Cycle people like the gods of Sergei Snow. People are like gods. Trilogy (Snegov Sergey). Rudiger Dahlke. "Disease as a Way". "Disease as the language of the soul". "Crisis as a chance to start living better

Plot

Galactic Exploration ()

Eli Gamazin as part of a delegation from Earth goes to Ora for an interstellar conference. Ora is an artificial planet, flat in shape and illuminated by an artificial sun that turns into a moon at night. On Åre, during the conference, earthlings receive information about humanoids (galaxies) who are waging a war with invisible enemies. Going to explore the Pleiades, earthlings stumble upon a race of destroyers who kidnap Andre Sherstyuk. In pursuit of the destroyers Eli, Leonid Mrava and Olga Trondike discovered that in the open cluster and Perseus, space is curved in such a way that there is no way out of the cluster. Earthlings receive messages from unknown friends, presumably from galaxies, that they urgently need to get out of the cluster via FTL communication, but the destroyers do not allow them to do this. Finally, after many attempts, Olga decides to annihilate one of the planets near the "active" stars, turning its matter into empty space (Tanev's reaction). Olga succeeds in doing this, but three gravitational impacts launched by the destroyer ships fall on their spaceship.

Invasion of Perseus ()

Two space squadrons under the command of Eli Gamazin are sent to the χ Perseus Cluster. There they meet with the Great Destroyer, galaxies, the Dreamer Brain, and learn about the existence of a mysterious and powerful people of Ramir, who created their civilization long before the galaxies. By joining forces with the Brain, the galaxies and their new unexpected allies from among the destroyers, people break out of the gravitational non-Euclidean nets created by metric stations and direct their gaze to that part of the Universe into which the Ramirs have gone.

Backward time ring ()

After the death of the First Expedition sent to the Core, the Second Expedition is formed on Earth, which includes people, galaxies and demiurges. Eli Gamazin is included in it as the scientific leader of the expedition. A small fleet of 15 starships rushes into the depths of the Galaxy, meeting on its way the Red Luminary, Dying Worlds, the system of the Three Dusty Suns, the people of Aran and Oan, traces of the Cruel Gods, Hymns to Existence and Non-Existence, All-Destructive Ray, gaps of Time, hostile Gravity and madness distortion of the sequence of events. At the same time, the members of the Second Expedition experience the pain of heavy losses, trying to close the Ring of Time, to which they decided to see the manifestations of the power of the ramirs.

Characters

People

Eli Gamazin - the main character narration. A graduate of a school in the Himalayas, a slow-witted and a joker. In the first part of the novel - the secretary of his older sister Vera, a member of the Space Eater crew. In the second - the admiral of the human flotilla, sent to Perseus, the commander of the combined fleets of people and galaxies. In the third - the scientific leader of the expedition to the core of the Galaxy.
Andre Sherstyuk - a graduate of a school in the Himalayas, a very close friend of Eli. "Idea's generator". Loves to change his appearance. He is married to Jeanne, who will later give birth to his son Oleg. In the first part, he composed a symphony "The Harmony of Star Spheres", where, in addition to music, the listener was influenced by changes in temperature and gravity. The symphony failed with a deafening crash. Took part in the campaign to the Pleiades, where he was kidnapped by the destroyers. In the second part, where Eli and his friends are captured by the destroyers, Andre appears before the prisoners completely lost their minds. However, he recovers very quickly and helps the prisoners to gain freedom, and when people capture one of the space curvature stations, Andre takes over the leadership of this station.
Pavel Romero - historian and historiographer. Dressed in the fashion of the XIX-XX centuries, wears a goatee goatee and a cane. Knows the history of the Earth very well. The groom (later husband) of Vera Gamazina, Eli's sister.
Lusin - a graduate of a school in the Himalayas, a biologist, an employee of the "Institute of New Forms", who bred mythical animals, influencing the genes of the real ones. For example, he created pegasus from horses, and dragons from lizards. Lusin speaks as if in “hieroglyphs”, constructs very short phrases of two or three words, and only those who know him well can understand him. He is very sensitive to all living things. He died in the third part of the novel on Arania while trying to prevent the mass suicide of local residents.
Vera Gamazina - elder sister of Eli and fiancee (later wife) of Paul. Member of the Grand Council. A very beautiful woman, always prettier in anger. He likes to stand by the window for a long time, his head thrown back and his hands on the back of his head. She died of natural causes before the beginning of the third part.
Mary Glan - Eli's wife (from the second part of the novel). The woman is not glittering with beauty, but pretty. She is fond of botany and microbiology, has brought out a group of bacteria that feed on metals and emit hydrogen and oxygen. She gave birth to a son, Astra.
Olga Trondyk - a graduate of a school in the Himalayas, mathematician, captain of a spaceship, commander of a reserve squadron. All her life she loved Eli Gamazin, but married Leonid Mrava. In his free time he likes to calculate.
Leonid Mrava - a graduate of a school in the Himalayas, a captain of a spaceship, a very sharp and impetuous person. The groom (later husband) of Olga Trondyk. Died before the beginning of the third part.
Allan Cruz - a graduate of a school in the Himalayas, a captain of a spaceship. A very tall person with a loud voice. According to Eli Gamazin, Allan has only two states: he is either rejoicing or indignant. He died before the beginning of the narrative of the third part, along with Leonid.
Edward Kamagin - a member of the crew of the starship "Mendeleev" (captain's mate), launched 400 years ago, attacked by destroyers. Because of Einstein's time dilation observed at near-light speeds, it became possible to meet with their descendants. Captain of one of the spaceships. A small person.
Vasily Groman - Member of the crew of the starship "Mendeleev" (navigator).
Oleg Sherstyuk - the son of Andre Sherstyuk, outwardly very similar to his father. Commander of a star squadron on an expedition to the Core. In love with Irina.
Irina Trondyk - daughter of Olga Trondike and Leonid Mrav. Character and appearance went to Leonid. A member of the expedition to the Core, Ellon's assistant, in love with her boss. After creating the collapsan, she sent herself into the future. The further fate is unknown.
Aster - the son of Eli Gamazin and Mary Glan, a bit like his father. "Infected" with life the Third Planet of Destroyers with a solution of microorganisms created by Mary, feeding on metals. Died at the age of 6 from high gravity on the Third Planet.

Aliens

Pipes - a four-winged angel of enormous size, a brawler who considers himself a prince. Originally from the ninth planet of the Flame B system in the Hyades. After the skirmish with Eli, he calmed down a bit, and when all the participants left Oru, he wished to fly not home, but to Earth to people. He became very friendly with Eli and Lusin. In battle, he proved to be an excellent fighter. Died in the Core when the expedition was struck by the cancer of time.
Fiola - a very beautiful snake with an almost human head, originally from Vega. Participant of the star conference on Are. Eli falls in love with Fiola, but then quickly cools down.
Eagle - destroyer (demiurge). Destroyer of the First Imperial category, a nobleman, close to the Great, one of the first to understand that the philosophy of destroyers is false, and actively helped Eli in the second part of the story. Accompanying Eli on an expedition to the planets of galaxies. In the third part, he helped to get Ellon to complete the tasks.
Ellon - destroyer (demiurge). One of the brightest minds, modernized weapons that create non-Euclidean space, and installed them on ships of the fleet in the third part of the story. He also developed a collapsar - a time machine. Mentally unbalanced (according to Gracia, due to an excess of artificiality in his body). The cancer of time aggravated Ellon's imbalance, and he died while trying to escape into the past.
Gig - destroyer, invisible man. Cheeky and friendly character. Like all invisibles, an excellent executor of orders, but too quick to make decisions. One of the first, together with Orlan, went over to Eli's side and accepted his philosophy (in the second part of the story). Also, together with Orlan, he accompanied Eli on an expedition to the planets of galaxies. In the third part, he was mainly engaged in intelligence.
Grace - galact, a creature of three meters in height, very similar to people, with huge eyes and disgusting fingers in all directions. One of the first to take Eli on the galactic ship (in the second part of the story), he took part in the control of the ship, duplicating the Brain. I tolerated cancer of time quite easily.
Brain - the living brain of the origin of galaxies. Used by destroyers to control gravity installations on the Third Planet. He actively helped Gamazin in the confrontation with the destroyers. With Eli's consent, he took up residence in the body of the dragon Thunder God (after his brain was damaged in the battle for the Third Planet) to enjoy bodily sensations and called himself the Rogue. But when in the third part of the novel the body of the Thunderer grew old, it was returned to its previous state. He controlled the ships until the MUM were damaged (Small Universal Machines - a kind of analogue of computers, control all equipment and provide, thanks to a complex system of sensors, telepathic communication between people). Presumably, he died due to hatred from Ellon, who sent him to the past.
Oan - a creature masquerading as the Arans, the inhabitants of the planet Arania. It is later revealed that Oan is a ramir's spy.

Publications

History of creation and publication

Snegov described the motives behind the creation of his novel as follows:

He turned to science fiction. I wanted to write something that no one can object. I gathered my relatives and friends and committed such hooliganism with them: I transferred them five hundred years ahead ... This is how the novel "People are like gods" appeared.

There was another reason why I turned to science fiction. The point is that this literature is tragic in the West. She describes our future as a kingdom of monsters. I wrote a novel about the bright future of mankind.

The publishing fate of the novel was not easy - it was rejected by four publishers in a row. The first book of the novel was first published in the fiction collection Lenizdat "Hellenic Secret" in 1966 under the name "People are like gods"... The second book was published two years later in a collection of the same publishing house called "In the gorges of the stars" (wherein "Invasion of Perseus" was the title of the first part of the second book and the collection itself). In 1971 in Kaliningrad, the first two books of the novel were published as a separate volume. In the 1970s, the third book of the novel was written, published in 1977. Finally, in 1982, all three books were collected in one volume, while the text of the novel was significantly reduced by the author (especially the first two books, which were reduced by more than 15 percent) to bring its volume in line with the requirements of the publisher, and the first book got the title "Galactic Exploration".

The novel was translated into foreign languages and was published in Germany, Japan, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Spain, France.

