Eppur si muove

“And yet it moves.” Galileo supposedly whispered that to himself after being forced to recant, in front of the Inquisition, what he knew to be true. The world didn’t believe him, the system wanted him silenced, and still, he knew. The Earth turns, whether anyone admits it or not.

When an idea becomes a thing

For a long time, Hidden Worlds: Cyber Slavic Chronicles existed only as an idea, a world where death is no longer the end, where Slavic mythology and a cyberpunk future intertwine in the same neon-lit, rain-soaked streets. Oto, the IT engineer who claws his way from small-time hacker to chief security in that world, lived for a long time only in my head and in documents I’d return to in the middle of the night, when everything else was quiet.

And then, the storefront

Kobo doesn’t put every book in its storefront. Only titles their editors, or the algorithms tracking readership, ratings, and reader engagement, flag as worth featuring end up there. That spot isn’t handed out just for publishing, it has to be earned.

So when I open Kobo and see *Hidden Worlds* sitting there, next to the “Get the eBook” button, that’s not just a moment of visibility for me. It’s a confirmation. Someone, or something, some system that recognized the pattern of a good story, decided this book deserved that spot, next to titles I wouldn’t have dared compare mine to until yesterday.

It’s hard to put into words, even as I’m trying to arrange those words well enough right now. Joy, relief, pride, a bit of disbelief, all at once, all tangled together. Because Jura Mikulchev was never just a name on a cover. He’s a younger version of me from the future, someone who doesn’t just write these stories, but actually walks through that cyberpunk and hard sci-fi world himself, a participant in the very events. And now that the book is out, and someone else has recognized it as worth featuring, the line between the one imagining the world and the one living in it has finally worn thin. No longer just an idea of who I might become, but someone who, in those pages, and now, in that storefront, already is.

And yet it moves

Every book that ends up featured in front of readers carries within it all the hours no one sees, the sleepless nights, the rewritten sentences, the moments of doubt that turned out to be wrong. Hidden Worlds now carries my name among them too, and someone recognized that work enough to put it where everyone can see it.

And as I look at that storefront, I remember why I started at all: because the story wanted to be told, and I was its only way to paper, or, in this case, to a screen. Doubt kept saying one thing, but the story, despite everything, kept moving anyway. And now, someone else is confirming it.

Eppur si muove.

I am Jura Mikulchev, though these days I answer just as readily to Vanja Spirin, a good deal younger, and arriving from a long way down the timeline. Here’s the twist: I didn’t invent the Mycorrhiza universe from that books, I lived in it. What reads as cyberpunk, space opera, hard SF, and biopunk is, from where I stand, eyewitness testimony, I was there, a contemporary of the heroes, before any of it made it onto paper.

My world is harsh and gritty, but always with a glimmer of hope, mystery, and biting Slavic humor, echoes of Borges and Bulgakov meet Adams and Pratchett. My books leave readers thinking two things: What did I just read? And what happens next?

Some things don’t change across timelines: I still love a good barbecue, good company, and heavy music, even if one of my regular dinner guests these days is an alien who tastes somewhere between octopus and Aldebaran crab.