His works from the 1920s and 1930s made him a highly regarded figure in Russian science fiction, often referred to as "Russia's Jules Verne".

[1] Belyaev's best known novel include Professor Dowell's Head, Amphibian Man, Ariel, and The Air Seller.

While he studied law his father died and he had to support his mother and other family by giving lessons and writing for theater.

During his convalescence, he read the work of Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, and Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, and began to write poetry in his hospital bed.

He served a brief stint as a police inspector, tried other odd jobs such as a librarian, but life remained difficult, and in 1923 he moved to Moscow where he started to practice law again, as a consultant for various Soviet organizations.

At the beginning of the German invasion of the Soviet Union during the Second World War he refused to evacuate because he was recovering after an operation that he had undergone a few months earlier.

A memorial stone at the Kazanskoe cemetery in the town of Pushkin is placed on the mass grave where his body is assumed to be buried.

The Moscow arbitration court found in favor of Terra, awarding 7.5 billion rubles in damages and barring Astrel from distributing the "illegally published" works.

[5] On further appeal, a federal arbitration court found that Belyaev's works entered the public domain on 1 January 1993, and could not enjoy copyright protection at all.