"Son of Heaven" by Gleb Golubev, summary

Gleb Golubev’s 1963 science adventure novella recounts the work of Soviet archaeologists in Crimea, who, using cybernetics and physics, uncover the mystery of the destruction of an ancient city and the identity of a mysterious ancient inventor. The work combines elements of detective fiction and popularization of science, demonstrating the clash of humanities and technical approaches to the study of history.

Archaeological Mysteries of Ouranoupolis

The story is told alternately from the perspectives of two friends: archaeologist Alexei Skorchinsky and cybernetic engineer Mikhail Zvantsev. Skorchinsky is directing excavations at the ancient Greek site of Ouranopolis ("City of Heaven") on the Crimean coast. The city was destroyed by fire in 63 BC. The archaeologist is troubled by the strange name of the settlement, formerly known as Heraclea, and by the discovery of coins depicting the god of healing, Asclepius, surrounded by stars and the inscription "Glory to Ouranid and Aglotel." The name Ouranid translates as "Son of Heaven," which is unusual in Greek onomastics.

Skorchinsky’s friend Mikhail Zvantsev comes to visit him on vacation. The engineer is skeptical of traditional archaeological methods ("picking with a knife"), suggesting using modern technological advances. During their vacation, the group discovers a cave with an underground lake, but finds only a modern inscription from tourists.

Soon, the expedition makes a significant discovery: in the temple ruins, they find a charred piece of leather with wooden planks, resembling a model wing, and a basket of papyri. One document contains business records, while the other is written in Greek letters but consists of a meaningless jumble of symbols. Zvantsev assumes it’s a cipher and takes a copy to Moscow for computer analysis.

Decipherment and new findings

In Moscow, Zvantsev, with the help of programmer Viktor, deciphers the text. It turns out it’s not just a cipher, but an artificially created language, reminiscent of Esperanto, distinguished by its logic and simplicity. The note’s contents are a recipe for a potion, encrypted by a priest.

Meanwhile, in Crimea, student Alik Rogov, a keen speleologist, explores the cave’s farthest reaches with scuba gear. He discovers the skeleton of a man with an unusually large skull. Nearby lies a metal rod wrapped in wire. When he attempts to examine the skull, it crumbles to dust upon contact and exposure to air. The rod is handed over to the police as evidence, suspecting a criminal motive.

Skorchinsky continues excavations in the temple and discovers a cache under the foundation slab. Inside are a silver model of a jaw and nose (votive offerings) and a copper cist containing a large papyrus scroll. This is the personal diary of the high priest of the Temple of Asclepius.

The Priest’s Manuscript

The deciphered text transports the reader to 63 BC. The priest describes the appearance of a strange stranger in the city immediately after a powerful earthquake and a flash in the sky. The stranger, nicknamed Uranides (Son of Heaven), had an unusual appearance: a small body, a huge head, and large eyes.

Uranides quickly learned Greek and demonstrated exceptional healing abilities, using hypnosis and suggestion techniques that surpassed the priest’s. He cured paralysis and controlled the behavior of animals and people. The priest, seeing him as a rival, attempted to exploit his talents to strengthen the temple’s power.

The foreigner proved to be not only a healer but also an inventor. He created mechanisms to ease the labor of slaves, discovered gold using dowsing (or geological knowledge), and developed an artificial language to unite Greeks and barbarians. Uranides openly ridiculed religious superstitions, explaining his "miracles" by his knowledge of nature and psychology.

The conflict escalated when Uranides predicted a Taurian raid, saving the city. In honor of this event, the city was renamed Ouranopolis. The priest, losing influence, decided to kill his rival. He sent his assistant, the slave Sonon, to lie in wait for Uranides in a cave. However, Sonon disappeared, and the priest had a dream in which the slave perished in the darkness of the cave, slain by an unknown force.

Later, Uranides began building a flying machine — an ornithopter. The priest declared this sacrilege and set a mob on the inventor, who destroyed the device. Uranides was imprisoned in a temple dungeon. The manuscript ends with the priest’s intention to kill the prisoner so that he could not influence the public assembly.

Experiment with the memory of matter

Skorchinsky finds confirmation of the manuscript’s events: two skeletons were discovered during excavations of the dungeon. One was that of a warrior at the entrance, the other that of a man chained to the wall. The archaeologist is convinced that these are the remains of Uranides.

Zvantsev urgently summons his friend to Moscow by telegram. He claims to have deciphered the recording on the wire found in the cave and that Uranides was an alien from outer space who left a video report. In the laboratory, the engineer shows footage of the ancient city on a screen: the market, slaves, warrior training, and the priest himself.

However, Zvantsev soon confessed to the hoax. The wire was ordinary, and the alien hypothesis was a test of the archaeologist’s beliefs. In reality, the engineer had developed a method for reconstructing visual images based on the effect of residual magnetization. Clay and ceramics exposed to intense heat (in this case, during the fire that destroyed the city) captured the electromagnetic oscillations of light waves from that moment.

The Secret of Genius

The friends view the "recording" preserved by the ancient bricks. They see Uranides’ final moments in prison. A priest enters the cell with a torch and sword to kill the chained inventor, but at that moment the vault collapses due to a fire, burying both.

Skorchinsky and Zvantsev conclude that Uranides was not an alien. He was a genius, a self-taught scientist, millennia ahead of his time, like Leonardo da Vinci. His knowledge of psychology, linguistics, geology, and mechanics seemed magical to his contemporaries. The skeleton in the cave likely belonged to the slave Sonon, who died in a trap, and the wire was part of some device of Uranides’.

The book concludes with reflections on how many other unknown geniuses perished in history, unappreciated by their contemporaries, and what secrets the earth still holds. "And who knows how many more amazing discoveries await us in the mysterious depths of time?"