I, Vasilyev, Vladimir Nikolayevich, first advertised my existence at around eleven o'clock on
Tuesday, the 8th of August 1967 with an enormous cry, and since then I haven't died even once, although
I've had a dozen or so chances. When I was three and a half, my father taught me to read, and I was
forever lost to the world of progressive humanity because since that time I have read SF, only SF, and
nothing but SF. About my childhood and later years I remember very little. I studied something or other
somewhere but really don't remember. I graduated from a perfectly ordinary high school. My one attempt
at entry into college (The Kiev Institute of Civil Aviation Engineering), fortunately, failed. By some means
unknown and untellable I found myself within the walls of the Nikolayev Special Trade (Technical)
School # 21 and studied for the speciality "Computer Operator."
Then I spent two and a half years in Turkmenia on the southern border. I was demobilized 29 Feb.
1988, one of the last in the area.
After my military service I finished the technical school, with a diploma that for some reason read
"Radio-Apparatus and Instrument Adjustment Specialist," worked for a year and a half at a railroad
telephone exchange, and then set off on the road. From the summer of '90 to the fall of '97 I managed to
live (often rather briefly) in the following cities: Nikolayev, Kiev, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Riga,
Yevpatoria, Yalta, Vinnitsa, Kharkov, Magnitogorsk, Volgograd, Sverdlovsk, Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk,
Novosibirsk, Ivanovo, Tiraspol, Odessa, Kerch, Minsk... I trucked sugar from Moscow to Magnitogorsk,
carted books in Kiev and Moscow, and in Moscow also sold books at the market in the Olympic
Stadium. I worked as a computer operator at a company which today is called "Eksimer." Beginning with
the summer of 1996 I have been living on my earnings as a writer.
I started writing (SF, naturally) some time in the eighth grade. My first publication happened
without my participation; I was in the army at the time, but some colleagues from the Nikolayev SF club
managed to publish one of my stories in a local newspaper.
Boris Zavgorodny published my first book at his own risk in 1991. He was even able to sell it.
Only Leonid Reznik's "House in the Center" sold better.
My first foreign publication was arranged by the late Ivailo Runev in 1992; it came out as part of a
double book with Henry Sayers in Bulgaria.
My first "real" book came out from "TP"; for a while thereafter I was with "Lokhid," but from the
beginning of 1996 I've been one of AST's team of authors, where I've stayed to this day. I've written nine
novels for AST, working on the tenth. Eleven books have come out and six more are in the pipeline.
My family situation is uncertain. Children, a daughter born in 1997 (an extremely naughty creature,
I must say, -- taking after me, I suppose). Hobbies, pretty much the same as everyone else's: music,
soccer, dogs, and yachting (well, it's a Bermuda-rigged centerboarder). I enjoy and drink beer and most
other alcoholic beverages, especially fine wines, Massandra primarily. In October of 2001 I had to my
name nineteen authored books and several publications in collections; along with that Maks Kachelkin
released a multimedia CD with texts, photos, and amateur recordings of my songs, both my own and those
written to the words of some other fine people. If things come together I might record an album of hard
rock some day. I play the guitar, both acoustic and electro, bass, and percussion.
I like girls with red hair and green eyes. I root for "Dynamo" Kiev and Manchester United. I
worship fried potatoes. I run Windows on my computers, alas!, despite the enmity. I own a DELL Latitude CPi300XT notebook. I am not a vegetarian. In terms of nationality I am a hybrid: my father is a Russian
from around Vologda, my mother a Ukrainian from the Zhitomir area. I support the reunification of the
countries of the former USSR because the customs checks on the railroads have been driving me nuts -
bringing any sort of electronic equipment is a nightmare. I have been a member of FIDO since 1994. I
have been abroad only once, and even then only to Bulgaria. The dream of my life is to walk all the
continents and swim all the oceans. I won't believe in UFOs until I see one. My favorite SF writers are
Lukyanenko and Gromov, and Tim Powers and Sapkovsky from the west. My favorite non-SF writers
are Japrisot, Westlake, Jeno Rejto and Farley Mowat. I can't stand anything in the Castaneda style. My
height is 183 cm., my weight flutters around 80 kg. Once upon a time I played soccer and basketball
tolerably. My vision is dreadful at -2. I consider myself a Russian cyberpunk and still a fan and not a
writer.
