Palman, V. The Crater of Ershot (Krater Ershota). Science fiction novel. Illustrated by B. Korzhevsky. First edition, 1958. In Russian.

Пальман, Вячеслав. Кратер Эршота. Фантастический роман. Рисунки Б. Коржевского.
М.: Детгиз, 1958. 264 с., ил. Первое издание.
Серия: Библиотека приключений и научной фантастики (БПиНФ), «рамка».
Твердый переплет, обычный формат. Тираж 90 000 экз. Иллюстрированные форзацы.
Состояние переплета: хорошее. Потертости, легкие загрязнения, пятнышки на задней крышке. Состояние блока: хорошее.
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Palman, Vyacheslav. The Crater of Ershot (Krater Ershota). Science fiction novel. Illustrated by B. Korzhevsky.
Moscow: Detgiz, 1958. 264 pp., illustrated. First edition.
Series: Library of Adventure and Science Fiction (BPiNF), frame series.
Hardcover, standard format. Print run 90,000 copies. Pictorial endpapers.
Binding condition: Good. Rubbed, lightly soiled, specks on the rear board. Text block condition: Good. 

Vyacheslav Palman (1914-1998) was an agronomist by training and a Soviet writer of adventure and popular fiction. He was convicted in 1937 and served a camp sentence in Kolyma, where he worked as an agronomist, and his northern experience stands behind The Crater of Ershot, described as his first novel. It ran in the magazine Vokrug sveta in 1957 and appeared as a book in 1958, so this Detgiz printing is the first book edition; later Soviet editions followed in 1963 and 1980, and an Estonian translation in 1960. The story follows the geological prospecting party 14-bis, which vanishes without trace in the roadless mountains of northern Yakutia, and the young Petya Odintsov and his friends who set out to find it. Their search leads through a spreading dead zone and a mass migration of ants to a crater in which mammoths turn up, with a helicopter, a bandit gang and a wolf pack along the way. Fantlab classes the book as soft science fiction and a Robinsonade. The prefatory note to readers printed in this copy presents the author as a former agronomist on the state farms of the polar North, then living in Krasnodar territory. This copy belongs to the Library of Adventure and Science Fiction (BPiNF), the Detgiz frame series, in which it is number 37, and it was signed to press on 20 November 1958 in a run of 90,000 copies. It was printed in Tallinn at the Punane Tahht press, an uncommon production detail for a Moscow imprint. The cover and drawings are by B. Korzhevsky, and the pictorial endpapers show a party of mountaineers with a dog crossing a snow slope. It suits collectors of Soviet science fiction, frame series completists, and readers of Siberian and polar adventure.