Alexander Belyaev wrote Professor Dowell's Head after spending several years immobilized in a plaster corset — tuberculosis of the spine. He knew from the inside what it means to be a head without a body, dependent on the goodwill of others.
He was born in 1884 in Smolensk, trained as a lawyer, tried his hand at the theater and at journalism. Then came the illness: years in bed, motionless. He began writing science fiction.
Amphibian Man, Ariel, The Star KETs, The Air Seller — his novels are about people who broke past the limits of the human: breathing underwater, flying without wings, living in orbit. Behind the fantasy stands a question: what does it mean to be free?
He died in 1942, in Pushkin, then under German occupation. Whether he froze or starved to death is not known for certain. He was fifty-seven. His grave is unknown. Soviet science fiction remembers him as its "first."