About the book: 2023 / A poet in Russia is more than a poet. This flying phrase by Yevgeny Yevtushenko is repeated by everyone who is not too lazy when the conversation turns to poetry. For some reason they don’t talk about science fiction writers like that. It's not fair. Science fiction in Russia is more than science fiction. It even happens that it is greater than science fiction itself. Not everyone, of course. The circle of such writers is small. Ivan Efremov, the Strugatsky brothers, Vladislav Krapivin, Kir Bulychev, Boris Stern, Mikhail Uspensky... Evgeny Lukin rightfully belongs to this rare minority. For him, science fiction is a device like Leskov’s microscope: you look into its eye and see that there is also a key on the tray next to the flea. Reading the writer Lukin is a joy and pleasure. Joy from the quality of his prose, pleasure from the buffoonish atmosphere in which his heroes live. You read it and see how suddenly Gogol winks at you from the page, then Saltykov-Shchedrin twirls his finger at his temple, or the tail of the cat Behemoth wags somewhere between the heads. Lukin’s first stories and tales were written together with Lyubov Lukina, the writer’s wife, alas . He has over a hundred of them. “Aelita”, “Wanderer”, “Bronze Snail”, “ABS Prize”, Interpresscon, Roskon, named after Ivan Efremov, Belyaev Prize, “Golden Ostap” and many various others. Even the “Literary Gazette” once declared him a prize winner "Golden Calf" for his ironic poems. And in 2015, Lukin was awarded the honorary title of Grandmaster of European Science Fiction.