- Year
- 1958
- By
- Liapunov, B. V.
- Published
- Moscow: Trudrezervizdat.
- Edition
- Russian. First edition, HC, no DJ.
- Ciancone
- N/A.
- Shelf
- L4
- Catalog
- Catalog D · Prelude to Sputnik
Six science-fantasy essays set in a near-future Soviet space program. The editor’s note presents the book as a sequel to the collection Flight to the Moon (1955, also in this collection), which ended with the astronauts landing on the Moon. The opening essay, “The 21st Century,” takes the reader to the Tsiolkovsky All-Union Institute of Interplanetary Communications (VIMS) and tells how the first lunar expedition ended; “Earth–Moon–Earth” follows.
Liapunov’s later essays turn to a construction site in the void (the extraterrestrial station), “We Are on Mars,” “Nearest the Sun,” and the title essay on interstellar flight. The note adds that the first automatic Earth satellites are already in orbit, so the fantasy is only slightly ahead of the science. Liapunov’s scientific books, such as Discovering the World (1954), are also in the collection.
Illustrated by E. I. Seleznev, with color plates, in the Fantastika. Priklyucheniya series. Approved for press 6 February 1958 in an edition of 90,000 copies; the colophon marks this copy as part of the second batch (copies 15,001–55,000).