List of editions

Russian editions

Sergey Snegov. People are like gods // Hellenic secret / Comp. and ed. foreword E. Brandis, V. Dmitrevsky. - L.: Lenizdat, 1966 .-- S. 22-304. - 518 p. - 65,000 copies
Sergey Snegov. In the gorges of the stars // Invasion of Perseus / Comp. and ed. foreword E. Brandis, V. Dmitrevsky. - L.: Lenizdat, 1968 .-- S. 32-305. - 469 p. - 100,000 copies
Sergey Snegov. People are like gods. - Kaliningrad: Kaliningrad book publishing house, 1971. - 464 p. - 30,000 copies
Sergey Snegov. Reverse Time Ring // Reverse time ring / Comp. and ed. entry Art. E. Brandis, V. Dmitrevsky. - L.: Lenizdat, 1977 .-- S. 11-270. - 639 p. - 100,000 copies
Sergey Snegov. People are like gods. - L.: Lenizdat, 1982 .-- 719 p. - 50,000 copies
Sergey Snegov. People are like gods. - Kaliningrad: Kaliningrad book publishing house, 1986. - 607 p. - 50,000 copies
Sergey Snegov. People are like gods. - Doval-Nikishka, 1992 .-- 624 p. - 50,000 copies - ISBN 5-8308-0015-2
Sergey Snegov. People are like gods. - SPb: North-West, 1992 .-- 634 p. - ISBN 5-835-2005-36
Sergey Snegov. People are like gods. - Armada, 1996 .-- 528 p. - 20,000 copies. - ISBN 5-7632-0186-8
Sergey Snegov. Works in three volumes. Vol. 1. People are like gods. - Azbuka-Terra, 1996 .-- 688 p. - ISBN 5-7684-0128-8, 5-7684-0127-x
Sergey Snegov. People are like gods. - Centerpolygraph, 1997. - T. 1-2. - 10,000 copies. - ISBN 5-218-00526-6, 5-218-00548-7
Sergey Snegov. People are like gods. - M-SPb: LLC "AST Publishing House", Terra Fantastica, 2001. - 640 p. - 10,000 copies. - ISBN 5-17-004122-5, 5-7921-0358-5
Sergey Snegov. People are like gods. - Amphora, 2006 .-- 864 p. - 5000 copies. - ISBN 5-367-00212-9
Sergey Snegov. People are like gods. - Amphora, 2006 .-- 864 p. - 3000 copies. - ISBN 5-94278-988-6
Sergey Snegov. People are like gods. - Eksmo, 2010 .-- 736 p. - 4000 copies. - ISBN 978-5-699-44065-8

German editions

Sergej Snegow. Menschen wie Götter. - München: Heyne Verlag, 1972 .-- 380 p. - ISBN 3453304683
Sergej Snegow. Menschen wie Götter. - Heyne Verlag, 1978 .-- 381 p. - ISBN 3453304683
Sergej Snegow. Menschen wie Götter. - Moskau - Berlin: Verlag Mir - Das Neue Berlin, 1981.
Sergej Snegow. Menschen wie Götter. - 1996 .-- 600 p. - ISBN 3359008383
Sergej Snegow. Menschen wie Götter. - Das Neue Berlin, 2003 .-- 634 p. - ISBN 3360008383
Sergej Snegow. Menschen wie Götter. - Verlag Neues Leben, 2006 .-- 608 p. - ISBN 3355017264, 978-3355017268
Sergej Snegow. Menschen wie Götter. - Heyne Verlag, 2010 .-- 608 p. - ISBN 3453525191

Polish editions

Siergiej Sniegow. Dalekie szlaki. - Iskry, 1972 .-- 540 p.
Siergiej Sniegow. Ludzie jak bogowie. - Współpraca, 1998. - ISBN 9788370180836

Hungarian editions

Szergej Sznyegov. Istenemberek. - Budapest: Móra Ferenc Könyvkiadó, 1988 .-- ISBN 9631163032

Japanese editions

セルゲイ・スニェーゴフ. 銀河の破壊者. - 東京：東京創元社, 1983 .-- 417 p. - ISBN 4-488-68201-4
セルゲイ・スニェーゴフ. ペルセウス座侵攻. - 東京：東京創元社, 1984 .-- 398 p. - ISBN 4-488-68202-2
セルゲイ・スニェーゴフ. 逆時間の環. - 東京：東京創元社, 1985 .-- 429 p. -

The starfleet of the Earth's distant future makes a long-distance flight into the depths of the Universe. Superluminal ships "devouring" space and converting it into energy. The civilizations of galaxies and destroyers clashing in a star war. Strange forms of the mind. The ability to manage time ...

The novel by Sergei Snegov, written in the genre of “space opera”, which is rare for the Soviet era, rightfully belongs to the best works of Russian science fiction that have stood the test of time, read and re-read today.

Interestingly, from the time of writing to the present day, the novel has been published only once in full, without abbreviations. Our edition reproduces an uncut version of the book.

On our literary site vsebooks.ru you can download for free the book by Sergei Snegov "People as Gods (collection)" in a suitable format for different devices: epub, fb2, txt, rtf. The book is the best teacher, friend and companion. It contains the secrets of the Universe, man's riddles and answers to any questions. We have collected the best representatives of both foreign and domestic literature, classic and modern books, publications on psychology and self-development, fairy tales for children and work exclusively for adults. Everyone will find here exactly what will give a lot of pleasant moments.

Free download of the book Sergei Snegov "People like Gods (collection)"

In the format fb2: Download
In the format rtf:

Sergey Snegov

PEOPLE AS GODS

(trilogy)

Message to readers

This five-volume collection is the first complete collection of sci-fi works by Sergei Snegov. In any case, those that he himself wanted to see printed. Of all the novels, novellas, pamphlets in the Snegovskih collections, there was not only one small story - "The Arithmetic of Love", which is included in the cycle of space detectives. Until now, it has only existed in the magazine version.

These texts are well known to many fans of science fiction: only the novel "People are Gods" was published in Russian 12 times (and 10 more times in German, twice in Polish, Hungarian and Japanese). The Dictator and Chrononavigators were published four times, space detectives seven times (and mostly after his death). It would seem that everything is so settled that take any of the latest texts - and go!

But the fact is that, as a rule, we have not seen the typesetting of these publications - even during Snegov's life, he did not receive it for verification every time. A lot of adventures fell to the lot of these books, and "People as Gods" especially distinguished themselves. Once, while typing, they lost two pages - and found it just before sending it to the printing house. As a result, the editor wrote a kind of small "adapter" in half an hour, the plot lines were rather conditionally connected - and after a while the book was out of print. Once, having received the next edition, we couldn’t believe our eyes: the novel had grown very noticeably thinner - the publishing house reduced it by 10 author's sheets (almost a quarter!). Naturally, no one warned us about this.

Sometimes, in order not to delay the typesetting, sentences and paragraphs were arbitrarily thrown out of the text - or they were added arbitrarily, which means that inconsistencies and inconsistencies often arose ... We really didn’t want to repeat these mistakes in the first Snegovskiy complete collection.

In addition, the first two parts of "People as Gods" were significantly reduced - a long time ago, back in the seventies. The fact is that their volume went off scale: in collections it could still pass, but in separate books it could not (paper was then worth its weight in gold, it was distributed from the center: so many tons for such and such a publishing house). These abbreviations were divided into three parts: the first Snegov removed those parts that he was forced to insert when preparing the first publication - this was the condition under which the book could see the light. In 1980, while working on the Leningrad edition of People as Gods, he did not just delete them - he blotted them out, and, I think, few work gave him such pleasure! The next to be eliminated were inserted characters and side storylines, as well as excessive detailing, which could be dispensed with. As a rule, these reductions made the romance better - but even if not, they didn't make it worse, that's for sure. And finally, the third group - these passages were really pitiful! They did not specify and did not concretize the plot - they worked for the characters, and, by God, the heroes of "People ..." lost something when they were gone. Actually, we told him this - and he agreed with us, but his hands did not reach back.

We have done all this in the current edition: restored some of the abbreviations, made edits that Snegov made for previous publications - and which for some reason were not taken into account, removed extraneous additions, returned paragraphs and sentences that had evaporated during the printing process. It cannot be said that this text is as close as possible to any particular edition, but it is as close as possible to the author's version, to the version that, for various reasons, has not yet been published.

And this applies not only to "People as Gods" - this is how we worked with all five volumes of this collected works.

Tatiana Lenskaya

GALACTIC INTELLIGENCE

Part one

SNAKE GIRL FROM VEGA

From Frascatti to old Rome

Peter the Astrologer came out.

Blacked high above him

The sky is a starry canopy.

He looked there, into the darkness,

From your plain.

And he dreamed

Strange pictures.

N. Morozov

I am a man: as a god I am doomed

To know the longing of all countries and all times.

For me, this story began with the fact that on the second day after returning to Earth, while walking over the craters of Kilimanjaro, I met Lusin riding a fire-breathing dragon.

I don't like flying dragons. They have something of an ancient theater. And I simply hate clumsy pegasus. For flights on Earth, I take an ordinary airplane - this is more reliable and more convenient. But Lusin cannot imagine movement without dragons. At school, when these foul-smelling monsters were just becoming fashionable, Lusin climbed on a training dragon to Chomolungma, the Dragon soon died, even though he was wearing an oxygen mask, and Lusin was forbidden to appear in the stable for a month. Forty-three years have passed since then, but Lusin has not grown wiser.

He insists that the soul of his ancestors, who deified these strange creatures, plays in him, in my opinion - he is original. André Sherstyuk yes they are ready to turn themselves inside out, just to amaze with something - such are these people!

And when a winged serpent rushed from the Indian Ocean, enveloped in smoke and flame, I immediately realized that Lusin was on him. Lusin shouted a greeting and landed on the cliff of Kibo Crater. I whirled in the air, examining his beast, then sat down too. Lusin ran to me, we cordially shook hands. We haven't seen each other for two years. Lusin enjoyed my surprise.

The dragon was large, about ten meters. He sprawled powerlessly on the rocks, wearily closed his bulging green eyes, his thin sides, armored with orange scales, swelled and sank, sweaty wings trembled. Smoke billowed over the head of the beast, and when exhaled, flame burst out of the mouth. Fire-breathing dragons were new to me.

The latest model, ”said Lusin. - I took it out for two years. Infovtsy praise. Good, no?

Lusin works at the Institute of New Forms - INFE - and does not get tired of boasting that they are creating living neoplasms, which nature will not reach even in a billion years. Some things, like talking dolphins, they did really well. The snake, smoking like a volcano, did not seem beautiful to me.

All this props are useless. Unless, of course, you have the intention of scaring the kids with it.

Lusin lovingly patted the dragon on one of its twelve frog legs.

Effective. Let's take you to Ora. Let them watch.

It annoys me when they talk about Ora. Half of my friends fly there, but I'm out of luck. It’s not their luck that infuriates me, of course, but the fact that they turn an interesting meeting with the inhabitants of other worlds into a primitive exhibition of toys. What kind of products are not being dragged to Ora!

Nonsense! No one there will look at your fossil. Each star dweller is more amazing in itself than all your curiosities. I think they will be much more interested in cars.

Cars - yes! Beasts - also yes. All Yes!

And you - yes! I mimicked. - Here is a sample of a man of the fifth century: red-haired, red-eyed, height one meter ninety-two, age - under sixty, lonely. No matter how a thinking toad falls in love with you. And you can't get away with a dragon!

Lusin smiled and shook his head:

You are jealous, Eli. An ancient feeling. Before dragons. Understand. Itself would be in your place.

Lusin speaks like hieroglyphs. We are used to his speech, but strangers do not always understand him. However, he does not like to talk with strangers.

His reproach upset me, and I turned away indignantly. Lusin put his hand on my shoulder.

Ask - how? he asked sadly. - Interesting.

I nodded so as not to upset Lusin with indifference. From the story, I understood that flammable substances are synthesized in the dragon's stomach and that the dragon himself is neither cold nor hot from this.

Lusin is working on the theme: "Materialization of the monsters of ancient folklore", the fire-breathing dragon is his fourth model, the following forms are the winged Assyrian lions and the reptiles of the Egyptian sphinxes.

I want the god Horus with the head of a falcon, ”said Lusin. - Not yet approved. Hopefully.

I remembered that Andre was taking to Ora a symphony he had composed called "The Harmony of Star Spheres" and that the first performance of the symphony would take place tonight in Cairo. I doubt Andre's musical ability, but music is better than smoking snakes.

Lusin jumped up.

Did not know. We fly to Cairo. I'm ahead. To the rocket station.

Enjoy the poisonous vapors of your freak yourself, ”I said. - And I'm in the old fashioned way: one, two, three - and not a hundred kilometers!

I managed to overtake Lusin by twenty minutes. While he was squeezing the last kilometers out of his orange slug, I arranged for the dragon to be fed at the Pegasus Stable.

It is narrated in the first person, like the memoirs of Eli Gamazin, a former admiral of the Starfleet.

