Science fiction is flourishing in Russia – these days, bookstores are full of science fiction books. What do you think is causing this upsurge in interest? In the ‘90s, our country was climbing out of a crisis – and chaos is always a beginning. We broke down our entire social system. Naturally, writers had to change as well. Those who couldn’t, didn’t survive, but a new kind of writer took their place. Some people who hadn’t written before decided to try their hand at it, and realized that there was a market for their work. Though to be perfectly honest, the current deluge of books does carry with it a lot of nonsense – but time will sort it all out. Do you think a science fiction book has to follow certain criteria in order to be successful? It should be well written. A smart reader isn’t just going to buy the book for its pretty cover. A writer can choose to catch the reader’s attention with a flashy plot: fights, swords, blasters… Or he can use the book to explore an idea, a concept. It’s always good to include some sort of mysterious secret. There isn’t a lot of mystery in our everyday life – or maybe we simply don’t notice it – and we yearn for the literary world that’s full of this feeling of mystery. I personally can’t write purely for the sake of plot: I need a mystery; I need it to call after me, to lead me through the book. It seems that science fiction is being gradually forced out by fantasy. In order to write a science fiction novel, a writer has to know science. Yours truly is an electronic radio engineer; I’ve studied physics, and I follow the latest developments in astronomy and cosmology. I’ve been studying these subjects for years. But many authors don’t have this kind of scientific basis. Fantasy is a lot simpler: you’ve got your bad wizard; you’ve got your good wizard; slap a hero with a big sword between them, and you have yourself a book. You don’t have to create anything new. All subjects have already been explored. It seems that a lot of young people are reading these books nowadays – but there’s very little real literature in there. Why do you only write science fiction? Actually, I’ve written a number of novels that can’t really be called science fiction: Catharsis, Forbidden Reality… Those books are about present-day life, but with a touch of mysticism. What seems like science fiction is not always invented by the author: things like trolls and elves actually exist, but they’re made of delicate matter, while we are pretty coarse. There’s a definite connection between our worlds, and that’s what I try to explore in my novels. My books are 90% reality – I use reliable sources! Some people might say that this is all fairy tales, it can’t possibly be real. But there are also people who believe that our world is a lot more mysterious than we think. There must be quite a few of those – after all, somebody bought 16 million copies of my books! You once said that for the Universe, human beings are a dead end of evolution. I stand by my words. The Universe has no use for human aggression. It can do without mutual backstabbing – literally and figuratively. Human beings represent an attempt at awareness, but it’s a failed attempt. We’ll go extinct soon… probably without even noticing. The Universe, which gave birth to us, is beautiful even without our presence. We’ll disappear, and it will remain. Just go outside at 2am and look at the night sky: you will know there and then that the stars can exist without us. But we can’t exist without them.