"James E. Gunn - The Listeners" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gunn James E)

the possibility of life on other worlds, and various proposals for
communicating with aliens. The availability of radio telescopes had led to
recent discussions among such scientists as Guiseppe Cocconi and Philip
Morrison about the possibility of picking up signals from space, and Cocconi
had written a letter (reprinted in the first Computer Run section) to Sir
Bernard Lovell proposing that some time on the Jodrell Bank radio telescope be
devoted to a search for signals from space.
Sullivan's book was fascinating, and included a good deal of material
that later found its way into my novel, but what stimulated my writer's
instinct was the concept of a project that might have to be pursued for a
century without results. What kind of need would produce that kind of
dedication, I pondered, and what kind of people would it enlist -- and have to
enlist if it were to continue? I wrote "The Listeners," which in the novel is
called "Robert MacDonald." My then literary agent thought it was overwritten
for its audience, had too many foreign-language quotations, and anyway, he
wrote, I should make my hero a young man fighting against the tyranny of tired
old men. Another agent didn't care for it enough to take me on as a client,
but when _Galaxy_ announced that it was going back to monthly publication (and
would need more material) I sent it to Fred Pohl and he wrote back saying that
he'd be happy to publish it if I'd include translations of the
foreign-language quotes. The following year Donald Wollheim included it in his
_World's Best Science Fiction_ anthology.
In the next few years (I was working on other projects as well), I
wrote vie more chapters and saw all but the final chapter published in
_Fantasy and Science Fiction_ and _Galaxy_. Meanwhile Charles Scribner's Sons
had decided to develop a science-fiction line under editor Norbert Slepyan,
and one of the novels he signed up was _The Listeners_. He asked me once if I
was going to add anything to the six chapters and I said I was planning on
broadening the perspective to include some of the materials that were being
gathered by the computer to aid in its recognition (and translation) of alien
communications, as well as the beginnings of artificial intelligence
(interested readers may watch it happen).
The novel was published in hard covers in 1972 as "a novel" (not a
science-fiction novel). The same year it became a selection of the Science
Fiction Book Club. The following year it was published by Signet Books and a
decade later it was reprinted by Del Rey Books. It has been translated into
Italian, German, Polish, Japanese, and Chinese. Three decades have passed
since the novel was published, and more than a fourth of the century-long
project. SETI projects on both coasts are still hard at work, trying to pick
up messages from the stars, and they continue -- without positive results. If
the novel has any claims to vision, its insight may be found in its evaluation
of human desire and persistence in the face of continuing discouragement. But
we are approaching the period when the novel begins, and maybe the signal we
all have been awaiting -- that we are not alone -- will soon be received.
If it is, if our search is rewarded, maybe _The Listeners_ will have
played a part in it, and the book that started in 1966 in a hot August
sunroom, in a college town in eastern Kansas, will have made a difference.
After all, one of the SETI project directors told me recently that _The
Listeners_ had done more to turn people on to the search than any other book.
My thanks go to Walter Sullivan's _We Are Not Alone_. I hope the title is