Biography
Ivan Efremov is a carrier of encyclopedic knowledge, which he found applied application in the amazing scope and detail of historical and fantastic works. His books are in one row with the works of Isaac Azimov, Herbert Welx and Stanislav Lem. The biography of the scientist and the writer is no less exciting than creativity.Childhood and youth
Ivan Efremova's father, Antipa Kharitonovich, from a simple peasant, gave out to the merchants, got the rank of the titular adviser. After the revolution of 1917 and the divorce of the parents, the future writer had to change the middle name and become Ivan Antonovich, so as not to attract attention to the belonging to the wealthy class.
Barbara Alexandrovna's mother was engaged in children, most of the time paying the youngest Vale. Brother was painful, and the family in 1914 moved to the Ukrainian Berdyansk. There Ivan went to the gymnasium.
With the beginning of the civil war, Efremov got to the front, received a contusion and stuttered a little longer. Demobilized, moved to Petrograd, worked as a loader, driver, graduated from school. In his free time, I read, in addition to fiction, books on biology, zoology and theory of evolution. Having learned on the navigator, Ivan was held in the Okhotsk Sea, and on his return entered the university, on the biological department.
In the late 1920s, Efremov became interested in geology, threw the university and studied at the Mountain Institute. Research expeditions have traveled the Urals and Mongolia, Central Asia and Siberia. In 1935, the degree of candidate of biological sciences was awarded for the combination of work on paleontology. Before the war itself, the writer defended his doctoral dissertation.
Literature
Alexey Tolstoy responded about the style of Efremova as a very cold and at the same time elegant. Ivan himself said in an interview that "the sense of language did not grow in poetic salons," and as a result of a long work, overcoming difficulties and from the preserved children's impressions. And call it more precisely a picer, not a science.
Ivan appealed to literary work during evacuation to Kazakhstan. Illness with typhoid, Efremov turned out to be for a long time chained to bed and began writing stories and stories. At this time, the "Last Marseille" and "Star ships", the "ways of old miners" and "Observatory Nur-and-Cheat", "Lake Mountain Spirits" and "Bay of Rainbow Jets" came out.
In the "Ellinsky Secret" it was about such a thing as gene memory. In the "meeting over Tuskaroi" the author reflected on the problem of the accumulation of "heavy" water in the ocean depths. "Olg-Khorha" is devoted to the search for a giant worm in the depths of Mongolian steppes. "Catty Sark", according to Efremov, contributed to the salvation of the legendary sailboat from oblivion. After publishing a story in England, the ship was transferred to the category of the museum, which the writer was informed by British readers.
The author, who united fiction with scientific facts, was involuntarily proud - the events described by them found a real embodiment. At various times, mercury deposits and cave with drawings of primitive people, kimberlite tubes in Yakutia and the features of the structure of liquid crystals were found. Deepive apparatuses that are able to explore the seabed and drill well in it, as in the "FAKOPO atoll". And trains at a speed of 300 km / h and everyday phenomenon at all.
The plot of the "shadows of the past" was formed by Ivan's fantasy about how the events of the past were reflected in rocks at a certain illumination angle. After 3 years, the Nobel laureate Denes Gabor theoretically substantiated the effect of holographic.
The scientific fantastic Etude "Five Pictures" of Efremov wrote in support of the artist Andrei Sokolov, the master of space themes in painting. Based on his cloth "Elevator in Cosmos" by Artur Clark, the novel "Fontans of Paradians" was invented by Arthur Clark.
On the story of the "heart of the snake" Ivan recalled as a stuff of mistakes. The first publication did not pass the proper editors and caused a lot of perturbations from part of readers, savvy in chemistry and anatomy. The dilogy "on the edge of Okumens" immersed in the details of slave life in the era of ancient Egypt and ancient Greece.
Efremov did not see the future of humanity without contact with other civilizations, without mastering the depths of outer space. In the expedition on the desert, Gobi scientist came to mind the idea of the novel "Timbal Andromeda". The book contains colorfully described what the descendants of a science fiction deal with: the consequences of negligent treatment with nuclear energy sources and unidentified flying objects, superhard substances and artificially synthesized food.
