H. P. Lovecraft’s Magazine of Horror and Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine. His Cold Blue Light novels with Parke Godwin are quite superb. The Fair Folk anthology which is most excellent and which he edited won a World Fantasy Award. He wrote the “Marvin Kaye’s Nth Dimension” for the Space and Time website. (Died 2021.)
  • Born March 10, 1938 — Ken Sobol. New to our Birthday honors list. I will single him out for having personally received Astrid Lindgren’s personal blessing to write the Pippi Longstocking series which he worked on with puppeteer Noreen Young. He also contributed scripts to Batman, Curious George, G.I. Joe, George of the Jungle, Hardy Boys, Highlander, Superman, and Wizard of Id, and that’s hardly a complete listing.  He also wrote one of the best works done on baseball, Babe Ruth and the American Dream. (Died 2010.)
  • Born March 10, 1951 — Christopher Hinz, 71. His Liege Killer novel, the first in his most excellent Paratwa Saga, won the Compton Crook Award, the BSFS Award for the Best First Novel. (And yes, there is a prequel, Binary Storm, which was written much later.) He was nominated for an Astounding Award for Best New Writer. 
  • Born March 10, 1956 — Robert Llewellyn, 66. He plays the mechanoid Kryten in the Red Dwarf series. His It2i2 which was a television show about AI depicting fictional events but presented as a documentary. And he played a gryphon in the oh-so-superb MirrorMask. 

(11) AFROFUTURISM. The Schomburg Center’s 10th Annual Black Comic Book Festival in partnership with Carnegie Hall’s Afrofuturism Festival! Presents “Black Feminist Futures Series: Planting for the Future”.

The Black Feminist Futures Series features programs highlighting the powerful and long-standing relationship between Afrofuturism and Black feminism in genres ranging from literature, film, art, fashion, and community organizing. Planting for the Future, a virtual conversation on Black women’s participation in Afrofuturism through literature, film, art, fashion, and community organizing. The program features Dr. Andrea Hairston (author of Master of Poisons), Sheree Renee Thomas (author of Nine Bar Blues), Tananarive Due (author of The Between: A Novel), and Tanaya Denise Fields (founder of Black Feminist Project & Black Joy Farm, and author of “Dirty Business: The Messy Affair of Rejecting Shame” in the book You Are Your Best Thing). Moderated by Dr. Chesya Burke.

(12) GAIMAN MIRACLEMAN REPRINT. Following the herald of his return in Timeless #1 and the announcement of an all-new omnibus, Marvel Comics continues to mark the 40th anniversary of Miracleman’s modern era with a new printing of award-winning writer Neil Gaiman and artist Mark Buckingham’s redefining work on the character.

 Arriving in October, Miracleman By Gaiman & Buckingham Book 1: The Golden Age TPB will collect the first six issues of Gaiman and Buckingham’s groundwork to give a legendary super hero a fascinating future —a future that will now come to pass! Available for the first time in paperback, the Miracleman By Gaiman & Buckingham Book 1: The Golden Age TPB will give fans a chance to revisit this beloved era of Miracleman ahead of the exciting plans Marvel has in store for the iconic character later this year.

Atop Olympus, Miracleman presides over a brave new world forged from London’s destruction. It is a world free of war, of famine, of poverty. A world of countless wonders. A world where pilgrims scale Olympus’ peak to petition their living god, while miles below the dead return in fantastic android bodies. It is an Age of Miracles — but is humankind ready for it? Do we even want it? Is there a place for humanity in a world of gods? Gaiman and Buckingham delve into the lives of lonely idealists, rebellious schoolchildren and fracturing families, exploring the human constant in a changing world of gods and miracles.

(13) STAR WARS FAN NEWS. “’Star Wars’ fans are raising money for transgender youth” – Yahoo! Life has the details. (The direct link to the GoFundMe is here: “Fundraiser by The Amidala Initiative (A Community Effort) : The Amidala Initiative for Equality Texas”. They have raised $8,292 of their $25,000 goal as of this writing.)

…Fans of the Star Wars franchise can relate to Padmé Amidala, a character from the Star Wars prequel trilogy played by Natalie Portman, for a multitude of reasons, from her troubled romance with Anakin Skywalker to her desire to do her best to protect her people.

