"Robert A. Heinlein - Expanded Universe (Collected Stories)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Heinlein Robert A)

The Third Millennium Opens
Who Are the Heirs of Patrick Henry?
тАЬPravdaтАЭ Means тАЬTruthтАЭ
Inside Intourist
Searchlight
The Pragmatics of Patriotism
Paul Dirac, Antimatter, and You
Larger Than Life
Spinoff
The Happy Days Ahead


To William Targ




2
FOREWORD
Warning! Truth in advertising requires me to tell you that this volume
contains THE WORLDS OF ROBERTA. HEINLEIN, published 1966.
But this new volume is about three times as long. It contains fiction
stories that have never before appeared in book form, nonfiction
articles not available elsewhere, a 30-year updating on my 1950
prognostications (as well as the 15-year updating that appeared in
THE WORLDS OF R.A.H.), with the usual weasel-worded excuses as
to why I guessed wrong-and (ruffles & flourishes) not one but two
scenarios for the year 2000, one for people who like happy endings
and another for people who can take bad news without a quiver-as
long as it happens to somebody else.
On these I will do a really free-swinging job as the probability (by a
formula I just now derived) that either I or this soi-disant civilization
will be extinct by 2000 A.D. approaches 99.92+%. This makes it
unlikely that I will again have to explain my mistakes.
But do not assume that I will be the one extinct. My great-great-great-
grandfather Lawrence Heinlein died prematurely at the age of ninety-
seven, through having carelessly left his cabin one winter morning
without his gun - and found a buck deer on the ice of
his pond. Lack of his gun did not stop my triple-greatgrandfather; this
skinful of meat must not be allowed to escape. He went out on the ice
and bulldogged the buck, quite successfully.
But in throwing the deer my ancestor slipped on the ice, went down,
and a point of the buckтАЩs rack stabbed between his ribs and pierced
his heart.
No doubt it taught him a lesson-it certainly taught me one. So far IтАЩve
beaten the odds three times: continued to live when the official
prognosis called for something less active. So I intend to be careful-
not chopped down in my prime the way my ancestor was. I shanтАЩt
bulldog any buck deer, or cross against the lights, or reach