Occupation Writer Awards Aelita Prize Role Fiction writer | Name Alexander Kazantsev Nationality Russian (USSR) | |
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Born aleksandr Petrovich Kazantsev
2 September 1906
Akmolinsk, Russian Empire ( 1906-09-02 ) Genre Science fiction, Popular science, Ufology Died September 13, 2002, Peredelkino, Russia Books The Destruction of Faena, Mechanical Action of Light on Atoms | ||
Alexander Petrovitch Kazantsev (Russian: Алекса́ндр Петро́вич Каза́нцев; 2 September 1906 – 13 September 2002) was a popular Soviet science fiction writer and ufologist.
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Biography
Born in Akmolinsk, Imperial Russia (modern Astana in Kazakhstan). He graduated from Tomsk Polytechnic University, and worked at the Soviet Research Institute of Electromechanics. Kazantsev was a member of the Soviet delegation at the 1939 New York World's Fair. When Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, Kazantsev joined the army. He left military service in 1945 with the rank of colonel, and was awarded a number of orders, including Order of the Patriotic War and Order of the Red Star. From then on, Kazantsev settled in the "literary village" of Peredelkino and concentrated on his writings. He survived the dissolution of the Soviet Union and died in 2002.
Writings
Kazantsev was an enthusiast of the unknown, and a pioneer of Soviet UFOlogy. Many of his works, both fiction and non-fiction, deal with controversial parascientific (or pseudoscientific) theories.
He researched the Tunguska event and published a number of science fiction, as well as popular science books, on the topic. He believed the Tunguska impact was caused by an alien spacecraft that crash-landed on the Earth.
Kazantsev researched events and legends that he believed were evidences of paleocontacts with extra-terrestrials. His novel Phaetae is based on the hypothetical planet Phaeton that some believe existed in the orbit of modern Asteroid belt. According to the novel, Phaeton was inhabited by a developed civilisation of the phaetae race, who survived the destruction of their planet and brought some of their culture to the prehistorical people of Earth.
Kazantsev was also interested in the Martian canal theory, and used it in his fiction concerning Mars.
He was also a composer of chess endgame studies. In 1975 he was awarded by the Permanent Commission of the FIDE for Chess Compositions (PCCC) the title of International Master of Composition.