Preface to the English Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without prior written permission of the author (permission may be obtained electronically from the author's emailing addresses below).

Any references to historical events, real people or real places are used for artistic or creative purposes only.

First printing edition 2018 (in Russian).

This is the English translation of my first book, it was prepared in the summer of 2026.

The First Edition in Russian was published electronically on the Litres digital platform and in print by Ridero in October 2018, ISBN 978-5-4493-5682-6, and the Second Edition in Russian was published in June–July 2026.

I do the translation by myself, since I know English and French to some extent, I studied them at school and university.

Initially, a machine translation source from Google was used, which was read twice and all found errors were corrected. The English translation of the book contains 431,834 characters (75,760 words).

Link to the book 19+ SE (Second Edition in Russian, 2026) in electronic form:

https://litres.com/book/vasiliy-lasovskiy/19-2-e-izdanie-74069359/

Link to the book 19+ (First Edition in Russian, 2018) in electronic form:

https://litres.com/book/vasiliy-lasovskiy/19-38626360/

Link to the author's page, where you can download the original Russian versions of my books and their translations:

vasilylasovsky.livejournal.com

Author's emails:

vasilylasovsky@yandex.ru

91tenet19@gmail.com

Best wishes to my occasional rare readers ;-),

Vasily Lasovsky.

Preface to the 2nd Edition

After translating my 2nd (The Last Da Vinci, 2024, in Russian in 2022) and 3rd (MNC, 2025) books into English, I returned to the very first book, 19+, which I wrote between July 2, 2017 and June 19, 2018, and published on October 15, 2018.

In December 2025, I began rereading and reformatting it for easier comprehension and correcting a multitude of spelling and syntax mistakes. I also began to wonder if there was any way to improve it. I decided to add some episodes from my childhood and youth, which I hope will be of interest to the reader.

I also seriously rewrote several small chapters, at the beginning of such chapters there will be a message about this.

Since these edits have become quite significant, it is best to consider this as a 2nd edition of the 19+ book.

The 2nd edition of the book in Russian has 422,218 characters (74,073 words). The 1st edition (2018) had 355,766 characters (62,415 words).

I plan to publish it in electronic form under the title "19+ (2nd edition)" in Russian on the Litres platform on June 19, 2026 (exactly 8 years after finishing work on the original version 19+) and in print by Ridero publishing house in the summer of 2026, ISBN 978-5-0070-7530-5. In addition, it will be presented as an electronic file on my LiveJournal page.

Also, a translation of the book "19+ (2nd edition)" titled "19+ SE", ISBN 978-5-0070-7528-2 into English is planned for the summer of 2026.

Terminology and restrictions

“Everything that really exists

exists within the present."

— Boris Pasternak.

The genre of this book... It's not mysticism, esotericism, or the occult. It's more of an everyday drama with elements of fantasy, or, as it's sometimes called, the "Path with the Spirit." Therefore, I warn you right away that the book will be completely uninteresting to most readers and incredibly boring for lovers of proper literature, although I occasionally try to entertain the reader.

This book is not published for a general audience. It may be of interest to professional astrologers due to its abundance of dates and numbers.

The book is based on real facts and events from my life.

My assumptions and fantasies (based on real facts)—I hope—will give the book the appearance of a work of fiction. In any case, I acknowledge the limitations and illusory nature of my own conclusions; they are presented primarily to tie together disparate facts, fill the book with emotions and make it easier to read.

The book contains numerous quotes; they form the core of the book. Of course, all quotes are enclosed in quotation marks. If a quote follows immediately after a reference to it, it is in normal font. If a quote is not preceded by a source citation, it is in italics.

The book is completely unscientific, and the writing style approximates the psychology of a 12-year-old boy. Or, if you find it easier to understand, imagine that this book is written by a poet.

Also, despite the existing chronology of events, taking into account the connections I hypothesize between them, I attempt to describe these events "as if in the present tense," occurring simultaneously, without regard for time. This book is more about a fictional puzzle or an abstract scheme than about the life story of a real person. In a puzzle, what's important is not the story of how the individual pieces are assembled, but the overall final picture. This is done in order to gain a closer understanding of the Spirit's creativity, which possibly occurs outside of time.

The order in which you read the book is also not important; you can start reading it from any place and in any order.

I would like to convey to the reader that, in my opinion, there are no small or large events, no good or bad ones, all of this is a subjective coloring that we give ourselves, which has little relation to reality.

