Professor Ivan Yefremov (born 1907) is well known both as a tireless fossil hunter and a talented science-fiction writer. His fantasy ranges between the mysteries of times long bygone and the distant future. His novels include The Land of Foam, where the scene is set in ancient Egypt and Greece, and the world-renowned Andromeda, in which his fantasy roams two thousand years ahead. The Heart of the Serpent, given in this volume, was written in 1959. Its subject is related to that of Andromeda. Anatoly Dnieprov (born 1919), the author of Siema, which he wrote in 1958, is a distinguished...

Ivan Yefremov (1907-1972) was a well-known Soviet scientist, a professor of paleontology and a talented writer of science fiction. "No writer did as much as Yefremov for science," wrote one reader, "and no scientist did as much as Yefremov for literature." Andromeda is a novel about the future of mankind. It depicts with truly fantastic scope the unparalleled bloom of science and technology and the rise of a new social order, and portrays the Universe in the so-called Era of the Great Circle, when Earth will have constant communication with space. Written in 1956, on the eve of the first...

Ivan Yefremov (1908 - 1972) was a Soviet writer and paleontologist. In addition to introducing a new paleontological field taphonomy - the study of fossilization patterns, Yefremov has written a series of novels and short stories, including science fiction, historic fiction, adventure and drama. Yefremov is frequently ridiculed for his enthusiasm and faith in the viability of a communist society, as described in his best known science fiction novel "Andromeda Nebula." What is frequently overlooked is Yefremov's tremendous knowledge of history and profound understanding of psychology. His...