Alexander Belyaev, author of ‘Invisible Light’, became a legend during his lifetime. Although confined to his bed with tuberculosis of the spine, he studied law, music, and science, and wrote indefatigably. Among his most popular science-fiction works are The Amphibian, Professor Dowell’s Head, A Jump Into Nothingness, and The Last Man from Atlantis. Victor Saparin (1905-), author of The Magic Shoes’ and a journalist by profession, is the editor of the Soviet geographical magazine, Around the World. He differs from the majority of Soviet science-fiction writers in that he writes of subjects which lend themselves to down-to-earth treatment. E. Zelikovich, author of ‘A Dangerous Invention’, is a present-day Soviet science-fiction writer. No other information about him is available. ‘A Dangerous Invention’ has been somewhat condensed by the omission of verbose passages, but the text has not been altered. Ivan Yefremov, author of ‘Shadows of the Past’ and ‘Cor Serpentis (The Heart of the Serpent)’, is a professor of geology who combines fossil hunting with writing, and who is the acknowledged dean of Soviet science-fiction writers. In addition to numerous short stories, he has several novels to his credit, including the very popular The Land of Foam, about ancient Egypt and Greece, and Andromeda, where the scene is set in the year four thousand. Mikhail Vasilyev, author of ‘Flying Flowers’, is a trained engineer who is at present the science and technology editor of Komsomolskaya Travda, the Communist youth daily in Moscow. Vasilyev writes science-fiction short stories, as well as popular science books, such as Space Travel, Man and Energy and Reports from the 2 ist Century (the last in collaboration with S. Gushchev). Anatoly Dnieprov, author of The Maxwell Equations’, is a distinguished Soviet physicist engaged in research in the laboratories of the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences. His main preoccupation in his science fiction (and possibly in his research) is with cybernetics. Valentina Zhuravleva, author of ‘The Astronaut’, is the youngest and one of the most popular writers of science fiction in present-day Russia. A doctor by profession, she draws her material mainly from the fields of medicine and biochemistry.