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

titles; moreover, he said that my title gave away the ending). I never liked тАЬWherever You May BeтАЭ (too
many indefinite verbs and a preposition to be memorable) and changed it, in this collection, to тАЬThe
Reluctant Witch.тАЭ

тАЬThe Beautiful BrewтАЭ emerged from a cartoon by Virgil Partch, a wonderfully off-beat cartoonist who
signed his cartoons тАЬVIP,тАЭ that showed a couple of bar patrons admiring the work of a bartender
drawing a mug of beer. The beer was foaming up into the bust and head of an attractive young woman.
The caption said something like, тАЬWhen he puts a head on a beer, he really puts on a head.тАЭ I did a little
research in FrazerтАЩsThe Golden Bough about the spirit of the grain, spent the afternoon at the local Blatz
brewery watching beer being made, and wrote тАЬThe Beautiful Brew.тАЭ Gold bought it forBeyond without
any hesitation, and it was published in the September 1954 issue. This time he didnтАЩt change my title.

тАЬSine of the MagusтАЭ had a more adventurous history. The idea came from a lobby bulletin board at the
Muehlebach Hotel in Kansas City. If magicians had a convention, I thought, they would meet just like
every other professional group, and their meetings would be announced on the lobby meeting board
spelled out in those detachable white letters. And there would be something misspelled. There always is
something misspelled. The magicians would behave just like every other professional group, with name
tags (often with corny requests) and printed programs and dull presentations. Only these would be real
magicians. I did some research on magic in Frazer and other authorities and then did some speculations
of my own. Maybe, I thought, the reason spells didnтАЩt work consistently was because they werenтАЩt
mathematically derived, and calculus, I learned, was invented for just this kind of task тАФ to provide
limits. What if someone had invented a calculus of magic!

I wanted to make a romantic comedy out of all this, like тАЬThe Reluctant WitchтАЭ and тАЬThe Beautiful BrewтАЭ
and the fantasy novels of Thorne Smith that I had always enjoyed, likeThe Night Life of the Gods. So I
wrote what I called тАЬBeauty Is a WitchтАЭ (from a quotation, Shakespeare, I think: тАЬBeauty is a witch
against whose charms faith melteth into bloodтАЭ) and sent it to Gold тАФ and he promptly rejected it. Fred
Pohl sent it to Fletcher Pratt, who was launching a new fantasy magazine but one that would pay only one
cent a word rather than three. Pratt liked the short novel but wanted a bit of rewriting in one of the
opening scenes; before I could start on that, however, Gold asked to have the story returned. He was in
dire need of a lead short novel, this time forBeyond. It was published in the May 1954 issue. Gold
changed the title to тАЬSine of the Magus.тАЭ Donald W. Lawler in Tymn and AshleyтАЩs reference book
Science Fiction, Fantasy, and WeirdFiction Magazines commented that the story тАЬstands out as one
of the best ofBeyond ,тАЭ and it was listed as a classic by theEncyclopedia ofFantasy . I retitled it тАЬThe
MagiciansтАЭ for this book, and later expanded it into a novel for ScribnerтАЩs under the same title. By that
timeTheExorcist andRosemaryтАЩs Baby had become best-sellers, and I included in the novel a satire of
those novels. Nobody noticed.

James Gunn

One
The Reluctant Witch
Matt refused to believe it. Incredulity paralyzed him as he stared after the fleeing, bounding tire. Then,
with a sudden release, he sprinted after it.

тАЬStop!тАЭ he yelled futilely. тАЬStop, damn it!тАЭ

With what seemed like sadistic glee, the tire bounced high in the air and came down going faster than
ever. Matt pounded dustily down the hot road for a hundred yards before he pulled even with it. He
knocked it over on its side. The tire lay there, spinning and frustrating, like a turtle on its back. Matt