Laureates of the International Literary Prize "History of the Future" have been awarded

On November 6, a solemn ceremony was held in Moscow at the Atom interactive Museum at VDNH to award the winners of the first international literary prize in the field of science fiction, The History of the Future. The evening dedicated to the best science fiction writers of the world ended with a loud announcement: the award will become an annual one.

The event brought together prominent figures of culture, science and literature. Among the guests of honor are Andrey Timonov, Director of the Communications Department of Rosatom State Corporation, Andrey Gelasimov, writer and Honored Artist of the Russian Federation, member of the jury; Alexey Varlamov, writer, rector of the Gorky Literary Institute, member of the jury; Albina Mukhametzyanova, CEO of the animation company YARKO, member of the jury; editor-in-chief of the Novy Mir magazine." Andrey Vasilevsky; astronomer, popularizer of science Vladimir Surdin; director of the department "Planet of Childhood" of the publishing house "AST" Sergey Tishkov and editor-in-chief of the publishing house "Alpina. Prose" by Tatiana Solovyova, test cosmonaut Oleg Blinov, and others.

The ceremony was opened by Andrey Timonov, Director of the Communications Department of Rosatom State Corporation. In his welcoming speech, he stressed the importance of the award as a platform for dialogue between science and culture.

"Today we don't just reward writers. We invest in ideas that can change our world tomorrow. Science fiction is a training ground for the mind, where bold hypotheses are born. We have made an important decision to win the second international literary prize in the field of science fiction," he said.

This announcement confirmed the founders' long-term commitment to supporting a genre focused on technological optimism.

The highlight of the first part of the evening was the presentation of a unique study conducted by the VTsIOM analytical center, which acted as a partner of the award. With the help of neural network analysis of the competition entries, a holistic picture of the images of the future created by modern science fiction writers was compiled.

Konstantin Abramov, CEO of the VTsIOM Foundation, presented the key findings: "Our algorithms have read and structured all the submitted papers. We saw that, despite the difference in cultures and geographies, the authors are united by the search for harmony between technological progress and humanity. Their focus is not just on gadgets and spaceships, but on ethical dilemmas, the contact between mind and feelings, and, most importantly, the belief that science and technology should serve for the benefit of man."

The award ceremony was the bright finale of a large-scale competition that brought together science fiction writers from all over the world. The jury selected 27 finalists out of more than 2,400 applications from Russia, Africa, Asia, South America, China and Europe. The total prize fund of the award was 5 million rubles.

Members of the prestigious jury, which included Alexey Varlamov, Stanislav Drobyshevsky, Alexey Semikhatov, Albina Mukhametzyanova, Andrey Vasilevsky, Vladimir Surdin, Yulia Selivanova, Sergey Tishkov and Tatiana Solovyova, rose to the stage of the Atom Museum to present awards and congratulations.

Elena Mironenko, CEO of the ATOM Foundation, presented the finalists of the international nomination. And she addressed the laureates and guests.:

"I would like to thank each of you for being here with us today, because the ATOM Museum has been celebrating its two-year anniversary and its second birthday for a week now. It is very important for us to talk about the future. It is very important that today everything is happening here, on the territory of the museum, which is becoming one of the leading international venues at the intersection of science, on the one hand, and culture, on the other, because writers are, of course, the personification and the whole stratum of any culture. We all talk every day about how our dreams and fantasies turn into reality with the help of nuclear technology."

Andrey Gelasimov, writer, Honored Artist of the Russian Federation, Chairman of the jury of the History of the Future Award, addressed the audience from the stage: "When reviewing the shortlisted stories, I, as a writer and a representative of literature, was interested in how strong the genetic ties of the previous generation of science fiction writers are with the current one. Has the connection of time been broken, how interconnected are the science fiction ideas of modern authors with the works of Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, Ivan Efremov, Alexander Belyaev? Many topics have changed, but at the same time, there is a trend related to the topic of artificial intelligence. In general, the unique feature and tool of fiction is that it provides a vector. He looks ahead, engages in the task of goal setting. And this is, perhaps, the most important thing! Not only in literature, but also in life."

The winners of the international literary prize "History of the Future" in 2025 are:

In the international nomination "Best Short story in a foreign language":

· 1st place: Leonid Airio Marino Murrillo (Colombia) with the short story "The Paradox of Jupiter".

· Second place: Imraan Coovadia (South Africa) with the story "Highly developed, cold and insensitive".

· third place: Walter Tartaglia (Italy) with the short story "The Awakening of Nila".

In the nomination "Best Short story":

· 1st place: Rahim Jafarov with the short story "The Psipatriarch".

· Second place: Alexander Lepekhin with the story "Pies".

· third place: Denis Stolyarov with the story "The Mandela Effect".

In the nomination "The best short story for children and teenagers":

· 1st place: Marina Anitskaya with the story "A Guest from Earth".

· Second place: Alexey Oleinikov with the story "The Christmas Tree on Enceladus".

· third place: Alice Korotovskikh with the story "The False Word".

In addition to the main awards, the award's partners awarded the authors with special prizes. From the portal "GodLiterature.Russian Federation" with the wording "For the letter trail in the digital age", the prize was awarded to Nikolai Pronev, the author of the short story "A Dream in a Digital Night". Yulia Domna received another award from Eksmo publishing house for her short story "The Age of Grasshoppers" with the phrase "For her metaphorical and sensual style, for her unique author's voice."

The award was established by the Atom Foundation with the support of the Rosatom State Corporation. And it was created to search for new talents whose creativity is focused on technological optimism and positive scenarios of the future, where science and progress serve the benefit of humanity. From the very beginning, The History of the Future was conceived as a unique platform blurring the boundaries between scientific thought, literary creativity and the global society of science fiction. In our difficult era, it is fiction that can become a bridge between the accurate calculation of a scientist and the imaginative thinking of a writer. Not just entertaining, but fulfilling the most important task – creating positive prototypes of a possible tomorrow, forcing society to think about the ethical consequences of technological progress. As well as inspiring a new generation of researchers and engineers to implement the most ambitious ideas. And the announcement of the second prize in 2026 was a sure start for a new round of the "History of the Future."