On Earth - the fifth century of the Communist era, state fragmentation has long been eliminated, automatic factories produce everything you need in abundance, including synthetic food. From the hardships of the past, only vague memories remained, incomprehensible to everyone except the historian Pablo Romero. Each person has a telepathic connection with computers - any, even an accidental thought, can become the property of all of Mankind, if the computer considers it significant. This subsequently happens with Gamazin's idea of \u200b\u200bbuilding a station for space waves on Earth. Computers protect people from dangerous acts, allow you to inquire about any person (including marital status, height, weight, age), allow the suggestion of thoughts to others, for example, about a personal meeting. This is how Gamazin, at the beginning of the narrative, still a simple engineer, meets his future wife, Mary Glan (or rather, she is with him).

Not so long ago, Earthlings mastered the effect of transformation of space into matter, which made possible interstellar flights in real time. An immobile starship destroys space in front of it and generates it behind it, in fact moving at superluminal speed towards its intended target. Relativistic effects (in particular, time dilation) do not work with such a movement. The stellar systems closest to the Earth were examined. The found civilizations lag significantly behind the Earth in their development. On Aur, a man-made planet in the Aldebaran region, Humanity is holding its first interstellar conference. And then suddenly it turns out that the memory of the aliens contains information about other powerful civilizations - humanoid galaxies and Destroyers (the appearance of the Destroyers is unclear). In the past, unimaginable wars raged between galaxies and Destroyers, the objects of destruction in which were no longer people and mechanisms, but entire star systems. The main task of the conference on Ora is to obtain new information about galaxies and Destroyers. Gamazin and his friends chat with a variety of aliens, appearance which is determined by the living conditions on their home planets (drop-like, arachnid, serpentine). For representatives of each alien race, earthlings have created separate hotels on Ora with their usual gravity, temperature, lighting. Romero disgusts the sight of aliens, while Eli, on the contrary, falls in love with the serpent girl from Vega. However, he quickly becomes convinced that further verbal explanations their love is impossible. The Altairians have a picture of captured galaxies, but those who captured them are not depicted. Andrey Sherstyuk assumes that destroyers are invisible.

Earthlings send two ships deep into the galaxy for further exploration. In the Pleiades star cluster, people, it seems to them, are finally figuring out the appearance of the Destroyers. They are creatures that look like a helmet with an outgrowth - they are called head-eyes. The head-eyes attack the earthlings, but they manage to defeat them using individual force fields. However, the head eyes are only the Destroyers' gendarmerie. Unfortunately, real-life Destroyers do turn out to be invisible! They kidnap Andre, Eli manages to kill the invisible one and he becomes visible. The invisible person looks like a naked skeleton, nerves and blood vessels in which inside the bones, invisibility is achieved by the work of the space warp, as a result of which any rays go around the invisible person. Having deciphered the negotiations of the Destroyers, earthlings are surprised to find that their connection is transmitted faster than the speed of light. People do not have such opportunities at the time of events. A battle ensues between a squadron of Destroyers and two human starships. The Destroyers' weapons are gravitational strikes (unsteady gravitational fields). Earthlings' weapons are annihilators that transform matter into space. However, the Superluminal Destroyer ships are invisible. People are saved by the fact that in order to inflict gravitational strikes, the Destroyers are forced to go into sublight mode. The Earthlings manage to annihilate four Destroyer starships, after which the enemy squadron leaves the Pleiades.

It was decided to immediately return one of the starships to Earth, so as not to risk the most valuable information received. The second ship is sent to the star clusters Khi and Ash Perseus, where, as it turned out, the Destroyers live. During the flight, Eli constantly ponders the method of the Destroyers' superluminal communication and discovers the waves of space - perturbations of the metric that can transfer information almost instantly. Using the waves of space, earthlings mount a locator and transmitter on the starship - now they can see in the superluminal region. In the Chi Perseus Cluster, humans find they have no control over the starship's path. Destroyers somehow change the metric of space, making it non-Euclidean, and as a result, the flight path is curved. Olga Trondyk develops a plan for a breakthrough - to annihilate one of the planets, to break into the newly created space, the metric of which the Destroyers are not yet fully controlling, and through it to leave the cluster. The breakthrough succeeds, but the Destroyers manage to inflict gravitational blows on the starship. As a result, Eli Gamazin is seriously wounded, falls into a coma, from which he comes out only when approaching Ora.

Humanity decides to start a war against the Destroyers. On Earth, Eli meets again with Mary Glan, whom Romero invites to a picnic on the occasion of the First Snow. At the picnic, guests drink real (non-alcoholic) wine and grill kebabs made from real (non-synthetic) lamb. Eli wants to take Mary away from the picnic, a quarrel breaks out between him and Romero, almost turning into a fight. However, the conflict is settled. A fleet is formed on Aur for the company in Perseus. Before flying to Ora, Eli calls Mary Glan and him to fly with him, actually making her an offer. The girl agrees.

Invasion of Perseus ()

Continuation of the memoirs of Eli Gamazin.

Eli Gamazin and Mary Glan are now spouses. Their son Astr is born on Ora. Biologist Lusin demonstrates his latest creation - the fire-breathing dragon Thunder God. It was decided to take dragons, like pegasus, on a hike. Eli Gamazin is appointed admiral of the fleet. Mary insists on participating in the campaign with her son, after much persuasion Eli agrees. The flotilla arrives at Perseus. The Admiral's flagship is the Bootes starship. However, the destroyers, distorting the metric of space, do not let the invasion fleet into the cluster - they throw the flotilla out. Gamazin develops a breakthrough plan:

the entire fleet storms the non-Euclidean barrier, - the Destroyers are forced to fully use their energy;
taking advantage of this, three starships, including Bootes, break through elsewhere, opening the way for the rest.

Allan Cruz has been given command of the fleet. Mary and her son flatly refuses to part with her husband. The breakthrough of three starships succeeds, but Allan's fleet is driven back. Trying to leave the cluster, earthlings use slow annihilation (first a planet-like body, then two of their starships). The attempt is unsuccessful, but this technique will come in handy for Allan's fleet, about which Gamazin gives his last order.

The Destroyers offer Bootes to surrender. Everyone prefers to die in battle, but the admiral insists on surrender, motivating his decision by the possibility of direct contact with the Destroyers and the continuation of the reconnaissance mission. On the captured Bootes appears Orlan, commander of the Destroyer fleet, Destroyer of the First Imperial category. He, like other representatives of the "superior" of the Destroyers of the race, humanoid, however, has the privilege of changing shape. On the Nickel planet, prisoners are taken out of the starship and placed in special rooms, moreover, equipped for dragons and pegasus. Orlan gives Eli the man Andre (captured during the battles in the Pleiades), but it turns out that he is insane. Subsequently, Andre will come to his senses, and will play an important role in the war against the Destroyers. He will tell that, having been captured, he awaited interrogation and torture with horror. To avoid them, he decided to drive himself insane, concentrating absolutely all his thoughts on an object known to the Destroyers - a gray goat from a nursery rhyme.

The Great Destroyer - the head of the Empire - offers Humanity an alliance for joint possession of the Galaxy. Eli insists that their talks be broadcast live to the entire Empire, to which the Great One reluctantly agrees. This was his fatal mistake! During the negotiations, the Great One informs about the civilization of the Ramirs, significantly more powerful than humans and Destroyers. However, the Ramirs are busy with the restructuring of the Galactic nucleus and are not interested in anything else. This information turns out to be the most significant for earthlings. Eli refuses the union, the Great dooms him to the desire for an unattainable death. Upon his return to the prisoner cell, Eli is imprisoned in an invisible power cage, doomed to the pangs of hunger and thirst. The admiral tolerates torment relatively easily, because he knows that, according to the unwise judgment of the Great, he is not in danger of death. He is visited by strange dreams, then he finds himself in a hall with a dome and a frightening ball in the center, then attends meetings with the Great, where the reports of the Destroyers are held in the most bizarre forms (they spread, explode, stink). During the last of his dreams, Eli learns about the troubles on the Third Planet, which led to a dangerous wedging of the Earthlings' fleet into the cluster for the Destroyers, about the terrible biological weapons of the galaxies, that it was decided to evacuate the prisoners to the Manganese planet, away from the place of possible battles (and, obviously , in order to avoid the risk of forceful release from captivity). The next day, an order is received to evacuate to Margansevaya, Eli is allowed to drink and eat.

The Earthlings are placed on the Bootes, together with a detachment of Destroyers led by Orlan. Suddenly, space bends so that the convoy starships, the entire outer world, all other stars disappear. Orlan says that they are being carried to the Third Planet and that it is necessary to reach the World Metric Station as soon as possible, which cannot be reached. A grueling journey to the Station begins through areas of high gravity. During it, Astr dies. People are preparing and starting an uprising, but it turns out that it is not a secret for the Destroyers - some of them, including Orlan himself and the commander of the invisible Gig, go over to the side of the people. After the victory, Orlan says that as a result of the dialogue between the Great and Admiral Gamazin, many Destroyers, like himself, doubted the correctness of the imperial policy. It was on Orlan's initiative that “prophetic dreams” were broadcast into Eli's brain. Humans and their new allies begin the assault on Metrica Station. Flyable dragons and pegasus play an important role. As a result, the Station was taken, but the dragon Thunderbolt was mortally wounded in the battle. Entering the premises of the Main Brain Station, Eli recognizes the same room with the ball that was in his dreams. The Main Brain of the Station, specially removed from the body of a captive galaxy and trained to control the metrics of space, turned out to be a dreamer, he imagined himself as various inhabitants of the Universe. When a human starship first appeared in Perseus, he had hope. Now he agrees to exchange his eternal immovable existence for a brief but full-fledged biological life. Eli and Lusin agree with the Brain to transplant it into the body of the dragon Thunder God. At the same time, he retains his mind and the ability to speak. The brain chooses a new name for itself - Vagrant.

The space around the Third Planet is untwisted, the concentration of a huge fleet of Destroyers is revealed in the area of \u200b\u200bthe future breakthrough of Allan's squadron. Orlan suggests asking the galaxies for help. Negotiations begin. It turns out that galaxies live indefinitely, replacing their organs with artificially grown ones. That is why they, immortals, are terrified of death, and hence of war. In the legends of the galaxies, the memory of the ramirs, the creators of the planets, has been preserved. When the Ramirs moved to the core of the Galaxy, all Perseus star systems went over to the galaxies. Destroyers did not exist then, because the galaxies themselves created them. These were servos, who were endowed with intelligence and the ability to reproduce, having created, however, same-sex, in order to protect them from the mental torment of love. Because of this, instead of sympathy for their neighbors, they developed self-adoration and selfishness. Under the pretext of conquering new worlds, the servos moved to empty planets and started a war against their creators. At present, the Destroyers completely dominate this region of the Galaxy, but the galaxies are safe on their planets, as they are protected by weapons that inevitably strike all living things.

Galaxies show people and their allies one of the biological weapons - an asteroid, inside which a living core. Starships of galaxies are equipped with similar weapons. The directional radiation of the nucleus, which the galaxies have learned to control, penetrates through any obstacles, destroying any life. The Destroyers cannot break through to the planets of the galaxies, but the galaxies cannot direct their radiation to the planets of the Destroyers, since it was precisely to combat this that the Metrica Stations were created. In the last big war, the Metrica Station warped space so that the biological rays of the galaxies hit their own planets. After that, the galaxies abandoned active hostilities and are locked in their star systems. Convincing the galaxies to help, Eli Gamazin delivers a passionate speech in which he scares them with the prospect of breaking out of the Destroyer submachine gunships, devoid of biologicality and, then, the horrors of death and captivity. The Galaxies agree to join the war. Their fleet, the command of which they entrust to Admiral Gamazin, is sent to the area of \u200b\u200bthe breakthrough of Allan's ships. A general battle ensues, the details of which the memoirist does not describe, referring the reader to Romero's accounts. Complete victory won: The Destroyers lost a third of their fleet, the rest of their fleet scattered, the combined fleet of humans and galaxies suffered no losses. Gamazin speaks of a new task - an expedition to the core of the Galaxy for contact with the mysterious powerful civilization of Ramir.

