"Asimov, Isaac - Magical Wishes" - читать интересную книгу автора (Asimov Isaac)

you under certain conditions. Perhaps there is some wishing "''_
object that already exists, manufactured who knows how, that ^
you need only find in order to gratify your every wish. ^

Folklore of every kind includes tales of magic wishes, and H.
the most successful of all such stories is to be found in The ^
Thousand and One Nights (more commonly known as The (
Arabian Nights). What child isn't fascinated by the tale of
Aladdin and his lamp and doesn't fantisize having such a lamp

INTRODUCTION 11

for himself? I experienced both the fascination and the fan-
tasy in copious quantities when I was young.

(Incidentally, we modems still believe in the power of
wishing. We call it "praying," of course, and, all too fre-
quently, praying is simply a way of substituting God for the
Slave of the Lamp and making him run our errands for us.)

Of course, some such tales caution against overweening
greed. Midas, having wished that everything he touched would
turn to gold, found he had gone too far and had left himself
no way of eating or drinking, scr he had to beg to get the wish
canceled.

In other stories, the wishes are limited in number, most
often to three, and then, invariably, there is a problem in
deciding what the wishes ought to be. Almost as invariably,
me choices prove unfortunate.

This instinctive suspicion that the notion that wishing will
make it so is nonsense was given its final support by the taws
of thermodynamics. The first law says that the amount of
energy is limited and the second says (in scientific terms)
exactly what 1 said earlierЧthat lousy things are no trouble,
but that to accomplish anything desirable takes an effort.
What's more, me laws of thermodynamics hold for every-
thing in the Universe, including Slaves of the Lamp.

And yet... and yet...

Even if we are grown-up, hardheaded, and scientific, and
have put childish things behind us. there is still this hanker-
ing. Even though we know that wishing will not make it so,
we can't help but wish that wishing will make it so.

Here, then, are sixteen stones in which wishes, in one
way or another, are involved. And just to make sure that you
will be hooked by them, the first story, "The Monkey's