Literary project ethnogenesis. In what order to read the books of the Ethnogenesis literary project in what order to read

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It all started when, several years ago, the famous publisher Konstantin Rykov came up with an unexpected idea: what if several good writers - each for his part - began to put together a giant literary puzzle? Every writer will tell some story interesting story, at first seemingly unrelated to the others. One writes a series of books about pirates Caribbean Sea, the other is about German saboteurs in besieged Leningrad, the third is about the near future, the fourth is about the distant future. At first, there is nothing in common, except that each book tells about people who own some mysterious artifacts - metal figurines of animals that endow their owner with unique abilities, and each figurine has its own. But little by little the series of the project will begin to intertwine. Common characters will appear, riddles posed in one book will find answers in another, and one day all these stories will come together into a mega-novel, which will answer many of the mysteries of the universe.

Such “wovenness” and versatility of the project turned into another unique aspect of it. If other projects are strictly tied to the genre, then “Ethnogenesis” allows its authors to experiment in almost all fantasy genres - from post-apocalyptic to teenage fiction, from harsh cyberpunk to romantic star opera. Therefore, almost every reader will be able to find his favorite style in Ethnogenesis.

The project started in May 2009 with Polina Voloshina’s book “Marusya” and it was one of the most successful literary starts. Suffice it to say that today the story of “a girl to whom something always happens” living in 2020 has sold a total circulation of more than three hundred thousand copies. 24 episodes of the project have been launched (9 of which have already been completed), the action of which takes place in all corners of the Earth (and not only), and the chronological length of the series is several million years - from the very distant past to the very distant future. The best science fiction writers in the country are working on the project, and the total circulation of books sold has exceeded one and a half million copies.

Initially, since 2009, the creators of the project assumed that a total of 12 series of three books each would be released. These series: “Marusya”, “Blockade”, “Genghis Khan”, “Revolution”, “Billionaire”, “Somnambulist”, “Armageddon”, “Dragon”, “Pirates”, “Hackers”, “Pangaea”, “Sinners” . These series make up “Ethnogenesis-1”, but gradually, with the advent of new authors (and the departure of some old ones), quite independent series began to be created, associated with other artifacts, one of the heroes or their ancestors/descendants. So in the summer of 2011, the publication of “Ethnogenesis-2” began, the first series of books in which: “Che Guevara”, “Rome”, “Hunters”, “Napoleon”, “Templars”, “Shadows”, “Mirrors”, “Tyrants”, “Tsunami”, “Frankenstein”, “Trap”, “Detectives”, “Eldorado”...

Opened in August 2012 new project- Novels based on your favorite series. The novella is not a continuation of the series, but rather a side branch of the plot. The authors are given the opportunity to talk about what they could not write about within the framework of the plot of the book, and readers learn more about their favorite characters and, perhaps, better understand the mysteries of “Ethnogenesis.” At the beginning of 2013, due to the collapse of the publishing concern "AST", "Ethnogenesis" moved to the publishing house "Arguments and Facts" - AiF, and the concept of the project changed somewhat. Any of the series could contain any number of books for full description conceived and the convergence of puzzles. But it didn’t work out, only 6 books were published, and “Ethno” returned to the AST publishing concern, which resumed work.

Igor Alimov

Series The Dragon

Director of the Center for St. Petersburg Oriental Studies, researcher at the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography named after. Peter the Great (Kunstkamera) RAS, candidate of historical sciences, sinologist.

Igor Aleksandrovich Alimov was born in 1964. In 1986 he graduated from the Oriental Faculty of St. Petersburg (then Leningrad and also named after A. A. Zhdanov) University (Department of Chinese Philology). The defense of the thesis took place in a tense atmosphere: the volume of work exceeded 400 pages, and the insatiable desire to embrace the immensity contributed to it in the form of annoying mistakes. The author's opponent, the late Viktor Vasilyevich Petrov, a man of deep, encyclopedic knowledge, brilliantly coped with a difficult task, in a forty-minute speech both praising and justly and mercilessly scolding the author.

