The Contact Formula

The Leningrad school of fantasy has given the genre many glorious names. Boris Strugatsky, Georgy Martynov, Ilya Varshavsky, Vadim Shefner, Alexander Shalimov… But one of them truly stands out, not just because its owner is a woman. Olga Larionova suddenly lit up the fantastic sky in the mid-sixties so brightly that she instantly gained a huge circle of admirers. ‘The Leopard from the Summit of Kilimanjaro,’ we speak of it — a novel that, according to online experts, ‘is not only considered one of Larionova's best books, but can boldly be added to the treasury of world fantasy. If the writer were American, she would surely have received the “Hugo” or “Nebula” awards (or maybe even both).’ Her works were published infrequently, but almost every one released during those sparse times for fantasy (the sixties to the eighties) was a direct hit — that is, right in the hearts of readers.