Roman "Hour Bull", dedicated to the wife of Taisiya - the philosophical parable on how dangerous tatalitarianism is dangerous. As the heroes of the distant past in it, the characters from the "Timbal Andromeda" are mentioned. This work the scientist wanted to argue with his colleagues who considered life as the road to death, where a person surrendered under the onslaught of animal instincts, where the triumph of Light and progressive was denied.
Efremov believed that a person, as a creature thinking and endowed with memory, and not only by reflexes, able to cross the stage of biological development. And in the future, the earthly civilization will put public and social values in the first place.
The last difficulty of Ivan Efremov was the narration of the Athenian heter of Thais, the companion of Alexander the Macedonian and King Egypt Ptolemy. This time fiction gave way to historical facts. And at the same time, the novel turned out to be a hymn of love, beauty, mind and loyalty. The book "Tais Athens" came out after the death of the writer.
Personal life
The first wife of Ivan Efremova became a scientific medium representative. Ksenia is the daughter of Professor Geology, Academician Nikolai Svitalsky, researcher of ore deposits, on which the famous Magnitogorsk Metallurgical Plant erected. Therefore, they rumored that from this marriage the writer sought to extract career benefits. The heroine of the novel "Razor Blade" Sim Metalin is written off just with Ksenia. There were no children in this family.
Moving the Paleozoological Institute, where the scientist worked, from Leningrad to Moscow he was presented and changes in personal life. In the capital of Efremov moved already with the second wife of Elena Kolukova. Soon the son of Allan was born. The name of the child chose his father in honor of the character from the novel "Care King Solomon" of the British writer Henry Haggard. Allan went in the footsteps of the Father - became interested in geology.
Elena died in 1961, after a year Ivan married Taisiya Yukhnevskaya. A scientist met a woman in 1950, when she worked as a typist at the Institute, and then became personal secretary of Efremov.
Despite the loud name, the spouses lived modestly. From the material "excesses" there was only a car that Ivan bought after receiving the Stalin Prize for scientific research. The writer until the last days remained a gentleman, who took place in the room of women greeted standing, served a coat even to girls.
Death
Ivan Efremov left life in October 1972, in a few hours before this consulted a colleague on the dissertation. The cause of death, according to the widow of Taii, became a heart attack. The body of the deceased on the 2nd day was cremated, and this fact for some reason caused a suspicion of the KGB.
A month after the funeral, 11 people from Lubyanskaya Square searched the apartment of a writer, including the ceiling and walls of the metal detector. What Efremov suspected and remained unknown. But until the 70s, the writings of Ivan were not published, and the name in scientific circles was mentioned in a whisper, despite the fact that the scientist was the founder of a separate direction - taphonomy. From libraries, according to the memoirs of contemporaries, they tried to remove the Roman "Hour Bull", excavating between the rows of anti-Soviet propaganda.
The ashes of Ivan Efremova is buried in the cemetery in Komarovo, near St. Petersburg. Basalt stove installed on the grave, and on it - a polyhedron from a mineral labradorite with carved name and dates of birth and death.
Quotes
"Fantasy is a shaft, rising to which you can see much further, let him even in unclear contours." Either there will be a non-flame communist society, or there will be no dust and sand on a dead planet. "" Time will come - and Representatives of the so-called "black work" will disappear in the world, how disappeared in our country of burlaca, excavations, fire marchs, etc., I have no doubt that in the future, material benefits will be made in a closed ring of technology - machine guns, robots, electronic computing machines - And the person will give him entirely creativity. "Bibliography
- "Katty Sark"
- "Meeting over Tuskaroi"
- "Observatory Hur-and-Cheat"
- "TV captain Ganeshina"
- "Star ships"
- "Last Marseille"
- "Hell fire"
- "On the edge of Okumen"
- "Bay of Rainbow Jets"
- "Atoll Fakofo"
- "Yurt Voron"
- "Razor blade"
- "Andromeda's nebula"
- "Hour bull"
- "Tais Athens"