Backward time ring ()

The text is again the memories of Eli Gamazin. Moreover, at the beginning, the author says that they are aware of all the guilt and bears full responsibility for the probable death of the expedition and dictates the records in the hope that by some miracle they will reach Earth.

The memoirs begin with the receipt of a message about the death of the expedition of Alan Cruz and Leonid Mrava to the core of the Galaxy, it is assumed that fightingdisguised as natural wonders (predatory planets, mysterious ray strikes). At the funeral, Eli again meets old friends: Romero, Lusin, demiurges (as the destroyers are now called) Orlan and Giga, Leonid's widow Olga with her adult daughter Irina. It was decided to send a second expedition to the core of the Galaxy, and Oleg Sherstyuk, Andre's son, was appointed its commander. Gamazin was offered the position of scientific supervisor. His wife Mary, as always, is inseparable from her husband. Eli takes on the expedition the dragon Tramp (formerly the Master Brain of the Space Metric Station). He has grown old, but he does not regret the lost immortality, he has tried all the joys of life and is ready to calmly meet death. The engineering genius, the demiurge Ellon, is in charge of the technical equipment of the starships. Mary tells her husband that she noticed that Irina is in love with Ellon, and this can create problems on the expedition. Eli retorts by referencing personal experience youth, that love for aliens is safe, because it is hopeless.

While passing through the dust clouds covering the Core, the expedition encounters a predatory planet absorbing dust, which is thrown by the metric generators, sees the impact of a beam of colossal power on one of the stars - an analogue of the rays that killed Allan's crews, only of incomparably greater power. If the rays are the weapons of the rams, then there is no protection from them. Nevertheless, at the meeting of the commanders, it was decided to continue the flight to the Core. Spacecraft pass through a globular star cluster with planets with ideal conditions for biological life, however, absolutely sterile. “Paradise for export,” by Gamazin's definition. All such clusters move away from the Core, it seems to "evaporate" by them. If exporters are ramirs, what kind of unimaginable technological and industrial power should their civilization have?

The expedition observes the gravitational collapse of one of the stars and then sees something incredible - flying from black hole starship. Six aliens are found in it, of which only one is alive. He has the appearance of a twelve-legged spider (Romero gives his race the name "arana"). Aran communicates telepathically freely with everyone, reads thoughts. Oan, as he asks to call himself, says that they are fugitives from the Dying Worlds, who are stricken with a terrible disease - the cancer of time. Therefore, they tried to get out through the collapsar at any other time. Once the Arans were a powerful civilization, but the Cruel Gods appeared - they stirred up the stars, forcing them to pour out dust, which covered the entire space. The Arans created automaton ships that collect dust and turn, as it accumulates, into predatory planets. But unknown aliens threw the planet-cleaners out of nowhere. The cruel Gods struck the star system of the Arans with the cancer of time, it began to burst inside the mechanisms and living beings: some parts and organs lived in the past, others in the future. The civilization of the Aranians suffered a deep regression - it degenerated into the religious sects of the Accelerators of the End, preferring death to torture from the Cruel Gods, and the Rejectors of the End, who dream of preventing death and stole the last starship to fly to the collapsar. Oan asks the expedition to help the needy.

In Dying Worlds, it turns out that the Accelerators have ordered self-immolation, the expedition decides to prevent it. This succeeds, but Lusin dies as a result. One of the cargo starships begins to annihilate dust to clear the space, but soon its onboard computer fails. Oan declares that the computer is struck by the cancer of the time, for the Cruel Gods looked at the expedition with their evil eye. Oleg Sherstyuk proposes to annihilate one of the lifeless planets, the newly created space will be clean of dust. However, the Ramir (are they the Cruel Gods?) Attack first: a mysterious beam destroys the starship preparing to strike. After the disaster, on the initiative of Gamazin, a secret meeting of the command staff of the fleet was called. Eli proves that Oan is a secret spy of the Ramir, or rather, he is Ramir, who took the form of an Aran. During interrogation, Oan blurts out, saying that the purpose of the flight to the collapsar was an attempt to master the bends of time, which would open up the possibility of bringing out into the past, into the future, into the lateral "now", clusters of stars that are dying in waning time. Realizing that he is revealed, ramir begins to disappear, Ellon manages to catch him in a power cage. Dead Oan is placed in a conservatory - a special spaceship room. Soon Gamazin develops a strange habit of going there and talking to Oan, reasoning out loud.

To regain control of the starships, it was decided to use the old Vagabond profession. Vagrant's brain transplant is to be performed by Ellon, who was trained as a destroyer of the Fourth Imperial Tier. Ellon refuses, but Orlan forces him, for a few minutes again becoming a powerful nobleman of the First Category. The former Tramp asks not to be called the Master Brain, Eli gives him the name "The Voice". Gamazine assumes that the Ramiers, by preventing explosions from occurring, will allow slow annihilation, and it turns out to be right: the expeditionary fleet begins to slowly annihilate the intended planet with two cargo starships and leaves the Dying Worlds. Having completed their passage through the dust clouds, the expedition now sees a giant starfire - the galactic core. Chaos reigns in it, the stars move too close to each other, they act on each other with huge gravitational forces. There is no question of the presence of planets in such conditions. Everyone understands that the future of the nucleus is a mutual group collision of stars and a colossal explosion. (Galaxies with exploded nuclei have been known to earthlings since the 20th century. Example: M87.) The first attempt to escape from the nucleus almost leads to death: Ellon is wounded, Irina hugs and kisses him, however, Ellon does not understand the meaning of her actions. Gamazine observes the unimaginable - the stars pass through each other without colliding. The voice explains this by a gap in time (one star was in the past, the other in the future). For the second attempt to escape, it is decided to annihilate one of the starships, but it is destroyed by a beam of ramirs. Everyone is in a panic, the Ramira turns out to be here in the Core. They are not the ones who release the expeditionary fleet. The gap between the past and the future begins to affect the psyche, most "fall into the past": Eagle turns into an arrogant imperial dignitary, Mary reproaches her husband that he stopped loving her and left her, having flown to Ora and Perseus. Then Gamazin, in order to move from the past to the present, goes to the conservative and begins to dictate memories.

Ellon studies the properties of time by experimenting with microcollapsar. Under the strict control of Orlan himself, he developed a time stabilizer. Time in the spaceship is whole again, everyone becomes themselves again. However, Ellon never left the past, he believes that he is doomed to be a servant of the fourth category, he will always be pushed around by Orlan and other government. Ellon shows Eli and Oleg the finished time machine, climbs inside and announces that he is going to the past, to the Third Planet of Perseus, taking with him the Voice - the former Main Brain of the Space Metric Station. When trying to return Ellon from the past, he dies; what happened to the Voice is unknown. Irina is hysterical, she explains that Ellon called her into the future, at a time when an earthly woman can be happy with the demiurge, but he himself decided to return to the past. Taking advantage of the general confusion, Irina enters the time machine and is carried away into the future. So far away that it cannot be returned. In addition to these losses, Gamazin announces to the crew that he has discovered a new ramir spy on the starship. Eli declares that the ramir's spy is himself. He spoke at the Conservatory with Ohan, revealed to the enemies the plans to leave the Core. Oan is not dead - he's a sensor, a ramir's eavesdropper. Romero justifies Eli, because the Ramirs are not enemies, they are simply indifferent to the expedition. The Ramirs are busy rebuilding the kernel, but what is there to rebuild? It is necessary to save the Galaxy from an explosion, to bring everything that is possible outside the core. Ramirs are lumberjacks who fell sick trees to preserve the entire forest, and other civilizations are the ants of this forest. Ramiram is not up to them, but if the ants bite the lumberjacks, they kill the ants.

Gamazin's self-accusations were rejected, in another conversation with Oan, he angrily shouts that now time is not dead in their hands, and they will break out of captivity through the future, the past, the time is crooked, the time is perpendicular. Great discovery made! In the Core, due to the tremendous gravity, time is two-dimensional, this is what creates its breaks, which, in fact, bends, and prevents collisions of stars. Using the ingenious design of Ellon's time machine, the starship warps time by gradually increasing its evasion angle. Eli corrects Romero's theory - the Ramirs became interested in Ellon's experiments and specially infected the expedition with the cancer of time, raising its status from ants to guinea pigs. However, Gamazin does not agree to this either. In his last conversation with Oan, he compares ramirov - thinking dead matter, which was once planets in Perseus, but here it took the form of stars, with biological life. This life is insignificant in mass, but not in the force of impact on nature. It is developing rapidly, it is the youth of the world - the future of the Galaxy. Eli asks the ramirs, or, as he guesses, the united stellar mind of the one ramir, so that Oan disappears in a sign of understanding of his theses. This is what happens at the end of the story. The spacecraft leaves the core of the Galaxy in the area of \u200b\u200bDying Worlds and returns in due time one Earth year later than they were there for the first time. The path of contact: from rejection to friendliness, passed!

Characters

People

Eli Gamazin - the main character of the story. A graduate of a school in the Himalayas, a slow-witted and joker. In the first part of the novel - the secretary of his older sister Vera, a member of the Space Eater crew. In the second - the admiral of the human flotilla, sent to Perseus, the commander of the combined fleets of people and galaxies. In the third - the scientific leader of the expedition to the core of the Galaxy.
Andre Sherstyuk - a graduate of a school in the Himalayas, a very close friend of Eli. "Idea's generator". Loves to change his appearance. He is married to Jeanne, who will later give birth to his son Oleg. In the first part, he composed a symphony "The Harmony of Star Spheres", where, in addition to music, the listener was influenced by changes in temperature and gravity. The symphony failed with a deafening crash. Took part in the campaign to the Pleiades, where he was kidnapped by the destroyers. In the second part, where Eli and his friends are captured by the destroyers, Andre appears before the prisoners completely lost their minds. However, he recovers very quickly and helps the prisoners to gain freedom, and when people capture one of the space curvature stations, Andre takes over the leadership of this station.
Pavel Romero - historian and historiographer. Dressed in the fashion of the XIX-XX centuries, wears a goatee goatee and a cane. Knows the history of the Earth very well. The groom (later husband) of Vera Gamazina, Eli's sister.
Lusin - a graduate of a school in the Himalayas, a biologist, an employee of the "Institute of New Forms", who bred mythical animals, influencing the genes of the real ones. For example, he created pegasus from horses, and dragons from lizards. Lusin speaks as if in “hieroglyphs”, constructs very short phrases of two or three words, and only those who know him well can understand him. He is very sensitive to all living things. He died in the third part of the novel on Arania while trying to prevent the mass suicide of local residents.
Vera Gamazina - elder sister of Eli and fiancee (later wife) of Paul. Member of the Grand Council. A very beautiful woman, always prettier in anger. He likes to stand by the window for a long time, his head thrown back and his hands on the back of his head. She died of natural causes before the beginning of the third part.
Mary Glan - Eli's wife (from the second part of the novel). The woman is not glittering with beauty, but pretty. She is fond of botany and microbiology, has brought out a group of bacteria that feed on metals and emit hydrogen and oxygen. She gave birth to a son, Astra.
Olga Trondyk - a graduate of a school in the Himalayas, mathematician, captain of a spaceship, commander of a reserve squadron. All her life she loved Eli Gamazin, but married Leonid Mrava. In his free time he likes to calculate.
Leonid Mrava - a graduate of a school in the Himalayas, a captain of a spaceship, a very sharp and impetuous person. The groom (later husband) of Olga Trondyk. Died before the beginning of the third part.
Allan Cruz - a graduate of a school in the Himalayas, a captain of a spaceship. A very tall person with a loud voice. According to Eli Gamazin, Allan has only two states: he is either rejoicing or indignant. He died before the beginning of the narrative of the third part, along with Leonid.
Edward Kamagin - a member of the crew of the starship "Mendeleev" (captain's mate), launched 400 years ago, attacked by destroyers. Because of Einstein's time dilation observed at near-light speeds, it became possible to meet with their descendants. Captain of one of the spaceships. A small person.
Vasily Groman - Member of the crew of the starship "Mendeleev" (navigator).
Oleg Sherstyuk - the son of Andre Sherstyuk, outwardly very similar to his father. Commander of a star squadron on an expedition to the Core. In love with Irina.
Irina Trondyk - daughter of Olga Trondike and Leonid Mrav. Character and appearance went to Leonid. A member of the expedition to the Core, Ellon's assistant, in love with her boss. After creating the collapsan, she sent herself into the future. The further fate is unknown.
Aster - the son of Eli Gamazin and Mary Glan, a bit like his father. "Infected" with life the Third Planet of Destroyers with a solution of microorganisms created by Mary, feeding on metals. He died at the age of about 9 years from the action of high gravity on the Third Planet.

