He was very often called "Soviet Jules Verne", thereby showing that he was just as amazing a visionary as the famous French science fiction writer. However, perhaps our Science Fiction Master's hit rate was even higher. Judge for yourself.
Alexander Belyaev began to fantasize from early childhood. At the age of six, Sasha Belyaev decided to learn to fly. Like a bird. And maybe even better - with one effort of will soar to the very clouds. But first it was necessary to learn at least to plan. And he climbed a tree, hoping to glide from it.
How it ended, you yourself can guess. When falling from a tree, he hit his back hard and even ended up in the hospital. While lying there for a month, I came to the conclusion that he still cannot fly like an angel, despite the fact that he is the son of a priest. So, we need to build an airplane. But this required money. Where can I get them?
The elder brother Vasily suggested a way out. “We'll find the treasure, and that's it,” he said authoritatively. “I know where to look …”. The boys made their way into an old house on the outskirts, where no one lived, and began to tap the walls. Found emptiness. They hit the wall hard - stones fell from above, almost crushing the boys.
And at night Sasha had a dream. As if she and her brother were making their way through a dark tunnel. Somewhere ahead, a light dawns at the exit from it, but my brother can no longer walk, remains somewhere in the darkness, and Alexander himself painfully, with his last strength he crawls and crawls towards the exit …
Two years later, Vasily actually died. Only not in a tunnel, but simply drowned, swimming in the river. And Sasha understood: according to that prophetic dream, he still faces long torments. And the trouble was not long in coming. The father decided that his son should continue the family dynasty, and sent him to study at the seminary.
But Alexander had no intention of being a clergyman. Contrary to his father's will, he graduated from the Demidov Lyceum and became a lawyer. In 1907, a young lawyer Belyaev began his own practice in Smolensk. Soon word spread throughout the city and its environs: Belyaev was winning the most complicated cases.
Once a young woman came to him with a request for protection. “I am psychic,” she explained. - Warned two women about the possible imminent death of their husbands. And now the inconsolable widows accuse me of their willful death. They say I prophesied it to them …"
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Belyaev pondered. Then he grinned.
- Since you are a clairvoyant, tell me about me.
“You were looking for gold, but you lost your brother,” the girl spoke without hesitation. - Your life will be hard, but very bright. And you yourself will be able to look into the future.
Belyaev stopped smiling.
“Okay, I'll take over your protection.
And the lawyer proved to the jury: you cannot accuse a person of seeing further than others. The client was acquitted. And Belyaev himself begins to seriously study the phenomenon of clairvoyance. He even set out to create a mind reading device. But he did not have time to complete his development. The First World War began.
Belyaev was not taken into the active army for health reasons - a back injury he received in childhood made itself felt. It was becoming increasingly difficult for him in court to stand before the jury for the hours of the trial. In 1916, doctors diagnosed him with a formidable tuberculosis of the spine. Prescribe climate change and complete immobility. He leaves for the Crimea, to a sanatorium. They put him in a plaster corset.
It is difficult to say how he would have survived three long years in a cast, if not for the nurse Margarita Magnushevskaya. She spent whole days with him. He began to tell her the stories that crossed his mind. And she wrote them down. This is how the first stories of the novice writer Alexander Belyaev were born. One of them - about the head, which lived, being separated from the body - was even published by a Yalta newspaper.
Meanwhile, the year 1917 is raging in the country. In big cities, Bolsheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, monarchists and Cadets replace each other at meetings. But in Crimea so far it is quiet, life goes on in an orderly manner.
The agonizing three years were finally over. The doctors allowed the sick Belyaev to get up. The treatment was good for him. And he immediately proposed to Margarita. They got married and left for Moscow. In the capital, there are more chances to add stories of a novice writer to print.
Young couple huddle in a tiny room. Damp and cold. But Alexander is proud: Moscow publishing houses have begun to publish it. His story "The Head of Professor Dowell", revised from a Yalta story, is coming out of print. In her, in particular, a new line appears: the singer continues to live when her head is connected to another female body.
In his fantasies, Alexander Belyaev relies on the latest achievements of Russian science. In 1928, Professor S. S. Bryukhonenko conducts an experiment to revive a dog's head, separated from the body. And his colleague V. P. Demikhov transplants a second heart and head to the experimental dogs.
The story was enthusiastically received by the public. Belyaev is becoming popular. He is invited to meet with readers. He is happy to tell them about the possible wonders of the near future. At one of the meetings he was bombarded with questions. Who lives at the bottom of the ocean? Is there life on other planets? Do Flying Dutchmen really exist? Where do they come from?
At home, Alexander Romanovich picks up a pencil and begins to figure it out. Suppose, somewhere, for example, in the region of Bermuda, there is a certain special zone. The neighboring Sargasso Sea with its many algae contributes to the accumulation of ships left for various reasons by their crews …
This is how the idea of the novel "The Island of the Lost Ships" was born. And Belyaev was the first to point out the mystery of the now famous Bermuda Triangle.
In 1929, the Belyaevs went to the Crimea - Alexander Romanovich needed to heal. Two men turn out to be fellow travelers in the compartment. Both are coughing continuously. Strange spots on the skin. They say: these are the consequences of a technological accident at one of the enterprises of Kuzbass. Yellow snow fell in the city. Many began to get sick …
This is the flip side of industrialization, Belyaev notes in his notebook. In the future, if no measures are taken, Russia will face a large-scale disaster. This is how the plot of the story "Air Seller" was born. A breath of clean air under certain conditions can cost a lot of money.
