The Kidnapping of a Sorcerer. A Crane in Hand. The City Above.

Kir Bulychev is the second most significant figure in Russian science fiction of the 20th century after the Strugatsky brothers. Several generations of readers grew up on his books, and first literary love is enduring and does not fade over the years. Founder of the Great Guslyar (the northern analogue of the famous research institute NIICHAVO and its employees), godfather of Alice Selezneva, a girl from the future Earth, chronicler of the labors and days of Doctor Pavlysh and his friends from the crew of the interplanetary starship «Segeža», pilot on the river Chronos, connecting different banks of Russia through time... Kir Bulychev is as multifaceted as life itself; in his literary universe, there is room for both playful pranks and biting, merciless irony, along with the wisdom of a scholar and a seer. It contains everything, except boredom. «The Kidnapping of a Sorcerer» appears to be a typical plot about a typical time travel. Yes, the heroes do not act in the age of Vikings, as, for example, in Harrison's «Fantastic Saga», and do not pedal the time bicycle, as in the story about NIICHAVO by the Strugatsky brothers, but Kir Bulychev tells us a very human story about people—some from the future, others from the present—who save people from the past, doomed to die for having outgrown their time and made the future for humanity. In «A Crane in Hand», there are two spaces—ours and a parallel one. Taking a step from here to there, from one space to another, the heroes find themselves in a world that outwardly differs not from ours, but inwardly is completely alien. The circumstances they face put them before a difficult choice: either to act decisively or to leave everything as it is—since the world is foreign, so are its laws. The choice remains with each... «The City Above». To survive after the nuclear catastrophe, the planet's population goes underground, creating a governmental structure where a person is just a tiny cog in a strict social hierarchy. But somewhere above exists a city. It is called— the city Above. This is a dream city, to which those who do not agree with their underground existence strive. How can Earthlings help, whose expedition has found itself here, in this godforsaken world at the far end of the Galaxy? And can they?..