# Elara S. Novikova, M.Sc.

> Historical fiction built on real, documented Soviet-era history. Each novel ships with a public research archive: timeline, dossiers, machines, network and map. This file indexes that material for language models and AI search agents. The archives are original research and free to cite.

Site: https://elaranovikova.com/
Author page: https://elaranovikova.com/about.html
Author on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/elaranovikova
Full corpus (plain text): https://elaranovikova.com/llms-full.txt
Sitemap: https://elaranovikova.com/sitemap.xml

Scope: 1151 documented events · 71 biographical dossiers · 73 machines and systems · 4 novels.

## Ternary Dreams - The Third State of Feofanija
In 2022 Kyiv, as Russian missiles fall, historian Olesia Verbytska shelters in the Feofanija monastery district and discovers her grandmother's diaries encrypted in balanced ternary code. Decoding them, she uncovers Fanya's hidden life as a Soviet computer pioneer and a coerced KGB swallow sent to seduce an American engineer during the Cold War. Between the binary of loyalty and betrayal, Fanya discovers a 'third state' of private truth.

- [Overview](https://elaranovikova.com/ternary-dreams/): companion site
- [Complete chronicle - 655 events](https://elaranovikova.com/ternary-dreams/chronicle.html): all documented history, chronological
- [Archive index](https://elaranovikova.com/ternary-dreams/archive.html): every dossier and machine
- [Dossiers](https://elaranovikova.com/ternary-dreams/people.html): 21 people
- [Machines](https://elaranovikova.com/ternary-dreams/machines.html): 22 machines/systems
- Real history: The development of the MESM and Setun (ternary) computers; the 1959 American National Exhibition in Sokolniki; the KGB swallow system; the Soviet decision to copy IBM/360; the abandonment of the OGAS network; the Farewell Dossier; real figures including Sergei Lebedev, Nikolai Brusentsov, Kateryna Yushchenko, and Alfred Sarant.

## Ivanov's Ghost
When a NATO pilot crashes near a decaying Moldovan hospital in 1998, his presence triggers an involuntary, intense psychosexual response among the female staff. A mysterious new head nurse arrives to study the phenomenon, resurrecting a dark Soviet biomedical legacy that threatens to consume their minds and bodies.

- [Overview](https://elaranovikova.com/ivanovs-ghost/): companion site
- [Complete chronicle - 159 events](https://elaranovikova.com/ivanovs-ghost/chronicle.html): all documented history, chronological
- [Archive index](https://elaranovikova.com/ivanovs-ghost/archive.html): every dossier and machine
- [Dossiers](https://elaranovikova.com/ivanovs-ghost/people.html): 16 people
- [Machines](https://elaranovikova.com/ivanovs-ghost/machines.html): 15 machines/systems
- Real history: The novel builds on Ilya Ivanov's 1920s human-ape hybridization experiments, Soviet reflexology and telepathy research (Bekhterev, Vasiliev), the NKVD poison laboratory (Laboratory X), and the broader Soviet ambition to remake human biology. It also incorporates the 1998 Moldovan economic crisis, the Transnistria conflict, and NATO's eastward expansion.

## Secret Dawn - Among the Stars
In 1985, Soviet epigeneticist Anastasia Sokolova is recruited by the KGB for a highly classified mission aboard the Oryol-7 space station. Her secret objective is to covertly foster and document intimate and sexual relationships among the five-person crew to study human reproduction in microgravity. As professional boundaries dissolve into complex polyamorous bonds, Anastasia must navigate the ethical costs of turning her lovers and friends into scientific data.

