"Kerr,.Katharine.&.Martin.H.Greenberg.-.Enchanted.Forests.V2" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dragon Stories)

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INTRODUCTION

by Katharine Kerr

The forest was our first alien world. Our species evolved
weak except for our shaped stones, defenseless except for our
foul smell. We needed an open view, where we could see the
leopard stalking the grass, the hyena pack spreading out to
surround. As we moved out of the Rift to migrate through and
then beyond the water meadows and grasslands of the area
that's now the Sahara desert, forests began to loom dark at the
edge of our view, always alien, always dangerous, but always,
since humans are who we are, inviting us in with questions
about what we might find there.

The history of Europe is the history of the death of forests.
Hunters might stalk through them, shamans and priests might
retreat into them, shepherds and horse nomads might shun
them, but the farmers, Europe's real settlers, slashed and
burned their way through, even though it took them thousands
of years to kill all the wild places- In China, in India, the pri-
meval forest also fell before stone ax and fire. In America the
history reads the same, though the axes flashed with steel.
Our once vast forests of the Eastern states, at least, have
dwindled into parks among the plowed fields.

Yet somewhere deep in our collective psyche, the en-
chanted forest still stands, fearsome and inviting all at the
same time. In forests lurk monsters but treasures as well, evil
witches but wise hermits, tests to fail, tests to win, roads that
lead to places where magic lives and things are made new.
For this book, I asked twenty-five different authors to take a
fresh look at these forests of the mind. Although some themes
have emerged from the collection, I've been fascinated by the
wide variety of the stories I received. I hope you enjoy them
as much as I did.

WODWRK