In the same year, he went for the first time as a translator to the People's Republic of China, where he stayed for a month instead of two years, conscientiously coordinating plans for the restoration of blast furnace and open-hearth enterprises in the cities of Anshan and Baotou. Blast furnaces and open-hearth furnaces were built in the PRC by our great country during the period of the first friendship; However, in 1986, even the Germans received the contract for their restoration. (I. A. Alimov is not at all to blame for this.) He returned to his homeland with a strong feeling that the Chinese people are not at all like the teachers at the university said.

In 1987, he began working in the field of Chinese ethnography at the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography. Peter the Great RAS as a research intern. I discovered a lot of new things, which I don’t regret one bit. He translated and wrote vigorously, but almost all attempts to publish what he had done ran into mountains of obstacles that were quite typical for those years. Wanting to develop science to the extreme, with a group of like-minded people he founded the Laboratory of Theory and History of Culture, which quite successfully met in different places in the central part of St. Petersburg and quietly prepared its works for publication. The efforts were crowned with some success: the studies of the Laboratory members were published in the collection “Man. Philosophy. Culture", two issues of which (the last one in two volumes) were published in Yekaterinburg.

Igor Alimov 90–91 spent in the PRC as an intern at the history department of Peking University, where he learned everything about the Chinese people. This time is covered in legends and deserves a separate, detailed narrative, which, perhaps, will happen someday.

In 1992, stimulated by the thirst to do something for St. Petersburg Oriental Studies, which was inevitably plunging into the abyss of perestroika, together with a group of like-minded people, he created the publishing house “Petersburg Oriental Studies Center”. The beginning was made with the first issue of the almanac "Petersburg Oriental Studies", which is currently a bibliographic rarity and generally a masterpiece of book publishing - a kind of monument to young enthusiasts who were armed with the 286th machine with a forty-megabyte disk and a wide dot matrix printer and - no idea (except for an ardent desire, of course) about how books should be published.

There was a lot of ardent desire, and things slowly progressed. Now, in 1999, we can safely say that the publishing house is established, established and has well-deserved authority in its field. You can find out more about the current state of affairs in the corresponding section.

Polina Voloshina! Evgeny Kulkov! You’d better go and herd oxen and sew bags, because writing books is contraindicated for you.

And in general, if humanity is not indifferent to the future generation, then this book should be exhibited in the section “Fourth Class Marriage. Selling at the price of an unedged slab."

The language is primitive, painfully and clumsily drawn to “modern youth” (according to the authors’ understanding). But what can we say about this, because they don’t have enough basic knowledge to COMPOSE something realistically, let alone describe something complex.

By the way, authors! You probably got your impressions of mammoths from the crazy movie “10,000 BC.” So here it is. Today scientists have already said that mammoths were not too big. Taller than elephants, with a short body. They were not much different in mass from their African contemporaries. At least not even twice. No, Marusya stands, looks at the pile of m...s, and thinks: “Who could “pile” so much? But it was impossible for her to imagine that the prodigies could easily throw a pile one and a half meters high with a shovel!

There is a strange urge to describe the details of Marusya’s clothing - taking off and putting on panties is alarming. And this Marusya also undresses too often, and these descriptions appear without justifiable reason.

The authors' ideas about the future remained at the level of science fiction writers of the 50-60s, and the style of writing is the same. And what kind of nonsense is it that in 2020 people are shocked at the sight of a “real, paper book”? The professor has some kind of thing in his hands, it seems to be called a “mobile phone”? What fabulous stupidity!

But books are not enough for authors! I’m sure that they themselves (or, perhaps, a purchased person) sit on the Internet on different sites, and write reviews of the book with the same (as it seems to them, zombifying) phrases: “I’m looking forward to the continuation!”, “I read it.” in one breath!”, etc.

They would have thought better about the children. They will read all this sh... but think that it is “cool” because it is in a beautiful wrapper and promoted. This is why the book “Marusya” is harmful.

