"Bradley Denton - The Calvin Coolidge Home for Dead Comedians" - читать интересную книгу автора (Denton Bradley)

"My name is Barbara," she said, in her most charming Miss Manners voice, and turned me toward the
ginzo. "Have you met my husband, Bradley?"

Well, friendships have been built on a lot less.

They lived somewhere out in the scenic flint hills ofKansas ,BaldwinCity to be exact, about a bazooka
shot fromLawrence .

Once I warmed up to him, really made an effort, I found that Brad could be fairly okay company.

Suddenly, six months later, I found myself showing them aroundAustin ; they were moving here so Barb
could get her M.L.S. at UT. Well, good, I thought, at least I'll get to look at Barb occasionally. So then
they and their dog Watson and the two catlike creatures they tolerate moved down here, where they've
been ever since, thanks to Barb's consummate library skills. (If we could only get them to move south of
the river to Bubbatown, everything would be hunky-dory.)

Oh yeah, it turns out Brad writes a little, too.



Enough of this sarcastic humorous stuff.

As a general rule, great novel-writers are not great short story-writers. It's two entirely different types of
work, folks.

Well, Brad breaks the old general rule.

I want to say right now in what total awe I am of Brad's novels and short stories.

Sure, you've read Wrack and Roll, his alternate history novel, which he wrote even before he met me.
And what are you doing listening to me yammer if you haven't read his Buddy Holly Is Alive and Well on
Ganymede, which is just out? and which is merely great?

What I've done that you haven't is to read his next novel,Blackburn , which is, in the old record business
phrase, a True Monster, like, you know, "96 Tears" was the first time you heard it.
 Well, good as they are they're, you know, novels. What you have in your hands is one of Brad's first
two short story collections, here only six or seven years into his career, which should tell you something
right there.

This volume is as wonderful (and sometimes as chilling) a reconnoiter into that field of SF and fantasy as
it could and should be that you can find between covers. (This isn't hype talking. This is Howard.)

I don't want to talk about the individual stories; they speak fluently, as Errol Flynn said in another
context. What I want to tell you about is what you will find in this book.

You will find what true salvation is all about in a couple of these stories; and it shows what a writer Brad
is because sometimes it's pulling a trigger, and sometimes it's not. Sometimes, again, it's just standing
there while whatever makes you you takes the beating and the killing.

Sometimes it's eating your Beanie Weenies under the strangest circumstances.