The second novel of the unfinished trilogy “Times” (other names: “Timelessness, Times, Eternity”). Received the Grand Prix of the literary project competition “Tomsk Book” for 2007 (posthumously). The text of the file is given according to the magazine publication.

***“In 1993, co-authored with his peer and old friend Yuri Marushkin Kolupaev began writing the novel “Timelessness.” There was no publisher for this unusual, funny and at the same time painfully hopeless book. In 2000, the book finally appeared, “at my own expense.” Its circulation amounted to 75 copies - “our own account” was not enough for more. In the same year, at the first science fiction festival in Tomsk “Urania” (organized mainly through the efforts of one of Kolupaev’s students, Yuliy Burkina), Viktor Dmitrievich organized something like a presentation of “Timelessness”. And he joked rather gloomily: “If you’re lucky, you won’t even notice this book.” The writer’s last novel was the deliberately complicated parody-philosophical novel “Socrates of Siberian Athens,” written, it seems to me, in such a way that no publisher in his right mind would , would not have undertaken to print it. They published it, but after death. Viktor Dmitrievich died on June 4, 2001 from heart failure, three and a half months short of his 65th birthday.”© Smirnov S.B.

***“V. Kolupaev’s parody presents philosophical conversations in a more interesting way , presentations of the philosophical concepts of the ancients and their discussion The plot is rather illustrative in nature, either demonstrating the worlds of Dionysus, Thales, Heraclitus, etc., or recreating details of the ancient world (the dwelling of Socrates, hetaerae Callipyges, etc.). Of course, criteria for scientific correctness in the presentation of ancient and modern philosophical concepts cannot be applied to Kolupaev’s prose; we must talk about their reception by modern consciousness, the consciousness of a person who has lost a monoidea, be it a Christian idea that claims to be true, be it for Soviet people , Marxism, the only true teaching. Who can be a teacher, a driver for a person who has thought about the essence of being?”© T.L. Rybalchenko

*** “He said this: “I apologize to all the philosophers who once lived, are now living and have not yet been born, for the fact that I may have distorted and misrepresented their speeches.” (...) The second part of the novel “Symposium” takes place in the house of Scientists, where idealists and materialists fight, and each defends his concept. Tomsk becomes both the center of the universe and a suburban town, that is, it combines the characteristics of cities in Russia, and perhaps the world. That is, it turns out to be such a symbolic city.”© Olga Kolupaeva ([email protected]), daughter of the writer.