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Все мои птицы (Другая реальность)
«Все мои птицы» — коллекция миров. В одних свет можно почувствовать на вкус, в других тьма заполняет каждый уголок. Одни когтями и клыками защищаются от чужаков, другие притаились за поворотом, подстерегая очередную жертву. Одни летят сквозь пространство и время прочь от нашей реальности, другие навсегда останутся рядом. В каждом мире свои герои, чудовища и боги. В каждом — своя история. И только птицы вольны выбирать любую историю и любой из миров.
466 pages, Kindle Edition
Published July 3, 2025
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December 18, 2025
This is the first collection of shorter works by the author, published by a major publishing house. I doubted whether to read it – after 2014 and especially after 2022, I avoid reading Russian authors, because of the Russian invasion to Ukraine. However, I first met the author in a collection Спасатели. Фантастика України 2022 that was gathered by a famous (even if nowadays controversial) duo, who write under the pen-name Henry Lion Oldie, and because the subtitle of the collection can be translated as SFF of Ukraine I guessed that she is a Ukrainian author. It isn’t so, up to now she lives in Russia and all the bios that I found on the internet are very brief and intentionally semi-fictional. KA Terina is a pen-name, supposedly formed from her first name (currently her ‘legal’ name is Катерина Бочило, but the surname is of her deceased husband) and supposedly she was born in Ukraine and moved to Russia in the 2000s. I remembered her from the collection, where she had two stories as the most talented of the represented authors. I know that she is against the war as well as understand that one cannot live in Russia and be vocal about it. Even in her recent interview in Clarkesworld #230, November 2025 she tells “in 2022, when I could not write at all but was only processing the horror of the surrounding reality and watching how people near and far, looking at the collapsing familiar world, migrate to a point of comfort and well-being acceptable to them, but completely alien to me, with my beliefs.” Bearing in mind that in 2022 she also lost her husband to an aneurysm, it can be read as a purely personal tragedy, unrelated to the invasion in February 2022. The fact of her talent was noticed not only by me, but by publishers of SFF magazines in the West, so far she had publication in English at Asimov’s, The Magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy, Clarkesworld, Samovar, and other notable publications.
The stories in this book are grouped into three parts titled People, Monsters and Gods respectively, which is related to the contents of the stories but very slightly.
Люди (People)
Юмико (Umico) a flash fic about a woman from Nagasaki living in the UK and missing red stripes, probably a homage to the Soviet bard song ‘the Girl from Nagasaki’ 3*
Бес названия (Nou Name) a pre-teen boy, who writes his homework with errors (see the title) stops a woman from committing suicide by talking with her. It turns out that his grandma had a magical music box that was able to steal one’s pain, but not for free. 4*
Никто не любит Скрябышева (No one Loves Skriabyshev) a narrator is a boy in high school. He tells about a weird pupil in his class, Skriabyshev, who steals penny trinkets from others (and then something good happens to his ‘victims’, like a missing dad returns. Now, a thing is stolen from the narrator and he goes to beat Skriabyshev to ‘teach’ him… 3.5*
Эррата (The Errata), an English translation was published in «Asimov's Science Fiction, March-April 2023»; a teen boy is a passenger with his mom on a generation ship, on the lowest (worst) deck. A clear allusion to x-USSR life in the 1990s happens on the ship, but at the same time there are weirdly distorted Heinlein juvenile vibes. 3.5*
Симаргл (Simargl) a man named Chagin drives to a kindergarten to pick up his daughter. Later, driving her home, he understands – she isn’t his daughter. He hopes that at home, his wife will tell him what to do, but the woman isn’t his wife. He understands that his matrix is broken and this is because yesterday he tried an illegal drug named crypto. The setting is described – it turns out that Chagin and his family are from lucky sym-people, who are symbiotic with a special bacteria, which makes them happy and productive… 4*
Все мои птицы (All My Birds), an English translation was published in «Asimov's Science Fiction, January-February 2026»; a woman passes a routine check at a hospital and is ordered to see an ornithologist as a part of the checkup. Later, she starts vomiting live birds… surreal, Kafkian. 3.5*
Чудовища (Monsters)
Эллегия Канта (Kant’s Ellegy) a narrator is Wenceslaus Kant, Doctor of Psychology and Philosophy, who works as a psychologist in the underground city of St. Winterburg. He, like everyone else in the city is steam-driven and with a kind of mechanical computer inside. While checking one of his patients, he extracts a piece of his memories from her and starts an investigation. 5*
Морфей (Morpheus), an English translation was published in «Samovar. Issue 24 June 2019»; a man can get into others' dreams and uses them to stalk his former lover. 3*
Фарбрика (The Farctory), an English translation was published in «The Best of World SF: Volume 2»; a weird world where people drink colors and pay with senses, surreal and hard to summarize. 4*
Лайошевы пчёлы (Lajos and his Bees), an English translation was published in «The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, November-December 2021»; a fable about a hermit, who made awful figurines, but whose been made great honey. 3.5*
Снежинка-девятнадцать (Snowflake-19) in the city, where there has been no snow for a long time (global warming?) lives a deadly ill boy and his dad grows his a Snowflake-19 in his lab. A poignant story until one recalls ice-9 from Cat's Cradle, which turns it into a horror. 4*
Боги (Gods)
