ABOUT THE BOOK
Alexander Royfe:
"In the stories "The Fairy Tale Reserve" and "The Goat Ivan Ivanovich", which are included in this book, fairy tales of the peoples of the world, familiar to all of us from early childhood, are intertwined with science fiction about the future. In this future, none of the adults are in a hurry to believe in fairy tale characters. Only the historian Ivan Ivanovich Tsarevich puts forward the theory that these characters really existed and lived somewhere between the ice ages. Using a time machine, he travels to the past and finds a dragon, a king, a mermaid, dwarves, Little Red Riding Hood... He invites all of these characters to move to the future, where a Fairy Tale Reserve is being established.
But in fairy tales, as we know, not all characters are good. Koschei the Deathless infiltrated the reserve under an assumed name and immediately began making plans to seize power. And now these plans are already coming true: Ivan Ivanovich has been turned into a goat, and the inhabitants of the reserve are asked to obey and revere the new ruler. Who will come to their aid?! After all, not a single adult in the future believes in fairy tales!
Luckily, Alisa Selezneva is ready to believe in fairy tales. Fortunately, she is kind and sympathetic and will not leave the fairy tale characters in trouble. Fortunately, she is brave enough to go to the reserve, and when necessary - to the legendary era. Alice is also smart and quick-witted. The inhabitants of the reserve are lucky, what can you say! "
CHARACTERS
•Alice Selezneva, aka Cinderella
•Professor Seleznev, her father
•Ivan Ivanovich Tsarevich - director of the Fairy Tale Reserve, turned into a goat
•Kusandra, aka Papa Yaga - a sorcerer, deputy director of the reserve
•Wolf - Kusandra's confidant, calls himself a vegetarian. According to him, he loves carrots very much
•Puss in Boots is another of Kusandra's confidantes. Amorous
•Sven, aka Venya, is a Norwegian gnome. He brought Alice to the reserve. He has an aunt, the gnome Dagmar, and two hard-working brothers. He declared Alice's doll Dasha to be his bride, and took her with him to the reserve
•The King
•The beautiful swan who works in the reserve as the Ugly Duckling
•The Sleeping Princess
•The Three Little Pigs
•The Mermaid
•The Serpent Gordynych is a fairy-tale dragon whom Kusandra brought to Professor Seleznev. His sister is the Loch Ness Monster
•Father Frost ("Moroz Timofeevich") and the Snow Maiden
•Working Grandmother and lazy Little Red Riding Hood
•The Silent Bear
PLOT
The main fairy-tale motifs in the plot:
- The Fairytale Thirtieth Kingdom, which is enclosed in a nature reserve. In the Thirtieth Kingdom, everything is "real": the reader does not perceive the Fairytale Reserve as something fictitious. It does not seem strange at all that mermaids, gnomes, etc. live in a magical land. On the contrary, Alice is seen as a supernatural, alien object that appeared there. "It is precisely humans, compared to magical creatures, that are perceived as something supernatural... and magical creatures are much more natural and closer to nature than humans. That's just the way they were born." That's why Venya the Dwarf invites Alice to temporarily become Cinderella, who has never been to the Fairy Tale Reserve before. This magical world is closed, and it only indirectly touches the real world (the visit of Kusandra, the reserve's assistant director for economic affairs, to Dr. Seleznev to treat a dragon). Otherwise, the real world and the fairytale world do not intersect. Ordinary people come to the reserve like a zoo, simply to look at the magical "exhibits." Upon entering the reserve, all the sounds of the real world disappear. At the very beginning of the story, Venya the Dwarf laments that in the modern era, no one believes in fairy tales, not even Alice Selezneva. After all, in an age dominated by science, the existence of magic seems completely absurd. However, at the end of the story, after all the trials, faith in fairy tales returns.
The space of the magical land is constructed according to the laws of the real world. The reserve has its own rules, for breaking which you can be sent to the basement for imprisonment. There are also certain social strata, the so-called managers and ordinary citizens. Representatives of different fairy tales live in the reserve.
- The Hero's Penetration into an Unusual Land.An ordinary girl, Alisa Selezneva, who lives with her father in a completely normal house, finds herself in the magical reality of the "Fairy Tale Reserve". Although it is worth making a small digression here, saying that the main character is not quite an "ordinary" child. She learns the Martian language, communicates with friends via "videophone," and her father, Professor Seleznev, is an expert on "animals from other planets." For the "distant future," all these facts are perfectly normal, while fairytale creatures arouse mistrust. "But a dragon isn't an animal," said Alice. "He's a fairytale creature." "There just aren't any fairytale creatures," said her father. "Everything in the world has a scientific explanation. You just can't always find it right away." Also worth noting is the hero's unique means of entering the fairytale land. Venya the dwarf shows Alice Selezneva the "employees' emergency exit." That is, a completely ordinary detail. All public places have "service entrances" for staff, and the "Fairytale Reserve" is a public institution. - Time Travel. In the story "The Fairytale Reserve," Kir Bulychev uses a real time machine, represented by a booth that sparks and emits smoke when in use. With its help, Kusandra travels to the "Legendary Era" to escape...
- Transformation. In Kir Bulychev's story, Kusandra transforms the director of the reserve, Ivan Ivanovich Tsarevich, into a small goat. An important factor here is the reason for the transformation: the evil wizard wants to escape with all the fairytale creatures to the "Age of Legends" to become "master of the world." And it would seem that his intentions are noble, as Kusandra monologues about how they are all languishing in this reserve, turning into stones, into exhibits, while "their cultured children look upon us." But at the end of his speech, the villain remarks that he wants to be "more impudent than anyone else, stronger than anyone else, richer than anyone else," and his true goals are revealed (Ivan Ivanovich Tsarevich was a great obstacle to Kusandra's achievements, which is why he turned the director of the reserve into a kid).
- Happy ending. The heroine goes through all the trials and achieves her goal: Kusandra's evil assistants are punished, the truth about the director's disappearance is revealed. But the villain himself escaped to the "Legendary Era," and no one knows how to disenchant Ivan Ivanovich Tsarevich.
That is, the ending of Kir Bulychev's work can be called open, although the tale continues in the writer's next story, "Ivan Ivanovich the Goat."