"01 - The Black Star Passes" - читать интересную книгу автора (Campbell John W Jr)

Along about sixteen to nineteen, a young man has to decide what is, for him, the Job That Needs DoingЧand get ready to get in and pitch. If he selects well, selects with understanding and foresight, he'll pick a job that does need doing, one that will return rewards in satisfaction as well as money. No other man can pick that for him; he must choose the Job that he feels fitting.

Crystal balls can be bought fairly reasonablyЧbut they don't work well. History books can be bought even more cheaply, and they're moderately reliable. (Though necessarily filtered through the cultural attitudes of the man who wrote them.) But they don't work well as predicting machines, because the world is changing too rapidly.

The world today, for instance, needs engineers desperately There are a lot of jobs that the Nation would like to get done that can't even be started; not enough engineers available.

Fifty years ago the engineering student was a sort of Second Class Citizen of the college campus. Today the Liberal Arts are fighting for a come-back, the pendulum having swung considerably too far in the other direction. So science-fiction has a very real function to the teenagers; it presents varying ideas of what the world in which he will live his adult life will be interested in.

This is 1953. My son will graduate in 1955. The period of his peak earning power should be when he's about forty to sixtyЧabout 1970, say, to 1990. With the progress being made in understanding of health and physical

vigor, it's apt to run beyond 2000 A.D., however.

Anyone want to bet that people will be living in the same general circumstances then? That the same general social and cultural and material standards will apply?

I have a hunch that the history books are a poor way of planning a life todayЧand that science-fiction comes a

lot closer.

There's another thing about science-fiction yams that is quite conspicuous; it's so difficult to pick out the villains. It might have made quite a change in history if the ballads and tales of the old days had been a little less sure of who the villains were. Read the standard boy's literature of forty years ago; tales of Crusaders who were always right, and Saracens who were always wrong. (The same Saracens who taught the Christians to respect the philosophy of the Greeks, and introduced them to the basic ideas of straight, self-disciplined thinkingl)

Life's much simpler in a thatched cottage than in a dome on the airless Moon, easier to understand when the Villains are all pure black-hearted villains, and the Heroes are all pure White Souled Heroes. Just look how simple history is compared with science-fiction! It's simpleЧbut

is it good?

These early science-fiction tales explored the Universe; they were probings, speculations, as to where we could go. What we could do.

They had a sweep and reach and exuberance that belonged.

They were fun, too ....

JOHN W. CAMPBELL, JR. Mountainside, N.J. April, 1953

BOOK ONE

PIRACY PREFERRED PROLOGUE

HIGH m THE DEEP BLUE OF THE afternoon sky rode a tiny speck of glistening metal, scarcely visible in the glare of the sun. The workers on the machines below glanced up for a moment, then back to their work, though little enough it was on these automatic cultivators. Even this minor diversion was of interest in the dull monotony of green. These endless fields of castor bean plants had to be cultivated, but with the great machines that did the work it required but a few dozen men to cultivate an entire county.

The passengers in the huge plane high above them gave little thought to what passed below, engrossed with their papers or books, or engaged in casual conversation. This monotonous trip was boring to most of them. It seemed a waste of time to spend six good hours in a short 3,500 mile trip. There was nothing to do, nothing to see, except a slowly passing landscape ten miles below. No details could be distinguished, and the steady low throb of the engines, the whirring of the giant propellers, the muffled roar of the air, as it rushed by, combined to form a soothing lullaby of power. It was all right for pleasure seekers and vacationists, but business men were in a hurry.

The pilot of the machine glanced briefly at the instruments, wondered vaguely why he had to be there at all, then turned, and leaving the pilot room in charge of his assistant, went down to talk with the chief engineer.

His vacation began the first of July, and as this was the last of June, he wondered what would have happened if he had done as he had been half inclined to doЧquit the trip and let the assistant take her through. It would have been simpleЧjust a few levers to manipulate, a few controls to set, and the instruments would have taken her up to ten or eleven miles, swung her into the great westward air current, and leveled her off at five hundred and sixty or so an hour toward 'Frisco'. They would hold her on the radio beam better than he ever could. Even the landing would have been easy. The assistant had never landed a big plane, but he knew the routine, and the instruments would have done the work. Even if he hadn't been there, ten minutes after they had reached destination, it would land automaticallyЧif an emergency pilot didn't come up by that time in answer to an automatic signal.

He yawned and sauntered down the hall. He yawned again, wondering what made him so sleepy.

He slumped limply to the floor and lay there breathing ever more and more slowly.

The officials of the San Francisco terminus of The Transcontinental Airways company were worried. The great Transcontinental express had come to the field, following the radio beam, and now it was circling the field with its instruments set on the automatic signal for an emergency pilot. They were worried and with good reason, for this flight carried over 900,000 dollar's worth of negotiable securities. But what could attack one of those giant ships? It would take a small army to overcome the