About the book: year / The idea to write a continuation of the Strugatsky brothers' trilogy about Maxim Kammerer "The Black Queen" came to my mind when, for some creative needs, I very carefully read Nietzsche's two-volume book , published in the “Philosophical Heritage” series. It was then, on some phrase or aphorism of the great madman, that it suddenly occurred to me that Saraksh is not what he seems. Of course, this is a cruel, bloody world, turned inside out, but at the same time possessing some kind of gloomy charm. It was not for nothing that the Excellent Wanderer dived into the bloodbath of Saraksha over and over again, looking for a break from the affairs of Comcon-2 and the other Isaac Brombergs. And the Komsomol member of the 22nd century, Maxim Kammerer, did not fall into prostration after the death of his ship, but, rolling up his sleeves, began to deal with the affairs of his new homeland. It was from this angle that I wanted to look at Saraksh, and at the new and old heroes. I knew about the continuation of the trilogy called “The White Queen”, which was never written by the masters, and I knew that someone, with the blessing of Boris Natanovich, was already writing it. But I myself categorically did not want to cross someone’s path. In addition, I categorically did not like the solipsistic idea embedded by the authors in “The White Queen”, that the world of Noon was invented by someone. The intended novel was supposed to be a sequel, fan fiction, a sequel-prequel, whatever, but it had to be different. Fewer Strugatskys! - under such a strange slogan, the continuation of the Strugatskys was written. Therefore, the idea came to me that he should dream about all the adventures of Big Bug on the planet Saraksh, and dream about it on the night after the unrest of that tragic day when Lev Abalkin died. Indeed, if a person sleeps and sees a dream, then the world in this dream appears somehow strange, shifted, distorted. If Saraksh only looks like a closed world due to its monstrous refraction, then Flaksh, where the events of “The Black Queen” take place, is truly a closed world, or rather, a Klein bottle on a cosmic scale. And so on. However, when the work began, a certain character began to persistently penetrate into the novel, who certainly had no place in the dream, or rather, in the feverish delirium of Maxim Kammerer’s inflamed conscience. I mean Toivo Glumov. Moreover, there was an urgent need for references to events that were yet to happen many years later and which are described in the story “The Waves Quench the Wind.” But for the time being this did not particularly bother me. You never know what a person can dream about? Prophetic dreams also happen. Only when the manuscript was finished, had gone through a couple of edits, did it suddenly occur to me that everything written consistently fits into a completely different concept. Of course, this is not a dream of Maxim Kammerer! This is the dream of Toivo Glumov, a metagom. Toivo Glumov, who became a superman and in his power created the world of Flax, which he inhabited with those whom he once knew and loved. This is a universe created by a metagom, either for his own entertainment, or to search for a recipe for producing Happiness on a cosmic scale, and not on a single Earth of the 22nd–23rd centuries. Strange things sometimes happen to writers. You understand what you wrote only when the thing sits and cools down... M. Savelichev