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

Marmie said, "Just listen to me for a minute. Little Rollo corrected Shakespeare. You pointed that out for yourself. Little Rollo wanted Shakespeare to say, 'host of troubles,' and he was right from his machine standpoint. A 'sea of troubles' under the circumstances is a mixed metaphor. But don't you suppose Shakespeare knew that, too? Shakespeare just happened to know when to break the rules, that's all. Little Rollo is a machine that can't break the rules, but a good writer can, and must. 'Sea of troubles' is more impressive; it has roll and power. The hell with the mixed metaphor.
"Now, when you tell me to shift the scene, you're following mechanical rules on maintaining suspense, so of course little Rollo agrees with you. But I know that I must break the rules to maintain the profound emotional impact of the ending as I see it. Otherwise I have a mechanical product that a computer can turn out."
Hoskins said, "But-"
"Go on," said Marmie, "vote for the mechanical. Say that little Rollo is all the editor you'll ever be."
Hoskins said, with a quiver in his throat, " All right, Marmie, I'll take the story as is. No, don't give it to me; mail it. I've got to find a bar, if you don't mind."
He forced his hat down on his head and turned to leave. Torgesson called after him. "Don't tell anyone about little Rollo, please."
The parting answer floated back over a slamming door, "Do you think I'm crazy? ..."
Marmie rubbed his hands ecstatically when he was sure Hoskins was gone.
"Brains, that's what it was," he said, and probed one finger as deeply into his temple as it would go. "This sale I enjoyed. This sale, Professor, is worth all the rest I've ever made. All the rest of them together." He collapsed joyfully on the nearest chair.
Torgesson lifted little Rollo to his shoulder. He said mildly, "But, Marmaduke, what would you have done if little Rollo had typed your version instead?"
A took of grievance passed momentarily over Marmie's face. "Well, damn it," he said, "that's what I thought it was going to do."

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IN THE MONKEY'S FINGER, by the way, the writer and editor were modeled on a real pair, arguing over a real story in a real way.
The story involved was C-Chute, which had appeared in the October 1951 Galaxy (after the argument) and which was eventually included in my book NIGHTFALL AND OTHER STORIES. I was the writer, of course, and Horace Gold was the editor.
Though the argument and the story are authentic, the people are caricatured. I am nothing at all like the writer in the story and Horace is certainly nothing at all like the editor in the story. Horace has his own peculiarities which are far more interesting than the ones I made' up for fictional purposes, and so have I-but never mind that.
Of all the stories I have written that have appeared once and then never again, this next is the one I talk about most. I have discussed it in dozens of talks and mentioned it in print occasionally, for a very good reason which I'll come to later.
In April 1953 I was in Chicago. I'm not much of a traveler and that was the first time I was ever in Chicago (and I have returned since then only once) .I was there to attend an American Chemical Society convention at which I was supposed to present a small paper. That was little fun, so I thought I would liven things up by going to Evanston, a northern suburb, and visiting the offices of Universe Science Fiction.
This magazine was then edited by Bea Mahaffey, an extraordinarily good-looking young woman. (The way I usually put it is that science fiction writers voted her, two years running, the editor to whom they would most like to submit.)
When I arrived in the office on April 7, 1953, Bea greeted me with great glee and at once asked why I had not brought a story for her with me.
"You want a story?" I said, basking in her beauty. .'I'll write you a story. Bring me a typewriter."
Actually, I was just trying to impress her, hoping that she would throw herself into my arms in a spasm of wild adoration. She didn't. She brought me a typewriter.
I had to come through. Since the task of climbing Mount Everest was much in the news those days (men
had been trying to scale it for thirty years and the seventh attempt to do so had just failed) I thought rapidly and wrote EVEREST .
Bea read it, liked it, and offered me thirty dollars, which I accepted with alacrity. I promptly spent half of it on a fancy dinner for the two of us, and labored-with so much success to be charming, debonair, and suave that the waitress said to me, longingly, that she wished her son-in-law were like me.
That seemed hopeful and with a light heart I took Bea home to her apartment. I am not sure what I had in mind, but if I did have anything in mind that was not completely proper (surely not!) I was foiled. Bea managed to get into that apartment, leaving me standing in the hallway, without my ever having seen the door open.


EVEREST

In 1952 they were about ready to give up trying to climb Mount Everest. It was the photographs that kept them going.
As photographs go, they weren't much; fuzzy, streaked, and with just dark blobs against the white to be interested in. But those dark blobs were living creatures. The men swore to it.
I said, "What the hell, they've been talking about creatures skidding along the Everest glaciers for forty years. It's about time we did something about it."
Jimmy Robbons (pardon me, James Abram Robbons) was the one who pushed me into that position. He was always nuts on mountain climbing, you see. He was the one who knew all about how the Tibetans wouldn't go near Everest because it was the mountain of the gods. He could quote me every mysterious manlike footprint ever reported in the ice twenty-five thousand feet up; he knew by heart every tall story about the spindly white creatures, speeding along the crags just over the last heart-breaking camp which the climbers had managed to establish.
It's good to have one enthusiastic creature of the sort at Planetary Survey headquarters.
The last photographs put bite into his words, though. After all, you might just barely think they were men.
Jimmy said, "Look, boss, the point isn't that they're there, the point is that they move fast. Look at that figure. It's blurred."
"The camera might have moved."
"The crag here is sharp enough. And the men swear it was running. Imagine the metabolism it must have to run at that oxygen pressure. Look, boss, would you have believed in deep-sea fish if you'd never heard of them? You have fish which are looking for new niches in environment which they can exploit, so they go deeper and deeper into the abyss until one day they find they can't return.
They've adapted so thoroughly they can live only under tons of pressure."
"Well-"
"Damn it, can't you reverse the picture? Creatures can be forced up a mountain, can't they? They can learn to stick it out in thinner air and colder temperatures. They can live on moss or on occasional birds, just as the deep-sea fish in the last analysis live on the upper fauna that slowly go filtering down. Then, someday, they find they can't go down again. I don't even say they're men. They can be chamois or mountain goats or badgers or anything."
I said stubbornly, "The witnesses said they were vaguely manlike, and the reported footprints are certainly manlike."
"Or bearlike," said Jimmy. "You can't tell."
So that's when I said, "It's about time we did something about it."
Jimmy shrugged and said, "They've been trying to climb Mount Everest for forty years." And he shook his head.
"For gossake," I said. " All you mountain climbers are nuts. That's for sure. You're not interested in getting to the top. You're just interested in getting to the top in a certain way. It's about time we stopped fooling around with picks, ropes, camps, and all the paraphernalia of the Gentlemen's Club that sends suckers up the slopes every five years or so."
"What are you getting at?"
"They invented the airplane in 1903, you know?"