By the term Spirit I mean "the Great Spirit, the Holy Spirit" (where my understanding of the nature of this phenomenon is very slight).

Of course, it's reprehensible that I use this imagery numerous times in the book, but without it, this work would not exist. The text may also refer to "the Spirit of Man," which implies "the immortal principle in man through their connection with the Holy Spirit." However, this book is in no way religious literature. I also apologize in advance to any readers whose religious sensibilities I may have unintentionally offended; this was by no means my intention.

This book in no way reflects my personal view of the events that took place. For me, as for the reader, the interpretation of the events described in this book is a work of fiction.

Because this work contains descriptions of real events, this book can have a serious and unpredictable impact on the reader, despite the author's almost complete lack of skill in writing it.

This book is not recommended for reading by persons under 19 years of age.

Prelude

Open sources on the Internet report this event in different ways:

"1973 — The discovery of an object resembling the head of the Sphinx on Mars, photographed by the American Viking spacecraft. Thirteen years later, Halley's Comet passed close to Earth."

"July 25, 1976 the American interplanetary probe Viking 1 transmitted photographs of the Martian surface to Earth. NASA specialists analyzed the images and, in an area approximately 3 km (1.86 mi) length and 1.5 km (0.93 mi) width, discovered something resembling a human face. For some reason, and as it later turned out, rather recklessly, six days later NASA decided to issue a press release announcing this quirk of nature."

(link in Russian)

https://www.kp.ru/daily/23935/70196/

"On July 25, 1976 the American spacecraft Viking 1 photographed Mars to help specialists select landing sites for future expeditions. Among the images captured was a picture of the Cydonia region, located on Acidalia Planitia with the same unevenness.

Legend has it that scientists, upon discovering the artifact, hid it under a veil of secrecy to avoid alarming the public about aliens. Only one brave renegade—a computer expert named Vincent Di Pietro—risked releasing the image three years later. <…>

It seems NASA itself started the Sphinx myth back in 1976. Then, a few years later, through the efforts of its own expert, Di Pietro—he worked for the agency under contract—it inflated the sensation, which had been weak on the first try. And now, from time to time, it drops ‘news.’ Everyone's happy. Moreover, scientists simply need to print out cards of the infamous ‘irregularity’—fans of the anomalous will find what they need there themselves."

Thus, we have two versions of events:

The first (official) version is that the photograph was found and published in late July 1976. The second version is that the photograph was obtained in 1973, but they decided to publish it in 1976.

But what really happened?

Mariner 9

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariner_9

"Mariner 9 was designed to continue the atmospheric studies begun by Mariner 6 and 7, and to map over 70% of the Martian surface from the lowest altitude (1,500 kilometers (930 mi)) and at the highest resolutions (from 1 kilometer to 100 meters (1,100 to 110 yards) per pixel) of any Mars mission up to that point. <…>

Main surface imaging did not get underway until mid-January 1972. <…>

After 349 days in orbit, Mariner 9 had transmitted 7,329 images, covering 85% of Mars's surface [with a resolution of 1 to 2 km (2% of the surface was photographed with a resolution of 100 to 300 metres)], whereas previous flyby missions had returned less than one thousand images covering only a small portion of the planetary surface. The images revealed river beds, craters, massive extinct volcanoes (such as Olympus Mons, the largest known volcano in the Solar System; Mariner 9 led directly to its reclassification from Nix Olympica), canyons (including the Valles Marineris, a system of canyons over about 4,020 kilometres (2,500 mi) long), evidence of wind erosion and deposition, weather fronts, fogs, and more. Mars's small moons, Phobos and Deimos, were also photographed.

The findings from the Mariner 9 mission underpinned the later Viking program.

The enormous Valles Marineris canyon system is named after Mariner 9 in honor of its achievements.

After depleting its supply of attitude control gas, the spacecraft was turned off on October 27, 1972."

The Russians also participated in the space race to Mars. But they were unlucky:

The Mars Mystery (Graham Hancock, John Grigsby, 1998)

https://grahamhancock.com/mars-mystery/

"As the Mars landers were consumed in the global dust storm below, Mariner 9 drifted silently in orbit, dormant, conserving its energy.

Meanwhile the Mars 2 and 3 orbiter modules, from which the unsuccessful landers had been deployed, snapped away at the Red Planet in a whir of irreversible, preprogrammed activity—and sent back to a devastated Russian team picture upon picture of dust clouds.