Modern systems — one question

Where to start

Start with Step I. The series is numbered as steps and meant to be read in order. The harder question is which edition, and there the Polish reader has a real choice to make.

The core is five steps, 2004 to 2005

The Russian originals came out from IG Ves in St Petersburg: Steps I to IV in 2004, Step V in 2005. Everything after that is a continuation, from 2006 onward, however box sets number it. A one-volume edition of Steps I to V followed in 2019. One oddity is worth knowing: the standard blurb of Step I calls it the first book of a trilogy, which the five steps then contradict, and nothing we found explains it.

In English: two lines of editions

O Books published the five steps as separate volumes between 2008 and 2011. We can confirm Natasha Micharina as translator of the first volume only; for the others the records are incomplete or disagree. Collected editions of Steps I to V followed from the Russian publisher itself in 2012 and 2021, and in a separate 2016 translation by Joanna Dobson. The terms differ between these lines, which is why searches for the same idea come back under different words.

In Polish: the choice that matters

The first Polish translation is Marcin Pracki’s, published by Hartigrama: volumes 1 to 4 in 2009 and volume 5 in 2010, all recorded by the National Library. A new translation by Ludmiła Walczak began appearing from Satja Juga in 2024, announced as made in cooperation with the author, starting again from Step I. We found no evidence that the older edition was withdrawn. The two translations use different words for some central terms, so a reader who moves between them will meet the same idea twice under two names.

What comes after the core

The continuations, among them The Reality Transurfer, two volumes of Forum of Dreams and a seventy-eight-day practical course, add practice and repeat the core rather than replace it. Tufti the Priestess, from 2017 or 2018, is a separate turn with a new claimed source, and is better read as its own thing.

What this does not settle

Whether you need all of it. Most of what works in the system, read on the practice page, is already in the first three steps. The rest is a question of how much of the vocabulary you want, which is a matter of taste, not of evidence.

A small warning for the careful: the ISBN table in the Russian Wikipedia article adds the 978 prefix to ten-digit numbers without recomputing the check digit, so several of its thirteen-digit ISBNs are wrong. Bookseller records are the safer source.

Fair questions

Which Reality Transurfing book should I read first?

Step I, The Space of Variants. The series is numbered as steps meant to be read in order, and the core is Steps I to V.

How many Reality Transurfing books are there?

The core is five steps, published in Russian in 2004 and 2005. Later titles from 2006 onward are continuations, however box sets number them.

Which Polish translation is better?

There are two: Marcin Pracki’s (Hartigrama, 2009 to 2010) and Ludmiła Walczak’s (Satja Juga, from 2024, announced as made with the author). They use different words for some central terms. We do not rank them; we note that switching between them means meeting the same ideas under different names.

Sources & further reading

• Russian first editions and years: IG Ves catalogue data via booksellers (Labirint) and the Russian Wikipedia series table, whose thirteen-digit ISBNs contain check-digit errors.
• English editions: Open Library records for the O Books volumes (2008 to 2011) and the collected editions of 2012, 2016 and 2021.
• Polish editions: National Library of Poland records for the Hartigrama volumes (2009 to 2010); publisher and bookseller data for the Satja Juga translation (2024).
• We do not reproduce or summarise the contents of Vadim Zeland’s books, which are in copyright.