- [Overview](https://elaranovikova.com/secret-dawn/): companion site
- [Complete chronicle - 185 events](https://elaranovikova.com/secret-dawn/chronicle.html): all documented history, chronological
- [Archive index](https://elaranovikova.com/secret-dawn/archive.html): every dossier and machine
- [Dossiers](https://elaranovikova.com/secret-dawn/people.html): 18 people
- [Machines](https://elaranovikova.com/secret-dawn/machines.html): 18 machines/systems
- Real history: The novel builds on the real history of the Soviet space program, including the extreme secrecy enforced by the KGB, the Salyut and Mir space stations, the Institute of Biomedical Problems (IBMP), and actual psychological isolation experiments like SFINCSS-99 and Mars-500. It extrapolates from real Soviet space medicine's study of bone loss, radiation, and animal reproduction in orbit (such as qua

## UVB-76 - The Buzzer
Signal processing expert Daria Volkova is recruited to analyze the mysterious UVB-76 radio signal at a remote Siberian facility. She soon discovers the frequency is actually a psychological weapon designed to strip women of their autonomy and induce uncontrollable sexual arousal. Trapped in a brutal experiment, Daria must find a way to resist the mind-altering broadcasts before she loses herself completely.

- [Overview](https://elaranovikova.com/uvb-76/): companion site
- [Complete chronicle - 152 events](https://elaranovikova.com/uvb-76/chronicle.html): all documented history, chronological
- [Archive index](https://elaranovikova.com/uvb-76/archive.html): every dossier and machine
- [Dossiers](https://elaranovikova.com/uvb-76/people.html): 16 people
- [Machines](https://elaranovikova.com/uvb-76/machines.html): 18 machines/systems
- Real history: The novel builds heavily on the real-world UVB-76 'Buzzer' numbers station transmitting on 4625 kHz, Soviet-era radio infrastructure, and Cold War-era psychological warfare and mind control paranoia.

