"Jack Dann - Going Under (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dann Jack)

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Going Under

Jack Dann

When I first met Jack Dann, he had one arm in a cast and a pretty woman, feebly protesting, slung
over the other shoulder, and what can one say? No one else at the party seemed surprised that he
should show up that way.
Jack is bawdy and hilarious, irrepressible-a very social and sociable creature invading a
profession supposedly full of introverted bookworms. You might expect his writing to be
lighthearted, slick; but it's not.
There's a phenomenon, familiar to people who have writers as friends, that I call The
Buchwald Paradox. The name comes from an article in the Washington Post Sunday magazine, some
years back, about the problems of making up a guest list for an upper-crust Washington party.
Never ever invite Art Buchwald, it advised; this man who is so funny on paper is an absolute sea
anchor at a party. He sits behind his cigar and mumbles that the world is going to hell. The
author of this article found it to be generally true that funny writers were rather morose people.
But the converse is also true. If you want to liven up your party, she sate you should invite a
writer whose work is unrelentingly serious. And nail down the lampshades.

So it is with Jack. Most of his writing is rather deep and dark, carefully crafted,
thoughtful, intense. When he emerges from the chrysalis of work he is quite a different sort of
animal. (This paradox also characterizes at least two other contributors to this volume, Gene
Wolfe and Gardner Dozois. )
Jack has published four novels, a book of short stories, and a chapbook of poetry; he has
edited or co-edited nine anthologies of science fiction. His stories have appeared in most of the
science fiction magazines and the more prestigious original anthologies, as well as the occasional
slick journal of popular gynecology. This one, from Omni magazine, takes us oddly forward and back
in time, centering around an event that is a mod-
ern archetype of helpless terror. -

She was beautiful, huge, as graceful as a racing liner. She was a floating Crystal Palace, as
magnificent as anything J. P. Morgan could conceive. Designed by Alexander Carlisle and built by
Harland and Wolff, she wore the golden band of the company along all nine hundred feet of her. She
rose 175 feet like the side of a cliff, with nine steel decks, four sixty-two foot funnels, over
two thousand windows and side-lights to illuminate the luxurious cabins and suites and public
rooms. She weighed 46,000 tons, and her reciprocating engines and Parsons-type turbines could
generate over fifty thousand horsepower and speed the ship over twenty knots. She had a gymnasium,
a Turkish bath, squash and racquet courts, a swimming pool, libraries and lounges and sitting
rooms. There ` were rooms and suites to accommodate 735 first-class passen-
gers, 674 in second class, and over a thousand in steerage.
She was the R.M.S. Titanic, and Stephen met Esme on her Promenade Deck as she pulled out
of her Southampton dock, bound for New York City on her maiden voyage.
Esme stood beside him, resting what looked to be a cedar box on the rail, and gazed out
over the cheering crowds on the docks below. Stephen was struck immediately by how beautiful she
was. Actually, she was plain-featured, and quite young.
She had a high forehead, a small, straight nose, wet brown eyes that peeked out from under
plucked, arched eyebrows, and a mouth that was a little too full. Her blond hair, though clean,
was carelessly brushed and tangled in the back. Yet, to Stephen, she seemed beautiful.