Time of Timelessness. Vol. 2

The third volume of the cycle "Stories of the 80s" includes the novella "Island of SSO", the play "Engineers", and the story "Meeting". The novella "Island of SSO" has already been published separately by our publishing house; it is a semi-documentary account of the patriotic movement of Soviet students in the 60s-80s. The author has been in construction brigades eight times, thus he has found the true words – both about the organization of brigades with all their complex stages, and about the hard work, about the creative, "explosive" work – as well as the rest that goes along with it, about songs and about love. It is no coincidence that the subtitle of the book mentions "Song". The song is about youth, trials, and love.

The play "Engineers" has a different tone – now the breath of that very "time of timelessness" indicated in the subtitle of the cycle is clearly audible: most technical intellectuals – engineers – are becoming unneeded in a country losing its momentum, and the story of the meeting of classmates-energy specialists five years after graduation is a subtle illustration of the impending stagnation. This is also reflected in the story titled "Meeting". The meeting of friends in the not-so-distant bright future did not happen because the bright future itself did not come to be, but still the mood of the story, as well as its epigraph, is optimistic: "...And even if the meeting does not take place, we will meet"!