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thumbnail Yuri Aleksandrovich Nikitin ((ロシア語:Ю́рий Алекса́ндрович Ники́тин)), born November 30, 1939 in Kharkiv, USSR, is a Russian science fiction and fantasy writer of Ukrainian origin. Although he was active in science fiction before perestroika, the recognition came when he wrote a Slavic fantasy novel, ''The Three from the Forest'' (Russian: Трое из Леса). One of the protagonists is a character based on the Russian Rurikid Prince Oleg of Novgorod, who is a mainstay of many sequels. Nikitin also wrote a couple of novels about Vladimir I of Kiev. Nikitin created a (website ) called Inn (Russian: Корчма) as a community portal to help young writers. Nikitin's books have a distinct, free, and often intentionally primitive and repetitive style with many jokes, reflecting his intent to keep the reader on topic and carry his ideas through. His later books develop the ideas of becoming a Transhuman through self-development and survival of the spiritually fittest. ==Biography== Yuri Nikitin was born November 30, 1939, in Kharkiv, Ukraine, an only child in a poor family. His father was drafted into the Soviet army soon after and died in the World War II, and his mother never married again. A weaver in a local factory, she raised her son on her own, with the only help of her elderly parents. The four of them lived in a small rustic house in Zhuravlevka, a half-rural suburb of Kharkiv. Nikitin’s grandfather was known as the best carpenter, joiner, and shoemaker in the local area.〔Nikitin, Yuri. ("Мне 65." ) (am 65. ) (In Russian). 2004. Moscow: Eksmo. ISBN 5-699-07045-1〕 However, the family could barely make both ends meet: as Nikitin recalled later, in the post-war time they had to eat soup of the potato peelings disposed by their neighbors.〔Nikitin, Yury. (''Re #69: Правильное питание''. ) (Re #69: Proper Nutrition.) (In Russian.) (''Transhuman.com'' ). 12 Sept. 2011. Retrieved 18 June 2014.〕 Living in poverty and starvation affected the young Nikitin’s health badly. Born with a heart disease, he also got rickets, rheumatism, and chronic tonsillitis. At the age of 15, Nikitin was told by doctors that he would not live for more than six months, but in the next year he overcame illnesses and improved his health greatly by means of yoga, hard physical exercise, and strict diet.〔 From his earliest years, Nikitin was bilingual in Ukrainian and Russian, which is rather common for people in Eastern Ukraine. Later, he also learned English and Polish on his own, in order to be able to read the books by foreign SF writers that were not translated in the USSR.〔Glebova, Irina. ("Мой друг Юрий Никитин." ) (friend Yuri Nikitin. ) (In Russian.) 22 Oct. 2010. Retrieved 18 March 2013.〕 At the age of 16, Nikitin was expelled from school for scuffling and hooliganism and got his first job as a metalworker in a local plant.〔Nevsky, Boris. (Бросающий вызов: Юрий Никитин ) (Nikitin: The Challenger. ) (In Russian.) ''Мир фантастики'' (World of CFF ), vol. 91, March 2011.〕 Two years later, he became a lumberman and rafter in the construction sites of Russian Far North, then a geologist exploring the Ussuri region (Russian Far East) with its swampy coniferous forests, great rivers, and many places where, literally, the foot of man had never stepped before. Bright impressions of those journeys inspired his ''Saveliy Cycle'', a series of short SF stories featuring a hunter from taiga who meets aliens and teaches the art of hunting to them.〔Nikitin, Yuri (1996). Preface. In ("Человек, изменивший мир" ) (Man Who Changed the World. ) (In Russian). Moscow: Eksmo. 2007. ISBN 978-5-699-22164-6〕 In 1964, Nikitin returned to Kharkiv and continued his series of temporary jobs, often low-skilled and involving hard physical work. He lingered in each one for hardly more than a year, mainly because of his wish to try something different. As he commented later in ''I am 65'', his autobiography, “I've never had a job I hated to do. Furthermore, I knew that whatever I did was temporary, that my true destiny was great and my current job nothing but an adventure I’d like to recall someday.” 〔 During 1964-65, Nikitin completed his secondary education as an external student in an evening school and considered seriously his choice of full-time career. He picked sports, music, painting, and writing as the most promising options for the kind of person he was: an ambitious man of 25 with no higher education. By 1967, he achieved the master-of-sports rank in canoeing, first grades in boxing, sambo, track and field athletics, learned to play the violin, sold several cartoons to local magazines.〔 Nikitin wrote his very first stories in 1965, just for fun. Those were humorous and very short: the shortest one only counted 28 words.〔Nikitin, Yury. (''Re #2113: Вопросы Никитину''. ) (Re #2113: Questions for Nikitin.) (In Russian.) (''Transhuman.com'' ). 30 Oct. 2009. Retrieved 18 June 2014.〕 All of them were purchased by Russian and Ukrainian magazines. In the next several years, Nikitin created lots of short SF stories (''Saveliy Cycle'', ''Makivchuck the Space Ranger Cycle'', and many others) with the same distinctive features: new unusual subject, lively characters, fast-changing events, and striking end. In 1973, they were collected to make Nikitin’s first book, ''The Man Who Changed the World'', which was a noticeable success. Many stories were translated into foreign languages and published in the countries of Warsaw Pact. However, the author’s earnings were not enough for living and supporting the family, so he retained his main occupation as a foundry worker till 1976.