From the Author

I am not too strict in the matters of faith, but one thing of which I am convinced is that as long as we remember someone, they live.

For some time after the death of Lyubov Lukin I cunningly kept trying to include two-three of our earlier stories in each new collection, simply so that the cover could carry both our names as before. This naive strategy proved to be successful just once, and only recently was it explained to me what the fuss was all about. It turned out that readers were less inclined to buy books by the Lukins, assuming that they were reprints of older materials written during the co-authorship. One can only thank the good Lord that Internet pages are not so dominated by commercial considerations.

Yevgeny Lukin
August 3, 1998

The star of Lyubov and Yevgeny Lukin first rose into the firmament of Russian SF in 1981, when their first story, "Spring break and a Photographer" appeared in the newspaper "Evening Volgograd". Despite the peripheral nature of the publication the story was noticed by SF fans everywhere and soon enough the Volgograd duo became one of the best-known figures in Russian SF of the 1980's. Over the course of the decade newspapers and magazines published a cascade of bright, profound, memorable stories under the byline "L. and Ye. Lukin." "Don't Believe Your Eyes," "The Awakening," "Construction," "The Right to Speak," the novelettes "When Angels Retreat" ("The Diverse Among The Diverse" in its original incarnation), "Invasion," and others. In 1986 the Lukins received the "Great Ring," a reader's choice award, for the story "Don't Believe Your Eyes." This marked the first time they received the "Great Ring," arguably the most democratic of the Russian literary prizes which is awarded to the best SF authors of the year as a result of readers' votes. The Lukins are four time winners of this prize (along with the other famous duo - the Strugatsky brothers): in 1990 for "Invasion," in 1991 for "There Is No God but the God" (also known under the title "Permission to Report!") and in 1992 for the story "Striking Steel."

Yevgeny Kharitonov

You can read about the authors in greater detail in the following articles:

• Biographies of Yevgeny and Lyubov Lukin, written by Boris Zavgorodniy