Born on May 27, 1969, in the city of Pskov, Andrei was an avid reader from an early age. But it was the Russian translation of Robert A. Heinlein's The Orphans of the Sky that decided his choice of future occupation. The story has become a pivotal moment in the boy's life, leaving a lasting impression on him.
Andrei wrote his first book at the age of eight. Since then, he's never stopped working on new books. His passion for science fiction has gradually become his career.
In 1998, Andrei debuted in Russia's leading publishing house EKSMO with his novella The Island of Hope. Since then, he has penned over 90 books that have enjoyed a total of 153 editions.
Andrei has created several unique worlds, each unlike the previous. He wrote A History of Our Galaxy (see The History of the Galaxy) with humanity itself as a protagonist. This sixty-book series creates a history of our future civilization and its contacts with alien races, forming a convincing and logical picture of humanity's development for two millennia from now.
Andrei's recent involvement with the bestselling genre of Lit RPG - books set in online roleplaying games - inspired him to create his most intriguing series to date, Phantom Server. Merging virtual reality with hard science fiction and space exploration, the two first books of the series, Edge of Reality (Phantom Server Book #1) and The Outlaw (Phantom Server Book #2) prompted an Amazon reviewer to call Andrei "one of the best new authors in American Sci Fi translated from Russian".
Besides hard science fiction, Andrei Livadny also works in cyberpunk genres which allow him to focus on human relationships and raise questions about artificial intelligence and identity uploading, describing cyberspace as humanity's future environment. The English translation of A History of Our Galaxy will be available shortly.
Bibliography
- Other Mind trilogy (2003-2006)
- Platoon. Ivan Lozin's platoon was only just beginning to explore space, when Space came down on a defenseless Earth. The giang swarm of unnaturally-moving asteroids hid alien ships. Continents were aflame, cities were in ruins, those few who survived thought the long-awaited apocalypse has finally come. But the desire to live erases differences between former enemies, and the bravery of a Russian soldier can allow him to achieve the impossible. A victory? But the unexplained alien invasion hides a terrible conspiracy. An even greater threat awaits humanity.
- Adjacent Sector. Three very different civilizations are envaged in a conflict: humans, Xenobians, and Others. A great chasm of minunderstanding separates the three cultures, and the only thing that can stop the self-destructing war is the Mind.
- Xenob-19. No inhabitant of the Xenob-19 colony has ever thought about the origin of its name. Isolated from Earth, they fought to survive. Few gave any thought to the questions and tried to find the answers. Why is the colony slowly dying? Why has the city been turned into the Citadel constantly under siege by alien mechanoforms. A few of the colonists, whom fate placed outside the society, find the strength to risk it all to find the truth. No one has even imagined what this truth about themselves will mean.
- Contact trilogy (2000-2012)
- Ganymede Rising. The fate of the colony on the titular moon of Jupiter is hanging by a thread. The crew of the American cruiser, secretly sent to the colony to retrieve a recently-unearthed alien artifact, are slowly succumbing to Space Madness after the long months of the trip from Earth. John Kinsky, The Captain of the ship, is getting ready to push the button and wipe out the colony. The only one who can stop the catastrophe is a female cyborg named Lada, a Russian intelligence agent. Without hesitation she will enter the depths of Hell, as she has nothing left to lose. She has already gone through the worst that can happen to any person.
- Contact. The Earth has been completely settled by humans. Giant megacities cover the landscape. There are even colonies on other worlds, indicating the expansion of the human race. However, sooner or later, humans must make contact with other civilizations with similar ambitions.
- The Gates of the Worlds. Gleb Polynin has just graduated the Russian Space Forces Academy and is preparing for his first interstellar flight. Everything is proceeding smoothly, except for one thing - the former cadet has met a girl. Tanya lives in the massive Mega City called Siberia. She has spent much of her life in virtual reality and has no desire to emerge into the real world, much less fly away with him into space. But Gleb is insistant, as a Russian officer's wife must follow him wherever his duty takes him. The young couple doesn't suspect that their fates are now under control of a powerful alien race of shapeshifters, who want to restore the ancient Gate network, which links distant worlds together, at any cost.
- Flare duology (2005-2007)
- Step to the Stars. The explosive development of cybernetic technology makes the appearance of artificial intelligence inevitable. It seems as if sentient robots will be created in the near future. But for Anton Izvalov, whose youth is scorched by warfare in the mountains of Caucasus, that future has arrived. Finding himself against his will in the mountains of Afghanistan, he encounters combat robots built in the Pentagon's secret labs.
- Flare. Earth after the Flare. What will it be like? What trials will future generations have to face? How will the appearance and development of various artificial intelligence systems affect the fates of several people and civilization in general?
