Fascinating Astronomy

Yakob Isidorovich Perelman (1882–1942) was neither a physicist, nor a mathematician, nor an astronomer — he graduated from the Forestry Institute in Saint Petersburg (now SPbGLTU). He was neither a writer nor an educator — but he corresponded with the greatest scientists and writers from around the world, worked on the compilation of new textbooks and problem sets in mathematics and physics, delivered more than two thousand popular lectures, wrote about a hundred popular science books, and an innumerable number of magazine articles. He made no scientific discoveries or inventions — but participated in the development of the project for the first Soviet anti-hail rocket, became the initiator of the introduction of daylight saving time in our country, was one of the founders of the genre of popular science literature, and the author of the term "science fiction." He held no scientific degrees or titles — but grateful readers in their letters invariably addressed him as "Dear Professor!".

All this is because in his writings, Yakob Isidorovich expressed complex scientific problems in his own unique style, with astonishing clarity and visual appeal; in the seemingly driest and most boring topics, he was able to uncover bright, captivating features, making them perfectly understandable even to the unprepared reader. It is no surprise that the books of the "people's professor of the Soviet Union" have undergone dozens of reprints, have been translated into many languages, from English to Hindi, and their total circulation has reached tens of millions of copies to date.

This collection includes five books by Perelman — "Fascinating Astronomy" (1938), "Distant Worlds" (1919), "Rocket to the Moon" (1935), "To the Stars by Rocket" (1934), and "Interplanetary Travels" (1935). The texts are presented in modern orthography and (in some cases) with clarified numerical data based on the relevant editions. In editing, we only replaced some outdated numbers, made separate additions and notes, but as much as possible preserved the spirit of the time when these texts were written — when new discoveries had not yet been properly interpreted, airplanes were often called aeroplanes, and the English writer Herbert Wells delighted readers with his new works. Fortunately, the scientific content of Yakob Isidorovich's articles has been selected in such a way that it can never become outdated.

298 illustrations in these books were created (in close contact with Perelman himself) by the chief artist of the Leningrad publishing house "Vremya" Yuri (Georgy) Dmitrievich Skaldin (1891–1951), the artist of the Ethnographic Museum Georgy Borisovich Ibach (1910–1938), and others.