[3] Lukyanenko started writing in the mid-1980s, and his first publication, the short story "Misconduct" ("Where The Mean Enemy Lurks", although written earlier, was published later), followed soon in 1988.

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the switch to the market economy, Russian authors now had to struggle with unfamiliar realities of a free publishing system.

Until 2006 relatively few of Lukyanenko's works had been released outside of Russia, mostly in Baltic states, Bulgaria and Poland, countries with traditionally strong ties with Russian literature.

Although his books are often set in harsh worlds, Lukyanenko is a humanist writer, and in this sense believes he follows in the footsteps of the Strugatsky brothers.

[19] Lukyanenko welcomed the Dima Yakovlev Law banning the international adoption of children from Russia[20] in response to the US Magnitsky Act.

Lukyanenko, having Ukrainian ancestry himself, threatened authors supporting the Euromaidan that he would make every effort to prevent their books being published in Russia.

[24] On 28 February 2022, Lukyanenko was the leading signatory of a public letter with a few other authors supporting Russian military invasion of Ukraine launched four days earlier.

[25] On 3 September 2022, at Chicon 8, the World Science Fiction Society passed a resolution condemning Lukyanenko's pro-invasion views and asking that he be disinvited as Guest of Honor at the 2023 Worldcon in Chengdu.

When asked how Russia could annex Ukraine when this would mean incorporating many people who did not wish to live under Russian rule, Krasovsky suggested: "So we shoot them.