"John Kessel - The Last American" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kessel John)

THE LAST AMERICAN
by John Kessel

John Kessel co-directs the creative writing program at North Carolina
State University in Raleigh. His fiction has received the Nebula Award, the
Theodore Sturgeon Award, the Locus Poll Award, and his
October/November 2002 AsimovтАЩs novella, тАЬStories for Men,тАЭ was the
winner of the James Tiptree Jr. Award. Another AsimovтАЩs story, тАЬA Clean
EscapeтАЭ (May 1985), was the first episode of last summerтАЩs ABC television
series Masters of Science Fiction. JohnтАЩs books include Good News from
Outer Space, Corrupting Dr. Nice, and The Pure Product. Most recently,
with James Patrick Kelly, he edited the anthologies Feeling Very Strange:
The Slipstream Anthology and Rewired: The Post-Cyberpunk Anthology.
His next short story collection, The Baum Plan for Financial
Independence will be out soon from Small Beers Press. The authorтАЩs latest
story for us takes a grim and brutal look at a master manipulator.

A word of warning: there are scenes in this story that may be
disturbing to some readers.

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The Life of Andrew Steele

Recreated by Fiona 13

Reviewed by The OldGuy

тАФ

тАЬI donтАЩt blame my father for beating me. I donтАЩt blame him for
tearing the book I was reading from my hands, and I donтАЩt blame him for
locking me in the basement. When I was a child, I did blame him. I was
angry, and I hated my father. But as I grew older I came to understand
that he did what was right for me, and now I look upon him with respect
and love, the respect and love he always deserved, but that I was unable
to give him because I was too young and self-centered to grasp it.тАЭ

тАФAndrew Steele, 2077 Conversation with Hagiographer

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During the thirty-three years Andrew Steele occupied the Oval Office
of what was then called the White House, in what was then called the United
States of America (not to be confused with the current United State of
Americans), on the corner of his desk he kept an antiquated device of the
early twenty-first century called a taser. Typically used by law enforcement
officers, it functioned by shooting out a thin wire that, once in contact with its
target, delivered an electric shock of up to three hundred thousand volts.
The victim was immediately incapacitated by muscle spasms and intense