Rating: no

Rave. What infuriates me most after reading Marusya is watching review videos on rusha.ru, where in every issue (obviously paid for), the project is praised on a par with high-quality literature and the cycle is presented as something revolutionary. :mad:

Rating: no

No matter what anyone says, the project is great. But precisely as a project of entertaining fiction literature. Yes, in these books you can find ideas, thoughts, and many other interesting things, but you should not treat it as if it were something grandiose with a literary significance of planetary scope. Of course, comparing Marusya with Alice is at least offensive to Kir Bulychev and everyone who grew up reading his books, and the formulation “our answer to Harry Potter” is very optimistic, but still too pretentious. However, this is the whole problem; you shouldn’t compare it with something, since this project in itself is good enough without any analogies. Yes and the idea literary series is also quite interesting, especially if it is multiplied by quality work writers.

If you don't like science fiction literature, then you shouldn't take on the project. Personally, I have mastered about a third of all the published works and I will tell you that such comprehensiveness inspires respect. Here you can find books about: about war, about pirates, about post-apocalypse, about financial tycoons, about futuristic adventures, about space and in general, about anything. And all this is united by one global idea.

Personally, I am absolutely delighted with all the books I have covered. True, there is one caveat - I haven’t read them. Yes, yes, I didn’t read them - I listened to them. The audio versions of the books are simply incomparable. No matter how many different audiobooks I have listened to, the audio versions of the books in this project are simply incredible, they so beautifully shape the feeling, tension and experience of the book... This is exactly the case when it is better to hear once than to see the text.

By the way, I personally was initially attracted to the project because it was free; the texts of the book and their versions appeared freely available on the website some time after the books went on sale. There was something unusual and attractive about this and inspired respect for the project even before I got to the books themselves. It's a shame that this turned out to be just another marketing ploy, now on the site again everything is for money. Yes, I understand that authors also need something and need to receive money for their work, but the unpleasant feeling that you were “conned” remains - they threw in a free sample, got you hooked, and now the money is shaking. But this relates to the ideological side of the issue. Listen to books ( free versions you can find them on the Internet), and only then decide whether they are good or not and whether they are worth buying for your collection.

Let me summarize once again - in my opinion (the view of a person who has shoveled mountains of science fiction) all the books in the project are of quite high quality and worth the time spent on it.

Oh yes, one more plus: those who came across the project and showed curiosity now know who Nikolai and Lev Gumilyov are, what Ethnogenesis and the idea of ​​Passionarity are, and this, you see, is already a lot: glasses:.

Rating: 10

I read Revolution, Blockade, Pirates, Pangea, Armageddon, Marusya, Bandits and some other separate novels. Each novel individually is not bad, there are some that are simply excellent, but overall the project did not work out.

The main reason is that it’s unclear what the hell with these figures and these transparent ones. What are they, why? It seems that everyone is explaining something, but in whole world It all somehow doesn’t add up, that’s why there is no general idea.

I didn’t initially expect any particularly philosophical insights, but still... Stalker is much better in this regard, at least there is a unity of place and an original concept of the Zone. But here everything is very eclectic - the authors take the story into pieces and insert their own plots into it, so the episodes are excellent, the NOVELS ARE NOT BAD, THE CYCLES TURN OUT INAUDIBLE, BECAUSE THERE ARE NO INTELLIGENT FINALS, AND THE SERIES ULTIMATELY IS ZERO.

Rating: 4

Well, let’s start, the “ethnogenesis” project is primarily commercial and is aimed at the entertainment niche without particularly carrying much semantic load (I hope this will be changed in subsequent books) the first book “Marusya” turned out to be rather ambiguous, it was written rather mediocrely and the main the heroine seemed quite stupid, that I wanted to hit her on the head so that at least something would appear there, but for some reason she won a fairly decent audience, and these were not only teenagers but also quite adults, of course, it’s a matter of ease of reading (I read the book about in a few hours) and in a plot similar to modern TV series, many compare it with Bulychev’s “Alice”, although she was not even close, people just haven’t had enough of this for a long time.