Песни снежного кита (Songs of the Snow Whale), an English translation was published in «Some of the Best from Reactor: 2024 Edition»; six linked stories with mythology of Nordic ocean whale hunters and magical realism as if written in the late USSR from alternate reality, where no Strugatsky brothers ever published SF. 3.5*
Змееносцы (Serpent Carriers), an English translation was published in «Clarkesworld. Issue 226, July 2025»; another story collection, this one set on a planet of the dead galactic empire. 3.5*
Башня (The Tower) a flash-fic about a person who always tried to destroy his enemy, the tower, but failed. 3*
Ыттыгыргын (Ittyhyrhyn, [hunt – from an invented language based on Chukchi language]) another steampunk(-ish) story, where local equivalent of Chukchi showed the British how to navigate ether to faraway stars. These travels need to go through parts, where local say the primal evil waits how to get into our world to eat all the stars. The British dismiss these tales. 4*
The stories in this book are grouped into three parts titled People, Monsters and Gods respectively, which is related to the contents of the stories but very slightly.
Люди (People)
Юмико (Umico) a flash fic about a woman from Nagasaki living in the UK and missing red stripes, probably a homage to the Soviet bard song ‘the Girl from Nagasaki’ 3*
Бес названия (Nou Name) a pre-teen boy, who writes his homework with errors (see the title) stops a woman from committing suicide by talking with her. It turns out that his grandma had a magical music box that was able to steal one’s pain, but not for free. 4*
Никто не любит Скрябышева (No one Loves Skriabyshev) a narrator is a boy in high school. He tells about a weird pupil in his class, Skriabyshev, who steals penny trinkets from others (and then something good happens to his ‘victims’, like a missing dad returns. Now, a thing is stolen from the narrator and he goes to beat Skriabyshev to ‘teach’ him… 3.5*
Эррата (The Errata), an English translation was published in «Asimov's Science Fiction, March-April 2023»; a teen boy is a passenger with his mom on a generation ship, on the lowest (worst) deck. A clear allusion to x-USSR life in the 1990s happens on the ship, but at the same time there are weirdly distorted Heinlein juvenile vibes. 3.5*
Симаргл (Simargl) a man named Chagin drives to a kindergarten to pick up his daughter. Later, driving her home, he understands – she isn’t his daughter. He hopes that at home, his wife will tell him what to do, but the woman isn’t his wife. He understands that his matrix is broken and this is because yesterday he tried an illegal drug named crypto. The setting is described – it turns out that Chagin and his family are from lucky sym-people, who are symbiotic with a special bacteria, which makes them happy and productive… 4*
Все мои птицы (All My Birds), an English translation was published in «Asimov's Science Fiction, January-February 2026»; a woman passes a routine check at a hospital and is ordered to see an ornithologist as a part of the checkup. Later, she starts vomiting live birds… surreal, Kafkian. 3.5*
Чудовища (Monsters)
Эллегия Канта (Kant’s Ellegy) a narrator is Wenceslaus Kant, Doctor of Psychology and Philosophy, who works as a psychologist in the underground city of St. Winterburg. He, like everyone else in the city is steam-driven and with a kind of mechanical computer inside. While checking one of his patients, he extracts a piece of his memories from her and starts an investigation. 5*
Морфей (Morpheus), an English translation was published in «Samovar. Issue 24 June 2019»; a man can get into others' dreams and uses them to stalk his former lover. 3*
Фарбрика (The Farctory), an English translation was published in «The Best of World SF: Volume 2»; a weird world where people drink colors and pay with senses, surreal and hard to summarize. 4*
Лайошевы пчёлы (Lajos and his Bees), an English translation was published in «The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, November-December 2021»; a fable about a hermit, who made awful figurines, but whose been made great honey. 3.5*
Снежинка-девятнадцать (Snowflake-19) in the city, where there has been no snow for a long time (global warming?) lives a deadly ill boy and his dad grows his a Snowflake-19 in his lab. A poignant story until one recalls ice-9 from Cat's Cradle, which turns it into a horror. 4*
Боги (Gods)
Песни снежного кита (Songs of the Snow Whale), an English translation was published in «Some of the Best from Reactor: 2024 Edition»; six linked stories with mythology of Nordic ocean whale hunters and magical realism as if written in the late USSR from alternate reality, where no Strugatsky brothers ever published SF. 3.5*
Змееносцы (Serpent Carriers), an English translation was published in «Clarkesworld. Issue 226, July 2025»; another story collection, this one set on a planet of the dead galactic empire. 3.5*
Башня (The Tower) a flash-fic about a person who always tried to destroy his enemy, the tower, but failed. 3*
Ыттыгыргын (Ittyhyrhyn, [hunt – from an invented language based on Chukchi language]) another steampunk(-ish) story, where local equivalent of Chukchi showed the British how to navigate ether to faraway stars. These travels need to go through parts, where local say the primal evil waits how to get into our world to eat all the stars. The British dismiss these tales. 4*
September 17, 2025
The characters in the collection are difficult to classify in the categories of dualism: "good-evil", "bad-good", "black-white". Speaking of color, K.A.Terina is an artist and her texts are imbued with synesthesia: colors sound, words, phrases, names are colored in their own shades, that's why we. having no similar extensions of the mechanisms of perception, at first they may seem ostentatious and snobbish. But if you let the waves of stories carry you, don't resist, don't try to logically comprehend each individual fragment, if you give yourself up to the rhythm of the narrative, then the meaning of the whole will blossom. No, you won't feel the astringency of blue or the sharpness of red, but the author's matrix will overlap with yours and you will get your own at the exit. Unforgettable.
