"Martin H. Greenberg - The Diplomacy Guild vol. 1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Greenberg Martin H)

getting mentioned as one of the "Big Three," the other two being Robert A.
Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke.
It only got worse as the decades continued to fly by. We were not only
cursed with prolificity, but with longevity, so that the same old Big Three
remained Big for nearly half a century. Heinlein died in 1988 at the age of
80, but Clarke is still going strong as I write this and, obviously, so am
I.
The result is that, at present, when there are a great many writers
attempting to scale the mountainside of science fiction, it must be rather
annoying for them to see the peak occupied by elderly has-beens who cling
to it with their arthritic paws and simply won't get off. Even death, it
seems, won't stop us, since Heinlein has already published a posthumous
book and the reissue of his old novels is in the works.
Thanks to the limited space on the shelves of bookstores (themselves of
sharply limited number), large numbers of new books of science fiction and
fantasy are placed on them for only brief intervals before being swept off
by new arrivals. Few books seem to manage to exist in public view for
longer than a month before being replaced. Always excepting (as some
writers add, with a faint snarl) the "megastars. "
"So what," I can hear you say in your warm and loving way. "So you're a
megastar and your books are perennial sellers and the economic futures of
yourself and your eventual survivors are set. Is that bad?"
No, it isn't bad, exactly, but that's where the guilt comes in. I worry
about crowding out newcomers with my old perennials, about smothering them
with the weight of my name.
I've tried to justify the situation to myself. (Anything to make it
possible for me to walk about science fiction conventions without having to
skulk and hide in doorways when other writers pass.)
In the first place, we started in the early days of science fiction-not
only the Big Three, but others of importance such as Lester del Rey, Poul
Anderson, Fred Pohl, Clifford Simak, Ray Bradbury, and even some who died
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young: Stanley Weinbaum, Henry Kutmer, and Cyril Kornbluth, for instance. In
those early days, the magazines paid only one cent a word or less, and there
were only magazines. There were no hardcover science fiction publishers, no
paperbacks, no Hollywood to speak of.
For years and decades we stuck it out under starvation conditions, and it
was our efforts that slowly increased the popularity of science fiction to
the point where today's beginners can get more for one novel than any of us
got in ten years of endless plugging. So, if some of us are doing unusually
well now, it is possible to argue that we earned it.
Secondly, from the more personal standpoint, back in 1958 1 decided I had
done enough science fiction. I had been successful in writing nonfiction of
various types and it seemed to me I could make a living if I concentrated
on nonfiction (and, to tell you the truth, I preferred nonfiction). In that
way I could leave science fiction to the talented new writers who were
making their way into the field.
So from 1958 to 1981, a period of nearly a quarter of a century, I wrote
virtually no science fiction. There was one novel and a handful of short