Sergey Borisovich Pereslegin is a famous writer, researcher, sociologist, futurologist. His interests are very broad and include theoretical physics, history, science fiction, cognitive technology, forecasting the future. In this article we will try to talk about the numerous projects, books and biographies of Sergei Borisovich Pereslegin.
Biography
Sergei Pereslegin was born in St. Petersburg (then Leningrad) on December 16, 1960. By profession Sergey Borisovich is a nuclear physicist; he received his education at the Faculty of Physics of Leningrad State University. After graduating from university, he began to teach at the school at Leningrad State University, but gradually his interests shifted from theoretical physics to the social sciences: since 1989 he worked on systems theory at the Moscow Institute for System Studies, and in the nineties he lectured in sociology.
In 1996, for the book The Eye of the Typhoon, which consists of critical articles, which analyzes the decline of classic Soviet science fiction literature, Sergei Pereslegin won the Wanderer Prize.
Since 2000, Sergey Pereslegin has been leading the Designing the Future research group, since 2003 the St. Petersburg School of Scenery, and since 2007 the Znanievy Reactor design group.
Sergey Pereslegin is married, he has two daughters. Many books and projects of Sergei Borisovich were written and implemented by him together with his wife, Elena Pereslegina.
Pereslegin and fiction
The name of Sergei Pereslegin is well known to lovers of Russian science fiction. Carried away by science fiction, in his student years he joined the Club of science fiction lovers “Polgalakti”, and also participated in a seminar of Boris Strugatsky. Since the late eighties, he has been writing research papers and introductions to many science fiction books. In the series “Worlds of the Strugatsky Brothers”, which appeared in the nineties and at the beginning of the two thousandth, he wrote the preface and afterword. They were written on behalf of a fictional historian who lives in the 23rd century in the World of Noon (that is, in that literary world in which the books of Arkady and Boris Strugatsky are acting). Thanks to this, the novels were combined into one universe similar to ours, however, due to a different result of the Second World War, it achieved different results - so that individual novels could be consistently combined within the framework of a single world, Boris Strugatsky even allowed text editing. Among these fantastic pretexts for science fiction novels by Sergey Pereslegin, they wrote such things as “The Arkanarian Detective”, “The Last Ships of the Free Search”, “Mirages of the Golden Age”, “Forecasters of the End of the World”, and others. The series “Worlds of the Strugatsky Brothers” aroused great interest among new readers in the works of these writers and made it possible to combine Soviet and new Russian science fiction together.
For his research work on Russian science fiction, Pereslegin many times became a laureate of various awards (the above-mentioned “Wanderer”, “ABS-award”, “Bronze snail”, “Sigma-F”, “Interpresscon” and so on).
Pereslegin and History
Another area of ​​interest of Sergei Pereslegin is historical sciences. He is the compiler and editor of the series “Military Historical Library” and other books on historical subjects. Many of his own books are devoted to historical events: for example, the book Pacific Premiere, which analyzes the military operations during the Second World War that took place in the Pacific Ocean.
Some of Pereslegin’s books combine both historical and fantastic elements (“World War II between realities”, “War on the doorstep. Hilbert Desert”).
Activities
The diverse interests of Sergei Borisovich Pereslegin intersect at the point of social designing, foresight (from the English Foresight, “look into the future”) - methods for long-term planning and shaping the future. Since the 2000s, he has been working in the field of social engineering, using various methods and technologies to model and predict the future in various fields.
The Znanievy Reactor group, under the leadership of Pereslegin, conducts informational development for various customers, collaborates with private and public institutions (for example, projects for the Ministry of Education and Science, the Ministry of Health and Social Development, the Research Institute of Atomic Reactors in Dimitrovgrad, the Open University of Skolkovo and others).
Methodology
Modeling and forecasting of the future in the “Znanieva Reactor” is carried out using various cognitive technologies. The work is carried out simultaneously at the analytical and metaphorical levels, which allows us to achieve a high level of originality, but at the same time to transform the result into specific solutions in accordance with the task.
Outwardly, the technology of the Znanieva Reactor is similar to the brainstorming, but it is more complicated. The method is based on scientific and practical forecasting games (role-playing, strategic, organizational and activity), creating a cohesive creative group that can jointly solve various problems: scientific, technical, strategic, educational, psychological. This “thought factory” has a new approach to working with knowledge and is able to effectively explore strategies and likely development scenarios, predict and manage the future, generate new ideas and meanings. At the same time, a look into the future is based on an understanding of the past: the study of various strategies often takes place on the basis of historical material, an analysis of crisis events and past wars.
Beliefs
Sergei Borisovich Pereslegin calls himself an imperialist, considers himself an Orthodox Christian, and also holds leftist views.
He was one of the first to use the term “Russian world” (a concept that says that all Russian-speaking people, not necessarily ethnic Russians, form a special civilization, the center of which is Russia) in its modern interpretation.
Sergei Borisovich is confident that we are now living at a critical moment for humanity. In its development, mankind has already overcome two phase barriers (the first is the transition to agriculture from gathering and hunting, the second is the invention of the printing press and the creation of a railway network), and now it is necessary to overcome the third. If we manage to invent something breakthrough, then humanity will enter a fundamentally new stage of its development, if not, it will roll back to the Middle Ages. The next phase of our development, according to Pereslegin, should be cognitive (i.e. related to cognition).
Many views of Sergei Pereslegin differ from those popular in society: for example, he considers the problem of global warming and environmental hysteria to be far-fetched.
And in conclusion, a few words about the most famous books of Sergei Borisovich Pereslegin.
“World Chess Board Tutorial”
The book “A tutorial on playing the world chessboard” was published in 2005. This is a study at the intersection of geohistory, geopolitics and geography, an analysis of contemporary world geopolitical reality and emerging new global projects. The book addresses issues of history, economics, demography, and education. It tells about the “life of the state” - about certain laws by which it is developed, about the laws of historical processes, hypothetical development scenarios are given. Sergey Pereslegin analyzes various global cognitive projects that shape the future, in particular, talks about the “Russian cognitive project” - the need and opportunity for Russia to create its own competitive image of the future.
“New maps of the future”
The book by Sergei Borisovich Pereslegin “New Maps of the Future” was published in 2009. It makes an attempt to describe the likely scenarios of world development until 2050. The main event of this period, Sergei Pereslegin, considers the post-industrial transition, which will occur through a sequence of global crises. The book describes probable scenarios, promising technological trends in the new reality, the hypothetical evolution of our familiar environment, social and economic.
“World War I. The war between realities ”
The latest book by Sergei Pereslegin ”World War I. War between realities ”came out in 2016.
This is a thoughtful and detailed historical study, an attempt to understand the hidden logic of the First World War and to comprehend the underlying key events that led to what happened and radically changed the whole world alignment.