Lyuben Dilov

Lyuben Ivanov Dilov (Любен Иванов Дилов, 25 December 1927- 10 June 2008 ), occasionally spelled Luben Dilov, Ljuben Dilov or Liuben Dilov was a Bulgarian science fiction writer of the Communist era and the author of acclaimed children's fiction and non-fiction works. He was the father of Bulgarian politician and screenwriter Lyuben Dilov Jr., who served in the National Assembly.

Life Childhood Dilov was born in Cherven Bryag, Kingdom of Bulgaria in 1927. His father was a teacher, journalist and playwright inspired by the Bulgarian Enlightenment and the September Uprising. Dilov writes of his father: "good in character, impractical, and actively dreamy, probably naive, because so much kindness cannot but be naive, all his life he threw himself at being useful to people. As a result, we lived almost like Romani. Throughout the year, we moved with a horse-cart from rental to rental in Sofia, and each time the owners keeping the better part of our luggage because of the unpaid rent. Accordingly, I moved from school to school, so that today I have neither fond memories of that time nor close friends from the school years, which sometimes makes me feel almost like a person without a childhood and without roots." Dilov attended the school "Neofit Bozveli", where his father was a teacher, in the poverty-stricken "Vasil Levski" quarter of Sofia. Dilov's two-year-old brother died during this time.

"Dilo", Lyuben's father, as an active member of the Bulgarian Agrarian National Union(BZNS), was sent to translate dispatches in Nazi Germany on the party's behalf. The young family was able to take more luxurious lodgings and Lyuben joined a high school alongside the children of ministers and generals. Dilov joined his father in Berlin on 25 December 1939, exactly on his twelfth birthday. As the BZNS was facing persecution in Bulgaria, Dilov's father was compelled to remain in Berlin and create and edit the pro-government Bulgarian newspaper Rodina. Despite this, Dilov writes that his father was staunchly anti-Nazi, as were the vast majority of the thirty thousand Bulgarians living in Germany at the time. Dilov writes that the family, during their fifth and final year in Germany, occupied the lavish apartment of an old Jewish millionaire who was hiding himself in the attic and who would come down for tea at night. The Dilovs evacuated Berlin during the Allied bombing.

Early career Dilov graduated from high school in Lukovit (1947). He worked as a clerk in the Union of Bulgarian Writers (1953–1957). In 1954, he graduated from Sofia University, where he specialised in Bulgarian language and literature, part of the People's Republic's first generation of intellectuals. He started writing as a student, and his first stories were published in Narodna Mladezh (National Youth) newspaper.

Biblioteka Galaktika In 1979, Milan Asadurov founded the Biblioteka Galaktika publishing series and called on Dilov, Agop Melkonyan, Dimitr Peev, Ognyan Saparov, Elka Konstantinov, Svetozar Zlatarov, and Svetoslav Slavchev to serve as the editing staff. Biblioteka Galaktika, with its iconic spiral emblem and cover art by Tekla Aleksieva, offered the best Bulgarian science fiction and crime writers alongside the giants of the genres including translated works from Frank Herbert, Ursula K. Le Guin, Ray Bradbury, the Strugatskys, Stanislav Lem, Sakyo Komatsu, Pier Paolo Pasolini, etc. Dilov published two books in the series, a short story collection called Double Star (1979) and a reissue of his 1969 novel The Weight of the Spacesuit. Biblioteka Galaktika won the Eurocon award for Best Publisher in 1983.

Post-communism

Lyuben Dilov was one of the few Bulgarian writers whose post-communism writings have been described as "manuscripts in a drawer", a selective nomen for writings that had been prepared in anticipation of greater artistic freedom after the fall of the Zhivkov regime. Dilov was a candid critic of the former state of artistic repression in Bulgaria. His 1993 memoir For the Dead, Either Good or Funny included a tribute to dissident Georgi Markov, whose name hadn't appeared in state media since his assassination in 1978.

In 1990, Dilov created the Graviton Award, the first national recognition for Bulgarian science fiction, and presented the Graviton trophy to one writer and one visual artist (and later, one translator) every year until his death. The first recipients were writer and editor Agop Melkonyan, a long time colleague of Dilov's, and artist Tekla Aleksieva who, in addition to many other illustrated works, had already created over one hundred covers for the Biblioteka Galaktika series.

The novel The Weight of The Spacesuit (1969) was one of the first works to address the social and psychological effects of networking. O. Saparev wrote that it was "the most concise and complete, cast as if in one breath.. single example of Bulgarian science fiction." Dilov stated that the reason for the fourth safeguard was that: "The last Law has put an end to the expensive aberrations of designers to give psychorobots as humanlike a form as possible. And to the resulting misunderstandings..."

Children's literature «Кладенецът на таласъмите» The Well of Goblins(written with ) - 1963 Happy and Sad - 1975

Novels «Атомният човек» The Atomic Man— 1958 «Помня тази пролет» I Remember This Spring— 1964 «Многото имена на страха» The Many Names of Fear— 1967 «Тежестта на скафандъра» The Weight of the Spacesuit— 1969 «Пътят на Икар» The Path of Icarus— 1974 «Парадоксът на огледалото» The Mirror Paradox— 1976 «Звездните приключения на Нуми и Ники» The Starry Adventures of Niki & Numi — 1980 «Пропуснатият шанс. Из съчиненията на моя компютър» The Missed Chance: From the Works of my Computer — 1981 «Незавършеният роман на една студентка» Unfinished Novel of a Student— 1982 «До Райската планета и назад. Другите приключения на Нуми и Ники» — 1983 «Жестокият експеримент» The Cruel Experiment — 1985 «Библията на Лилит» Lilith's Bible— 1999 «Голямата стъпка» Bigfoot or The Big Step — 1999 «Демонът на Максуел» Maxwell's Demon — 2001 «Да избереш себе си» Choose Yourself — 2002

Short story collections

The Path of Fidelity (1967) Double Star (1969) A Profile of Myself (1977) No Smoking! Fasten Your Seatbelts (1982) Lagrange Point (1983) Even if They Leave (1987) We and the Others (1989) Forward, Humanity! (2017)

Non-fiction «» Pigeons Over Berlin - 1952 «» Impressions from a Planet: Notes of a Science-Fiction Writer 1990 «» For the Dead, Either Good or Funny «» Sex Life Under Totalitariansim «»

In English translation

Dilov's story Contacts of a Fourth Kind was included in the English language multi-writer novel Tales from the Planet Earth. His story “The Stranger” was translated into English in full, and can be found in the book Introduction to modern Bulgarian literature (1969).

The Last Interview of Adam Sousbe, was included in Fantastika: Almanac of Bulgarian Speculative Fiction (2020).

In 2021, the short story "Even if They Leave", translated by Andy Erbschloe, was published by the SFRA Review.