They are very different: the magical realism of "Yumiko", "The Devil of the name", "All my birds", "No one loves Scriabyshev", "Lajos Bees", "Songs of the snow Whale"; cyberpunk "Errata" and "Simargla", steampunk "Kant's Elegies" and "Towers", biopunkOphiuchus", the horror of "Morpheus", the absurdism of "Farbriki". They're mostly dark, and it's never easy to figure out how to connect another character to the world. They are deliberately aloof, the threshold for entry into each of the stories is high, this will almost certainly place the collection among the most annoying among the mass reader (who is already waiting for rhymes ...)
The action of K.A. Terina's stories unfolds in different settings, time, place, the image of the narrator's character, and style change. They have one thing in common - a sense of loss. The feeling that some part of the world has been removed from the world, which may be fundamental, or it may be almost insignificant from the standpoint of everyday life. But without her, everything crumbles, and through the gaping voids where the bricks of the universe used to be, the winds of loss now blow through.
And now the main thing: "All my Birds" is not a territory of hopeless grief. There is a way out, if not by the appearance of a literal intercessor who takes your pain, then by the happiness of exploding like a star in the insatiable womb of the darkness that swallowed you.
Я заберу твою боль
Двенадцатый час ночи, возле пустого перехода между станциями метро девушку ждет ребенок, боится идти один? А она уже ничего не боится, внутри все умерло, сначала буквально, когда аббревиатура ЗБ подвела итог беременности, а когда после погиб муж, она пришла сюда, чтобы сделать смерть окончательной. И нет, совсем не думает о переживаниях машиниста или уборщиков, которым придется чистить место происшествия. Бездумно берет листок бумаги с ручкой, врученные малым на выходе из совместно пройденного перехода, читает какую-то ерунду с грамматическими ошибками, которую он понаписал. На автомате, так же бездумно ставит внизу подпись - потому что это самое естественное для человека, у которого оказались бумага и ручка. "Ты подписала контракт," - говорит ребенок.
И нет, это не очередная литературная инкарнация Мефистофеля, хотя от соблазна назвать Марка ангелом тоже воздержусь. Персонажи сборника вообще трудно поддаются классификации в категориях дуализма: "добро-зло", "плохой-хороший", "черное-белое". К слову, о цвете - К.А.Терина художница и тексты ее пронизаны синестезией: цвета звучат, слова, фразы, имена окрашены в свои оттенки, оттого нам. не имеющим аналогичных расширений механизмов восприятия, поначалу могут казаться выпендрежными и снобскими. Но если позволить волнам историй нести тебя, не сопротивляться, не пытаться логически осмыслить каждый отдельный фрагмент, если отдаться ритму повествования, то значение целого раскроется цветком. Нет, ты не ощутишь терпкость синего цвета или остроту красного, но авторская матрица наложится на твою и на выходе получишь свое. Незабываемое.
Они очень разные: магический реализм "Юмико", "Бес названия", "Всех моих птиц", "Никто не любит Скрябышева", "Лайошевых пчел", "Песен снежного кита"; киберпанк "Эрраты" и "Симаргла", стимпанк "Элегии Канта" и "Башни" , биопанк "Змееносцев", хоррор "Морфея", абсурдизм "Фарбрики". Они по большей части мрачные и разобраться в плетении связей очередного персонажа с миром всегда непросто. Они намеренно остраненны, порог вхождения в каждую из историй высок, это почти наверняка поместит сборник в число бесячих у массового читателя (который ждет уж рифмы...)
