The Power of Thought in Artistic Interpretation of A.R. Belyaev (The Ruler of the World) and S.M. Belyaev (The Radio-Brain)

The science fiction idea about the potentiality for suggesting thoughts and feelings to another man at a distance, affected by electromagnetic waves, plays a key role in the A.R. Belyaev’s novel The Ruler of the World (1926). It is associated with scientific research of this period, in particular, the research of B.B. Kazhinskiy on this and the experiments he did with the group of scientists (that included even the V.M. Bekhterev) in the Durov’s Corner. Belyaev used Kazhinskiy’s and Durov’s works in his novel. In addition, he intentionally gave the main hero, who is the German adventurer and subordinates all the world to himself, a name of the popular philosopher known as a father of anarchic individualism, Stirner. S.M. Belyaev also used the scientific hypotheses of his contemporaries as the basis for making a fictional invention from the novel The Radio-Brain (1928). For the scientific circles’s part, Kazhinskiy gave a special response to that work and wrote an afterword enunciating his own theory in it. It is shown which aspects of the works of both science fiction writers are real and which are fictional, how the episodes of these novels connected with similar science fiction ideas correlate, and to what degree the social problems as a result of suggesting thoughts and feelings against people’s will are reflected there. The review of this phenomena seems current due to popularity of some technologies dealing with psychotronic weapon and artificial intelligence.