〔 Nikitin’s second book, ''Fire Worshippers'', belongs to the genre of industrial novel, which was extremely popular in the Soviet Union. Nikitin wrote it on a bet with his fellow writers who said that writing industrial novels was far more difficult than SF and that he was hardly capable of it. Nikitin bet that he would write such a novel in six months and won.〔 The book received several awards, and a TV series was made on the basis of it. The novel featured real people – Nikitin’s co-workers in the foundry. He even used their real names, and they were pleased by this fact.〔Nikitin, Yury. (''Re #119: Вопросы Никитину''. ) (Re #119: Questions for Nikitin.) (In Russian.) (''Transhuman.com'' ). 2 Jan. 2008. Retrieved 18 June 2014.〕 In 1976, Nikitin joined both the Communist Party and the USSR Union of Writers. He was the first ever science fiction writer who was not only allowed but invited insistently to do it. The management of both those organizations had rather slighting attitudes towards science fiction in general, but they highly appreciated ''Fire Worshippers'' and the fact that Nikitin was a workman without higher education: it was congruent with the aims of Communist propaganda.〔 Nikitin used his newly-gained opportunities and influence to found the Speculative Fiction Fan Club (SFFC) (Russian: Клуб Любителей Фантастики, КЛФ) in Kharkiv. It was designed as a communication platform for SF writers, scientists and avid readers, a place for literature discussions and critics, and a means to help young SF authors improve their writing skills and get their stories published. In 2003, Nikitin also created (SFFC in Moscow ). In 1979, Nikitin wrote his third book, ''The Golden Rapier'': a historical novel about Alexander Zasyadko (1774-1837), a Russian general of Ukrainian origin and inventor of rocket weapons. The contents of the book were found to be inappropriate by Leonid Kravchuk, the head of agitprop department of the Communist Party of Ukraine. He accused Nikitin of Ukrainian nationalism and ordered to destroy all the printed copies of the book.〔 For his scandalous novel, Nikitin was dismissed from his office in the Union of Writers, banned from publishing in Ukraine, and his name was forbidden to mention in the local media. Also in 1979, he entered the prestigious Higher Literary Courses (HLC) in the Literary Institute, Moscow. The pro-rector of HLC had read ''The Golden Rapier'' and so liked it that he accepted Nikitin despite the Communist officials strongly recommending not to do it.〔 In 1981, Nikitin completed HLC and returned to Kharkiv but could not resume his work as a writer. Whatever he wrote was rejected by publishers for the reason that his name was blacklisted. In 1985, this made him move to Moscow.〔Nikitin, Yury. (''Re #3222: Вопросы Никитину''. ) (Re #3222: Questions for Nikitin.) (In Russian.) (''Transhuman.com'' ). 15 Aug. 2011. Retrieved 18 June 2014.〕 There Nikitin published his fourth book, ''The Radiant Far Palace'', a collection of short science fiction and fantasy stories. During perestroika, when some degree of free enterprise was allowed to Soviet citizens, Nikitin in association with other writers founded “Homeland” (Russian: Отечество), one of the first cooperative publishing companies in the country. He worked as a senior editor there for a while, then established his own private publishing company, “Three-Headed Serpent” (Russian: Змей Горыныч), later re-organized into “Ravlik” (Russian: Равлик). It specialized in English and American SF, almost unknown to the Soviet readers before. Books for translation and publishing were selected by Nikitin from his home library that included over 5,000 SF books in English. As he explained later, “I could prepare a hundred volumes of selected sci-fi works as there was no book in my library that I hadn’t read from cover to cover.” 〔 By that time, Nikitin had half a dozen of his own novels written but unpublished. In the USSR, no author was allowed to release more than one book in three years. Another reason that publishers rejected Nikitin's manuscripts was that his protagonists were immortal and happy with it. The Soviet editorial policy was to publish only the works that showed immortality as a terrible and abominable thing; all immortal heroes were expected to repent and commit suicide.〔Nikitin, Yuri (2006). Preface. In ("Трансчеловек" ) (). (In Russian). Moscow: Eksmo. 2006. ISBN 5-699-15001-3〕 In 1992, Nikitin printed the first of those novels, ''The Three from the Forest'', in “Ravlik” – and it was a great success. Each next book of this series became a bestseller. In the late 1990s, Nikitin abandoned his publishing business and focused entirely on writing books. The rights for them were purchased by major publishing houses: at first "Centrpolygraph" (Russian: Центрполиграф), then "Eksmo" (Russian: Эксмо). On March 30, 2014, during the Eksmo Book Festival in Moscow, Nikitin officially confessed his writing ''Richard Longarms'', an epic fantasy novel series ongoing since 2001 with over 7,000,000 copies sold in Russia and other countries, under the pen name of Gaius Julius Orlovksy.〔Wolf, Ingrid. . (Video.) (Subtitled in English.) ''Youtube.com.'' 1 Apr. 2014. Retrieved 18 June 2014.〕 Today Nikitin is the author of more than 100 books (including those published under the pen name of Gaius Julius Orlovksy) and one of the most commercially successful Russian writers.〔''Eksmo.ru.'' (Yuri Nikitin Author’s Page ). (In Russian.) (''Eksmo.ru.'' ) Retrieved 18 March 2013.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Yuri Nikitin (author)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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