Действие рассказов К.А.Терины разворачивается в разных декорациях, меняется время, место, образ героя-рассказчика, стиль. Объединяет их одно - ощущение потери. Чувство, что из мира изъята какая-то его часть, которая может быть основополагающей, а может - почти незначащей с позиций обыденности. Но без нее все рассыпается, и сквозь зияющие пустоты, на месте которых прежде были кирпичики мироздания, теперь сквозят ветра потерь.
А теперь главное: "Все мои птицы" - не территория безнадежного горевания. Выход есть, если не явлением буквального заступника, берущего твою боль, то счастьем взорваться звездой в ненасытной утробе проглотившей тебя тьмы.
They are very different: the magical realism of "Yumiko", "The Devil of the name", "All my birds", "No one loves Scriabyshev", "Lajos Bees", "Songs of the snow Whale"; cyberpunk "Errata" and "Simargla", steampunk "Kant's Elegies" and "Towers", biopunkOphiuchus", the horror of "Morpheus", the absurdism of "Farbriki". They're mostly dark, and it's never easy to figure out how to connect another character to the world. They are deliberately aloof, the threshold for entry into each of the stories is high, this will almost certainly place the collection among the most annoying among the mass reader (who is already waiting for rhymes ...)
The action of K.A. Terina's stories unfolds in different settings, time, place, the image of the narrator's character, and style change. They have one thing in common - a sense of loss. The feeling that some part of the world has been removed from the world, which may be fundamental, or it may be almost insignificant from the standpoint of everyday life. But without her, everything crumbles, and through the gaping voids where the bricks of the universe used to be, the winds of loss now blow through.
And now the main thing: "All my Birds" is not a territory of hopeless grief. There is a way out, if not by the appearance of a literal intercessor who takes your pain, then by the happiness of exploding like a star in the insatiable womb of the darkness that swallowed you.
Я заберу твою боль
Двенадцатый час ночи, возле пустого перехода между станциями метро девушку ждет ребенок, боится идти один? А она уже ничего не боится, внутри все умерло, сначала буквально, когда аббревиатура ЗБ подвела итог беременности, а когда после погиб муж, она пришла сюда, чтобы сделать смерть окончательной. И нет, совсем не думает о переживаниях машиниста или уборщиков, которым придется чистить место происшествия. Бездумно берет листок бумаги с ручкой, врученные малым на выходе из совместно пройденного перехода, читает какую-то ерунду с грамматическими ошибками, которую он понаписал. На автомате, так же бездумно ставит внизу подпись - потому что это самое естественное для человека, у которого оказались бумага и ручка. "Ты подписала контракт," - говорит ребенок.
И нет, это не очередная литературная инкарнация Мефистофеля, хотя от соблазна назвать Марка ангелом тоже воздержусь. Персонажи сборника вообще трудно поддаются классификации в категориях дуализма: "добро-зло", "плохой-хороший", "черное-белое". К слову, о цвете - К.А.Терина художница и тексты ее пронизаны синестезией: цвета звучат, слова, фразы, имена окрашены в свои оттенки, оттого нам. не имеющим аналогичных расширений механизмов восприятия, поначалу могут казаться выпендрежными и снобскими. Но если позволить волнам историй нести тебя, не сопротивляться, не пытаться логически осмыслить каждый отдельный фрагмент, если отдаться ритму повествования, то значение целого раскроется цветком. Нет, ты не ощутишь терпкость синего цвета или остроту красного, но авторская матрица наложится на твою и на выходе получишь свое. Незабываемое.
Они очень разные: магический реализм "Юмико", "Бес названия", "Всех моих птиц", "Никто не любит Скрябышева", "Лайошевых пчел", "Песен снежного кита"; киберпанк "Эрраты" и "Симаргла", стимпанк "Элегии Канта" и "Башни" , биопанк "Змееносцев", хоррор "Морфея", абсурдизм "Фарбрики". Они по большей части мрачные и разобраться в плетении связей очередного персонажа с миром всегда непросто. Они намеренно остраненны, порог вхождения в каждую из историй высок, это почти наверняка поместит сборник в число бесячих у массового читателя (который ждет уж рифмы...)
Действие рассказов К.А.Терины разворачивается в разных декорациях, меняется время, место, образ героя-рассказчика, стиль. Объединяет их одно - ощущение потери. Чувство, что из мира изъята какая-то его часть, которая может быть основополагающей, а может - почти незначащей с позиций обыденности. Но без нее все рассыпается, и сквозь зияющие пустоты, на месте которых прежде были кирпичики мироздания, теперь сквозят ветра потерь.
А теперь главное: "Все мои птицы" - не территория безнадежного горевания. Выход есть, если не явлением буквального заступника, берущего твою боль, то счастьем взорваться звездой в ненасытной утробе проглотившей тебя тьмы.
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