On the contrary, Benediktov’s “blockade” showed itself to be the best side IMHO, a crypto-historical plot, familiar personalities, and an interesting writing concept. The book definitely turned out to be head and shoulders above Marusya.

in the end, the problem of the project is that it is uneven, sometimes good, sometimes bad, let’s wait for the Zorichs, they should raise (I hope) the bar, they promise to attract some more established writers

PS, having mostly read the classics of science fiction and its masters, I enjoyed reading it, although the project is not worth taking particularly seriously, although the ambitions are quite high

Rating: 7

Perhaps I’ll present a list of what I remember from the series:

Billionaire: Strongly connected with Marusya, who only pulls because of the good audio version. But I think fans of conspiracy theories will like the adventures at a secret German base in modern times).

Blockade: at the level of a billionaire, flesh and blood of the lit series and is good as an introduction to it. Nothing special in my opinion. A team of psychics in the service of the Soviets.

Genghis Khan - again a connection with a billionaire, at least at the beginning. You can probably read it. There are some very interesting points.

Armageddon - zombieland. If you like the genre, then you can add Hackers 3 from this author here.

Not directly connected to the series, only through the “figurines”. In principle, you can probably read it.

Pronin Pirates On the one hand it’s not bad, but the further it goes, the worse it gets. The robberies of Spanish galleons with a ship in its arsenal that has explosive cannonballs is still interesting, but submarines are already something superfluous IMHO. Yes, and bundles of stupid silver figurines too.

Pangea's deck I don't know about others, but I liked GG with his harmonica first of all. Still, I’ll write down a plus rather than a minus for this book.

And finally, what I liked and can recommend reading:

Chubaryan Hackers: this is the book because of which I began to read this series. You could say it's a pearl. I really, really liked it. And it’s a terrible pity that the author didn’t write the 3rd, the sketches for it are very interesting. And it’s a pity that he didn’t work on this outside of Ethnogenesis.

The 3rd book from Burnosov is not that bad... it’s just that it’s absolutely not about that, Burnosov shouldn’t have agreed to take on it in the first place, he could have spent his energy on something else. Ending someone else's cycle is not best job for a generally good writer.

Dubrovin Detectives. The first one is much better for me than the second one, the story about the ripper is on par with the first one. Foggy London, a little mysticism and it turns out to be a very good book. I love this atmosphere, ever since I read the Bartimaeus trilogy. The location of the second one was not so inspiring.

Alimov Dragon A funny cat, although of course this is not the main thing. As for the rest, it doesn’t look like a historical novel, but everything is quite nice. I read it because of the location and the cool main characters. Including the cat, yes :)

Times when the process of working on popular literary works was a sealed secret, passed. Today, a caring audience can not only boo the author, but also take part in the conflict between the producers of their favorite spiritual food. An example of this is the scandal surrounding the “Ethnogenesis” project.

Whatever may be said about “Ethnogenesis”, at the level of the original concept it has at least two serious advantages. Firstly, it was initially created as a project designed to exist in conditions of a literary apocalypse - cryptohistorical books about magical objects should have been addressed almost primarily to those numerous young people who do not read any books at all. Secondly, the key point in the project has always been to work on a clear production plan, which involves setting certain tasks and their adequate implementation, and such a pragmatic approach is directly linked to the idea of ​​literary quality.

If we talk about the extent to which these guidelines were implemented (and to what extent they are being implemented right now), then it is necessary to distinguish between several “basic” indisputable facts and everything else, including phenomena that cannot be unambiguously interpreted, subjective assessments, loud phrases and fan swearing.

The author of the idea and producer Konstantin Rykov managed to assemble a relatively large team of authors, which at first was more or less permanent. The original synopsis of “Ethnogenesis” indicated a remarkable space-time continuum, which included different places in the Universe and eras distant from each other. The series “Marusya”, “Blockade”, “Billionaire”, “Genghis Khan”, “Somnambulist” and some others filled this continuum with objects and characters that quickly interested those same young people who did not read anything, and with them many representatives of other groups of the population .