It’s the latter that inspired the Amidala Initiative, a group of Star Wars fans and content creators who have joined … forces … to raise money for Texas advocacy organization Equality Texas after Texas Governor Greg Abbott directed the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services to investigate the parents of trans children who have had or are seeking elective gender-affirming procedures or treatments.

“We, the undersigned, are 77 fan content creators, podcasters, YouTubers, TikTokers, artists, writers and cosplayers who have joined together to use our limited platforms to stand in solidarity with our trans siblings and their families in Texas,” a GoFundMe site for the Amidala Initiative states. “No child should fear that their teachers will report their parents to the government for allowing them to live as their true gender. No parent should fear criminal charges for supporting their transgender child and helping them seek therapeutic and medical support to treat their gender dysphoria … this is something we refuse to stand by silently for.”…

(14) DOES NOT PLAY WELL WITH OTHERS. Radio Times listens in as “Christopher Eccleston rules out Doctor Who multi-Doctor story return”.

…However, according to the latest comments from The A Word star, there’s seemingly no chance he would return for a 60th anniversary team-up special currently rumoured for 2023.

He told crowds at Australian convention Supanova: “I’ve never been a fan of multi-Doctor stories. When I worked on the series, I had really strong ideas about what works and what doesn’t, and I always think that multi-Doctor stories are a bit of a cash-in, and a bit of exploitation.

“Creatively, they never worked for me. I looked at the script for the 50th anniversary and I felt as soon as I said I wasn’t doing it it got better because, well, if I’m not in it, it’s better. The creation of the War Doctor introduced a whole new facet to the canon.”

Interestingly though, a later comment from Eccleston suggested he would consider returning to Doctor Who in live-action for a solo storyline following the Ninth Doctor.

He added: “The Ninth Doctor, in particular, is a one-man band. Definitely. So he doesn’t work with other Doctors. If you want me back, you’d get me on my own.”

(15) HEAR FROM EDITORS. Space Cowboy Books will host an online panel discussion “Beyond the Submission Guidelines” on March 29 at 6:00 p.m. Pacific. Register for free here.

Join us for an online panel discussion with editors of SF/F magazines. Learn about the behind the scenes of running science fiction and fantasy magazines with editors: Arley Sorg (Locus & Fantasy Magazines), F.J. Bergmann (Mobius & Weird House), Rob Carroll (Dark Matter Magazine), and JW Stebner (Hexagon Magazine)

(16) PREDICTING THE PAST. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Inscriptions provide an invaluable insight into the ancient world. But over the centuries, many inscriptions have been damaged and exist in fragmented or semi-legible forms, making the job of reading and interpreting them extremely difficult. In this week’s issue of Nature, “Restoring and attributing ancient texts using deep neural networks”, Yannis Assael, Thea Sommerschield and their team introduce Ithaca, a deep neural network designed to help historians restore and understand ancient Greek inscriptions. Working alone, Ithaca is able to restore damaged texts with a 62% accuracy, but when historians use Ithaca, their accuracy on the same task rises to 72%. Ithaca can also determine the original geographical location of inscriptions with 71% accuracy, and can date them to within 30 years from the date ranges proposed by historians. The researchers say that such cooperation between artificial intelligence and historians could help transform studies of the ancient world. 

(17) SOUNDTRACK OF SPACE. NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory page hosts a “Sonification Collection” – maybe there is a “music of the spheres.”

…By translating the inherently digital data (in the form of ones and zeroes) captured by telescopes in space into images, astronomers create visual representations that would otherwise be invisible to us.

But what about experiencing these data with other senses like hearing? Sonification is the process that translates data into sound, and a new project brings the center of the Milky Way to listeners for the first time. The translation begins on the left side of the image and moves to the right, with the sounds representing the position and brightness of the sources. The light of objects located towards the top of the image are heard as higher pitches while the intensity of the light controls the volume. Stars and compact sources are converted to individual notes while extended clouds of gas and dust produce an evolving drone….

There’s a demonstration in this tweet:

(18) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] Arthur C. Clarke chats with Dick Cavett about 2001, life on other planets, and perpetual motion machines in this clip from a 1972 Dick Cavett Show. “Arthur C. Clarke on Why Aliens Would Be Superior To Humans”.

