Paolo Bacigalupi is a writer who made his debut in science fiction in 1999 and immediately attracted the attention of such masters of the genre as Harlan Ellison and Gardner Dozois. His story “The Flute Girl,” which was a finalist for the Theodore Sturgeon Prize, was included in their anthologies by three editors. Since then, the aspiring author has received 13 awards, including such prestigious ones as Hugo, Nebula and 4 Loci. An ardent defender of ecology and an adherent of Eastern culture, Bacigalupi combines in his works the exoticism of distant countries with the debunking of the ruthless mechanisms of destruction of natural balance. The collection includes the novel “The Alchemist”, which raises the problem of the destructive side of progress, and stories that paint gloomy pictures of the future in which humanity is assigned the role of a passive observer of one's own degradation.