The name of Ilya Iosifovich Varshavsky is inscribed in golden letters in the history of Russian science fiction. Each of his works is “a miniature thought experiment, a close and attentive look, penetrating into the intricacies of our interesting world with an unexpected delight of wise and cheerful imagination” (B. Strugatsky). The characters and events in Warshavsky’s books are always reliable, regardless of the place and time of action or genre - be it an intellectual parody, a detective story or interstellar adventures - because they were born not in a literary workshop, but in a hard-working human soul.