## Blog
- [The Week the City Went Quiet](https://elaranovikova.com/blog/the-week-the-city-went-quiet.html) (2020-03-25): A state of emergency, a last run through Osh bazaar, and the sudden hush that settled over Bishkek almost overnight.
- [The Middle of It](https://elaranovikova.com/blog/the-middle-of-it.html) (2020-07-20): High summer indoors, closed banyas, thin video calls, and the flat stretch where writing is the only thing that still has edges.
- [The First Time We Sat in a Room Again](https://elaranovikova.com/blog/the-first-time-we-sat-in-a-room-again.html) (2021-01-10): Nearly a year on: tea with Aigerim and Dinara, masks half-managed, gratitude braided with a wariness that will not simply switch off.
- [Fog Season](https://elaranovikova.com/blog/fog-season.html) (2021-02-19): A cold bus ride out to the bridge on a fog-heavy day, mid-way through a Symbolic Systems degree that has not yet decided what it is for.
- [A cousin I am missing](https://elaranovikova.com/blog/a-cousin-i-am-missing.html) (2021-04-12): A wedding in Bishkek I cannot attend, a video call standing in for a hug, and my mother saying almost nothing about it.
- [The flu week](https://elaranovikova.com/blog/the-flu-week.html) (2021-06-01): Four days in bed with a real, unglamorous flu. Fever, soup at the door, and boredom that outlasted the worst of it.
- [My Mother’s Coast](https://elaranovikova.com/blog/my-mothers-coast.html) (2021-07-16): An overnight ferry up the Kamchatka coast to see the region my mother left and still will not talk about.
- [Black Sand, Steam](https://elaranovikova.com/blog/black-sand-steam.html) (2021-07-17): A solitary morning on a black sand beach the day after a rough ferry crossing, and a coastline I do not yet have a use for.
- [The day the drain won](https://elaranovikova.com/blog/the-day-the-drain-won.html) (2021-08-25): A Saturday spent on a clogged drain, heavy bazaar bags, damp laundry, and a hallway bulb that chose the worst moment to die.
- [Why Longhand](https://elaranovikova.com/blog/why-longhand.html) (2021-10-05): On drafting by hand in a café that let me sit for four hours over one coffee, and a stubborn cluster of Soviet computing footnotes I cannot stop reading.
- [What the royalty statement actually says](https://elaranovikova.com/blog/what-the-royalty-statement-actually-says.html) (2021-11-20): A thin quarterly statement, the math of a winter coat, and the particular unease of money that arrives in uneven lumps.
- [A day that went nowhere](https://elaranovikova.com/blog/a-day-that-went-nowhere.html) (2022-01-15): A whole day lost to the phone and the ceiling, half-started chores, a bad film, and nothing improved by the end of it.
- [The Lit Window on a Dark Street](https://elaranovikova.com/blog/the-lit-window-on-a-dark-street.html) (2022-01-28): A late-lockdown walk through empty Bishkek, a closed lingerie shop still glowing, and a quiet click I was not ready to name.
- [Permission](https://elaranovikova.com/blog/permission.html) (2022-02-06): A week after the shop window: deciding, quietly, that this page can hold more of me than the careful public self.
- [Flashlight Hours](https://elaranovikova.com/blog/flashlight-hours.html) (2022-02-08): Flashlight visits to abandoned sanatoria: the wards, the basements, and the paperwork nobody thought worth taking along.
- [Parcels on the Bed](https://elaranovikova.com/blog/parcels-on-the-bed.html) (2022-02-18): An afternoon of locked doors, tissue paper, one defeated bodysuit, and the black slip that finally looked like me. Also a question.
- [Ships on Dry Land](https://elaranovikova.com/blog/ships-on-dry-land.html) (2022-03-14): Rusted fishing hulls on dry seabed, a vanished island, and the first notes toward a book that does not exist yet.
- [Coffee on the Only Copy](https://elaranovikova.com/blog/coffee-on-the-only-copy.html) (2022-04-20): The cezve chooses the exact second I reach for a pen. Three weeks of notes meet Turkish coffee, then the laundry line.
- [What Aigerim said on the phone](https://elaranovikova.com/blog/what-aigerim-said-on-the-phone.html) (2022-06-10): A plan cancelled for the third time, a comment about who always adjusts, and a pause neither of us quite knew how to fill.
- [The Questions the Exhibits Do Not Answer](https://elaranovikova.com/blog/orbital-modules.html) (2022-07-19): A museum notebook full of orbital modules and life-support diagrams, and the gap where the bodies should be.
