Ivan Yefremov (1907-1972) was a well-known Soviet scientist, a professor of paleontology and a talented writer of science fiction. "No writer did as much as Yefremov for science," wrote one reader, "and no scientist did as much as Yefremov for literature." Andromeda is a novel about the future of mankind. It depicts with truly fantastic scope the unparalleled bloom of science and technology and the rise of a new social order, and portrays the Universe in the so-called Era of the Great Circle, when Earth will have constant communication with space. Written in 1956, on the eve of the first attempts at space exploration - when the word "cosmonaut" still belonged exclusively to the domain of science fiction - the novel has long since become widely known throughout the world. It is symbolic that, on the day of the launching of the first Earth satellite, readers congratulated Yefremov on the dawning of the Era of the Great Circle.