While the damned capitalists are trying to turn the whole world against socialist realism, the most ordinary and typical merchant Bailey has come up with and implemented a terrible plan to usurp the air environment of our beloved and only (!) planet Earth. With the connivance of the higher Martian and foreign-bourgeois forces, this misanthropist illegally crossed the border of the Soviet state and settled in the wild, but nevertheless socialist, lands near Yakutsk. Shame and condemnation on the greedy egotist and creep! We will not tolerate such impudence, we will stand up for our Motherland or we will all go down!
Alexander Romanovich Belyaev; born 16 March 1884 in Smolensk, Russian Empire; died 6 January 1942 in Pushkin, USSR. Born in Smolensk, at the age of 30 Alexander became ill with tuberculosis. Treatment was unsuccessful; the infection spread to his spine and resulted in paralysis of the legs. Belyayev suffered constant pain and was paralysed for six years. In search for the right treatment he moved to Yalta together with his mother and old nanny.
Whether or not Belyaev carries out the order, it makes no difference! If there is anything human in you, you must be enraged by the misanthropic policies of the cunning English toad. To liquefy all the air in order to enslave the common people, to get all the treasures of the world, and simply to exterminate as many members of the dominant earthly species as possible - disgusting! We will need a hero, maybe two, but no less. Let the barbarians gasp, conspire and tremble with their knees, Our Man will not retreat in the face of circumstances that, as they say, may be stronger. But fatalism will not tie our hands. Hooray, comrades!
Good and light sci-fi novel "Air Salesman" - the brainchild of the famous Soviet science fiction writer Alexander Belyaev. The work is done in the best traditions of the scientific (!) Genre, with an adventure component, technical, edifying and heroic. Read in one breath, you can read in one evening. There are not many characters, and not to say that Belyaev bothered much over descriptions of appearance or character. However, even a few discreet strokes, he was able to indicate all the necessary, so that I have the images and the characters of the TAG, and Nicola, and Mr. Bailey, as well as the Engelbreckt family.
The issues raised in the book are as old as the world - the dangerous adherence to the credo "any means to an end", the contrast between the socio-political system of East and West, exploitation and bondage for some, luxury for others, the responsibility of science for discovery and its application, the courage and simple wisdom of down-to-earth people, love and sacrifice, the triumph of reason over egoism and ambition, the fragility of the ecosystem and the consequent vulnerability of life on this planet. And that's just on the surface.
I was inspired to read Belyaev by my father, a lover of good old Soviet fiction. I knew that the day would come when I would also step on the well-trodden path of my ancestors, and now it has happened. The introduction was successful, as it almost always is with me. "Air Salesman" is not the last book by Belyaev in this marathon, so NF to be and do things!
This article was sponsored by Natalia Maksimova
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