In the early 2000s, I was deeply involved in the Russian sci-fi community, writing my own stories and reviewing all the latest sci-fi releases in Russian. They say my resource on this topic was among the most popular at the time and later even inspired the name of this blog—The Notes of Glitch the Hamster.
Back then, there was a kind of game among sci-fi writers: they would insert their colleagues into their works in various ways. Maybe this tradition continues today, though I no longer follow it. Or perhaps everyone has grown up and stopped playing the game.
The most notable character was Yuri Semetsky, who became a kind of Sean Bean—not in movies, but in Russian fandom. He was “killed off” in one way or another in nearly every book, and it even became a trend. He would joke that this would ensure his long life.
Somehow, this trend touched me as well. I never kept track, but now I can distinctly recall two cases where my persona appeared in friends’ books. Additionally, in one story, a character from one of my own stories is briefly mentioned.
In 2004, the third book in Olga Gromyko’s Belor Witch series, The Supreme Witch, was published. In it, there’s a casual mention of a tapestry:
For a few moments, Gdyn and his companions successfully portrayed the famous golden tapestry, Saint Knary and His Two Disciples Bring Divine Fire to Humanity, which adorned the main temple in Starmine. However, the “saint” soon clumsily failed his mission to deliver fire to grateful humanity, dropping his oar and, along with his “disciples,” fleeing in whatever direction his eyes took him.
Understood, here’s the complete translation:
At that time, I only had two daughters.
Later, in her story The Lock with a Secret, Olga briefly mentioned a demon named Bartok, the main character of my story Working on Mistakes, which was nominated in 2001 for the “Torn Hot Water Bottle” (Рваная грелка) contest.
In 2005, Alexey Pehov began a new series titled Wind and Sparks, and in the first novel, Chasers of the Wind, there appears a criminal and murderer named ‘Knari, nicknamed Hamster‘. He lived for just a few pages and met an unfortunate end, not even getting a chance to win over readers 😉
I think there were other mentions somewhere, but I’m no longer sure.