English science-fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke discusses the on-going research in astronomy into discovering new planets and how he believes there is life on other planets, although we don’t know it yet.

[Thanks to Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, rcade, Phil Nichols, mlex, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, John King Tarpinian, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jim Janney.]

Numerous Russian SFF Writers Support Ukraine Invasion in Open Letter

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“Stars Over Donbass” logo.

Sergey Lukianenko1, a guest of honor of the 2023 Worldcon in Chengdu, heads the list of eighty organizers of the “Stars Over Donbass” literary festival who have signed an “Open Appeal” supporting Russia’s military action in the Ukraine.

Russian sff author Lukianenko attended the inaugural event held in Donbass in 2019, an oblast of Ukraine that was recognized as an independent republic by Russia in February. A report at the time by the Analytical Service of Donbass, a Russian-language website, also named five other prominent writers, Andrei Lazarchuk, Alexander Pelevin, Evgeny Lukin, Vitaly Pishchenko and Alexey Mashtakov, who all are signers of the “Open Appeal” posted yesterday.    

Borys Sydiuk, an internationally-known Ukranian sff fan, called out the “misanthropic document” on Facebook, urging his readers “to ban these people who support the genocide of the Ukrainian people: please, don’t issue visas to them, don’t publish them, don’t invite them to cultural events.”

The full text of the letter translated into English including the names of the signers follows the jump.

Continue reading →

Sergei Lukianenko Defends Russian Policy Towards Ukraine

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Sergei Lukianenko

Russian sff author Sergei Lukianenko1, selected by the Chengdu 2023 Worldcon as a guest of honor, has been busy in February extending his track record as an apologist for Russian policy toward the Ukraine. This includes a recent interview where he tries to blame the West, and the U.S. in particular, for Russia being “forced to intervene” there.

The author was asked about the crisis by an interviewer from the Russian-language EurAsia Daily (a product of the Jamestown Foundation, a conservative U.S.-based think tank with a board composed of Trump Administration veterans and CPAC speakers) for an article published February 5 with a headline that translates as: “The United States is trying to push Kiev against Moscow militarily: an interview with Sergei Lukyanenko”. (Via Google Translate.)

The famous Russian science fiction writer Sergei Lukyanenko was very excited when Crimea returned to Russia. Moreover, in his early works, this topic repeatedly surfaced. True, the science fiction writer described in his books a real, bloody war between Russia and Ukraine, which he managed to avoid. What he is sincerely happy about. But how to turn things around now, when the situation is tense to the limit?

A Russian writer who is visiting Yerevan in an interview with EADaily said that even now the war can be avoided, although today the situation is more explosive and there is a very active attempt by certain forces and circles, very far from both Russia and Ukraine, to arrange a military conflict. But, as Lukyanenko emphasized, Russian President Vladimir Putin confidently takes the blow.

– Do you think Ukraine needs it, Kiev really wants and, most importantly, is ready for war?

– Moscow does not need a war, I am sure that Ukraine does not need it either. But you need to understand that in Ukraine itself the situation has reached a certain point: the West does not want to sponsor it, and it is not even going to develop it, because the West never creates competitors for itself. Ukraine has always been important for the Western world as a kind of anti-Russia, a springboard against Russia and a source of its problems and headaches. And now they are trying to push Kiev against Moscow militarily, for example, by starting another conflict in the Donbass, where Russia will be forced to intervene. Because, besides the fact that there are many of our citizens there, no one in Russia itself will understand when the cleansing operations will begin there, and we will not intervene. Yes, this is not a military danger for Russia, but it will be a great reason to impose all sorts of sanctions on it to the very top. While we are trying to dodge this dubious honor – we are for peace, we do not need it. But will it succeed? Hope so.

— Sergey Vasilyevich, there is also an opinion that, in fact, the goal of the United States is not so much Russia as Europe, namely, to stuff it with American military bases and control it.

