"John D. MacDonald - Flaw" - читать интересную книгу автора (MacDonald John D)

FLAW
John D. MacDonald (1916- )
Startling Stories, January


John D. MacDonald returns (see his two excellent stories in our
1948 volume) with this interesting and unusual piece of speculative
fiction. MacDonald was tremendously prolific in the late 1940s, working
in almost every genre that still had magazine markets available, in what
was the twilight of the pulp era. He got published because he was a
wonderful storyteller, but also because he developed an excellent
work-ing knowledge of genres and their conventions. However, like all
great writers, he could successfully defy genre conventions and get
away with it, as in this story, which is blatantly pessimistic and questions
the very possibility of going to the starsтАФan attitude and point of view
that most late 1940s science fiction writers and their readers certainly did
not share.тАФM.H.G.

(Science fiction can be at its most amusing [and most useful,
perhaps] when it challenges our assumptions. And that is true of
straightforward scientific speculation, also.

Even when the challenge is doomed to failure [and in my opinion
the one in this story is so doomed] or when scientific advance actually
demonstrates, within a few years, the chal-lenge to be doomed, the story
is likely to remain interesting. тАФThus, I once wrote a story in which I
speculated that the Moon was only a false front and that on the other
side were merely wooden supports. Within a few years the other side of
the Moon was photographed and our satellite proved not to be a false
front after all. But who cares? Anyone who reads the story is not likely to
forget the speculation.

Read тАЬFlaw,тАЭ then, and ask yourself: With the rockets and probes of
the last three decades, has the thesis of this story yet been
demonstrated to be false? If so, how?тАФI.A.)

****

I rather imagine that I am quite mad. Nothing spectacular, you understand.
Nothing calling for restraint, or shock therapy. I can live on, dangerous to no
one but myself.
 This beach house at La Jolla is comfortable. At night I sit on the rocks
and watch the distant stars and think of Johnny. He probably wouldnтАЩt like
the way I look now. My fingernails are cracked and broken and there are
streaks of gray in my blonde hair. I no longer use makeup. Last night I
looked at myself in the mirror and my eyes were dead.

It was then that I decided that it might help me to write all this down. I
have no idea what IтАЩll do with it.