Two fantastic stories - “Chimera” and “Deviant” - adjoin the novel with their moral issues and drama, so characteristic of the bygone 20th century. Can the attempts of the heroes of these stories to make humanity happy come true? Or will all the tragic contradictions of the era migrate to the future? From the author. In 1964, the story “Farewell on the Shore,” written together with I. Lukodyanov, was published. It always seemed to me that in this story, in its problematics, there were untapped possibilities. Life circumstances did not allow us to return to him, and in 1984 I. Lukodyanov passed away. Only relatively recently, using this story as a basis, I wrote a fantasy story, “The Chimera.” I wanted not only to reveal human characters in more detail, but also to give the problem greater philosophical depth. However, this is for the readers to judge.