was rejected by publishers for the reason that his name was blacklisted. In 1985, this made him move to Moscow. There Nikitin published his fourth book, The Radiant Far Palace, a collection of short science fiction and fantasy stories. During perestroika, when some degree of free enterprise was allowed to Soviet citizens, Nikitin in association with other writers founded “Homeland” (Russian: Отечество), one of the first cooperative publishing companies in the country. He worked as a senior editor there for a while, then established his own private publishing company, “Three-Headed Serpent” (Russian: Змей Горыныч), later re-organized into “Ravlik” (Russian: Равлик). It specialized in English and American SF, almost unknown to the Soviet readers before. Books for translation and publishing were selected by Nikitin from his home library that included over 5,000 SF books in English. As he explained later, “I could prepare a hundred volumes of selected sci-fi works as there was no book in my library that I hadn’t read from cover to cover.” By that time, Nikitin had half a dozen of his own novels written but unpublished. In the USSR, no author was allowed to release more than one book in three years. Another reason that publishers rejected Nikitin's manuscripts was that his protagonists were immortal and happy with it. The Soviet editorial policy was to publish only the works that showed immortality as a terrible and abominable thing; all immortal heroes were expected to repent and commit suicide. In 1992, Nikitin printed the first of those novels, The Three from the Forest, in “Ravlik” – and it was a great success. Each next book of this series became a bestseller. In the late 1990s, Nikitin abandoned his publishing business and focused entirely on writing books. The rights for them were purchased by major publishing houses: at first "Centrpolygraph" (Russian: Центрполиграф), then "Eksmo" (Russian: Эксмо). On March 30, 2014, during the Eksmo Book Festival in Moscow, Nikitin officially confessed his writing Richard Longarms, an epic fantasy novel series ongoing since 2001 with over 7,000,000 copies sold in Russia and other countries, under the pen name of Gaius Julius Orlovsky. Today Nikitin is the author of more than 100 books (including those published under the pen name of Gaius Julius Orlovsky) and one of the most commercially successful Russian writers. Themes “The World of SFF” (Russian: Мир фантастики), the largest and most reputable Russian SFF magazine, writes about