RU, UA. Novel, 2006.

Space Opera.

Puppeteer is the first book of the trilogy Oikoumene. The author calls the novel an adventure “Space-Opera” or “Space Symphony.” As of today, the first and second books have been completely translated from Russian into English. The translation of the third book is in progress.

The dynamic plot, remarkable characters, breathtaking adventures, and humanistic and philosophical ideas make this novel popular among its readers.

The novel presents a vision of the distant future. Human races with unusual "energetic abilities" live in the Oikoumene on different planets revolving around different suns. There are spaceships, bio-computers and bio-technologies, newly invented materials, nanotechnologies, virtual reality, travels in hyper-space, plasma- and- ray-guns, powerful "inter-phase" weapons, people with psycho-abilities, etc.

The main character of the novel is Luchano Borgotta. He was born on Borgo, a planet that belongs to Technologists. Luchano is the director of “The Den,” a traveling theatre troupe specializing in contact impersonation. He and his artists are neurodrivers – people who can mentally influence and completely take over the vocal and motor functions of others. The Den performs for clients who pay for this experience as a form of entertainment or as a way to improve certain abilities. Neurodrivers can help a professional orator make an important speech. They can make someone play a role like a professional actor. They can even help someone with a disability move properly.

As a result of a mistake Luchano makes while controlling a powerful client, he is arrested, tried, and convicted of a crime. His punishment is exile on a Pompilian spaceship – the galley of Guy Octavian Tumidus – as a slave. Tumidus controls many slaves who are all "living batteries" and whose energy drives the galley services. Tumidus’s ship raids barbarian planets in order to abduct their inhabitants as slaves. On that planet, Luchano saves Tumidus’s life and helps him return to the galley.

On their way back to the civilized part of the Galaxy, a group of hydras (continuum fluctuations) attacks the spaceship. During the battle with hydras, a fragment of a continuum fluctuation penetrates Luchano's body and mind. As a result, Luchano is endowed with some unusual gifts. He starts receiving visual and auditory information about past and future events.

Because Luchano saved his life, Tumidus changes Luchano’s slave status to "semilibertus" – a half slave and half free-man…

Published 6 times from 2006 to 2019 (Russia).