And again, Belyaev foresaw the situation. Hundreds of thousands of people die in the world today because of bad air. The leaders of states are forced to take measures to limit the emission of industrial gases into the atmosphere. The Kyoto Protocol is just one example of this.
End of the 20s. Maxim Gorky travels across the country. He has a lung disease, the writer seems to say goodbye to the country and its people. And Belyaev is writing a new novel, The Amphibian Man. The talented surgeon Salvator replaced the boy's ailing lungs with shark gills. Ichthyander now has the opportunity to dwell in the ocean.
The book is instantly sold out in stores. However, periodicals unexpectedly attack the writer with criticism. Say, why did he move the action of the novel somewhere abroad? Are there really no Salvators in the Soviet country? And the critics do not care at all about the tragedy of the writer himself, whose illness the same Soviet doctors cannot cure in any way. And then the eldest daughter of the Belyaevs Luda falls ill with meningitis. Doctors are frank: they can only hope for a miracle. Science is still powerless …
In 1932, Lyudmila died in the arms of her parents. On the same day, 12 more children died at the clinic. The writer is severely depressed. It also causes complications of its own illness. He is again chained in plaster armor. He cannot work, and the family has problems with money.
Therefore, barely getting to his feet, Belyaev left for Murmansk. He was recruited to the North as a planner to earn some money. Colleagues will soon find out that a famous writer is working with them. On an acquaintance, Belyaev in a heavy hydro-suit is lowered to the bottom of the Barents Sea. Fish, algae - a lot of impressions. Soon the concept of the novel "The Miraculous Eye" matures. He takes up his pen again. And two years later the book "Underwater Farmers" was published.
And again, the science fiction writer Belyaev anticipates reality. Only in 1943 did the Frenchman Jacques-Yves Cousteau invent scuba gear. And plantations of seaweed will appear at the bottom at the bottom of the Amur Bay only in the 70s.
The critic accepts new works of the writer favorably. Belyaev is invited to a meeting with Herbert Wells, who has arrived in the USSR. He read some of Belyaev's things and responded favorably about them. Alexander Romanovich speaks fluent English, starts a conversation about the Nazis, about the brown plague impending on the world. Wells replies evasively - he says that the danger should not be exaggerated.
Only five years later, Belyaev received a letter from England. “You were right, the Nazi eagle flew out of the nest,” writes H. G. Wells. And Belyaev, meanwhile, is writing the story "The Castle of Witches", where he describes how the Nazis are trying to put even fireballs at their service.
A terrible year for many in our country is coming in 1937. Terrible rumors flow from house to house - people disappear without a trace at night. In order to somehow distract himself, Belyaev makes a toy carousel for Svetlana's youngest daughter. And suddenly she grabs a pencil. A thought flashes: after all, a carousel can be arranged in space, in orbit. This is how the idea of the novel "The Star of the CEC" was born.
When the book came out of print, even Tsiolkovsky himself sent an enthusiastic review, after whom the orbital station is named in the novel. The two dreamers were far ahead of their time - after all, the first real orbital station appeared in space only in 1973. But Soviet criticism is hard to please. They attacked again: why does the writer take the reader away from everyday reality? And why should people go crazy in space?
But the writer does not understand why this book is so attacked? He wants to sleep longer to wake up in the future. You look, then the order in the country will be different. And he writes a story about suspended animation during deep cooling. Experiments in this direction are still underway.
Meanwhile, 1940 comes on. In the country, many have dark forebodings that a big war is coming. And the writer has special feelings; he understands that he will not survive this war. Health is getting worse. And he remembers his childhood dream, writes a book about Ariel - a man who could fly. He himself would like to fly above the bustle of everyday life …
Belyaev's last prediction concerns his family. He will save the life of his wife and daughter by telling them not to go to Leningrad when the Germans attack. He himself can no longer move, he is again bedridden.
With the beginning of the war, the Germans soon captured Pushkin, where the writer lived with his family, came close to Leningrad, took the city into a tight ring of blockade. A mass famine soon began in the city. Thousands of people die from malnutrition and cold. In Pushkin, during the occupation, oddly enough, life was still a little easier, people had a chance to survive.
But the cold pesters everyone here too. Everything that can burn flies into the stove - furniture, then books. Finally, it comes to manuscripts. The wife tries to object, but the writer says: "I won't need them anymore."
On the night of January 6, 1943, it was as if someone had pushed Margarita in a dream. Waking up, she rushed to her husband. The fifty-eight-year-old writer was no longer breathing.
In the morning she wrapped him in a blanket and took him to the cemetery on a children's sled. I gave the blanket to the gravedigger and asked to bury the writer in a separate grave. He promised, but could not fulfill the promise - the frozen ground did not give in to the shovel. And the writer Belyaev was buried in a common grave along with many others.
And the Germans sent his wife and daughter to work in Poland. Here they waited for the liberation by Soviet troops. And then they were sent into exile to Altai for 11 long years.
When they were finally able to return to Pushkin, the former neighbor gave Alexander Romanovich's glasses that had miraculously survived. On the bow, Margarita found a tightly wound piece of paper. She unrolled it carefully. “Don't look for my tracks on this earth,” her husband wrote. - I am waiting for you in heaven. Your Ariel."
From the book "100 Great Predictions"