Lyuben Dilov

Lyuben Dilov Ivanov (Любен Дилов Иванов, 25 December 1927- 10 June 2008 ), occasionally spelled Luben Dilov, Ljuben Dilov or Liuben Dilov was a Bulgarian science fiction writer of the Communist era and the author of acclaimed children's fiction and non-fiction works.

Dilov was born in Cherven Bryag, Kingdom of Bulgaria in 1927.

His father was a teacher, journalist and playwright inspired by the Bulgarian Enlightenment and the September Uprising.

Dilov writes of his father: "good in character, impractical, and actively dreamy, probably naive, because so much kindness can not but be naive, all his life he threw himself at being useful to people. As a result, we lived almost like Romani. Throughout the year, we moved with a horse-cart from rental to rental in Sofia, and each time the owners keeping the better part of our luggage because of the unpaid rent. Accordingly, I moved from school to school, so that today I have neither fond memories of that time nor close friends from the school years, which sometimes makes me feel almost like a person without a childhood and without roots."

Dilov attended the school "Neofit Bozveli", where his father was a teacher, in the poverty-stricken "Vasil Levski" quarter of Sofia.

Dilov's two-year old brother died during this time.

"Dilo", Lyuben's father, as an active member of the Bulgarian Agrarian National Union(BZNS), was sent to translate dispatches in Nazi Germany on the party's behalf.

The young family was able to take more luxurious lodgings and Lyuben joined a high school alongside the children of ministers and generals.

Dilov joined his father in Berlin on 25 December 1939, exactly on his twelfth birthday.

As the BZNS was facing persecution in Bulgaria, Dilov's father was compelled to remain in Berlin and create and edit the pro-government Bulgarian newspaper Rodina.

Despite this, Dilov writes that his father was staunchly anti-Nazi, as were the vast majority of the thirty thousand Bulgarians living in Germany at the time.

Dilov writes that the family, during their fifth and final year in Germany, occupied the lavish apartment of an old Jewish millionaire who was hiding himself in the attic and who would come down for tea at night.

The Dilovs evacuated Berlin during the Allied bombing.

Lyuben Dilov's father spent years imprisoned by the newly established Communist government in various concentration camps such as that at Belene Island.

Dilov graduated from high school in Lukovit (1947).

He is the father of Bulgarian politician and screenwriter Lyuben Dilov Jr.., who currently serves in the 49th National Assembly.

He worked as a clerk in the Union of Bulgarian Writers (1953–1957).

In 1954, he graduated from Sofia University, where he specialised in Bulgarian language and literature, part of the People's Republic's first generation of intellectuals.

He started writing as a student, and his first stories were published in Narodna Mladezh (National Youth) newspaper.

Dilov writes of being subject to undue persecution by his teachers and fellow students, on account of his father's political affiliations and his own non-partisanship.

He received the award of the Central Committee of DKMS (1963) for his (non-fiction) story "Boyan Darev's Holiday".

Dilov came to European prominence when he won the Eurocon award for Best Novel for The Path of Icarus (1976).

Arkady Strugatsky considered The Path of Icarus one of the finest socialist-realism novels and a few years later, on his first ever trip abroad, Strugatsky visited Dilov in Bulgaria, spending time at the retreat of the writers' union in Hisarya and inspiring the Dilov story "The Plundered Truth", which is also dedicated to him.

In 1977, Dilov was one of the three editors of Bulgarian Fantasy with Ognyan Saparev and Stanka Pencheva.

Pencheva, when asked why all three were required, answered, "Dilov is the writer, Saparev is the critic, and I am a poet - and the only one who likes SF!"

In 1979, Milan Asadurov founded the Biblioteka Galaktika publishing series and called on Dilov, Agop Melkonyan, Dimitr Peev, Ognyan Saparov, Elka Konstantinov, Svetozar Zlatarov, and Svetoslav Slavchev to serve as the editing staff.

Biblioteka Galaktika, with its iconic spiral emblem and cover art by Tekla Aleksieva, offered the best Bulgarian science fiction and crime writers alongside the giants of the genres including translated works from Frank Herbert, Ursula K. Le Guin, Ray Bradbury, the Strugatskys, Stanislav Lem, Sakyo Komatsu, Pier Paolo Pasolini, etc. Dilov published two books in the series, a short story collection called Double Star (1979) and a reissue of his 1969 novel The Weight of the Spacesuit.

Biblioteka Galaktika won the Eurocon award for Best Publisher in 1983.

Lyuben Dilov was one of the few Bulgarian writers whose post-communism writings have been described as "manuscripts in a drawer", a selective nomen for writings that had been prepared in anticipation of greater artistic freedom after the fall of the Zhivkov regime.

Dilov was a candid critic of the former state of artistic repression in Bulgaria.

In 1990, Dilov created the Graviton Award, the first national recognition for Bulgarian science fiction, and presented the Graviton trophy to one writer and one visual artist (and later, one translator) every year until his death.

The first recipients were writer and editor Agop Melkonyan, a long time colleague of Dilov's, and artist Tekla Aleksieva who, in addition to many other illustrated works, had already created over one hundred covers for the Biblioteka Galaktika series.

Dilov was awarded the Karel Čapek Medal of Honor for Cultural Contribution from the Czech Republic in 1991.

His 1993 memoir For the Dead, Either Good or Funny included a tribute to dissident Georgi Markov, whose name hadn't appeared in state media since his assassination in 1978.

The Association of Bulgarian Writers was founded on 18 February 1994 and Lyuben Dilov was elected its first chairman.

In the last years of his life, a serious illness (Parkinson's) limited his ability to create.

Dilov's work consists of numerous short stories, fairy tales, novellas, short novels, memoirs and other non-fiction which was variously collected and recollected into over 35 books.

Additionally, he authored two popular science fiction novels for young readers, the adventures of two teenage adventurers named Numi and Niki.

Dilov's early work was primarily nonfiction.

His first book, Pigeons Over Berlin was a personal memoir.