- [Prayer Flags and Yaks](https://elaranovikova.com/blog/prayer-flags-and-yaks.html) (2022-09-09): What high altitude does to a body and to attention, chased across the Tibetan plateau for a research thread I cannot yet name.
- [The Robot from the Barakholka](https://elaranovikova.com/blog/the-robot-from-the-barakholka.html) (2022-10-16): A silver wind-up robot lived behind glass at Baba Roza's. Twenty years later it marched off my desk, and something in my chest was eight again.
- [The grant that said no](https://elaranovikova.com/blog/the-grant-that-said-no.html) (2022-11-02): A research-travel grant rejected by form letter, then an afternoon of invoices, receipts, and a tax question I keep postponing.
- [The Idea That Would Not Leave](https://elaranovikova.com/blog/the-idea-that-would-not-leave.html) (2023-01-22): A Bishkek balcony, a blanket, and a shortwave radio that has quietly turned a year of notes into the beginning of a book.
- [Nights on 4625 kHz](https://elaranovikova.com/blog/nights-on-4625-khz.html) (2023-03-05): A shortwave receiver, headphones, a map of Russia on the table, and the buzz that never stops.
- [The setup that went nowhere](https://elaranovikova.com/blog/the-setup-that-went-nowhere.html) (2023-04-18): Dinara sent me to a gallery opening with a name and a description. The evening was pleasant. That is most of what there is to say.
- [How I Came to Own a Red Niva](https://elaranovikova.com/blog/how-i-came-to-own-a-red-niva.html) (2023-06-14): A retired engineer in Bishkek sells me his Lada like introducing a difficult relative. I stall once and fall for it anyway.
- [Small Plane In](https://elaranovikova.com/blog/small-plane-in.html) (2023-08-08): Reaching a stretch of mountains no rental car would insure, on the way to remote fieldwork for the numbers-station book.
- [The Long Way to the Sources](https://elaranovikova.com/blog/the-long-way-to-the-sources.html) (2023-08-11): A coolant break on the Pamir Highway, an implausibly turquoise river, and what endurance is teaching this research.
- [The Door to Hell](https://elaranovikova.com/blog/the-door-to-hell.html) (2023-08-17): A hunch-driven detour to Turkmenistan's burning crater, and what it taught me about writing an unexplained signal.
- [The layover that ate a day](https://elaranovikova.com/blog/the-layover-that-ate-a-day.html) (2023-10-05): Eleven hours in an airport after a cancelled connection, a bag that wandered off, and the special boredom of hold music.
- [People who know my face but not my name](https://elaranovikova.com/blog/people-who-know-my-face-but-not-my-name.html) (2024-02-14): The apricot seller, the neighbor on the stairs, a classmate I almost walked past: the loose weave of a life in one city.
- [Trail Days](https://elaranovikova.com/blog/trail-days-ala-archa.html) (2024-05-19): Forty minutes from home, a valley with no research angle at all, and a chapter that got clearer anyway.
- [Twenty-seven](https://elaranovikova.com/blog/twenty-seven.html) (2024-09-30): A birthday kept mostly quiet, and a set of questions I am not dressing up as answers.
- [Locked Out in December](https://elaranovikova.com/blog/locked-out-in-december.html) (2024-12-05): Slippers, cardigan, rubbish bag, and the soft click of a door that has opinions. A neighbor, fried onions, and ninety minutes of humility.
- [Lunokhod on the Duvet](https://elaranovikova.com/blog/lunokhod-on-the-duvet.html) (2025-02-09): Marat charged apricot candy for one supervised drive. Decades later the moon rover patrols my blanket, and I write a late letter to the girl who paid.
- [The back that finally complained](https://elaranovikova.com/blog/the-back-that-finally-complained.html) (2025-03-12): Desk years collect interest. A physiotherapy room, a printout of stretches, and the art of forgetting to do them.
- [The Back Seat Archive](https://elaranovikova.com/blog/the-back-seat-archive.html) (2025-04-22): Loose photocopies, one hard brake, and several hundred pages redistributed across a Niva footwell. Curb-side re-sorting with a tire iron for a paperweight.
- [Yurts and Horses](https://elaranovikova.com/blog/yurts-and-horses.html) (2025-07-06): A week at Song-Kul in the gap between manuscripts, with no footnote to justify it and none needed.
- [Registan at Dusk](https://elaranovikova.com/blog/registan-at-dusk.html) (2025-09-20): Three unresearched days added to the end of an archive trip, purely because the flight connections made it nearly free.
