"John Kessel - Buffalo" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kessel John)

ago, met with Booker T. Washington and came away impressed,
although he still considers the peaceable coexistence of the
white and colored races problematical.

"What are you working on now, Wells?" Russell asks.
"What new improbability are you preparing to assault us
with? Racial equality? Sexual liberation?"

"I'm writing a screen treatment based on _ T_ h_ e _ S_ h_ a_ p_ e
_ o_ f
_ T_ h_ i_ n_ g_ s _ t_ o _ C_ o_ m_ e," Wells says. He tells them
about his
screenplay, sketching out for them the future he has in his
mind. An apocalyptic war, a war of unsurpassed brutality
that will begin, in his film, in 1939. In this war, the
creations of science will be put to the service of
destruction in ways that will make the horrors of the Great
War pale in comparison. Whole populations will be
exterminated. But then, out of the ruins will arise the new
world. The orgy of violence will purge the human race of
the last vestiges of tribal thinking. Then will come the
organization of the directionless and weak by the
intelligent and purposeful. The new man. Cleaner,
stronger, more rational. Wells can see it. He talks on,
supplely, surely, late into the night. His mind is fertile
with invention, still. He can see that Darrow and Russell,
despite their Yankee individualism, are caught up by his
vision. The future may be threatened, but it is not
entirely closed.

------------------------------------------------


Friday night, back in the barracks at Fort Hunt, Kessel
lies on his bunk reading the latest _ A_ s_ t_ o_ u_ n_ d_ i_ n_ g
_ S_ t_ o_ r_ i_ e_ s.
He's halfway through the tale of a scientist who invents an
evolution chamber that progresses him through 50,000 years
of evolution in an hour, turning him into a big-brained
telepathic monster. The evolved scientist is totally
without emotions and wants to control the world. But his
body's atrophied. Will the hero, a young engineer, be able
to stop him?

At a plank table in the aisle a bunch of men are playing
poker for cigarettes. They're talking about women and dogs.
Cole throws in his hand and comes over to sit on the next
bunk. "Still reading that stuff, Jack?"

"Don't knock it until you've tried it."