★ Winner of the 2025 Big Book Award for Fiction! A novel that asks whether humanity can bear the weight of its own brilliance, suspended between stars and scaffold.
★ A philosophical science-fiction (or “thought-experiment”) novel, extending the Soviet tradition of “idea-driven” SF while re-drawing the borders of “hard” science with modern psychology (Jung’s collective unconscious) and esotericism.
★ Offers no easy answers; instead it builds a stage for speculation and invites the reader to ponder ultimate questions—much like Bruegel’s painting that gives the book its title.
★ Majestic, heart-stunning, and resonant—recalling the classics of Soviet cosmic literature, those tales of piercing the galactic gloom to follow the star-road.
★ Eduard Verkin—multiple winner of Russia’s Big Book, Yasnaya Polyana, and other major literary prizes—has been translated into German, Polish, French, Finnish, Czech, Serbian, Arabic, Japanese, and more.

Circa 24th century: thanks to scientific breakthroughs humanity has entered the era of “surface utopia.” Disease, ageing, war, and famine are conquered; replicators end material want; “necro-teleportation” (repeated clinical deaths) makes interstellar travel routine. Several exoplanets are settled; parts of Earth have reverted to nature reserves. Yet civilisation suffers spiritual stagnation and yearns for a leap forward.
The Tsiolkovsky Academy is developing “Synchronistic Physics,” a frontier science that may one day grant humans super-powers: shape-shifting, oxygen-free survival, instantaneous (rather than multi-death) travel, future prediction through ideal-state modelling. Its goal is to “tame entropy,” synchronise human consciousness with the cosmos, and bestow near-divine abilities. Oddly, its theoretical foundations interweave with esotericism—tarot, astrology—and for a century and a half it has produced no verifiable progress, devouring colossal resources and sparking fierce controversy.
Protagonist Thomas Yang, an ordinary rescue worker in an Earth nature reserve, is “randomly selected” to sit on the Grand Jury that will decide the fate of Synchronistic Physics. The jury is to convene on planet Regin, home to an institute branch building the “Jahn Drive,” a device existing simultaneously in several dimensions and powered by Jungian flux; whole libraries are being freighted there. The jurors must vote on a collective consciousness jump into the future—an experiment that may bring transcendence or total psychic dissolution. The panel is usually reserved for scientific and philosophical luminaries; what qualifies Yang to hold the destiny of civilisation? Against his family’s wishes he boards a cargo star-ship and meets two fellow jurors—Maria the librarian and Whistler the synchrophysicist—embodying “common citizen,” “guardian of knowledge,” and “scientific elite.” While waiting for the remaining jurors on Regin, they wander the institute, talk, think, and argue, and through their dialogues the novel expounds its themes: humanity’s future, the meaning of life, chosen paths and goals, the price of progress, the aim of evolution, and immortality as the ultimate end. No vote result is given; the focus is on Yang—the “magpie on the gallows”—and his new understanding of civilisation, life, and personal responsibility. Like Bruegel’s painting, the book leaves the reader infinite interpretive space.
The title refers to the 16th-century Dutch painter Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s work: a magpie perched on a village gibbet, serene farmland behind—magpie (chatter, vigilance, vitality) plus gallows (death, authority, repression) form a stark metaphor: even in the harshest order or dead-end, an undaunted observer, rebel, or voice of hope persists. In this utopian future-meadow, humanity still faces the ultimate gibbet—cosmic entropy, evolutionary paradox, existential emptiness. Ordinary Thomas Yang, the magpie, stands on the great scaffold of the jury, observing, questioning, and finally helping to decide. Synchronistic Physics is at once gospel (magpie) and potential self-gallows for civilisation.
Is there room for us in the universe? Is it waiting for us? Can we shoulder the burden of exploring it? To open the galaxy, should we “accelerate” the evolution of the human brain? And if we do, will we still be human? Eduard Verkin explores global experiments on humanity, the fight against ageing, and the evolution of space missions, fusing the depth and anxiety of contemporary psychological essay into a science-fiction text as majestic as the Soviet star-road classics.

【Author】Edward Verkin (Эдуард Веркин)
Born 1975 in Vorkuta; father a miner, mother a pharmacist. 1993: entered the History Faculty of Syktyvkar State University, later added Law. 1998-99: lectured in social studies in a Vorkuta college; overcome by existential doubt, turned to writing. 2003: accepted into the Advanced Literary Workshop of the Gorky Literary Institute on the recommendation of the local writers’ union.

Author of short stories, novellas, and children’s books; hobbies—motorcycles and fishing, now sacrificed to literature. Member of the Russian Writers’ Union, married, two sons. Works translated into German, Polish, French, Finnish, Czech, Serbian, Arabic, Japanese, etc. Multiple finalist and winner of Russia’s Big Book, Yasnaya Polyana, Book Worm, New Horizons, Dream of Fate prizes! Often compared to world classics: Sakhalin Island seen as a response to Chekhov’s non-fiction; YA fiction likened to Krapivin and Bradbury.
- listed on the IBBY Honour List.
- reprinted eight times and included in school “Russian Literature” syllabi.
- won the 2017 New Horizons SF Prize.
-Post-apocalyptic (2018) was Mir Fantastiki magazine’s “Novel of the Year.”
-2023: 1,500-page two-volume reached the Big Book short-list and took third place in the reader poll.
-2025: new novel wins the Big Book Award for Fiction.