OBRUCHEV, Vladimir A(fanasevich)

(1863-1956)

   Russian geologist, academician and writer. Two of his novels, both early classics of Russian sf, have been translated: Plutoniia (1915; 1924; trans B. Pearce as Plutonia 1957) and Zemlya Sannikova (1926; transY. Krasny as Sannikov Land 1955 USSR). Both are adventures after the style of Jules VERNE, aimed at younger readers, and informatively crammed with geological and palaeontological data. The first is a HOLLOW-EARTH story in which a party of Russian explorers enters the Earth via an unknown landmass north of the Bering Strait and finds a LOST WORLD full of prehistoric reptiles. The second is similar; a volcano thrusting through the Arctic icecap to the far north of Siberia has a fertile lost world, populated by a stone-age people, inside its huge crater. Other, untranslated, works by VO were travel novels set in Central Asia.

   PN

   See also: RUSSIA.