Belyayev Fund President Andrei Balabukha (right) and
two associates present one of last year's publisher's prizes.
The human amphibian was one of Alexander Belyayev's more outlandish fantasies which has not yet metamorphosized into being, but the "father of Russian science fiction" made a number of other forecasts about the future which were not so far off the mark.
Belyayev's writings about space travel were influenced by the work of pioneering rocket scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky and he put forward the idea of organ transplantation half a century before Dr Barnard.
The wanderings of Belyayev's imagination must have been some compensation for the disability which rendered him almost permanently bedridden.
He was not physically strong enough to survive the Siege of Leningrad and died in 1942 at the age of 57.
Instead of following socialist dictum and writing about the predetermined "bright future," Belyayev expressed his own views which were not always so optimistic.
His illness probably saved from persecution by the Soviet government.
For those writers who are now living in the space age which Belyayev could only dream about, a prize fund has been established in his honor.
A group of St Petersburg writers created the fund in 1990 for original works and translations of science fiction and fantasy, for non-fiction works of popular science, criticism and publishing in the same genres.
The prizes this year should have been awarded in the summer, as the jury made its decisions in May.
However, new sponsors had to be sought and the prize-giving will instead take place on December 12 in the museum of Pushkin's apartment.
In any country writers are notoriously hard-up, but in Russia the market has been flooded with pirate publications and cheap Western detective novels, so "good literature" has been swamped.
There is a Russian copyright law and a presidential decree which allows literary organizations to pay lower taxes. Enforcing these laws is another matter.
The Belyayev Fund's primary purpose is to reward high-quality work.
The reward is financial, unlike other Russian science fiction prizes.
"Russian writers need money," said the fund's president Andrei Balabukha. "We won't say exactly how much the prizes are worth, but it is nothing by Western standards. They are in the region of $250 each, which gives the winners an opportunity not to think about where their bread is coming from for a month or so."
Both Mr Balabukha and the Belyayev Fund's vice-president, Alexander Bransky, could cite numerous examples of their acquaintances being deceived by Russian publishing companies.
"There are two reasons for this, incompetence and deliberate avoidance of payment," said Mr Bransky. "A translation by one of my friends was published in a collection without his name even on it, and on another occasion a writer was not paid because the publishing company didn't know where to find him."
Sometimes publishing companies produce pirate editions and then simply liquidate themselves and disappear so that no legal action can be taken against them.
The St Petersburg Writers' Union and literary agencies help writers get what they are entitled to.
Mr Balabukha started working on a novel in 1993 about the psychological condition of people in a chemical catastrophe, but he has been unable to finish it because he spends most of his time writing criticism for magazines and translating.
This earns him a maximum of $100 or $150 a month.
"Poets are in the worst situation," said Mr Balabukha, "because poetry is not profitable."
The books which have won this year's Belyayev prizes were chosen because they appeal to a large readership, "not a narrow circle of aesthetes," Mr Balabukha continued.
"The criteria were that the books had to be both marketable and works of art."
The nominees for the prize will not be made public, but Mr Balabukha said that 59 authors were in contention for them this year.
In the categories for criticism and for a non-fiction translation no work was considered worthy of a prize, so extra prizes will be given for original works of science fiction and non-fiction.
Last year's winners included Muscovite Vladimir Mikhailov for his trilogy "Captain Waldemir," St Petersburg's Alexander Shcherbakov for his translation of a Robert Heinlein novel, and the Severo-Zapad publishing house for a series of Russian science fiction books.
The Belyayev Fund is still accepting donations from sponsors, who receive in return an honorary diploma.
The names of sponsors will be read out at the prize-giving ceremony and published in books by the laureates.
The fund's telephone number is 274 6335 and contributions can be made to their current account 700126 in St Petersburg Branch P.C. Avtovazbank MFO 161002/044030863.
Warped minds or just a powerfully different perspective?