"Joe Haldeman - Guardian" - читать интересную книгу автора (Haldeman Joe)

Joe Haldeman
ACE BOOKS, NEW YORK
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the
author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or
dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
GUARDIAN
An Ace Book Published by The Berkley Publishing Group,
a division of Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.
Visit our website at www.penguinputnam.com
Copyright ┬й 2002 by Joe Haldeman.
Jacket art by Craig White. Jacket design by Rita Frangie. Text design by Tiffany Kukec.
All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

First edition: December 2002 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Haldeman, Joe W.
Guardian /Joe Haldeman.тАФ 1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-441-00977-8 (alk. paper)
1. WomenтАФAlaskaтАФFiction. 2. AlaskaтАФFiction. I. Title.

PS3558.A353 G83 2002
813'. 54тАФdc21
2002021444

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This book is dedicated to my brother Jay, who (as Jack C. Haldeman II) wrote
eight science fiction novels and over a hundred short storiesтАФand also
dedicated to Alaska, where we had the good fortune to live as children.
The state is calling itself "our last, best hope" now, which may or may
not be true. It is probably the best place to raise a child if for some reason you
want him or her to become a science fiction writer. The beauty and size of it, the
limitless possibilities. The amazing sky.

I also want to thank the Clutes, John and Judith. John, for clueing me in on the
Flammarion novel that eerily parallels this one; Judith, for leading me on a wild
bicycle ride through the labyrinthine streets of London, to their huge book
collection, where we actually found an English translation of it.

One character's name was changed to memorialize Gordon R. Dickson, who
took many of us to places we wouldn't have found on our own.
Prologue
When my father died in 2004, aged 105, he left behind this manuscript, with a letter
saying that I could publish it if I wished to.
I don't see why not, though I will call it a work of fiction, or of wishing, rather
than a memoir. Much of it is impossible to believe, though it is presented as fact. I am of
an age myself, 77 this month, able to appreciate the fact that the membrane that separates
memory from imagination is semipermeable at best.