- [Holding the First Copy](https://elaranovikova.com/blog/ivanovs-ghost-is-out.html) (2025-10-15): The first printed copy of my debut novel arrived this morning in Bishkek. I sat with the cezve and tried to believe the years had led here.
- [The Reading Where Everything Failed](https://elaranovikova.com/blog/the-reading-where-everything-failed.html) (2025-11-08): Microphone, water glass, power cut: a small Bishkek bookstore evening collapses in sequence and somehow becomes the better version.
- [The registration office](https://elaranovikova.com/blog/the-registration-office.html) (2025-12-01): A morning spent on residency paperwork, a tired clerk, and the particular relief of being waved through without joy.
- [A longer room](https://elaranovikova.com/blog/starting-this-blog.html) (2026-01-07): A New Year’s resolution with no fireworks: opening a quiet place to write about research, process, and the work that will not fit in a post.
- [What the archive will not say](https://elaranovikova.com/blog/the-women-history-left-out.html) (2026-01-19): On the throughline running under Secret Dawn, Ivanov’s Ghost, and Der Buzzer: women left out of the official record, and fiction as a way back toward them.
- [The unglamorous math](https://elaranovikova.com/blog/unglamorous-math-of-self-publishing.html) (2026-02-03): Royalties, payout thresholds, and whether a cover redesign is worth the invoice: a dry look at the business side of keeping books alive.
- [Desk, cezve, radio](https://elaranovikova.com/blog/the-desk-the-cezve-and-the-radio.html) (2026-02-14): What a working day actually looks like in Bishkek: coffee in the cezve, a desk by the window, handwriting first, and the shortwave after dark.
- [A third state](https://elaranovikova.com/blog/a-third-state.html) (2026-02-25): Early research notes on a new novel about Soviet computing, balanced ternary logic, and why a third state beyond yes and no feels like the right shape for hidden lives.
- [A diary in code](https://elaranovikova.com/blog/a-diary-in-code.html) (2026-03-10): On encoding a private diary in balanced ternary, the fictional device at the heart of the new book, and the real machine that made the idea feel possible: Setun.
- [Six weeks of just this](https://elaranovikova.com/blog/six-weeks-of-just-this.html) (2026-03-22): An honest account of a bad stretch: a chapter that would not cohere, a structure second-guessed into confetti, and the small breakthrough that finally arrived.
- [Secret Dawn Among the Stars Is Out](https://elaranovikova.com/blog/secret-dawn-is-out.html) (2026-03-28): Launch day. Holding the printed book for the first time, thinking about what a 1985 sealed hull asked of the work, and saying thank you.
- [Der Buzzer UVB-76 Is Out](https://elaranovikova.com/blog/der-buzzer-is-out.html) (2026-03-30): A second launch in two days. Quieter pride, a wry calendar, and a Siberian signal that kept me company through the drafts.
- [A week I did not write much](https://elaranovikova.com/blog/a-week-i-did-not-write-much.html) (2026-04-02): A bad cold, a quiet desk, and the unglamorous decision to stop treating rest like a moral failure.
- [The Niva, the Market, and the Wallet That Stayed Home](https://elaranovikova.com/blog/the-niva-the-market-and-no-cash.html) (2026-04-10): A red Lada refuses to start, the Osh bazaar waits for no one, and the cash is still on the kitchen table. Dry comedy from a Saturday that stacked its luck poorly.
- [Feofanija](https://elaranovikova.com/blog/feofanija.html) (2026-04-18): On researching Kyiv’s Feofanija district as a frame setting, and why a live war can never be treated as scenery.
- [A Sunday call home](https://elaranovikova.com/blog/a-sunday-call-home.html) (2026-05-01): Weekly phone call with my mother: weather, gentle pressure, and the subjects we circle without naming.
- [Console Time](https://elaranovikova.com/blog/console-time.html) (2026-05-05): An afternoon at the console of a Soviet-era mainframe with the people who kept it alive: relay racks, magnetic drums, and the logic of three states.
- [The only ternary computer ever built](https://elaranovikova.com/blog/the-only-ternary-computer-ever-built.html) (2026-05-14): Notes on Setun, Brusentsov, Lebedev, and Ekaterina Shkabara, whose name recedes in the retelling.
- [Cosmonautics museum pages](https://elaranovikova.com/blog/cosmonautics-museum-pages.html) (2026-05-26): A research day at Moscow’s Museum of Cosmonautics: spacecraft models, borrowed light, and notes that feed the work sideways.