Aliens

Pipes - a four-winged angel of enormous size, a brawler who considers himself a prince. Originally from the ninth planet of the Flame B system in the Hyades. After the skirmish with Eli, he calmed down a bit, and when all the participants left Oru, he wished to fly not home, but to Earth to people. He became very friendly with Eli and Lusin. In battle, he proved to be an excellent fighter. Died in the Core when the expedition was struck by the cancer of time.
Fiola - a very beautiful snake with an almost human head, originally from Vega. Participant of the star conference on Are. Eli falls in love with Fiola, but then quickly cools down.
Eagle - destroyer (demiurge). Destroyer of the First Imperial category, a nobleman, close to the Great, one of the first to understand that the philosophy of destroyers is false, and actively helped Eli in the second part of the story. Accompanying Eli on an expedition to the planets of galaxies. In the third part, he helped to get Ellon to complete the tasks.
Ellon - destroyer (demiurge). One of the brightest minds, modernized weapons that create non-Euclidean space, and installed them on ships of the fleet in the third part of the story. He also developed a collapsar - a time machine. Mentally unbalanced (according to Gracia, due to an excess of artificiality in his body). The cancer of time aggravated Ellon's imbalance, and he died while trying to escape into the past.
Gig - destroyer, invisible man. Cheeky and friendly character. Like all invisibles, an excellent executor of orders, but too quick to make decisions. One of the first, together with Orlan, went over to Eli's side and accepted his philosophy (in the second part of the story). Also, together with Orlan, he accompanied Eli on an expedition to the planets of galaxies. In the third part, he was mainly engaged in intelligence.
Tigran - galact. He made the first contact with earthlings.
Grace - galact. Negotiator, xenosociologist, negotiated with earthlings on behalf of galactic civilization. Later he took part in the expedition to the Core, acting as an agent of peace, and after the disappearance of the Tramp, he took over the functions of controlling the ships and the time machine. I tolerated cancer of time quite easily.
Brain - a living isolated brain of the origin of galaxies. Used by destroyers to control gravity installations on the Third Planet. He actively helped Gamazin in the confrontation with the destroyers. With Eli's consent, he took up residence in the body of the dragon Thunder God (after the latter's brain was damaged in the battle for the Third Planet) in order to enjoy bodily sensations, and called himself the Rogue. But when in the third part of the novel the body of the Thunderer grew old, it was returned to its previous state. He controlled the ships until the MUM were damaged (Small Universal Machines - a kind of analogue of computers, control all equipment and provide, thanks to a complex system of sensors, telepathic communication between people). Presumably, he died due to hatred for him from Ellon, who sent him to the past.
Oan - a creature masquerading as the Arans, the inhabitants of the planet Arania. It is later revealed that Oan is a ramir's spy.

Reviews of the novel

I really liked Snegov's novel - he's a fine fellow, although his people are even weaker than our ancestors - nervous, hectic, rude. But fantasies are rife - just write more.

He turned to science fiction. I wanted to write something that no one can object. I gathered my relatives and friends and committed such hooliganism with them: I transferred them five hundred years ahead ... This is how the novel "People are like gods" appeared.
There was another reason why I turned to science fiction. The point is that this literature is tragic in the West. She describes our future as a kingdom of monsters. I wrote a novel about the bright future of mankind.

The publishing fate of the novel was not easy - it was rejected by four publishers in a row. The first book of the novel was first published in the fiction collection Lenizdat "Hellenic Secret" in 1966 under the name "People are like gods"... The second book was published two years later in a collection of the same publishing house called "In the gorges of the stars" (wherein "Invasion of Perseus" was the title of the first part of the second book and the collection itself). In 1971, in Kaliningrad, the first two books of the novel were published as a separate volume in a slightly modified edition, and the first book received the title "Galactic Exploration"... In the 1970s, the third book of the novel was written, published in 1977. Finally, in 1982, all three books were collected in one volume, while the text of the novel was significantly reduced by the author (especially the first two books, which were reduced by more than 15 percent) in order to bring its volume in line with the requirements of the publisher.
The novel was translated into foreign languages \u200b\u200band published in Germany, Japan, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Spain, France.

List of editions

Russian editions

Sergey Snegov. People are like gods // / Comp. and ed. foreword E. Brandis, V. Dmitrevsky. - L.: Lenizdat, 1966 .-- S. 22-304. - 518 p. - 65,000 copies

Sergey Snegov. In the gorges of the stars // / Comp. and ed. foreword E. Brandis, V. Dmitrevsky. - L.: Lenizdat, 1968 .-- S. 32-305. - 469 p. - 100,000 copies

Sergey Snegov. ... - Kaliningrad: Kaliningrad book publishing house, 1971. - 464 p. - 30,000 copies

Sergey Snegov. Reverse Time Ring // / Comp. and ed. entry Art. E. Brandis, V. Dmitrevsky. - L.: Lenizdat, 1977 .-- S. 11-270. - 639 p. - 100,000 copies

Sergey Snegov. ... - L.: Lenizdat, 1982 .-- 719 p. - 50,000 copies

Sergey Snegov. ... - Kaliningrad: Kaliningrad book publishing house, 1986. - 607 p. - 50,000 copies

Sergey Snegov. ... - Doval-Nikishka, 1992 .-- 624 p. - 50,000 copies - ISBN 5-8308-0015-2.

Sergey Snegov. People are like gods. - SPb: North-West, 1992 .-- 634 p. - ISBN 5-835-2005-36.

Sergey Snegov. ... - Armada, 1996 .-- 528 p. - 20,000 copies. - ISBN 5-7632-0186-8.

Sergey Snegov. ... - Azbuka-Terra, 1996 .-- 688 p. - ISBN 5-7684-0128-8, 5-7684-0127-x.

Sergey Snegov. ... - Centerpolygraph, 1997. - T. 1-2. - 10,000 copies. - ISBN 5-218-00526-6, 5-218-00548-7.

Sergey Snegov. ... - M-SPb: LLC "AST Publishing House", Terra Fantastica, 2001. - 640 p. - 10,000 copies. - ISBN 5-17-004122-5, 5-7921-0358-5.

Sergey Snegov. ... - Amphora, 2006 .-- 864 p. - 5000 copies. - ISBN 5-367-00212-9.

Sergey Snegov. ... - Amphora, 2006 .-- 864 p. - 3000 copies. - ISBN 5-94278-988-6.

Sergey Snegov. ... - Eksmo, 2010 .-- 736 p. - 4000 copies. - ISBN 978-5-699-44065-8.

German editions

Sergej Snegow. ... - München: Heyne Verlag, 1972 .-- 380 p. - ISBN 3453304683.

Sergej Snegow. ... - Heyne Verlag, 1978 .-- 381 p. - ISBN 3453304683.

Sergej Snegow. Menschen wie Götter. - Moskau - Berlin: Verlag Mir - Das Neue Berlin, 1981.

Sergej Snegow. Menschen wie Götter. - 1996 .-- 600 p. - ISBN 3359008383.

Sergej Snegow. Menschen wie Götter. - Das Neue Berlin, 2003 .-- 634 p. - ISBN 3360008383.

Sergej Snegow. ... - Verlag Neues Leben, 2006 .-- 608 p. - ISBN 3355017264, 978-3355017268.

Sergej Snegow. Menschen wie Götter. - Heyne Verlag, 2010 .-- 608 p. - ISBN 3453525191.

Polish editions

Siergiej Sniegow. ... - Iskry, 1972 .-- 540 p.

Siergiej Sniegow. Ludzie jak bogowie. - Współpraca, 1988 .-- ISBN 9788370180836.

Hungarian editions

Szergej Sznyegov. ... - Budapest: Móra Ferenc Könyvkiadó, 1988 .-- ISBN 9631163032.

Japanese editions

セルゲイ・スニェーゴフ. ... - 東京：東京創元社, 1983 .-- 417 p. - ISBN 4-488-68201-4.

セルゲイ・スニェーゴフ. ... - 東京：東京創元社, 1984 .-- 398 p. - ISBN 4-488-68202-2.

セルゲイ・スニェーゴフ. ... - 東京：東京創元社, 1985 .-- 429 p. - ISBN 4-488-68203-0.

The title of Snegov's work copies the title of HG Wells' novel "People as Gods" () and echoes the SF novel by Clifford Symak \u200b\u200b"" () and the collection of fantasy stories by Kir Bulychev "" ().

In the original version of the novel, earthlings lived much longer than our contemporaries, and matured more slowly. So, at the beginning of the first book it was mentioned that Eli, Andre and Lusin are 57 years old, and Mary - 43. When shortening the text, Snegov abandoned this detail (for example, Mary in the shortened version is 23 years old).

