"Kathleen Ann Goonan - What Science Fiction is All About, or The Amazing Dancing Chairs" - читать интересную книгу автора (Goose Mother)

What Science Fiction is All About
or,
The Amazing Dancing Chairs

by Kathleen Ann Goonan

Story Copyright (C) 2007, Kathleen Ann Goonan.
Images Copyright (C) 2007, Rudy Rucker.
2,200 Words.




Lefton is a plasterer. He lives in Christopher the FarmerтАЩs old white frame house, a rental house now,
which is hidden in the folds of a small hollow, next to a spring.

I have never been inside the house, but I can imagine it. The plank floors tilt. During the summer,
aluminum plates with barns or mountains painted on them cover the holes in the wall where the
stovepipes go. People used to take their stoves out for the summer, or, if not the entire stove (those big
Warm Mornings are heavy suckers), just the stovepipe. ItтАЩs nice to have a different look during the hot
months.

You cover the couches with slipcovers, and put vases of flowers from the garden on the tables, and cope
with too much heat instead of too much cold. ThatтАЩs what slipcovers are for. Summer.

But until I got the junkyard chairs, I could never figure out why people put dresses on their dining room
chairs, tied in the back with bows as if the chairs were demure little girls going to church. Why not put
frilly white socks on the legs, and some black patent-leather shoes on them, too?

Maybe that would be nice in a museum show. I might follow up on that. I bring it up, though, because I
picked up some chairs at the county dump last year.

They were strong aluminum-tube kitchen chairs with foam seats and backs, which were covered with
plaid vinyl. I spray-painted the chairs all different colorsтАФred and purple, green and yellow, and so on,
the legs and the cushions different colors, and stamped big leaves all over them in contrasting colors.
They were handy chairs, and the carpenters used them all winter in the house as they did the finish work,
slowly. Their names were ZingтАФthe master carpenterтАФand Abe, a tall, skinny black-hair guy who
smoked too much and hardly ever showed up when he said he would.

I didnтАЩt mind that the seats were torn up, because they had after all been rescued from the dump. But at
that point, I had my epiphany about the potential of the chair dresses. My chairs now needed clothes. It
would give them a whole new life. As epiphanies go, it wasnтАЩt much. It is important, though, to be able to
recognize the signs of an epiphany, even a small one. You never know what might turn out to be
important. ThatтАЩs what some of science is about. Bear with me. IтАЩm getting to the fiction part.
I am a science fiction writer. I want to write a science fiction stories, but presently all of my ideas have to
do with old cartoons, the real ones from the fifties made with millions of cells, in which chairs danced.

I could make the chairs dance now, with the power of science fiction, but that seems old and stale. Soon
we will have dancing chairs, but will we be as delighted as I was when I was five to see them? Who
knows? They will make moving easier, but we have to be careful, because that is the plight of being