Mars, 1939

Vasily Shchepetnev is a master of psychological fantasy, alternative history, and literary horror, a two-time laureate of the Boris Strugatsky award 'Bronze Snail'. This book includes a representative collection of novellas and stories that brought the author fame among both genre enthusiasts and connoisseurs of quality prose ('The Seventh Part of Darkness', 'Mars, 1939', 'Waiting for the Red Army', etc.), and the novel 'Black Earth'. Here, the Russian Empire, where an assassination attempt on Stolypin failed, avoided revolution but in 1933 is fighting on two fronts against the Kuomintang China and the European Comintern, or having mastered the secret of interspatial movement, colonizes Mars in 1939; here in the taiga near Podkamennaya Tunguska, a phoenix hatched in 1908, and the laboratory of necrobiotic structures (Night Watch) is trying to take control of the undead rising from their graves when the country and society are on the brink of survival…