Write a review on the article "People as Gods (Snegov's novel)"
Notes

Links

on the site "Laboratory of Fantasy"

in LiveJournal

An excerpt characterizing People as gods (Snegov's novel)
A murmur arose in the crowd of awaiting wounded.
- It can be seen, and in the next world to live alone, - said one.
Prince Andrew was brought in and placed on a table that had just been cleaned up, from which a paramedic was rinsing something. Prince Andrew could not make out separately what was in the tent. Complaining moans from different sides, excruciating pain in the hip, abdomen and back entertained him. Everything that he saw around him merged for him into one general impression of a naked, bloody human body, which seemed to fill the entire low tent, as a few weeks ago, on this hot, August day, the same body filled a dirty pond along the Smolensk road ... Yes, it was that very body, that same chair a canon [meat for cannons], the sight of which even then, as if predicting the present, aroused horror in him.
There were three tables in the tent. Two were occupied, on the third they put Prince Andrew. For some time he was left alone, and he involuntarily saw what was being done on the other two tables. On the near table sat a Tatar, probably a Cossack - in a uniform thrown beside him. Four soldiers were holding him. A doctor with glasses was cutting something in his brown, muscular back.
- Uh, uh, uh! .. - as if the Tatar was grunting, and suddenly, raising up his high-cheekbone black snub-nosed face, bared white teeth, he began to torn, twitch and squeal with a piercing, prolonged squeal. On another table, around which a lot of people crowded, on his back lay a large, plump man with his head thrown back (curly hair, their color and head shape seemed strangely familiar to Prince Andrey). Several paramedics piled on the man's chest and held him. The white large, full leg jerked rapidly and often without ceasing with feverish tremors. This man was sobbing convulsively and choking. Two doctors in silence - one was pale and trembling - were doing something over the other, the red leg of this man. Having dealt with the Tatar, over whom they had thrown an overcoat, the doctor in glasses, wiping his hands, went up to Prince Andrey. He looked into the face of Prince Andrey and hastily turned away.
- Undress! What are you standing? He shouted angrily at the paramedics.
The very first distant childhood was remembered by Prince Andrei, when a paramedic with hurried rolled up hands unbuttoned his buttons and took off his dress. The doctor bent low over the wound, felt it and sighed heavily. Then he signaled to someone. And the excruciating pain inside the abdomen made Prince Andrei lose consciousness. When he woke up, the broken bones of his thigh were taken out, the pieces of meat were cut off, and the wound was bandaged. They sprayed water on his face. As soon as Prince Andrei opened his eyes, the doctor bent over him, silently kissed him on the lips and hurried away.
After the suffering he had endured, Prince Andrey felt a bliss that he had not experienced for a long time. All the best, happiest moments in his life, especially the most distant childhood, when he was undressed and put in a crib, when the nanny, lulling him, sang over him, when, burying his head in the pillows, he felt happy with one consciousness of life - he imagined himself imagination not even as the past, but as reality.
Doctors fussed about the wounded man, the outlines of his head seemed familiar to Prince Andrey; he was raised and calmed.
- Show me ... Oooh! about! oooh! - heard his groan, interrupted by sobs, frightened and resigned to suffering. Hearing these groans, Prince Andrew wanted to cry. Whether because he was dying without glory, because it was a pity for him to part with his life, whether from these irrecoverable childhood memories, whether because he suffered, that others suffered and this man groaned so pitifully before him, but he wanted to cry childish, kind, almost joyful tears.
The wounded man was shown a severed leg in a boot with caked blood.
- ABOUT! Oooh! He sobbed like a woman. The doctor, who was standing in front of the wounded, blocking his face, walked away.
- Oh my God! What is it? Why is he here? - said Prince Andrew to himself.
In the unhappy, sobbing, exhausted man, whose leg had just been taken away, he recognized Anatol Kuragin. Anatole was held in his arms and offered him water in a glass, the edges of which he could not catch with trembling, swollen lips. Anatole was sobbing heavily. “Yes, this is it; yes, this man is somehow close and difficult to me, - thought Prince Andrey, not yet clearly understanding what was in front of him. - What is the connection of this person with my childhood, with my life? He asked himself, finding no answer. And suddenly a new, unexpected recollection from the childish world, pure and loving, presented itself to Prince Andrey. He remembered Natasha as he had seen her for the first time at the ball in 1810, with a thin neck and thin hands with a face ready for delight, a frightened, happy face, and love and tenderness for her, even more lively and stronger than ever, woke up in to his soul. He now remembered the connection that existed between him and this man, through the tears filling his swollen eyes, looking dimly at him. Prince Andrew remembered everything, and ecstatic pity and love for this man filled his happy heart.
Prince Andrew could no longer restrain himself and wept tender, loving tears over people, over himself and over their and his own delusions.
“Compassion, love for brothers, for those who love, love for those who hate us, love for enemies - yes, that love that God preached on earth, which Princess Marya taught me and which I did not understand; this is why I felt sorry for life, this is what still remained for me if I were alive. But it's too late now. I know it!"
The terrible sight of the battlefield, covered with corpses and wounded, combined with the weight of the head and the news of the killed and wounded twenty familiar generals and with the consciousness of the powerlessness of his formerly strong hand, made an unexpected impression on Napoleon, who usually liked to look at the dead and wounded, thus testing his mental strength (as he thought). On this day, the terrible sight of the battlefield defeated the spiritual strength in which he believed his merit and greatness. He hastily left the battlefield and returned to the Shevardinsky mound. Yellow, swollen, heavy, with dull eyes, a red nose and a hoarse voice, he sat in a folding chair, involuntarily listening to the sounds of gunfire and not looking up. He waited with painful longing for the end of the work, which he considered himself the cause, but which he could not stop. For a brief moment, personal human feeling prevailed over the artificial ghost of life that he had served for so long. He endured the suffering and death that he saw on the battlefield. The heaviness of his head and chest reminded him of the possibility of suffering and death for himself. At that moment he wanted neither Moscow, nor victory, nor glory for himself. (What more glory did he need?) The one thing he wanted now was rest, tranquility and freedom. But when he was at the Semyonovskaya height, the chief of artillery suggested that he put several batteries at these heights in order to increase the fire on the Russian troops crowded in front of Knyazkov. Napoleon agreed and ordered to bring him the news of what action these batteries would produce.
The adjutant came to say that, by order of the emperor, two hundred guns were aimed at the Russians, but that the Russians were still standing.
“Our fire tears them out in rows, and they stand,” said the adjutant.
- Ils en veulent encore! .. [They still want! ..] - said Napoleon in a hoarse voice.
- Sire? [Sovereign?] - repeated the adjutant who did not listen.
“Ils en veulent encore,” Napoleon croaked in a hoarse voice, frowning, “donnez leur en. [I would also like to, well, ask them.]
And without his order, what he wanted was done, and he ordered only because he thought that orders were expected from him. And he again transferred to his former artificial world ghosts of some kind of greatness, and again (like that horse walking on a sloping drive wheel imagines that it is doing something for itself) he humbly began to play that cruel, sad and heavy, inhuman role that was intended for him.
And not for this hour and day alone were the mind and conscience of this man darkened, heavier than all the other participants in this case, who bore the whole burden of what was happening; but never, until the end of his life, he could understand neither goodness, nor beauty, nor truth, nor the meaning of his actions, which were too opposite to goodness and truth, too far from everything human, so that he could understand their meaning. He could not renounce his deeds, praised by half of the world, and therefore had to renounce truth and goodness and everything human.
Not on that day alone, going around the battlefield laid by dead and mutilated people (as he thought, according to his will), looking at these people, he counted how many Russians there were for one Frenchman, and, deceiving himself, found reasons to rejoice that for one Frenchman there were five Russians. Not on that day alone did he write in a letter to Paris that le champ de bataille a ete superbe [the battlefield was splendid], because there were fifty thousand corpses on it; but also on the island of St. Helena, in the quiet of solitude, where he said that he intended to devote his leisure time to an exposition of the great deeds that he had done, he wrote:
"La guerre de Russie eut du etre la plus populaire des temps modernes: c" etait celle du bon sens et des vrais interets, celle du repos et de la securite de tous; elle etait purement pacifique et conservatrice.
C "etait pour la grande cause, la fin des hasards elle commencement de la securite. Un nouvel horizon, de nouveaux travaux allaient se derouler, tout plein du bien etre et de la prosperite de tous. Le systeme europeen se trouvait fonde; il n "etait plus question que de l" organizer.
Satisfait sur ces grands points et tranquille partout, j "aurais eu aussi mon congres et ma sainte alliance. Ce sont des idees qu" on m "a volees. Dans cette reunion de grands souverains, nous eussions traites de nos interets en famille et compte de clerc a maitre avec les peuples.
L "Europe n" eut bientot fait de la sorte veritablement qu "un meme peuple, et chacun, en voyageant partout, se fut trouve toujours dans la patrie commune. Il eut demande toutes les rivieres navigables pour tous, la communaute des mers, et que les grandes armees permanentes fussent reduites desormais a la seule garde des souverains.
De retour en France, au sein de la patrie, grande, forte, magnifique, tranquille, glorieuse, j "eusse proclame ses limites immuables; toute guerre future, purement defensive; tout agrandissement nouveau antinational. J" eusse associe mon fils al "Empire ; ma dictature eut fini, et son regne constitutionnel eut commence ...
Paris eut ete la capitale du monde, et les Francais l "envie des nations! ..
Mes loisirs ensuite et mes vieux jours eussent ete consacres, en compagnie de l "imperatrice et durant l" apprentissage royal de mon fils, a visiter lentement et en vrai couple campagnard, avec nos propres chevaux, tous les recoins de l "Empire, recevant les plaintes, redressant les torts, semant de toutes parts et partout les monuments et les bienfaits.
The Russian war should have been the most popular in modern times: it was a war of common sense and real benefits, a war of peace and security for all; she was purely peaceful and conservative.
It was for a great purpose, for the end of accidents and for the beginning of peace. A new horizon, new labors would open up, full of well-being and prosperity for all. The European system would be founded, the question would be only in its establishment.
Satisfied in these great matters and calm everywhere, I would also have my own congress and my sacred union. These are the thoughts that have been stolen from me. In this meeting of great sovereigns, we would discuss our interests in the family and would reckon with the peoples, like a scribe with a master.
Indeed, Europe would soon become one and the same people in this way, and everyone, traveling anywhere, would always be in a common homeland.
I would argue that all rivers are navigable for everyone, that the sea is common, that permanent, large armies are reduced solely to the guards of sovereigns, etc.
Returning to France, to my homeland, great, strong, magnificent, calm, glorious, I would proclaim its boundaries unchanged; any future defensive war; any new spread is antinational; I would add my son to the rule of the empire; my dictatorship would end, and his constitutional rule would begin ...
Paris would be the capital of the world and the French are the envy of all nations! ..
Then my leisure time and the last days would have been devoted, with the help of the Empress and during the royal education of my son, to little by little visit, like a real village couple, on their own horses, all corners of the state, accepting complaints, eliminating injustices, scattering all sides and everywhere buildings and benefits.]
He, destined by providence for the sad, unfree role of the executioner of peoples, assured himself that the purpose of his actions was the good of the peoples and that he could direct the destinies of millions and through the power to do good deeds!
“Des 400,000 hommes qui passerent la Vistule,” he wrote further about the Russian war, “la moitie etait Autrichiens, Prussiens, Saxons, Polonais, Bavarois, Wurtembergeois, Mecklembourgeois, Espagnols, Italiens, Napolitains. L "armee imperiale, proprement dite, etait pour un tiers composee de Hollandais, Belges, habitants des bords du Rhin, Piemontais, Suisses, Genevois, Toscans, Romains, habitants de la 32 e division militaire, Breme, Hambourg, etc .; elle comptait a peine 140000 hommes parlant francais. L "expedition do Russie couta moins de 50000 hommes a la France actuelle; l "armee russe dans la retraite de Wilna a Moscou, dans les differentes batailles, a perdu quatre fois plus que l" armee francaise; l "incendie de Moscou a coute la vie a 100,000 Russes, morts de froid et de misere dans les bois; enfin dans sa marche de Moscou a l" Oder, l "armee russe fut aussi atteinte par, l" intemperie de la saison; elle ne comptait a son arrivee a Wilna que 50,000 hommes, et a Kalisch moins de 18,000 ".
[Of the 400,000 people who crossed the Vistula, half were Austrians, Prussians, Saxons, Poles, Bavarians, Virtembergians, Mecklenburgians, Spaniards, Italians, and Neapolitans. The imperial army, in fact, was one third made up of the Dutch, Belgians, residents of the banks of the Rhine, Piedmontese, Swiss, Geneva, Tuscan, Romans, residents of the 32nd military division, Bremen, Hamburg, etc .; it had hardly 140,000 French speakers. The Russian expedition cost France proper less than 50,000 people; the Russian army in the retreat from Vilna to Moscow in various battles lost four times more than the French army; the fire of Moscow cost the lives of 100,000 Russians who died of cold and poverty in the forests; finally, during its transition from Moscow to Oder, the Russian army also suffered from the severity of the season; upon arrival in Vilna it consisted of only 50,000 people, and in Kalisz less than 18,000.]
He imagined that, according to his will, a war with Russia had taken place, and the horror of what had happened did not strike his soul. He boldly assumed full responsibility for the event, and his darkened mind saw an excuse that, among the hundreds of thousands of people killed, there were fewer French than Hessians and Bavarians.
Several tens of thousands of people lay dead in different positions and uniforms in the fields and meadows that belonged to the Davydovs and state peasants, in those fields and meadows where for hundreds of years the peasants of the villages of Borodin, Gorki, Shevardin and Semenovsky had simultaneously gathered crops and grazed their livestock. At the dressing stations for the tithe of the place, the grass and earth were soaked in blood. Crowds of wounded and non-wounded different teams of people, with frightened faces, on one side wandered back to Mozhaisk, on the other side - back to Valuev. Other crowds, exhausted and hungry, led by their leaders, marched forward. Still others stood still and continued to shoot.
Above the whole field, once so gaily beautiful, with its glittering bayonets and smoke in the morning sun, there was now a haze of dampness and smoke and smelled of a strange acid of saltpeter and blood. Clouds gathered, and began to drizzle on the dead, on the wounded, on the frightened, and on the exhausted and doubting people. It was as if he were saying, “Enough, enough, people. Stop ... Come to your senses. What are you doing?"
Exhausted, without food and without rest, people of both sides began to equally doubt whether they should still exterminate each other, and there was a noticeable hesitation on all faces, and in every soul the question was raised equally: “Why, for whom should I kill and be killed? Kill whoever you want, do what you want, but I don't want more! " By the evening this thought had matured equally in everyone's soul. At any moment all these people could be horrified at what they were doing, drop everything and run anywhere.
But although by the end of the battle people felt all the horror of their deed, although they would have been glad to stop, some incomprehensible, mysterious force still continued to guide them, and, sweating, covered in gunpowder and blood, remaining one by three, the artillerymen, although and stumbling and panting with fatigue, they brought charges, charged, directed, applied wicks; and the nuclei just as quickly and cruelly flew over from both sides and flattened the human body, and that terrible deed continued, which is not done at the will of people, but at the will of the one who leads people and worlds.
Anyone who looked at the frustrated bottom of the Russian army would say that the French should make one more small effort and the Russian army will disappear; and anyone who looked at the backs of the French would say that the Russians had to make one more little effort and the French would perish. But neither the French nor the Russians made this effort, and the flames of the battle were slowly dying out.
The Russians did not make this effort because they were not the ones who attacked the French. At the beginning of the battle, they only stood on the road to Moscow, blocking it, and in the same way they continued to stand at the end of the battle, as they stood at the beginning of it. But if even the goal of the Russians was to bring down the French, they could not make this last effort, because all the Russian troops were defeated, there was not a single part of the troops that did not suffer in the battle, and the Russians remained in their places , lost half of their troops.
It was easy for the French, with the memory of all the previous fifteen years of victories, with confidence in Napoleon's invincibility, with the knowledge that they had taken possession of a part of the battlefield, that they had lost only one-fourth of the people and that they still have a twenty-thousandth untouched guard, it was easy to make this effort. The French, who attacked the Russian army in order to knock it out of position, had to make this effort, because as long as the Russians, just as before the battle, blocked the road to Moscow, the French goal was not achieved and all their efforts and the losses were wasted. But the French did not make this effort. Some historians say that Napoleon should have given his pristine old guard in order for the battle to be won. To talk about what would have happened if Napoleon had given his guard is like talking about what would have happened if spring had come in the fall. It couldn't be. Napoleon did not give his guard, because he did not want it, but it could not be done. All the generals, officers, and soldiers of the French army knew that this could not be done, because the fallen spirit of the army did not allow it.
