A meeting with the author of the first Ukrainian space opera Farengo, Volodymyr Yeshkilev, took place on Friday at the Hrushevsky Odesa Regional Universal Scientific Library.
Volodymyr Yeshkilev has written numerous texts in the genres of science fiction and alternative history, and he is also a playwright, historian, philosopher and representative of the "Stanyslav phenomenon."
An Empire in Space: Why Yeshkiliev 's Farengo is a Real Space Opera
The writer was born in Ivano-Frankivsk and began his literary career as a poet. He is the author of the cultural term Stanislavsky Phenomenon, which describes the emergence in Ivano-Frankivsk in the early 1990s of a group of writers and artists oriented towards the values of Postmodernism. He defined this phenomenon as a combination of three socio-cultural formats: mood, message, and canon.
"Fahrenheit" is a science fiction saga that intertwines politics and conspiracies, galactic machinations, cloning, and philosophical reflections on the essence of human existence. In the book, Vladimir Yeshkilev predicts that even with cyborg innovations, people will remain people-with all their passions, power, envy, and manipulation. At the same time, cloning, in his opinion, will become a necessity for the transformation of humanity into a multi-planetary species. The writer also believes that any attempts to go beyond the human will have a high price.
"Farengo" is called the first Ukrainian space opera, although this is debatable, because books by Dmytro Hromov and Oleh Ladyzhensky, who write under the pseudonym Henry Lyon Oldie , appeared earlier, but unlike them, Volodymyr Yeshkilev's works are written in Ukrainian, so critics tend to give the lead in this matter to Volodymyr Yeshkilev.
By the way, a series of creative meetings and cultural events with the participation of Henry Lyon Aldy took place in Odesa in the spring. Intent was the media partner of the visit. For two days, residents and guests of Odesa had the opportunity to join various meeting formats - from intimate conversations in the library to an atmospheric music evening and informal communication in the Bookstore-Café.
Кирило Бойко