– Europe is one of the competitors of the USA, and the United States has huge problems – internal, political, social, economic. Now the United States is at risk of losing the status of the greatest economic power – China has already ousted them from this Olympus. Therefore, yes, the United States needs someone who can be both taxed and robbed, thus breathing new strength into itself. Russia was clearly planned for this role, but it doesn’t work out: it turned out that it was too dangerous to touch us. China is also not suitable for this role, the European Union remains, which is still under them. So yes, it is quite possible that the purpose of the conflict in Ukraine is to completely quarrel Russia with Europe, and to draw as much juice out of it as possible….

To leave no doubt where EA Daily is coming from, a sidebar survey asks readers, “Do you support the operation of the Russian Armed Forces to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine?”

Lukianenko’s first Facebook post since the war started, dated February 23, does not even hint at any opposition to the invasion, but rather praises Putin’s government for allowing protesters. Following a series of remarks about dissent during the Russo-Japanese War of 1905, the First World War, and the Great Patriotic War (WWII), he says:  

…Russia is a unique country. Only we can curse our army during the war, oppose the authorities – and at the same time calmly walk the streets, receive salaries in state institutions and even work in the media and for the defense industry. Do you know any other such country? I don’t. And they say we are bad with democracy.

He has been a go-to source of comment supporting Russian policy toward the Ukraine for some time. In 2014 he gave Komsomolskaya Pravda, a Russian tabloid, an interview published under the colorful headline, “Sergey Lukyanenko about the events in Ukraine: ‘Forced de-Russification is as much a crime as forced sex reassignment’” where he “explained why he banned the translation of his books into Ukrainian.”

More recently, Lukianenko claimed there is no Ukraine, it was created artificially, in a Q&A posted March 3, 2020 in Ukraina, published by an agency of the Russian government: “Science fiction writer Lukyanenko: Russians deserve to enshrine their status in the Constitution of Russia” (Google translation.)

– How do you feel about the statement of Vladislav Surkov from his interview, which he made immediately after his resignation to the site “Actual Comments”: there is no Ukraine, there is only Ukrainianism? He thereby wanted to say that Ukrainians do not exist, and those who are called “Ukrainians” are in fact one people with Russians. Do you agree with Surkov’s thought?

– I partially agree, because the Ukrainian national identity was formed artificially. It was intensively formed both before the revolution, and by the efforts of outside forces, and after the revolution – thanks to the unintelligent national policy under the communist regime. It was formed at that time. It’s a fact, it’s known.

As a result, we got what we got: a nation that is being created before our eyes. It is actually created by artificially severing ties with the Russian people. If earlier it was part of a single people, now it is a separate people, which is now being formed.

– In 2019, you were in Donetsk, where you took part in the festival of literary fiction “Stars over Donetsk”. Will Sergei Lukyanenko continue his creative cooperation and cultural patronage over the DPR in 2020?

“Donbass is the region that has earned its right to self-determination with its blood. Of course, this is a complex process and a long one. It does not depend on Russian writers or even on ordinary ordinary citizens of Russia, but it seems to me that it is necessary to support the people of Donbass at the cultural and national level.

If any events are held in Donetsk, I, of course, will come to a meeting with my readers. People who gathered in Donetsk for this fantastic event and came to meet with science fiction writers, and not only with me, they were happy and really deeply touched that they are not forgotten, including in such cultural events, which Donbass is largely deprived of.

Donbass, an oblast of Ukraine that was recognized as an independent republic by Russia earlier this week, was paid a visit by the author in 2019. The Analytical Service of Donbass, a Russian-language website that reports on such things as the “criminal-oligarchic regime in power in Ukraine”, covered his appearance — “Sergey Lukyanenko visited Donetsk for the first time” — and how he responded to a question from the audience about his prediction of the war in Donbass.

…Donetsk journalist and cameraman Timur Kolesnik asked about references to the modern Ukrainian state in Lukyanenko’s new novels, where the writer subtly, playing with metaphors, ridicules the Ukrainian so-called jingoistic patriots. The writer noted that it is not for nothing that he was included in the lists of enemies of Ukraine on the scandalous website “Peacemaker”.

Lukianenko has over 40 books published and has received 32 literary awards.

1 The spelling of Lukianenko here follows the usage of the author’s official site. However, his name is commonly translated on Amazon and in news articles as Lukyanenko.