Today the name Alice has different associations. It was only in the second half of the sixties in the USSR that they began to call girls in honor of one book heroine. And it was not Alice Lewis Carroll at all. Such popularity was enjoyed by Alisa Selezneva from a series of fantastic works created by the wonderful Soviet writer Kir Bulychev.
The 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 work, since there he did not consider the occupation of literature, especially science fiction, worthy.
He was born in Moscow on 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 his work. In 1925, he married Maria Bulycheva, a worker at a pencil factory.
When young Igor was barely five years old, his father left the family, and his mother got married a second time. Thanks to this marriage, the writer Natasha was born.
Study and creativity
After graduating from school, Kir Bulychev began to study foreign languages at the Maurice Thorez Institute. After college, he worked for several years as a translator in Burma. Later he returned to his hometown and began to study oriental studies at the graduate school of the Institute of the Academy of Sciences. After graduation, he remained there as a teacher of Burma history.
In subsequent years, the biography of Cyrus 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 works on Southeast Asia, in particular on Burma.
In addition to work, in his spare time, Kir Bulychev published various notes and essays for such eminent publications as Around the World and Asia and Africa Today.
The first artistic work of Bulychev was the story printed in 1961, "Maung Joe will live." However, the author took up writing fantastic works only four years later, and the "firstborn" became a small short story, "The Duty of Hospitality."
Pretty soon, the works of Igor Mozheiko, who writes under the pseudonym Kir Bulychev, began to enjoy the love of readers. And a little later, his stories and novels began to be published in separate books.
In 1977, his short story One Hundred Years Ahead was filmed. The multi-part film, shot based on her motives, was called “A Guest from the Future”. Thanks to her, the whole USSR met with an inquisitive schoolgirl Alisa Selezneva, who lives in the second half of the 21st century.
After the incredible success of the film adaptation, the biography of Cyrus Bulychev was not particularly filled with vivid events. As before, he continued to write a lot, and his works liked the readers. Quite often, he was engaged in adapting his stories and novels to film scripts. By the way, about twenty works of Bulychev were filmed.
In addition to a successful creative career, the personal life of a writer by the name of Kir Bulychev has developed simply superbly. The wife of Igor Mozheiko became his fellow writer, writer Kira Soshinskaya, who became an illustrator of the works of Bulychev. From this union, a daughter Alice was born, in whose honor the famous heroine was named.
With the advent of the difficult nineties, the writer remained popular, and his work - to interesting readers. In addition, in those difficult years, the biography of Cyrus 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 an oncological disease, because of which he died in the fall of 2003.
Biography of Cyrus Bulychev, perhaps, is not crowded with vivid events, like Alice Sezezneva’s, but he received many well-deserved prestigious awards and prizes. Among them are the USSR State Prize, the All-Russian Aelita Prize, and the Order of the Knights of Fantasy named after I. Khalymbadzhi ”and the Alexander Grin Russian Literary Prize , which he was awarded posthumously in 2004.
A series of works about Alice Selezneva
Despite the fact that the writer's works are almost twenty volumes, the most popular Kira Bulychev brought a series of stories and tales of Alice Selezneva, named after the author’s own daughter.
In total, he devoted 52 works to his beloved heroine. In them, she traveled to other planets, fell into the past, a parallel fairytale dimension and much more. Throughout the literary "life" Selezneva often met with a variety of people and creatures from other planets and eras. However, most often participants in the adventures of the girl 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 girls' friends and classmates.
This heroine first appeared in 1965 on the pages of the story "The Girl with Which Nothing Happens." She soon gained popularity, especially after the release of films and cartoons. On the screen, Alice Selezneva was embodied by such actresses as Natalya Guseva (“A Guest from the Future”, “Purple Ball”), Ekaterina Prizhbilyak (“The Island of the Rusty General”), Daria Melnikova (the film was never shot, but the girl voiced the heroine in the animated series “Alice knows what to do”) and other Polish and Slovak actresses.
The cycle of works about the inhabitants of the city of Great Guslyar
Another famous series of Cyrus Bulychev was a cycle of humorous works about the life of the inhabitants of the town of Great Guslyar (prototype - Great Ustyug). More than a hundred novels and stories the writer devoted 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 in this series was Personal Relations.
At the beginning of the two thousandth, Kir Bulychev officially announced the end of the cycle, substantiating his action by the fact that the idea has outlived itself and is no longer interesting to him. All written works from The Great Guslyar, Kir Bulychev himself divided into six parts, grouping them into collections.
Based on the motives of the cycle, several cartoons, two short films and one television movie “Chance” were shot.
Other works of the writer
In addition to these two cycles, Bulychev’s creative heritage has many separate works, as well as small series from two to ten novels. The most popular of these are three cycles.
1) Novels about Andrei Bruce - a brave agent from Cosmoflot ("Agent of Cosmoflot" and "Witches Dungeon"). Based on the second novel, the film of the same name was shot.
2) Another hero who appeared in many of Bulychev’s works is Dr. Pavlysh. He is dedicated to one novel "The Countryside" and eight other, less voluminous works.
3) The heroine of many other works of Cyrus Bulychev Kora Orvat is a kind of matured version of Alisa Selezneva. However, instead of space biology, she is interested in solving crimes. It is noteworthy that in some works she intersects with Alice.
Interesting facts from the life of a writer
In order not to lose his job at the institute, Igor Mozheiko at first took the pseudonym Kirill Bulychev. But when publishing this alias is 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: in her girlhood she had the name Maria Bulycheva. And Cyrus is the masculine version of the name of the writer’s wife, Kira Soshinskaya.
It is noteworthy that most readers for a long time did not even suspect who was hiding behind the name of Kir Bulychev. Only in 1982, the secret was revealed, as the writer was awarded the USSR State Prize.
Possessing excellent knowledge of the English language, Kir Bulychev was engaged in translating into Russian fantastic works of many famous writers from the United States.
Unlike his literary heroes, the biography of Cyrus Bulychev for children and adults does not contain many bright or interesting events. Moreover, it may seem rather boring to young readers. 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 if you rephrase the words of the classic, we can say that with his work Kir Bulychev erected a miraculous monument in the hearts of many generations of readers.