Lukin definitely makes it into the top five best modern domestic writers of science fiction. Perhaps even into the top three. I won’t name names. After all, science fiction is a conditional genre. Lukin is broader than science fiction both as a genre and as a literary direction. He writes about our life, turning it inside out. For example, Lukin invented the town of Bakluzhino. Well, he invented it; who doesn’t? Andrei Platonov invented the town of Chevengur, and before him, Saltykov-Shchedrin invented the town of Glupov. Both towns, and the third one, were populated. With different, ordinary and extraordinary inhabitants, like me and you, with all our fantastic conditions, small and not so small evildoings, with a devil living in the head, and an angel on the right shoulder. And often, for some reason, it turns out that the worlds invented by writers, where life is turned inside out, are livelier and brighter than the one that surrounds us. And, for some reason, more truthful. Although, when you look closely, these invented worlds are a complete reflection of ours, but seen through the magical device called the writer's eye. If you start counting all the awards and prizes that Lukin has received since the beginning of his writing career, you’ll lose track somewhere in the fifth or sixth dozen. He has over a hundred of them. “Aelita,” “Strannik,” “Bronze Snail,” “ABS Prize,” Interpresscon, Roscon, named after Ivan Yefremov, Belyaev Prize, “Golden Ostap,” and many other varied prizes. Even “Literary Gazette” once declared him the laureate of the “Golden Calf” prize for his ironic poems. And in 2015, Lukin was awarded the honorary title of Grandmaster of European Science Fiction. Works about Bakluzhino and its surroundings, scattered across numerous collections, have long requested to be gathered into one. “Readers have asked me more than once if I intend to ever unite all the Bakluzhino stories under one cover. And the opportunity has arisen,” wrote Evgeny Lukin in the preface to this book. And this “opportunity” is now before you in the form of the book “Scarlet Aura of the Protopartorg.” Read it; it won't be boring.
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