Kir Bulychev is probably the most famous author of Science Fiction and Speculative Fiction for children in Russia, but before 1982 very few knew that he was a Pen Name of Dr. Igor Vsevolodovich Mozheiko (1934 – 2003), a well known historian and author whose popular history books often stood on the same shelves as his alter ego's SF. After graduating school he enrolled in a Moscow State Foreign Languages institute where he majored in South-Eastern Asian languages and became a specialist in Burmese history. He started writing early, right after graduating from the institute, under his real name, but most of his early works were popular history and geography essays about East Asia and realistic short stories.