Shagurin, Nikolai Yakovlevich

Born September 16, 1908 in Kharkov , in a family of doctors. He spent his childhood at home. After graduating from school, he left for Moscow , where he got a job as a construction worker and entered the evening department of an electrical technical school. He worked as an electrician , instructor for training film projectors , as part of anti-religious film movement, traveled to the regions of Central Russia .

Began to print since 1927. In 1930, the first book, Godless Cinema in the Country, was published at the Moscow publishing house Teakinopechat. Then he collaborated with the magazine “ Around the World ”, “Red Armyman and Red Navy”, “30 Days”, “Cinema and Life” and others. In particular, in 1930 in the magazine “Around the World” his first sci-fi publications appeared - the stories “The Man Who Died the Day before yesterday”, “The Story of Ma-Ting-Fang, a Chinese Soldier”, “25000 Bibles”.

After moving to Alma-Ata , he worked as a traveling correspondent for the newspaper Socialist Kazakhstan. Impressions from trips to Central Asia formed the basis of his second book, The Tale of Tau Sagiz (1932). In 1932 he became a member of the Union of Proletarian Peasant Writers of Kazakhstan and continued to work in various newspapers in the south of Kazakhstan.

Then he moved to Crimea , worked as an essayist in a large-circulation newspaper of the builders of the Kamysh-Burunsky iron ore plant near Kerch . In 1937, becoming the editor of the large-circulation newspaper Severny Voyage, which was published on board the polar vessel Anastas Mikoyan, two navigations traveled on this vessel in the Arctic . In 1939 he returned to Crimea, worked at the editorial office of the newspaper Krasny Krym.

I met the Great Patriotic War in Simferopol . Having sent his family to the Saratov region , he evacuated with the newspaper to Grozny , where he was drafted into the army. He served in a field hospital, a year later was removed from military registration and sent to the Saratov region to the post of production manager of the Kolkhoznaya Stroyka newspaper.

After the liberation of Crimea, he returned to Simferopol and began working again in the newspaper Krasny Krym, where he held the posts of head of the department of culture, special correspondent, essayist, and editorial secretary. He wrote feuilleton, fables, continued the cycle of fairy tales dedicated to the sea (“Silver Sailor”, “Sea Tales”, “Three Sailors”). In 1949, he was a member of the All-Union Conference of Satirical Writers and Feuilletonists in Moscow.

In the second half of the 1940s, his collections “Twelve Fables” (1947), “Sea Tales” (1946) and the adjoining “Three Sailors” (1948) came out in the Crimea as separate editions. “Sea Tales” was harshly criticized in the press for “unpatriotic worship of everything foreign,” and the author himself was accused of cosmopolitanism .

In 1950, he became his own correspondent for the River Transport newspaper on the basins of the Ob , Irtysh , Lena , Amur rivers and moved to Novosibirsk , and two years later he was transferred to Krasnoyarsk . In 1955, he compiled a guidebook “On the Ob and Irtysh”, in 1958 his essay “Architects of the Siberian Fleet” (1958) was published as a separate pamphlet.

In 1955, the writer’s science fiction novel “The Ruby Star”, which takes place in the post-war Crimea, was published. The plot of this book is the espionage story, traditional for the 50s of the 20th century, in pursuit of a cultivar of medicinal apples that was bred by Soviet breeders- Michurins , which gave the name to the story. It was unusual that the author included a short story about the island of the last capitalists in the text of the story in the spirit of the classic " fiction of a close sight ", where mutants hide under the ruins after devastating wars with the use of unprecedented weapons. The stylistics and ideas of this short story are in sharp contradiction with the then prevailing trend of science fiction.

In the same espionage and adventure key, his next fantastic novel, The Island of Big Lightnings (1956), on the accumulation of atmospheric electricity, was written.

In the 1960s, the thematic range of Shagurin expanded significantly. Along with the purely adventure The Mystery of the Decembrist and The Problem with Three Unknowns (both - 1965), his new fantastic works “Return of the Star Hunter” (1962) and “Interplanetary Patrol” (1965) on the development of the near and deep space, "Operation" Blue Dwarf "" (1964) on the struggle of mankind with an alien disease, a fantastic cycle "From Shahrazada of the XX century" (1968-1981). Together with the then-novice writer Sergei Pavlov , he wrote science fiction and adventure novels Argus against Mars (1965) and The Centaur Fires an Arrow (1967).

In 1981, the last and largest work of Shagurin was published - the novel "This Ferocious Eve." The novel is built according to the plot scheme, traditional for the "science fiction" and tells about weather control and the fight against hurricanes .

He died in September 1983 in Krasnoyarsk.

• Shagurin, Nikolai Yakovlevich // Encyclopedia of fiction: Who is who / Ed. Vl. Gakova . - Minsk : IKO "Galaxy", 1995. - 694 p. - ISBN 985-6269-01-6 .
• Shagurin, Nikolay Yakovlevich on the site " Science Fiction Laboratory "
• Bibliography of fiction N. Shagurin