- The History of the Galaxy series (1997-present). Please see the series trope page.
- The History of Worlds, the next setting of the author, evolving from the previous one. It describes a clash of five Parallel Worlds, one of which being The History of the Galaxy setting.
- Death Zone Shared Universe. The series takes place 50 years after S.T.A.L.K.E.R., when a massive anomalous event wipes out the Chernobyl zone and creates something even worse.
- Titanium Vine (2009). The icy, chilly morning of September 15, 2051... Half a century has passed since the Second Chernobyl Catastrophe. This time, five places were hit. From Sosnovy Bor near St. Petersburg to the Kurchatov Institute in Moscow, from Akademgorodok in Novosibirsk to Kazantyp in Crimea. Simultaneous explosions of immense power have created the nightmarish Five Zones. It's difficult to imagine that someone could have survived there, but some have. New stalkers now no longer have to contend with just mutants and anomalies but also with the soulless products of advanced technology. Mechanoids, staltechs, autons, and tumble-zones are the true inhabitants of the Wasteland. This world is theirs, and they won't give it up without a fight. But the brave female stalker named Darling (AKA Titanium Vine) is not one to shy away from difficulties.
- The Black Wasteland (2010). The silence in the Five Zones is deceptive. Then again, it's a rare occurance. When you're surrounded by countless hordes of cyborgs, while outside the Barriers Mad Scientists are responsible for putting the world in danger For Science!, who will expect silence? And now even the mechanoids and the scorgs feel confined in the isolated Zones. And powerful people on the other side of the Barrier have decided to destroy the Black Wasteland in one fell swoop. The massive explosions destroy not only the nightmarish technological spawn but also the people who live there. What else do people have left to do? Survival at any cost. Then again, for experienced stalkers like Ascetic and Titanium Vine, this is nothing new. After all, there's a reason they're both marked with the stange "DRG" tattoo.
- Staltech (2010). He got to the isolated Zones against his own will. He wanted to survive at any cost but had to go through all the circles of the technogenic Hell and understand the depths of human treachery and how merciless and uncaring the power of technos is. The inexperienced stalker Maxim doesn't suspect that he has been thrust into the very maelstrom of events. Who cares about a dying newbie infected by scorgs, when the military and the Order are at the threshold of discovering the secrets of the Node, and the armies of mechanoids are clashing in a final battle? But not everything is decided by the powers-that-be. Only Maxim and the team of the legendary Titanium Vine can affect the relentless path of events, reveal the evil plans of the technos, look behind the threshold of life and death, to discover the secret of the strange building with the DRG logo.
- The Breaking Point (2011). They fought side-by-side, breaking through to their goal through all the dangers of the Five Zones. They were met with fire by the fanatics of the Flaming Cross and the jaegers of the Ark, they were constantly under attack by the mechanoids, they constantly had to watch out for numerous traps. Ahead of them was the mythical Bright Tunnel, removing any scorg infections from a stalker's body, as well as the mysterious scorgium, which has the potential to change the balance of power in the endless struggle with the monstrous spawns of the technochaos. The dark irony is, it is they who have a chance to save all stalkers in all Five Zones from instant death.
- Breakthrough (2012). Many years ago, a catastrophe, caused by a scientific experiment gone awry, Five Zones appeared on the territory of the former Soviet Union. They are separated from the outside world by nigh-impenetrable Barriers. Nothing alive is left inside the Barriers, replaced by the spreading and evolving products of Technos. Only the powerful Barrier Army can stand against the push of the technogenic monsters. But there are always people who are willing to take something dangerous from the Zone outside the Barrier for a profit. One of them is Stanislav Radić, brilliant scientist, international terrorist, and henchman to the criminal corporations. No one knows why Radić has penetrated the Barrier, but one thing is clear - no good can come of this. Unless, of course, he is stopped by Major Ivan Shershnev of the Barrier Army.
- Controlled Emission (2009). A novel in the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 'verse. If you set foot into the Exclusion Zone, it will never let you leave. Tailspin, an ex-stalker, having left Chernobyl behind a long time ago, decides to return to pick up his swag, hidden away on the Cordon. Much has changed in the Zone after he left, so Tailspin hires two experienced stalkers as guides: Enoch and Huron. Neither of them knows that they have just signed up on a deadly adventure, where they will be forced to deal with government agents, soldiers, and stalkers from the legendary Monolith outfit. Tailspin himself has a dark secret, more dangerous than all the mutants and deadly traps of the Zone combined.
- Lifeform series (2003-2006).
