The striking variety of "incredible phenomena" in the USSR was a hallmark of the Era of Stagnation. Ideas concerning the body’s hidden reserves, the brain’s secret capabilities, the search for the Yeti, and contact with extraterrestrial civilizations captured the imaginations of many Soviet citizens. In this book, however, Alexei Konakov—a scholar of late-Soviet culture and literature—examines not so much the "incredible phenomena" themselves, but rather a specific discourse surrounding the "incredible." The historical trajectory of this discourse aligns, in a remarkable way, with the rise and decline of the Soviet technical intelligentsia and, more broadly, of Soviet techno-optimism.