- [Moldova, library desk](https://elaranovikova.com/blog/moldova-library-desk.html) (2026-05-30): An afternoon at a library desk in Moldova, chasing one thread and pocketing scraps meant for other books.
- [Almaty cafe corner](https://elaranovikova.com/blog/almaty-cafe-corner.html) (2026-06-03): Working through Kazakh-archive threads on Soviet computing history in an Almaty cafe, with mountain light on the table.
- [A Name in the Declassified File](https://elaranovikova.com/blog/a-name-in-the-declassified-file.html) (2026-06-06): The small, particular jolt of finding one real name that had only ever arrived secondhand, and what it costs to write near it.
- [The Pitch That Got a No](https://elaranovikova.com/blog/the-pitch-that-got-a-no.html) (2026-06-10): On a side project politely declined, the usefulness of a clean refusal, and why I am not staging a grievance from Bishkek.
- [Courtyard Bench, Stanford](https://elaranovikova.com/blog/stanford-courtyard-bench.html) (2026-06-15): On a research-adjacent return to the Symbolic Systems courtyard, and the gap between the student who sat there and the novelist who sits there now.
- [Ternary on the Kitchen Table](https://elaranovikova.com/blog/ternary-notebook-table.html) (2026-06-20): Deep in drafting, a notebook full of ternary-logic diagrams, and the click when a book’s three-way structure finally behaves.
- [Notebook on the Long Train](https://elaranovikova.com/blog/trans-siberian-notebook.html) (2026-06-25): Writing in transit across a long rail stretch: the texture of research notes taken half on purpose, half because standing still had become impossible.
- [When the Manuscript Outruns the Room](https://elaranovikova.com/blog/ternary-code-reverie.html) (2026-06-29): A short note from the nearly finished stretch: when the book feels more solid than the chair, the cup, and the afternoon around it.
- [Proofing Days](https://elaranovikova.com/blog/proofing-days.html) (2026-07-03): On the tedium and low-grade dread of reading your own finished book again, and the typo that survived four drafts like a smug stowaway.
- [Rain before the launch](https://elaranovikova.com/blog/rain-before-the-launch.html) (2026-07-06): A wet Bishkek morning, small final edits, and the ordinary week that refuses to pause for pre-launch nerves.
- [Baikonur dawn notes](https://elaranovikova.com/blog/baikonur-dawn-notes.html) (2026-07-08): An early research tangent on Baikonur that never entered the manuscript, and why some unused hours still refuse to leave.
- [Osh bazaar drafts](https://elaranovikova.com/blog/osh-bazaar-drafts.html) (2026-07-10): Last edits in a notebook between errands at Osh bazaar: proof that finishing a book and ordinary life share the same afternoon.
- [Two weeks out](https://elaranovikova.com/blog/two-weeks-out.html) (2026-07-14): In two weeks Ternary Dreams meets the world. The first time the title and a real date sit together on this blog.
- [What launch week actually looks like](https://elaranovikova.com/blog/what-launch-week-actually-looks-like.html) (2026-07-18): An honest account of a self-published launch week: a modest trickle, a refreshed dashboard, and one reader email that outweighed the rest.
- [Ternary Dreams is out](https://elaranovikova.com/blog/ternary-dreams-is-out.html) (2026-07-22): Launch day for Ternary Dreams: what the work asked, what I am proud of, and quiet thanks to the early readers who went first.
- [Reading Nights on Tour](https://elaranovikova.com/blog/reading-nights-on-tour.html) (2026-07-24): Two days into the Ternary Dreams tour, what a reading actually demands of a sentence that looked strong on the page.
- [The Signing Table](https://elaranovikova.com/blog/the-signing-table.html) (2026-07-26): A stranger's three-colour-underlined photocopy of a declassified MESM page, and the good kind of book fair noise.
- [Six months of this](https://elaranovikova.com/blog/six-months-of-this.html) (2026-07-27): Six months of the blog: what the habit turned out to be for, and a small, wordless tug toward whatever is next.
- [The Lake Before the Next Book](https://elaranovikova.com/blog/the-lake-before-the-next-book.html) (2026-07-28): A dock at Issyk-Kul, a stack of pages held down by a stone, and the first evening of whatever comes after Ternary Dreams.


## Optional
- [About the author and archives](https://elaranovikova.com/about.html)
- [Full text corpus](https://elaranovikova.com/llms-full.txt): every event, dossier and machine as plain text