"Harlan Ellison - Toward The Light" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ellison Harlan)

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HARLAN ELLISON

GO TOWARD THE LIGHT

IT WAS A TIME OF MIRACLES. Time, itself, was the first miracle. That we had
learned how to drift backward through it, that we had been able to achieve it at
all: another miracle. And the most remarkably miraculous miracle of all: that of
the one hundred and sixty-five physicists, linguists, philologists,
archaeologists, engineers, technicians, programmers of large-scale numerical
simulations, and historians who worked on the Timedrift Project, only two were
Jews. Me, myself, Matty Simon, a timedrifter, what is technically referred to on
my monthly paycheck as an authentic "chronocircumnavigator" -- euphemistically
called a "fugitive" by the one hundred and sixty-three Gentile techno-freaks and
computer jockeys-- short-speak for Tempus Fugit -- "Time Flies" -- broken-backed
Latin, just a "fugitive." That's me, young Matty, and the other Jew is Barry
Levin. Not Levine, and not Leveen, but Levin, as if to rhyme with "let me in."
Mr. Barry R. Levin, Fields Medal nominee, post-adolescent genius and wiseguy,
the young man who Stephen Hawking says has made the greatest contributions to
quantum gravity, the guy who, if you ask him a simple question you get a
pageant, endless lectures on chrono-string theory, complexity theory, algebraic
number theory, how many pepperonis can dance on the point of a pizza. Also,
Barry Levin, orthodox Jew. Did I say orthodox? Beyond, galactically beyond
orthodox. So damned orthodox that, by comparison, Moses was a fresser of
barbequed pork sandwiches with Texas hot links. Levin, who was frum, Chassid, a
reader and quoter of the Talmud, and also the biggest pain in the . . . I am a
scientist, I am not allowed to use that kind of language. A pain in the nadir,
the fundament, the buttocks, the tuchis!

A man who drove everyone crazy on Project Timedrift by continuing to insist that
while it was all well and good to be going back to record at first hand every
aspect of the Greek Culture, that the Hellenic World was enriched and
enlightened by the Israelites and so, by rights, we ought to be making book on
the parallel history of the Jews.

With one hundred and sixty-three goyim on the Project, you can imagine with what
admiration and glee this unending assertion was received. Gratefully, we were
working out of the University of Chicago, and not Pinsk, so at least I didn't
have to worry about pogroms.

What I did worry about was Levin's characterization of me as a "pretend Jew."


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