Marina and Sergey Dyachenko

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Marina and Sergey Dyachenko are known Ukrainian science fiction and fantasy authors, writing mostly in Russian.

They wrote several books which may be considered as social science fiction with some emphasis on psychology. Armaged-Home (Armaged-Dom, 2000, awarded with "Bronze Snail" and "Sigma-F" in 2001) is set in a world where apocalypses happen every 20 years. Prior to each, people have several hours to get salvation in randomly opened Gates... and "tickets" to get there ahead of others become the highest and basest privilege. We watch for the life of the main hero from her childhood to old ages.

Prize-winning The Cave (Peschera, 1998) is set in the society, where "natural" human aggression was replaced from day life to a sort of dreams, in which people realize themselves as beasts in the Cave and kill to feed... There are no "crimes" (although the authorities are as base as always, forming a kind of soft totalitarianism), but have people the right to know who they have killed and to be responsible for that?

In 2003 novel Pandem the writers depicted an attempt of a superbeing with half-god abilities to help people on the Earth to evolve... Despite huge technical and social achievements, Pandem faced the principal contradiction: removing pain from a person's life it removed one's incentives to evolve. Either to love, either to let to evolve... On realizing this, Pandem left the Earth.