"Randall Garrett - Takeoff" - читать интересную книгу автора (Garrett Randall)

In the first chapter of TolkienтАЩs Fellowship of the Ring, the venerable Bilbo Baggins makes a
speech at the party he is giving to celebrate his eleventy-first birthday. In that speech, he tells the
assembled hobbits that he does not know half of them as well as he should like, and he likes less than half
of them half as well as they deserve.
Most of his guests sit around trying to work it out and see if it comes out a compliment.
I am still doing exactly the same thing with VanтАЩs introduction to this book.
Van vastly underrates his own memory and even more vastly overrates mine. I remember our first
meeting well, but
Why should A. E. Van Vogt, who has been a glittering star in the science fiction firmament since
1939, remember an unimpressive, awestruck fan who had one very minor story published under another
name four years before? That summer of 1948, I found his name in the L.A. phone book and
trepidatingly called him up. I must have said something right, for he invited me to his home.
I showed up, but I have the feeling that Van was far more impressed by the blue-eyed тАШhoney
blonde I brought with me.
VanтАЩs working out of my age is a marvel of mathematical exactitude. I was born in 1927. Unlike
Bilbo, I have never liked birthday parties, especially my own. Just for the novelty, I decided to celebrate
my fiftieth, but only after it had passed;
You are all invited to my next such party, to be held sometime after my eleventy-first birthday.
By that time, I may have enough material to put together another book like this, but that is
problematical. You see, I only do them when I bloody well feel like it. If the right idea for a pastiche or
parody hits me, I do it, but that doesnтАЩt happen often. This book represents some twenty years of that
kind of work.
The difference between a pastiche and a parody is, perhaps, a subtle one..
A pastiche attempts to tell a story in the same way that another author would have told it. In this
book, The Best Policy is a pastiche, not a parody. I used, to the best of my ability, Eric Frank RussellтАЩs
style of writing and his way of telling a story.
A parody, when properly done, takes an authorтАЩs idiosyncrasiesтАФof style, content, and method of
presentationтАФand very carefully exaggerates them. You jack them up just one more notch. The idea is
to make those idiosyncrasies blatantly visible. Thus, Backstage Lensman is a parody. Doc Smith would
never have-very probably could never have-written it. It is very difficult indeed for a writer to see his
own idiosyncrasies; they are too much a part of him.
But the line between parody and pastiche is not hard and thin; it is broad and fuzzy. Is The Horror
Out of Time a pastiche or a parody? I donтАЩt know. You tell me.
I do not decide to write a pastiche or parody just for the sake of writing one. The story idea comes
first. In 99.44% of the cases, I write my own story in one of my own styles. But once in a very great
while it seems to me that the idea belongs in someone elseтАЩs universe. Then I write a pastiche. See,
herein, No Connections.
And when the idea belongs in anotherтАЩs universeтАФexcept that it is patently ridiculousтАФI write a
parody. The idea for Backstage Lensman, for instance, you will find in the next-to-last scene, in a simple
mathematical formula. All the rest of it came from that.
The тАЬReviews in VerseтАЭ are a different breed of mutant. They are quite deliberate. The idea is to tell
the plot with reasonable accuracyтАФand leave out the entire point that the author was trying to
make! So even if you do not heed my warning at the beginning of that section, you will still not know
what the story is really about. For that, go to the originals.
The тАЬLittle WilliesтАЭ are takeoffs of an Englishman named Harry Graham, who originated them.
Since he was a retired officer of Her MajestyтАЩs [Victoria, that is.] Coldstream Guards, he wrote under
the name тАЬCol. D. Streamer.тАЭ
The Benedict Breadfruit stories need no introduction from me. My very good friend, Reginald
Bretnor, got his very good friend, Grendel Briarton, to do an introduction for them. And Mr. Briarton,