"Frankowski, Leo - A Boy and His Tank" - читать интересную книгу автора (Frankowski Leo)

November 21, 1998


Author's Note for A Boy and His Tank
This book was a long time coming.

I've never met two authors who used the same technique in getting things written. Personally, I use something akin to Method Acting, or maybe it's a form of benign schizophrenia, but I sort of become my narrator and the other main characters in the book. This imposes certain limitations on my work. For one thing, I'm largely limited to first person writing. For another, I have to be careful of my characters, since I often forget and stay in character when I get up from my desk. If my protagonist was a real mental case, I just might end up in jail.

In the late eighties, I became impressed with David Drake's Hammer's Slammers, and I wanted to write something where my mercenary heroes went around blowing up the countryside in super tanks.

In return for nothing more than money, a mercenary volunteers to kill people who haven't done much to harm him or his family, and to take his chances of being on the receiving end of pain, disfigurement, and death while dishing the same out.

A person accepting such a job might be so poor that his immediate family is at risk of starving to death. Faced with his wife and children dying, a man would likely be willing to do what he has to in order to keep his people alive.

Or he might be someone who really enjoys butchering people and thinks that getting paid for it besides is just wonderful. That is to say, he is simply out of his mind, and in a most unpleasant way.

Since it is illegal to starve to death in America, only the second group is available to man the few American mercenary outfits that exist. I have met such people. You wouldn't want one living on your street. They are scary.

(Understand that I am not talking about soldiers, people who serve in the regular armed forces of their country. Such individuals are often among the best that our race produces.)

Needless to say, I couldn't write about such group two mercenaries and still be fit (or even safe) company. My heroes would have to come from group one.

This left me with the problem of, if my heroes were so damn poor, how could they afford all those multimillion-dollar super tanks? This got me into the long and strange history of the Wealthy Nations Group and the New Kashubians.

Then there was the question of whose territory I was going to have these sterling troops desecrate.

Well, back in the late eighties, it was obvious to anyone not in the government that Yugoslavia was an explosion impatiently waiting to happen. I mean, most countries have a minority group or two, but Yugoslavia had so many mutually belligerent minority groups that they didn't have enough people left over to form a majority group. This made them an ideal candidate for starting any number of territorial wars. Also, having Kashubian Poles, Serbians, and Croatians in the same book would give me lots of opportunities to display the various aspects of the Slavic character.

Thus prepared, I went about my trade of making esthetically pleasing marks on clean, white paper. I had the book about ninety percent done when those unspeakable Yugos, completely without my permission, went and started their war two hundred years early and on the wrong damn planet, besides.

Please understand that historical and technical accuracy is supremely important to me. Unless my own disbelief is completely suspended, I can't write at all. With a war going on, all bets on the future history of Yugoslavia were off. If the Serbs, say, were wiped out, the character of Yugoslavia would be totally altered. Hell, I couldn't be sure that there would even be a Yugoslavia two hundred years hence.

Fruitless months went by when nothing useful appeared on my computer screen. Finally, I set the book aside, and went to work on The Fata Morgana. This book, too, was approaching completion when it too had to be delayed. I had some medical problems and was generally unable to sit at my computer, let alone push the buttons in any meaningful manner.

Years later, my health started to return about the same time as my bank account was running dry and the landlord was getting uppity. I did the obvious thing, completely rewrote A Boy and His Tank, and at long last you have it in your hands.

Enjoy.



Leo Frankowski

August 1, 1998

Sterling Heights



CHAPTER ONE