"Asimov, Isaac - Buy Jupiter and Other Stories" - читать интересную книгу автора (Asimov Isaac)

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Buy Jupiter and Other Stories

Copyright (c) 1975 by Isaac Asimov


CONTENTS

BUY JUPITER AND OTHER STORIES 1
DAY OF THE HUNTERS 2
SHAH GUIDO G. 8
BUTTON, BUTTON 14
THE MONKEY'S FINGER 22
EVEREST 28
THE PAUSE 31
LET'S NOT 39
EACH AN EXPLORER 42
BLANK! 50
DOES A BEE CARE? 53
SILLY ASSES 56
BUY JUPITER 58
A STATUE FOR FATHER 61
RAIN, RAIN, GO AWAY 65
FOUNDING FATHER 70
EXILE TO HELL 73
KEY ITEM 76
THE PROPER STUDY 78
2430 A.D. 82
THE GREATEST ASSET 86
TAKE A MATCH 91
THIOTIMOLINE TO THE STARS 101
LIGHT VERSE 105


To all the editors, whose careers
at one time or another,
have intersected my own-
good fellows, every one.


In THE EARLY ASIMOV I mentioned the fact that there were eleven stories that I had never succeeded in selling. What's more, said I in that book, all eleven stories no longer existed and must remain forever in limbo.
However, Boston University collects all my papers with an assiduity and determination worthy of a far better cause, and when they first began to do so back in 1966, I handed them piles and piles of manuscript material I didn't look through.
Some eager young fan did, though. Boston University apparently allows the inspection of its literary collections for research purposes, and this young fan, representing himself as a literary historian, I suppose, got access to my files. He came across the faded manuscript of Big Game, a thousand-word short-short which I had listed in THE EARLY ASIMOV as the eleventh and last of my lost rejections.
Having read THE EARLY ASIMOV, the fan recognized the value of the find. He promptly had it reproduced and sent me a copy. And I promptly saw to it that it got into print. It appeared in BEFORE THE GOLDEN AGE.
When I read the manuscript of Big Game, however, I discovered that, in a way, it bad never been lost. I had salvaged it. Back in early 1950, Robert W. Lowndes, then publishing several science fiction magazines for Columbia Publications, and reveling in the science fiction boom of the period, asked me for a story. I must have remembered Big Game, written eight years earlier, for I produced DAY OF THE HUNTERS, which was an expanded version of the earlier story, and Had published it in the November 1950 issue of Future Combined with Science Fiction Stories.


DAY OF THE HUNTERS