Science fiction writer, screenwriter, playwright, translator, orientalist, doctor of historical sciences, State Prize of the USSR (1982) Igor Vsevolodovich Mozheiko was born on October 18, 1934. But absolutely all readers of our country know him as Kira Bulychev . The writer created this sonorous pseudonym from the name of his beloved wife, the artist and book illustrator Kira Alekseevna Soshinskaya, and the maiden name of his mother. Initially it was “Kirill Bulychev”. Sometimes even the combination “Kirill Vsevolodovich Bulychev” appeared. But then they began to write on the covers of books with the abbreviation “Kir”. And then she “left,” period.
Writer Kir Bulychev – historian Igor Vsevolodovich Mozheiko.
The writer managed to keep his real name secret until 1982. He feared that the management of the Institute of Oriental Studies, where he worked, would consider science fiction a frivolous activity. Igor Vsevolodovich recalled: “I imagined that I would come to the institute… and they would say to me: “You, Comrade Mozheiko, did not come to the vegetable base, you did not treat Comrade Ivanova in a friendly manner. , you were late for the meeting… and you are also writing fiction!” When I imagined this “And you’re still writing!” I was so scared that I decided to hide behind a pseudonym.” The pseudonym was revealed during the presentation of the State Prize for the script of the animated feature film “The Secret of the Third Planet” and the feature film “From Thorns to the Stars.” Igor Vsevolodovich’s fears turned out to be in vain. After all, it has earned universal recognition in the scientific community. At that time, Mozheiko had written numerous scientific works and popular science books…
Igor Mozheiko was born in the Grauerman maternity hospital. In his fictional autobiography, “How to Become a Science Fiction Writer,” he wrote about it this way: “At that time, all worthy citizens of Moscow were born in the Grauerman maternity hospital on Arbat Square.” The family of the future scientist and writer then lived in Chistye Prudy, and then in Sivtsev Vrazhek Lane. Surprisingly for a science fiction writer, many of his science fiction works take place in Moscow, right in Sivtsev Vrazhek. And on Gogolevsky Boulevard, Kir Bulychev located a zoo for alien animals, the “Cosmozoo”, described in his series of stories about Alice.
Already during his school years, Igor Mozheiko began to devote himself to literary creativity: together with his friends he published a handwritten magazine. They even organized a creative group “KtoVoChtoGorazd”, abbreviated “Ark”.
After graduating from school, Igor Vsevolodovich, according to the Komsomol order, entered the Moscow State Institute of Foreign Languages named after Maurice Thorez (today Moscow State Linguistic University), where he continued his literary activity: Mozheiko participated actively in the creation of the institute’s wall newspapers, wrote poetry. He completed his studies in 1957. He worked for two years as a translator and correspondent for the APN (Novosti Press Agency) in Burma, a Southeast Asian state today known as Myanmar.
In 1959, the future science fiction writer returned to Moscow and entered graduate school at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the USSR Academy of Sciences. He wrote historical and geographical essays for the magazines “Around the World” and “Asia and Africa Today.” From 1963 he worked at the Institute of Oriental Studies, specializing in Burmese history. In 1965 he defended his thesis on the topic “Pagan State (11th-13th centuries)”, and in 1981, his doctorate on the topic “The Buddhist Sangha and the State in Burma”. In the scientific community, Mozheiko was known for his works on the history of Southeast Asia.
His debut in fiction was the story “Maung Jo Shall Live”, written in 1961. Mozheiko’s first story in the fantasy genre was “The Debt of Hospitality” (1965), signed under the pseudonym Maung Sein Ji. The writer used this name more than once in the future. But the vast majority of his fantastic works were published under the pseudonym “Kir Bulychev.” The first work of this type was the cycle of miniatures “The girl to whom nothing happens”, published in 1965 in the anthology “The world of adventures”, inspired by the writer’s communication with his little daughter.
Kir Bulychev is one of the most popular domestic science fiction writers. He wrote more than a hundred works of fiction, of which more than two dozen films were shot (by the way, the writer also created the scripts himself). But until now, the most famous and beloved by many generations of young readers remains the cycle of works about the adventures of a charming girl from the future – Alisa Selezneva. The heroine’s name is not made up. The writer’s only daughter bears this name, and the writer “borrowed” the surname Seleznev from his mother-in-law.
Alisa Selezneva became the main character of a large number of novels, stories and short stories of the writer. The most famous: “Alice’s Journey” (1974), “Alice’s Birthday” (1974), “The Girl from Earth” (1974), “One Hundred Years Ago” (1978), “A Million Adventures” (1982), “Fairy Tale Reserve” (1985).
Based on the story “One Hundred Years Ahead”, in 1984 director Pavel Arsenov shot a five-part film “Guest from the Future”, in which Alisa Selezneva was played by the young Natalia Guseva (Murashkevich). The film was a great success. “Guest from the Future” is rightly considered one of the most popular Soviet children’s films of the mid-80s.
In 2024 the film “One Hundred Years Ahead” was released. The script of the film was written based on the story of the same name by Kir Bulychev, but without the participation of the writer. The distribution of the film was a success and perhaps the filmmakers will turn to Bulychev’s work more than once.
Kir Bulychev sometimes admitted that he no longer wanted to write about Alice. But the character turned out to be stronger than the author, and Alisa Selezneva became the same “eternal hero” as Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. Therefore, the writer still periodically returned to him. Shortly before her death, she completed her last Alice story, “Alice and Alicia.”
Few people know that the writer Kir Bulychev was also a poet. Sometimes, out of necessity, when it was necessary to express an episode of a film adaptation, this is how “The Driver’s Song” appeared in the animated film “Two Tickets to India”, based on Bulychev’s script. Among his poems there are many humorous ones, parodies and imitations of great authors of different eras. But they certainly had talent, and those who heard them hardly thought that the author of the words was Kir Bulychev himself and at the same time a serious scientist, Doctor of Historical Sciences Igor Mozheiko.
But to think that Kir Bulychev wrote only about Alice is an illusion. His bibliography contains many completely diverse works. For example, a cycle about the fictional city of Great Guslyar, about the space doctor Vladislav Pavlysh, the prototype of which was the doctor of the ship “Segezha”, with which the writer sailed across the Arctic Ocean. A series of books about the adventures of InterGalactic Police agent Cora Orvat, a series of three books under the general title “Theater of Shadows”, which describe the adventures of the heroes in a parallel world, “of shadows”, which It exists next to ours. Bulychev wrote in the alternative history genre. The cycle of novels and stories “River Chronos” was written in the genres of alternative history, cryptohistory and detectives. Many of his out-of-cycle novels and stories are also known. In addition, Igor Mozheiko wrote several plays, a book on faleristics, and also translated fantastic works by American writers into Russian.
Kir Bulychev was a member of the creative councils of the fantasy magazines “Noon. XXI Century” and “If”, winner of the Aelita science fiction award (1997), holder of the Order of Knights of Fantasy (2002) and simply a prolific and sought-after writer, whose works continue in cinema. What is the secret of his success among the reader? Kir Bulychev brought humanity to science fiction and made this direction of literature more humanitarian. It is not in vain that one of his collections of stories was called “People as People” (1975).
Igor Vsevolodovich Mozheiko died on September 5, 2003. The writer is buried in Moscow, at the Miusskoye cemetery.
