"Gordon R. Dickson - Of The People" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dickson Gordon R)

A strikingly different view of mankind, and a most unusual
story for Gordy, the greatest discovery-delight I had in reading
these pages. And I'm not sure I can explain why without
creating the wrong impression.
You see, I have read a lot of slushpile тАУ the technical term for
unsolicited manuscripts, sent to magazines or writers'
workshops by aspiring amateurs. And the theme of this story is
a slushpile regular тАУ second in popularity only to the one about
the only two survivors of a planetary disaster who ground their
lifeship safely on a habitable new planet and it turns out their
names are Adam and Eve. For some reason beyond my
grasping, God in His Downtown Providence ordained that
everyone who ever tried to write, tried to write this story. They
are, invariably, awful.
Well, everybody makes an ashtray their first week in shop
class (and sometimes their last), and they always stink too.
Here's the ashtray the shop teacher made.
How terrible (goes the ubiquitous theme) it must be to be a
god . . . and be cursed with empathy. It wouldn't be so bad if you
could just hate the little buggers!
But to be a god is, by definition, to be . . .


OF THE PEOPLE

But you know, I could sense it coming a long time off. It was a little extra
time taken in drinking a cup of coffee, it was lingering over the magazines in
a drugstore as I picked out a handful. It was a girl I looked at twice as I ran
out and down the steps of a library.
And it wasn't any good and I knew it. But it kept coming and it kept
coming, and one night I stayed working at the design of a power cruiser
until it was finished, before I finally knocked off for supper. Then, after I'd
eaten, I looked ahead down twelve dark hours to daylight, and I knew I'd
had it.
So I got up and I walked out of the apartment. I left my glass half-full and
the record player I had built playing the music I had written to the pictures I
had painted. Left the organ and the typewriter, left the darkroom and the
lab. Left the jammed-full filing cabinets. Took the elevator and told the
elevator boy to head for the ground floor. Walked out into the deep snow.
"You going out in January without an overcoat, Mr. Crossman?" asked the
doorman.
"Don't need a coat," I told him. "Never no more, no coats."
"Don't you want me to phone the garage for your car, then?"
"Don't need a car."
I left him and set out walking. After a while it began to snow, but not on
me. And after a little more while people started to stare, so I flagged down
a cab.
"Get out and give me the keys," I told the driver.
"You drunk?" he said.
"It's all right, son," I said. "I own the company. But you'll get out