- Lifeform. A mysterious new lifeform, what will it bring humanity? Death or immortality? A strange silvery mold, attacking machines and people of the Martian colony is threatening the expansionist plans of a powerful corporation. It's boss, Miler von Braun decides to solve the problem in his own way.
- The Colony. Thirty million years is an unthinkable amount of time for humans settling Mars. And a brief moment for an android, who has spent this time in stasis thanks to powerful enemies from a long-dead world. Two epochs, two civilizations separated by the chasm of the centuries, and remarkably similar problems. Selene would not have been destroyed by a catastrophe from space if not for internal strife and greed of its inhabitants. And now, here on Mars, events are repeating themselves in yet another loop of the eternal spiral of time. Perhaps meeting another sentient creature (even half-mechanical) will help humanity avoid following in the footsteps of their predecessors.
- Lord of the Night. Who are they, the ancient Selenites: myth or reality? Where did the Moon come from? What does the ancient word "Atlantis" mean in the language of the people of Selene?
- Rebellious Procyon. An unthinkable has happened on Procyon: the creators have swapped places with their creations. Artificial intelligence used technology, left by the long-gone Selenites, to re-create... humans. Lacking memories about the past, which they never really had, they have become lab rats to the androids. The best of the re-created humans, Jan Kowalski and Marie Lerman, risk everything to find answers to the eternal questions. Who are we? Where did we come from? Why are we here? Unexpectedly, they receive help from a deadly enemy, Colonel Nagayev: a supermachine and a superhuman.
- World on the Palm (2005). What will happen when our galaxy cools down? Can sentience survive in other parts of the universe? How can that be achieved?
- City of the Dead (2000). After a global catastrophe, the population of a human colony has a choice: become cyborgs adapted to survive in the now-hostile environment or die.
- The Lost (1999). What will happen to the Solar System when the Sun will grow old and expand, consuming Mercury and Venus?
- Nebel (2005). Our past and present are inseperable. Many remember fragments of the "past life", but most do not understand their meaning. But what if the memory of the past will return in its entirety?
- The Tower (2006). Memories about her past life lead a young woman to realize that they contain a terrible and unexplained tragedy. However, she has the willpower to face her fear, accept events unexplainable by science, and allow her to not only discover the secret of the tragedy but also meet face-to-face with the ENEMY.
- Warrior's Burden (2004). Earth is gone. The Ashangs, a violent race that fought humans, has won a Pyrrhic Victory. A "wiser" race spares a few humans and gives them a new world, as long as they serve it as mercenaries. But a day comes when a human and an Ashang meet once more on the narrow warpath, leaving no room for a choice. But there is a choice. All one has to do is stop for a minute, think about the meaning of history, and the veil of hate will fall from the eyes. The important thing is not to let it happen too late.
- Ark (2000). Two thousand years ago, a massive catastrophe has turned the enormous explorer ship Ark into a "Flying Dutchman". But life aboard the Ark survived. The primitive people collected from various planets for the purpose of an experiment to accelerate intelligence development have survived and continue to fight for supremacy under the artificial suns of the Ark. All keep the memories of the mysterious and powerful Gods, overthrown by their ancestors, and fear the day the Gods will return to exact their vengeance. But some legends turn out to be true.
- Ashen Light (2010). The Stars Are Going Out at the center of the galaxy. This discovery heralds the end of universe is done at the same time a strange Object appearing in the Solar System. The Object does not respond to any attempts at a contact. The starship Argo is sent after it. The astronauts manage to get aboard the Object, make it to the Temporal Station and converse with the artificial intelligence residing there. They manage to avert the catastrophe and kick-start the human expansion of the galaxy.
- The Dark Side of the Earth (2002). Following an asteroid impact, Earth has stopped spinning. Can humanity survive in this new world?
- Phantom Server (2015-2016). A LitRPG series, and the first of the author's novels to be translated and published in English.
- Edge of Reality. A bored cyber-dweller finds out about a hyper-realistic VR game in closed alpha testing and spends a large amount of money to obtain a login. He finds himself in a distant star system, where humans and a number of alien races struggle so survive, while studying the mysterious artifacts of the Founders. He gets more than he bargained for, as the realism may be too much for even the most die-hard player. Note: The book's original title is just Phantom Server. The subtitle Edge of Reality was added for the English translation, which may be problematic, as it's the title of a completely unrelated book in Livadny's The History of the Galaxy series.
- The Outlaw. The game has entered Beta. A flood of unsuspecting new players aboard the Eurasia fleet arrives to the Darg System. Anyone still remaining from Alpha is branded as an outlaw and killed on sight.
- Black Sun. The game has become something more.
