"Harry Harrison - Galactic Dreams" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harrison Harry)

1: I Always Do What Teddy Says
2: Space Rats of the CCC
3: Down to Earth
4: A Criminal Act
5: Famous First Words
6: The Pad
7: If
8: Mute Milton
9: Simulated Trainer
10: At Last, the True Story of Frankenstein
11: The Robot Who Wanted to Know
12: Bill, the Galactic Hero's Happy Holiday

A WRITER'S LIFE

I have recently been reading Brian W. Aldiss's autobiographical work titled
Bury My Heart at W. H. Smith's. (Smith's is the largest chain of booksellers
in Great Britain, not a bespoke graveyard, and the heart referred to is a
metaphorical one.) The book wanders like a pleasant stream through green
meadows and dark woods, just as a writer's life does. People enter this life
and leave; there are both good and bad times. But hovering over the physical
life of its author are insubstantial spirits; the books and stories that have
been summoned to life by this fascinating and talented writer. From life comes
art; art becomes life.

From the outside a writer's life might appear uncommonly dull. Rise in the
morning and proceed to the study. Then with pen, pencil, typewriter, computer
sit like a monk in a cell for long hours. The only movement the flashing or
plodding fingers.

But it's not like that at all. It is wildly exciting. The work on the page is
reality, experience, knowledge, imagination transmogrified and transformed
into art. Yes, art, the word should not be shied away from. Anyone can type
"With a gentle sigh . . .тАЭ on a sheet of paper. But it ceases to be a typing
exercise when supposedly wise publishers force money upon one for simply
writing those words. It must be an art - a black one perhaps - that makes them
do something like that.

I wrote those words in Mexico in 1956. Then in 1957 and 1958, in London, Italy
and Long Island, New York, I added sixty-four thousand, nine hundred and
ninety-six more words to these four. And John W. Campbell bought these words,
paying three cents for each one, and published them as a serial in his
magazine Astounding Science Fiction.

Within a year Bantam Books bought these same words again and published them as
a paperback book entitled Deathworld. My first novel. There were more to come.

The reasons why I wrote this book are clear enough; science fiction has always
been my pleasure and enthusiasm. But what on earth was I doing in Mexico? Not