Many fans of “Ethnogenesis” were disappointed by the news that the “Dragon” series, written by Igor Alimov, would not be continued within the project by the “Mirror” series, which was written by the same author and which many already perceived as an integral part of the overall design. As far as one can understand, this came as a surprise to Alimov himself. Passions began to boil on the Internet, and project leaders and coordinators began to be accused of intrigues and voluntarism.

No. categorical entry: “It’s a pity, but OUR “Ethnogenesis” is RIP. Now it’s final.” The meaning of this epitaph was that the so-called “Ethnogenesis-2” - a set of new series of the project written by new authors - does not correspond to the original plan and is not liked by readers. Volkov, like a certain part of the fan audience, was clearly upset by the “change of generations” of the authors within “Ethnogenesis.”

The high point of the crisis was the accusations against the editor of “Ethnogenesis” and the author of two “Marus” books, Polina Voloshina, in whom someone saw a suspicious “ eminence grise”, practicing voluntaristic editing and deciding the destinies of authors in secret from them.

To understand the situation, the newspaper VZGLYAD turned for comments to the participants in the conflict - Sergei Volkov and Polina Voloshina.

“There was, let’s say, some kind of squeezing me out of the project. I find it difficult to say what this is connected with, because reader interest in my texts is very great,” said Sergei Volkov. - As for the general situation, this is how things stand here. When “Ethnogenesis” began, a team of professionals worked in it - Kirill Benediktov, Yuri Burnosov, myself, Alexander Zorich, Igor Alimov, Igor Pronin and the author of the idea, Konstantin Rykov. We thought through the storylines, the general concept, and so on. And at the moment, neither Zorich nor Burnosov are participating in the project. In some strange way, they, like me, disappeared from Ethnogenesis. There is some kind of controversy going on around the continuation of Igor Alimov’s “Dragon” series that I don’t understand. On the other hand, new authors came to Ethnogenesis. These are talented guys, but they are writing their own new series, and the “Ethnogenesis” that we started two years ago is in some kind of limbo. Readers are unhappy that the main series does not end, and at the same time many new ones begin. The editor of the “Ethnogenesis” project is now Polina Voloshina. She was very lucky - she got the opportunity to work on the same project with experienced professionals. She could learn literary skills from them and gain experience. Instead, she allows herself to edit the texts of some of them, change the layout of the plot, and also determine the publishing policy. I don't know how true this is from a business point of view. Just look at the circulation statistics of “Ethnogenesis”: Lately they fell fourfold.”

Polina Voloshina sees the situation differently. “What happens in Ethnogenesis is what happens in any series - the composition of the authors changes,” she believes. - This is done so that “new blood” appears, new names, new readings. Fans of old series may perceive this as some kind of unwanted intrusion. It’s like in television series - if they replace some actor beloved by the public, then the one who replaces him is met with hostility by the audience. But then quite quickly it turns out that he is already loved just like his predecessor, because what matters is not what he looks like, but what he does. If we don’t take those cases when people were specifically “stirred up” with statements that “Ethnogenesis” had gone bad, then I’m not sure that the new series causes any kind of rejection among readers - they just get new stories. Perhaps they are angry that we are not returning to the old series, but the project has a clear rule that each story is limited to three books. As for the new books, they are no less popular than the old ones, and they are no worse. Moreover, I personally think that their quality is even higher, because it is important for their authors to express themselves, and they try very hard. New episodes of “Ethnogenesis” are selling less, but this is simply due to the fact that now e-books, which someone buys, and someone simply takes from the Internet. If you now release "Genghis Khan" or "Marusya" on paper, they will not sell as much as before, because they will again be purchased in in electronic format. “Ethnogenesis” is indeed expanding in breadth, but we have realized this problem, and now all new books are tied to earlier ones. As for the dissatisfaction of some of the authors of the first call, significant editing of their texts was required in cases where it was obvious that other people were involved in the writing. It’s not very good to resort to this method, especially since you can always distinguish pieces written by a professional from what was done by a beginner from the outside.”

Summarizing the discussions around “Ethnogenesis”, Konstantin Rykov in the group