“I didn’t even think that I would become a writer”: Sergey Lukyanenko – 55

Perhaps the most famous modern Russian science fiction writer Sergei Lukyanenko turned 55 on April 11. On serious topics with the author of the Dozorov universe and other bestsellers, Moskovsky Komsomolets talked more than once: they talked about the pandemic, and about world politics, and the future of Russian literature. Therefore, the “anniversary” interview turned out to be more frivolous and confidential, like a table conversation.

– Sergey Vasilyevich, in the new version of the school curriculum on literature, your story “The Boy and the Darkness” is included in the list of works studied in the 6th grade. Did you dream about it when you yourself were sitting at the school desk?

– Firstly, when I was at school, I didn’t even think that I would become a writer. And secondly, inclusion in the program is a double-edged sword, because the works that are studied at school become an obligation for children, not a joy. So I don’t feel particularly positive about it. But if they read it, why not.

School is the time when you need to discover classical literature, but we understand that not all works are interesting for a teenager, not all are accessible at a young age. But they lay a certain foundation, without which even entertainment literature is incomprehensible.

– And yet – about your personal school dreams.

— I dreamed of becoming a film director and making science fiction. This did not happen, but still managed to be somewhere nearby.

— There are several cases in history when writers became leaders of the country. If Sergei Lukyanenko were elected President of Russia, what would be his first decree?

– I simply do not consider such an option, since I am absolutely convinced that the writer is not the profession with which you need to go into politics, and even more so to be promoted to the highest positions. Still, the writer reflects on what is happening much longer than expected, he reacts to everything with a certain hitch. Politicians need to be more efficient.

But I would like to issue a decree to change our education system. It seems to me that we have lost many of the correct elements of Soviet education. No one argues that it needed serious reform. But today education has lost its universality and its significance in general. Sergei Fursenko, assistant to the president for science, once said, quite innocently looking at the camera, that the task of modern education is to grow a qualified consumer. What can be said about this approach? If we are only talking about the survival of the country, then all right, but if we want Russia to live, develop, people love it and work for its benefit, we still need to grow citizens, not consumers.

– You probably remember the British film “Yesterday”, the hero of which turned out to be the only inhabitant of the planet who did not forget the songs of The Beatles, and was able to “appropriate” the hits of the “beetles”. If you had the opportunity to “scrape” the name off any masterpiece of world classics, what book would you make your own?

– The question is very cruel, it implies that I will name my favorite book. And taking away your favorite book means taking it away from your favorite author, which is a great dishonesty. Therefore, I didn’t appropriate anything, and if it turned out that everyone had forgotten a certain book and only I could recreate it, I would release it under a pseudonym that matches the author’s name and anonymously post it on the Web.

“Let’s pretend then that you are Eli and you are trying to make your way through the wasteland of a post-apocalyptic world with a single book. What kind of book is it?

“If you don’t take technical books and reference books, which will surely be needed in such a world …

– H. G. Wells considered “novels, poems and the like rubbish” unsuitable for the future, but still I propose to save fiction.

– I would take a book not very thick – you never know how much you have to go. George Martin flies by, Leo Tolstoy with “War and Peace” too. I would take, say, Exupery’s Planet of the People.

– On a birthday, it is customary to wish something to the birthday man, but let’s mirror this tradition. What would you like to wish the readers of “MK” on the anniversary?

I would like to wish everyone peace, health, patience. And the world, of course. I would like not to forget to think, to develop myself. In a series of days and events, people often do not find time to even read a good book. Reading is not the most popular pastime. But at least a book a month is worth overcoming, because this is the most intellectual of the activities.