Based on
a review at the Modern Novel website, part of this story involves the devil showing photographs of the future to a man named Vanoski (an obscure author from the 1930s). So, we’ve got photos-from-the-future, but no actual time travel. However, there is time travel in another story (
“Fotografiya Pushkin (1799–2099)”) from the
Teacher of Symmetry Cycle. And just to pile satire on top of satire, the 16 stories in the cycle were purportedly written by an obscure Englishman named A. Tired-Boffin, and Bitov was merely the humble messenger who provided translations of these lost gems into Russian.
Also, according to
Fantlab[/b] and
Labirint, this is the central story of Bitov’s Teacher of Symmetry Cycle, which consists of 16 of avant-garde stories by an unknown English author, A. Tired-Boffin (1859–1937). Bitov purportedly found and translated some of these stories to Russian.
The year is 1693, the month is June, and the day is the fifteenth. Come and watch with me.
