"Harlan Ellison - Partners in Wonder" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ellison Harlan)

The Prowler in the City at the Edge of the World
Up Christopher to Madness
Runesmith
Rodney Parish for Hire
The Kong Papers
The Human Operators
Survivor #1
The Power of the Nail
Wonderbird
The Song the Zombie Sang
Street Scene
Come to Me Not in Winter's White
 SONS
OF
JANUS
 INTRODUCTION

These are stories I have written with other writers. Collaborations, theyтАЩre called. They are the
products of two minds working together, sometimes in complete harmony, more often in opposition. The
former, because the ideas were so right they needed no conflict to produce a coherent whole; the latter,
because writers are perverse creatures who enjoy tormenting one another. And also, conscious opposition
on the part of one of the collaborators, to the direction a story is taking naturally, may produce a stress that
bends it unexpectedly in a totally unpredictable way. And from that can come a toad prince or a toad,
depending on whether or not both writers know how to handle a fable run amuck.
The beloved Lester del Rey тАУ one of my early mentors in the craft of professional lying тАУ told me
once: never write a story with someone, that you can do as well by yourself. Well, I believe that. I tried
writing a novel with Avram Davidson once, titled тАЬDonтАЩt Speak of RopeтАЭ. Ech. One of the most horrible
experiences in a universe filled with death camps, hardhats, campus massacres and the human gamut that
runs from Spiro to Manson; somewhere in a file drawer languish ten thousand words of that novel,
unended, unlamented, unfortunate. So I do, I really do, agree with Lester.
Even so, life can occasionally become dull and predictable, and so, to spice it slightly, those of us
with a flair for danger and high adventure take guided tours through the heart of Mt. Vesuvius, stalk the
blood-sucking vampire bat through the swamps and fens of Bosnia and/or Herzegovina, join peace rallies,
date beautiful models and, when all else fails, collaborate on fictions with other writers. I grant you the
picture of world-weariness and jaded appetite I paint, the desperation of ennui that drives men to such
hideous extremes as collaboration, is an ugly one. But I feel you must know what horrors and pitfalls lie
behind this seemingly uncomplicated act. Ask Avram. Ech.
But the reward of successful collaboration is a thing that cannot be produced by either of the
parties working alone. It is akin to the benefits of sex with a partner, as opposed to masturbation. The latter
is fun, but you show me anyone who has gotten a baby from playing with him or herself, and IтАЩll show you
an ugly baby, with just a whole bunch of knuckles.
And so, risking the hisses and catcalls of overly critical readers and critics who will call these joint
efforts (if youтАЩll pardon my carrying on the allusion from the preceding paragraph) merely gimmicky
constructs, over the past many years I have yoked myself to fourteen other writers, and from these literary
miscegenations have come the fictions before you.
My relationships with all of these men have been substantially more than what might be termed
mere acquaintanceship. All of them are my friends, but not all of them like me. Nor do I like all of them.
Many of them have done me favors I would be hard-pressed to repay in full or in kind. Others have messed
me over hideously. From time to time I have been in serious disagreement with one or another of them.
Between one of them and myself there was a shadow for many years. Between myself and another is