Biography of Kir Bulychev. Writer's books, interesting facts

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Today the name Alice has different associations. It was only from the second half of the sixties in the USSR that girls began to be called in honor of one book heroine. And it wasn't Lewis Carroll's Alice at all. Alisa Selezneva from a series of fantastic works created by the wonderful Soviet writer Kir Bulychev enjoyed such popularity.

Biography of the writer in childhood

The real name of the beloved science fiction writer is Igor Vsevolodovich Mozheiko. He took the pseudonym Kir Bulychev out of fear that he might be fired from his job, since there literature, especially science fiction, was not considered worthy.

He was born in Moscow one October day in 1934. The guy's father belonged to an old Belarusian-Lithuanian noble family. However, in his youth, he broke off relations with him and began to live by his work. In 1925 he married Maria Bulycheva, a pencil factory worker.

When young Igor was barely five years old, his father left the family, and his mother for the second timegot married. Thanks to this marriage, the writer's sister Natasha was born.

Study and creativity

After graduating from school, Kir Bulychev began to study foreign languages at the Maurice Thorez Institute. After graduation, he worked as a translator in Burma for several years. Later he returned to his native city and began to study oriental studies at the graduate school of the Institute of the Academy of Sciences. After graduation, he stayed there as a teacher of Burmese history.

In subsequent years, the biography of Kira Bulychev was marked by scientific achievements: he defended his Ph. D., and a little later, his doctoral dissertation. In addition, while working at the institute, Bulychev wrote many scientific papers about Southeast Asia, in particular about Burma.

Besides work, in his free time, Kir Bulychev published various notes and essays for such eminent publications as Around the World and Asia and Africa Today.

Bulychev's first work of art was the story "Maung Jo will live" published in 1961. However, the author took up writing fantastic works only four years later, and the short story “Debt of Hospitality” became the “first-born”.

Pretty soon the works of Igor Mozheiko, who writes under the pseudonym Kir Bulychev, began to enjoy the love of readers. A little later, his stories and novels began to be published as separate books.

In 1977 his story "One Hundred Years Ahead" was filmed. The multi-part film based on her was called "Guest from the Future". Thanks to her, the entire USSR met an inquisitive schoolgirlAlisa Selezneva, who lives in the second half of the 21st century.

After the incredible success of the film adaptation, the biography of Kira Bulychev was not particularly filled with bright events. As before, he continued to write a lot, and readers liked his works. Quite often, he was engaged in adapting his stories and novels for film scripts. By the way, about twenty of Bulychev's works were filmed. In addition to a successful creative career, the personal life of a writer named Kir Bulychev has developed just fine. The wife of Igor Mozheiko was his colleague in writing, writer Kira Soshinskaya, who became an illustrator of Bulychev's works. From this union, a daughter, Alice, was born, after whom the famous heroine was named.

With the advent of the difficult nineties, the writer remained popular, and his work remained interesting to readers. In addition, in those difficult years, the biography of Kira Bulychev was enriched by one remarkable fact: he saved the If magazine from closing.

At the beginning of the 2000s, the writer was diagnosed with cancer, due to which he died in the fall of 2003.

Kir Bulychev's biography may not be full of bright events, like Alisa Sezezneva's, but he received many well-deserved prestigious awards and prizes. Among them are the State Prize of the USSR, the All-Russian Prize "Aelita", the "Order of the Knights of Science Fiction" named after. I. Khalymbadzhi” and the Alexander Grin Russian Literary Prize, which he was awarded posthumously in 2004.

A cycle of works about Alisa Selezneva

Despite the fact that the writer's works are almosttwenty volumes, the most popular Kir Bulychev brought a series of short stories and novels about Alisa Selezneva, named after the author's own daughter.

In total, he dedicated 52 works to his beloved heroine. In them, she traveled to other planets, got into the past, a parallel fairy-tale dimension, and much more. Throughout her literary "life" Selezneva often met with a wide variety of people and creatures from other planets and eras. However, most often the participants in the girl's adventures were her father, Professor Igor Seleznev (named after the writer himself), as well as the four-armed archaeologist Gromozek from an alien planet.

Some stories featured the girl's friends and classmates.

For the first time this heroine appeared in 1965 on the pages of the story "The girl with whom nothing will happen." She soon gained popularity, especially after the release of movies and cartoons. On the screen, Alisa Selezneva was embodied by such actresses as Natalya Guseva ("Guest from the Future", "Purple Ball"), Ekaterina Prizhbilyak ("Island of the Rusty General"), Daria Melnikova (the film was never made, but the girl voiced the heroine in the animated series "Alice knows what to do") and other Polish and Slovak actresses.

A cycle of works about the inhabitants of the city of Veliky Guslyar

Another well-known series by Kir Bulychev was a cycle of humorous works about the life of the inhabitants of the town of Veliky Guslyar (the prototype is Veliky Ustyug). Over 100 novels and short storiesdedicated the writer to this fictional town.

There are no main characters in this series, although many characters are present in several works at once. The first story of this cycle was "Personal Connections". At the beginning of the 2000s, Kir Bulychev officially announced the end of the cycle, justifying his act by saying that the idea had outlived itself and was no longer interesting to him. Kir Bulychev himself divided all the written works from The Great Guslar into six parts, grouping them into collections.

Several cartoons, two short films and one TV movie "Chance" were shot based on the cycle.

Other works of the writer

In addition to these two cycles, Bulychev's creative heritage includes many individual works, as well as small series from two to ten novels. The most popular of these are three cycles.

1) Novels about Andrey Bruce - a brave agent from the Space Fleet ("Agent of the Space Fleet" and "Dungeon of the Witches"). A movie of the same name was made based on the second novel.

2) Another hero who appeared in many of Bulychev's works is Dr. Pavlysh. One novel, The Country Road, and eight other, less voluminous works are dedicated to him.

3) The heroine of many other works of Kir Bulychev, Kora Orvat, is a kind of grown-up version of Alisa Selezneva. However, instead of space biology, she is interested in solving crimes. It is noteworthy that in some works it intersects withAlice.

Interesting facts from the writer's life

In order not to lose his job at the institute, Igor Mozheiko at first took the pseudonym Kirill Bulychev. But during publications, this pseudonym was often abbreviated as Cyrus. Bulychev. After some time, due to a typo, the dot disappeared, and the resulting name suited the writer.

The surname for the pseudonym was taken by Igor Vsevolodovich from his mother: her maiden name was Maria Bulycheva. And Kir is the masculine version of the name of the writer's wife, Kira Soshinskaya.

It is noteworthy that for a long time most readers did not even suspect who was hiding behind the name Kir Bulychev. Only in 1982 the secret was revealed, as the writer was awarded the USSR State Prize.

Possessing excellent knowledge of English, Kir Bulychev translated into Russian fantastic works of many famous writers from the USA.

Unlike his literary heroes, Kir Bulychev's biography for children and adults does not contain many bright or interesting events. Moreover, young readers may find it rather boring. However, all this was more than compensated by the indefatigable imagination of the author, who managed to create a whole world described in several hundred beautiful works. And to paraphrase the words of the classic, we can say that with his work, Kir Bulychev erected a miraculous monument to himself in the hearts of many generations of readers.