"Harlan Ellison - Alone Against Tomorrow" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ellison Harlan)

Tomorrow
 Introduction:
The Song of the Soul
Carl Jung once said, тАЬThe only thing we have to fear on this planet is man.тАЭ He could not have
been more correct. We have only to look around us, at the fissures in the rock-wall of our times, to know
that we have created for ourselves a madhouse of irrationality and despair. The lunacies of our world erupt
daily like boils on the diseased body of civilization. Is it, hopefully, the reawakening of conscience, or,
more likely, the refracted pain of denying our souls?
Alienation.
The keyword so easily bandied by sociologists and inept novelists alike. The explanation for racial
strife, random violence, mass madness, the rape of our planet. Man feels cut off. He feels denied. He feels
alone. He is alienated.
If one more quotation might be permitted, the words of Oscar Wilde-himself a classic study of
alienation-serve to describe alienation: тАЬTo reject oneтАЩs own experiences is to arrest oneтАЩs own
development. To deny oneтАЩs own experience is to put a lie into the lips of oneтАЩs own life. It is no less than a
denial of the Soul.тАЭ
Alone against his world, the man of today finds his gods have deserted him, his brother has grown
fangs, the machine clatters ever nearer on his heels, fear is the only lover demanding his clasp, and without
answers he turns and turns, and finds only darkness.
The creative intellect struggles against this sorry reality. Pressing with unflagging intensity against
the shuddering membrane of alienation, against the interface between himself and freedom of the soul, the
artist tries to gain an exit with the magics of words and movements and colors. Yet all around him the
inexorable inertia of the alienated society finds the strength to keep rolling, grinding, crushing. It would
seem only the mind of the madman is free.
And even so, the artist persists. He speaks of man, alone in the night, alone against the stars, alone
against tomorrow-more starless and darker than even today. He speaks of worlds beyond our world, days
beyond our days, places cross-when and never-will-be, in hopes that cautions may be flung on the wind and
somehow still be heard.
These are stories I have written over the past ten years and more. Stories in which the theme of
alienation dominates. They are by no means stories of hopelessness; for in examples of the damned and
lost, we find hope within ourselves. Alienated, perhaps; yet never alone.

HARLAN ELLISON
Los Angeles, January, 1970
 I Have No Mouth,
and I Must Scream
LIMP, THE BODY OF GORRISTER hung from the pink palette; unsupported-hanging high above us in the
computer chamber; and it did not shiver in the chill, oily breeze that blew eternally through the main
cavern. The body hung head down, attached to the underside of the palette by the sole of its right foot. It
had been drained of blood through a precise incision made from ear to ear under the lantern jaw. There was
no blood on the reflective surface of the metal floor.
When Gorrister joined our group and looked up at himself, it was already too late for us to realize
that once again AM had duped us, had had his fun; it had been a diversion on the part of the machine.
Three of us had vomited, turning away from one another in a reflex as ancient as the nausea that had
produced it.
Gorrister went white. It was almost as though he had seen a voodoo fetish, and was afraid for the
future. тАЬOh God,тАЭ he mumbled, and walked away. The three of us followed him after a time, and found him
sitting with his back to one of the smaller chittering banks, his head in his hands. Ellen knelt down beside
him and stroked his hair. He didnтАЩt move, but his voice came out of his covered face quite clearly. тАЬWhy
doesnтАЩt it just do-us-in and get it over with? Christ, I donтАЩt know how much longer I can go on like this.тАЭ