Not only Napoleon experienced that dreamlike feeling that the terrible sweep of the arm falls powerlessly, but all the generals, all the soldiers of the French army who participated and did not participate, after all the experiences of previous battles (where, after ten times less effort, the enemy fled), experienced the same feeling of horror in front of the enemy who, having lost half of the army, stood as menacing at the end as at the beginning of the battle. The moral strength of the French attacking army was exhausted. Not that victory, which is determined by the pieces of matter picked up on sticks, called banners, and the space on which the troops stood and are, but a moral victory, one that convinces the enemy of the moral superiority of his enemy and in his powerlessness, was won by the Russians under Borodin. The French invasion, like an angry beast that had received a mortal wound in its flight, felt its destruction; but it could not stop, just as it could not help but deviate the twice weaker Russian army. After this push, the French army could still reach Moscow; but there, without new efforts on the part of the Russian army, it had to die, bleeding from the mortal wound inflicted at Borodino. The direct consequence of the Battle of Borodino was the unreasonable flight of Napoleon from Moscow, his return along the old Smolensk road, the death of the five hundred thousandth invasion and the death of Napoleonic France, on which the hand of the strongest enemy was laid for the first time at Borodino.
The absolute continuity of movement is incomprehensible to the human mind. A person understands the laws of any kind of movement only when he considers arbitrary units of this movement. But at the same time, from this arbitrary division of continuous motion into discontinuous units, a large part of human delusions flows.
The so-called sophism of the ancients is known, which consists in the fact that Achilles will never catch up with a turtle walking in front, despite the fact that Achilles is ten times faster than a turtle: as soon as Achilles passes the space separating him from the turtle, the turtle will pass one tenth of that in front of him. space; Achilles will pass this tenth, the tortoise will pass one hundredth, and so on to infinity. This task seemed insoluble to the ancients. The senselessness of the decision (that Achilles would never catch up with the turtle) stemmed only from the fact that discontinuous units of movement were arbitrarily allowed, while the movement of both Achilles and the turtle was continuous.
Accepting smaller and smaller units of motion, we are only approaching the solution of the issue, but never reaching it. Only by admitting an infinitely small value and an ascending progression from it to one-tenth and taking the sum of this geometric progression, we achieve a solution to the problem. The new branch of mathematics, having achieved the art of handling infinitesimal quantities, and in other more complex questions of motion, now gives answers to questions that seemed insoluble.
This new, unknown to the ancients, branch of mathematics, when considering the issues of motion, admitting infinitely small quantities, that is, those under which the main condition of motion (absolute continuity) is restored, thereby correcting that inevitable mistake that the human mind cannot but make when considering instead of continuous movement, individual units of movement.
Exactly the same thing happens in the search for the laws of historical movement.
The movement of mankind, flowing from the countless number of human arbitrariness, is carried out continuously.
Comprehension of the laws of this movement is the goal of history. But in order to comprehend the laws of continuous movement of the sum of all the arbitrariness of people, the human mind allows arbitrary, discontinuous units. The first method of history is that, taking an arbitrary series of continuous events, consider it separately from the others, whereas there is no beginning of any event, and there can be no beginning, but always one event continuously follows from another. The second method is to consider the action of one person, a king, a commander, as the sum of the arbitrariness of people, while the sum of the arbitrariness of people is never expressed in the activity of one historical person.
Historical science in its movement constantly accepts smaller and smaller units for consideration and in this way strives to get closer to the truth. But no matter how small the units that history accepts, we feel that the assumption of a unit separated from another, the assumption of the beginning of some phenomenon and the assumption that the arbitrariness of all people is expressed in the actions of one historical person, are false in themselves.
Any conclusion of history, without the slightest effort on the part of criticism, disintegrates like dust, leaving nothing behind, only due to the fact that criticism chooses a larger or smaller discontinuous unit as an object of observation; to which it always has the right, since the historical unit taken is always arbitrary.
Only by admitting an infinitely small unit for observation - the differential of history, that is, homogeneous drives of people, and having achieved the art of integrating (taking the sums of these infinitely small ones), can we hope to comprehend the laws of history.
The first fifteen years of the 19th century in Europe represent an extraordinary movement of millions of people. People abandon their usual occupations, strive from one side of Europe to the other, rob, kill one another, triumph and despair, and the whole course of life changes for several years and represents an intensified movement, which first goes on increasing, then weakening. What is the reason for this movement or according to what laws did it take place? - the human mind asks.
Historians, answering this question, describe to us the actions and speeches of several dozen people in one of the buildings of the city of Paris, calling these actions and speeches the word revolution; then they give a detailed biography of Napoleon and some sympathetic and hostile persons to him, talk about the influence of some of these persons on others and say: this is why this movement took place, and these are its laws.
But the human mind not only refuses to believe in this explanation, but directly says that the method of explanation is not correct, because in this explanation the weakest phenomenon is taken as the cause of the strongest. The sum of human arbitrariness made both the revolution and Napoleon, and only the sum of these arbitrariness endured and destroyed them.
“But whenever there were conquests, there were conquerors; whenever there were coups in the state, there were great people, ”history says. Indeed, whenever the conquerors appeared, there were wars, the human mind answers, but this does not prove that the conquerors were the causes of wars and that it was possible to find the laws of war in the personal activities of one person. Whenever I, looking at my watch, see that the hand has approached ten, I hear that the gospel begins in a neighboring church, but from the fact that whenever the hand comes at ten o'clock when the gospel begins, I I have no right to conclude that the position of the arrow is the reason for the movement of the bells.
Whenever I see a locomotive moving, I hear a whistling sound, I see a valve opening and wheels moving; but from this I have no right to conclude that the whistle and movement of the wheels are the reasons for the movement of the locomotive.
The peasants say that in late spring a cold wind blows because the bud of the oak unfolds, and indeed, every spring a cold wind blows when the oak unfolds. But although the cause of the cold wind blowing during the unfolding of the oak is unknown to me, I cannot agree with the peasants that the cause of the cold wind is the reeversion of the bud of the oak, because the force of the wind is outside the influence of the bud. I see only the coincidence of those conditions that occur in every phenomenon of life, and I see that, no matter how much and no matter how detailed I observe the hand of the clock, the valve and wheels of a steam locomotive and the bud of an oak tree, I do not recognize the reason for the evangelism, the movement of the steam locomotive and the spring wind ... To do this, I must completely change my point of view and study the laws of motion of steam, bells and winds. History should do the same. And attempts have already been made.
To study the laws of history, we must completely change the subject of observation, leave alone the kings, ministers and generals, and study the homogeneous, infinitely small elements that lead the masses. No one can say to what extent it is given to a person to achieve this by understanding the laws of history; but it is obvious that on this path only lies the possibility of grasping historical laws and that on this path the human mind has not yet put one millionth part of the efforts that historians put on to describe the deeds of various kings, generals and ministers and to present their views on the occasion of these deeds ...
The forces of the twelve languages \u200b\u200bof Europe burst into Russia. The Russian army and population are retreating, avoiding collision, to Smolensk and from Smolensk to Borodino. The French army with a constantly increasing force of impetuosity rushes towards Moscow, towards the goal of its movement. The force of its swiftness, approaching the target, increases like an increase in the speed of a falling body as it approaches the ground. Behind a thousand miles of a hungry, hostile country; tens of miles ahead, separating from the target. Every soldier of the Napoleonic army feels this, and the invasion is coming by itself, by the force of impetuosity alone.
In the Russian army, as they retreat, the spirit of anger against the enemy flares up more and more: retreating, it is concentrated and grows. A collision occurs near Borodino. Neither army disintegrates, but the Russian army immediately after the collision retreats just as necessary as a ball rolls back when it collides with another ball rushing towards it with greater swiftness; and just as necessary (although having lost all its strength in the collision) the rapidly scattered ball of invasion rolls some more space.
The Russians retreat one hundred and twenty versts - beyond Moscow, the French reach Moscow and stop there. For five weeks after this there is not a single battle. The French don't move. Like a mortally wounded beast that, bleeding, licks its wounds, they stay in Moscow for five weeks, doing nothing, and suddenly, without any new reason, they run back: they rush to the Kaluga road (and after the victory, since again the battlefield remained behind them at Maloyaroslavets), without engaging in any serious battle, they run even faster back to Smolensk, for Smolensk, for Vilna, for Berezina and beyond.
On the evening of August 26, both Kutuzov and the entire Russian army were confident that the Battle of Borodino had been won. Kutuzov wrote to the sovereign. Kutuzov ordered to prepare for a new battle in order to finish off the enemy, not because he wanted to deceive anyone, but because he knew that the enemy was defeated, just as each of the participants in the battle knew it.
But on the same evening and on the next day, news began to arrive, one after another, of unheard-of losses, of the loss of half of the army, and a new battle turned out to be physically impossible.
It was not possible to start battles when information had not yet been collected, the wounded had not been removed, the shells had not been replenished, the killed had not been counted, new commanders had not been appointed to the places of the killed, the people had not eaten and had not had enough sleep.
And at the same time, immediately after the battle, the next morning, the French army (due to the swift force of the movement, now increased, as it were, in the inverse ratio of the squares of distances) was already advancing by itself on the Russian army. Kutuzov wanted to attack the next day, and the whole army wanted this. But in order to attack, the desire to do so is not enough; you need to be able to do this, but this was not possible. It was impossible not to retreat to one transition, then in the same way it was impossible not to retreat to another and a third transition, and finally on September 1, when the army approached Moscow, despite all the strength of the rising feelings in the ranks of the troops, the strength of things demanded so that these troops should go beyond Moscow. And the troops retreated one more, to the last transition and gave Moscow to the enemy.
For those people who are accustomed to thinking that plans for wars and battles are drawn up by commanders in the same way that each of us, sitting in his office over a map, makes considerations about how and how he would order in such and such a battle, questions arise as to why Kutuzov did not act this way when retreating, why did not he take up the position before Filia, why he did not immediately retreat to the Kaluga road, left Moscow, etc. People who are accustomed to think so forget or do not know those inevitable conditions in which the activity of every commander-in-chief always takes place. The activity of the commander has not the slightest resemblance to the activity that we imagine to ourselves, sitting freely in the office, sorting out some kind of campaign on the map with a known number of troops, from one side and the other, and in a certain area, and starting with what of some known moment. The commander-in-chief is never in those conditions of the beginning of an event in which we always consider the event. The commander-in-chief is always in the middle of a moving series of events, and so that never, at any moment, is he in a position to ponder the full significance of the event taking place. The event is imperceptible, moment by moment, is carved into its meaning, and at every moment of this sequential, continuous cutting out of the event, the commander-in-chief is in the center of a complex game, intrigue, worries, dependence, power, projects, advice, threats, deceptions, is constantly in the need to answer to the countless number of questions offered to him, always contradicting one another.
Military scientists tell us that Kutuzov had to move troops to the Kaluga road much earlier than Filay, that even someone suggested such a project. But before the commander-in-chief, especially in difficult times, there is not one project, but always dozens at a time. And each of these projects, based on strategy and tactics, contradicts one another. It would seem that the commander-in-chief's business is only to choose one of these projects. But even this he cannot do. Events and time do not wait. He is offered, let's say, on the 28th to go to the Kaluga road, but at this time Miloradovich's adjutant comes up and asks whether to tie up business with the French or retreat. He must now, this very minute, give the order. And the order to retreat knocks us off the turn onto the Kaluga road. And following the adjutant, the quartermaster asks where to take the provisions, and the head of the hospitals - where to take the wounded; and a courier from St. Petersburg brings a letter from the sovereign, which does not allow the possibility of leaving Moscow, and the rival of the commander-in-chief, the one who breaks down under him (there are always such, and not one, but several), proposes a new project, diametrically opposed to the plan to enter the Kaluga road; and the forces of the commander-in-chief himself require sleep and reinforcement; and a rewarding venerable general comes to complain, and the inhabitants beg for protection; an officer sent to inspect the area arrives and reports exactly the opposite of what the sent officer said before him; and the spy, the prisoner and the general who made the reconnaissance - all describe differently the position of the enemy army. People who are used to not understanding or forgetting these the necessary conditions activities of any commander-in-chief, present to us, for example, the position of the troops in Fili and at the same time assume that the commander-in-chief could on September 1 completely freely decide the question of abandoning or defending Moscow, whereas with the position of the Russian army five miles from Moscow, this could not be ... When was this issue resolved? And at Drissa, and at Smolensk, and most noticeably on the 24th at Shevardin, and on the 26th at Borodino, and in every day, and hour, and minute of retreat from Borodino to Filia.
Russian troops, retreating from Borodino, stood at Fili. Ermolov, who went to inspect the position, drove up to the field marshal.
“There is no way to fight in this position,” he said. Kutuzov looked at him in surprise and made him repeat the words he had spoken. When he spoke, Kutuzov held out his hand to him.
“Give me your hand,” he said, and turning it so that he could feel his pulse, he said: “You are not well, my dear. Think about what you are saying.
Kutuzov on Poklonnaya Gora, six versts from the Dorogomilovskaya outpost, got out of the carriage and sat on a bench at the edge of the road. A huge crowd of generals gathered around him. Count Rostopchin, having arrived from Moscow, joined them. All this brilliant society, divided into several circles, talked among themselves about the advantages and disadvantages of the position, about the position of the troops, about the proposed plans, about the state of Moscow, and about military issues in general. Everyone felt that although they were not called upon, that although it was not called that, but that it was a council of war. All conversations were held in the area of \u200b\u200bgeneral issues. If someone reported or learned personal news, they spoke about it in a whisper, and immediately went back to general questions: no jokes, no laughter, no smiles were even noticeable between all these people. Everyone, obviously with an effort, tried to keep to the height of the position. And all the groups, talking to each other, tried to keep close to the commander-in-chief (whose shop was the center of these circles) and spoke so that he could hear them. The commander-in-chief listened and sometimes asked again what was being said around him, but he himself did not enter into the conversation and did not express any opinion. For the most part, having listened to the conversation of some circle, he turned away with an air of disappointment - as if it were not at all what they were saying that he wanted to know. Some spoke about the chosen position, criticizing not so much the position itself as the mental abilities of those who chose it; others argued that the mistake had been made before, that it was necessary to accept the battle the day before yesterday; still others spoke of the battle of Salamanca, about which the newly arrived Frenchman Crosar in a Spanish uniform spoke. (This Frenchman, together with one of the German princes who served in the Russian army, dismantled the siege of Saragossa, foreseeing the possibility of defending Moscow in the same way.) In the fourth circle, Count Rostopchin said that he and his Moscow squad were ready to die under the walls of the capital, but that all yet he cannot but regret the uncertainty in which he was left, and that, if he had known it before, it would have been different ... Fifth, showing the depth of their strategic considerations, talked about the direction that the troops would have to take. The sixth spoke utter nonsense. Kutuzov's face grew more anxious and sadder. From all these conversations, Kutuzov saw one thing: there was no physical possibility to defend Moscow in the full meaning of these words, that is, to such an extent there was no possibility that if some insane commander-in-chief gave the order to give a battle, then there would be confusion and battles all it would not have been; would not be because all the top leaders not only recognized this position as impossible, but in their conversations they discussed only what would happen after the undoubted abandonment of this position. How could the commanders lead their troops into a battlefield that they considered impossible? The lower leaders, even the soldiers (who also reason), also recognized the position as impossible and therefore could not go to fight with the certainty of defeat. If Bennigsen insisted on defending this position and others were still discussing it, then this question no longer mattered in itself, but was only important as a pretext for dispute and intrigue. Kutuzov understood this.

