Alina Potekhina is a contemporary Russian writer who gained recognition for her works in the genres of urban fantasy, magical realism, and young adult fiction. Her creative journey is closely tied to popular literary platforms and major publishing houses like Eksmo. Readers appreciate her works for the skillful blending of everyday reality with magical elements, as well as for dynamic detective lines. Her connection with the Futurating platform is a recent but firm friendship, based on the idea that the future must still be planned, not waited for to happen on its own.
Among the author’s most recognizable books is the novel Magic Returns on Monday, which immerses you in an atmosphere of mysterious events unfolding in the familiar world. Also significant in the writer’s bibliography are the works On a Wooden Platter and Death Loves Chocolate, showcasing her characteristic style: light prose, attention to detail, and deep character development. Alina actively engages with her audience online, publishing both finished novels and drafts of new stories, allowing fans to follow the world-building process in real time.
— Why did you choose the near future for your book, rather than a distant one—100 years from now? What is more important for the reader: a speculative megatrend or events a couple of years away?
— In our complex political situation, people need to know what will happen in a couple of years. Let everything get back on track, become better, and let them hope for good things. But you have to understand the reasons behind the trend of magic returning. The book ends with magic coming back, but not everything that is good and right in the short term leads to easy changes.
Any innovations, even good ones, first create difficulties. Until the adjustment period is over, until connections, methods, and workarounds are established, it will be hard. At some point, it may seem like things have gotten worse. But once everything settles, it will all be fine. We just have to get through this transitional phase.
That’s why I describe the near future: magic was legalized in 2024, and by 2054 everything is wonderful. I’m specifically interested in the period of adjustment, when non‑obvious pitfalls emerge and things become even more complicated. But the outlook is clear: sooner or later everything will work out for the best.
— Why does the story take place in a small town among ordinary people, rather than on a global scale?
— Most of the country lives in small towns and villages, among ordinary people—they eat in ordinary kitchens, meet in cafes, live on the outskirts. I myself am just as ordinary. I want to talk to the reader as an equal, from my perspective, in my own language, not from above. Globally, everything looks very different, but my position is closer to me.
We are all writing history—grain by grain, stone by stone. Every word, every action or inaction matters. Even if it seems insignificant, in the perspective of the future it has great importance. Together we create our future.
— Fantasy and science fiction are often seen as lightweight fairy tales. What can such a genre teach?
— Any book is a story about people, their decisions, and their actions in certain situations. The setting doesn’t matter: fantasy, science fiction, a romance or a political novel—it’s still about the person.
Example: a peasant borrows money from a merchant, builds a farm, a dragon burns it down—ruin, debt, problems. A person takes a loan for a factory, it burns down—the same difficulties. A space marine buys a ship for transport, it gets set on fire—the same situation. It doesn’t matter if it’s magic, blasters, technology, or our own life. The decisions are the same. Through the genre, we use different methods, but we’re telling the same story. Magic shows internal problems, science shows external aspects. Fantasy is not a fairy tale that teaches nothing.
— How does your technical mindset combine with writing fantasy? Does your education influence it?
— Any world and any magic require technical functions: the writer needs to understand how they work. The book may not have explicit laws, but for my own world I’ve developed everything. A new world, even if it’s fictional, must operate logically.
Engineering laws simplify the writer’s task: you build the plot, the fantasy rules, the detective lines brick by brick. A technical approach complements creativity, not contradicts it.
— Why do superpowers always come with a price in your books? Isn’t there room for pure miracle?
— I don’t like abilities without a counterbalance. My magic inherently comes with a backlash: you have to control it, otherwise the power will kill the wizard himself. For example, the Chukchi girl in my book has a platter that causes her to be expelled from the world. The curse is only broken with a sacrifice.
After all, everything in life has a cost. To write a book, you have to sacrifice time. You create at work—you sacrifice work. You don’t walk with your child—you sacrifice that. A miracle without a price is impossible.
— How is a living writer different from a neural network? Can AI replace authors?
— A neural network doesn’t create context and subtext—the most valuable thing in books. You have to put your soul into it, let it pass through you, create layers, emotions, double meanings. It writes straightforwardly, on one plane. A living writer writes on several.
There is such meaning in every book. A neural network won’t replace us, except maybe simple chewing‑gum books. The reader will distinguish living emotions from machine‑generated text.
— How does fantasy allow you to talk about global issues through an intimate, small‑scale format? The example of the ban on magic.
— Fantasy speaks not head‑on, but through detours—about repression, bans. They are not always necessary, but sometimes they are. In my book, for example, magic was banned for 40 years, wizards were repressed—and many didn’t even know they had the gift. The authorities had reasons: to stop a revolution, murders, and oppression painlessly. There was no other way at the time. Time passed, the pendulum swung the other way: the ban was lifted, and a new wave surged.
Life is very similar to this fictional pendulum: decisions are right in the moment, but they change. Sometimes they seem wrong, but globally they are the only ones. Over time they are urgently changed, and everything starts anew. An era of change is inevitably difficult and contradictory, and we just have to live through it.
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