| ]

Galactic Exploration (1966)[ | ]

The narration is in the first person, like the memoirs of Eli Gamazin, a former admiral of the Starfleet.

He turned to science fiction. I wanted to write something that no one can object to. I gathered my relatives and friends and committed such hooliganism with them: I transferred them five hundred years forward ... This is how the novel "People are like gods" appeared.
There was another reason why I turned to science fiction. The point is that this literature is tragic in the West. She describes our future as a kingdom of monsters. I wrote a novel about the bright future of mankind.

The publishing fate of the novel was not easy - it was rejected by four publishers in a row. The first book of the novel was first published in the fiction collection Lenizdat "Hellenic Secret" in 1966 under the name "People are like gods"... The second book was published two years later in a collection of the same publishing house called "In the gorges of the stars" (wherein "Invasion of Perseus" was the title of the first part of the second book and the collection itself). In 1971, in Kaliningrad, the first two books of the novel were published as a separate volume in a slightly modified edition, and the first book received the title "Galactic Exploration"... In the 1970s, the third book of the novel was written, published in 1977. Finally, in 1982, all three books were collected in one volume, while the text of the novel was significantly reduced by the author (especially the first two books, which were reduced by more than 15 percent) in order to bring its volume in line with the requirements of the publisher.

The novel was translated into foreign languages \u200b\u200band published in Germany, Japan, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Spain, France.

List of editions [ | ]

Russian editions [ | ]

Sergey Snegov. People are like gods // Hellenic secret / Comp. and ed. foreword E. Brandis, V. Dmitrevsky. - L.: Lenizdat, 1966 .-- S. 22-304. - 518 p. - 65,000 copies
Sergey Snegov. In the gorges of the stars // Invasion of Perseus / Comp. and ed. foreword E. Brandis, V. Dmitrevsky. - L.: Lenizdat, 1968 .-- S. 32-305. - 469 p. - 100,000 copies
Sergey Snegov. People are like gods. - Kaliningrad: Kaliningrad book publishing house, 1971. - 464 p. - 30,000 copies
Sergey Snegov. Reverse Time Ring // Reverse time ring / Comp. and ed. entry Art. E. Brandis, V. Dmitrevsky. - L.: Lenizdat, 1977 .-- S. 11-270. - 639 p. - 100,000 copies
Sergey Snegov.

Cycle people like the gods of Sergei Snow. People are like gods. Trilogy (Snegov Sergey). Rudiger Dahlke. "Disease as a Way". "Disease as the language of the soul". "Crisis as a chance to start living better

Plot

Galactic Exploration ()

Invasion of Perseus ()

Backward time ring ()

Characters

People

Aliens

Publications

History of creation and publication

List of editions

Russian editions

German editions

Polish editions

Hungarian editions

Japanese editions

Free download of the book Sergei Snegov "People like Gods (collection)"

Invasion of Perseus ()

Backward time ring ()

Characters

People

Aliens

Reviews of the novel

List of editions

Russian editions

German editions

Polish editions

Hungarian editions

Japanese editions

Write a review on the article "People as Gods (Snegov's novel)"

Notes

Links

An excerpt characterizing People as gods (Snegov's novel)

Galactic Exploration (1966)[ | ]

List of editions [ | ]

Russian editions [ | ]

Similar articles