"Out Of Bounds" - читать интересную книгу автора (Merril Judith)

CONTENTS

Introduction: Theodore Sturgeon
That Only a Mother
Peeping Tom
The Lady Was a Tramp
Whoever You Are
Connection Completed
Dead Center
Death Cannot Wither

"It's been suggested that most women fail to write significantly because the female mind is viscerotonic, and occupied almost exclusively with the moment-to-moment reality of emotions. If this is true, literature's loss is science-fiction's gain, for OUT OF BOUNDS, Judith Merril's collection of short stories, is a warm and colorful rendering of the minutiae of the future."
ЧAlfred Bester, Fantasy & Science Fiction

OUT OF BOUNDS
A PYRAMID BOOK
First printing, April 1960 Second printing, February 1963
This book is fiction. No resemblance is intended between any character herein and any person, living or dead; any such resemblance is purely coincidental.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
"That Only a Mother," copyright 1948, by Street & Smith, Inc.; originally appeared in Astounding Science Fiction, June 1948
"Peeping Tom," copyright 1954, by Standard Magazines; originally appeared in Startling Stories, Spring 1954
"The Lady Was a Tramp," copyright 1957, by Fantasy Press; originally appeared in Venture Science Fiction, July 1957
"Whoever You Are," copyright 1952, by Standard Magazines; originally appeared in Startling Stories, December 1952
"Connection Completed," copyright 1954, by Standard Magazines; originally appeared in Universe, Summer 1954
"Dead Center," copyright 1954, by Fantasy Press; originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, November 1954
"Death Cannot Wither," copyright 1958, by Fantasy Press; originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, February 1959


Copyright, й 1960, by Judith Merril All Rights Reserved
Printed in the United States of America
PYRAMID BOOKS are published by Pyramid Publications, Inc., 444 Madison Avenue, New York 22, New York, U.S.A.

INTRODUCTION

IT SEEMS there was a travelling salesman. There really was. He was seedy and he was sad, and he travelled from door to door in ChelseaЧthat section of the lower West Side of New York lying between the more famous Village and the more infamous Hell's Kitchen. If he ever sold his wares I do not know, except as I may here bear witness he sold nothing to me; he did, however, carry news of me, a writer barely begun, to the ears of Miss Merril, a writer barely beginning.
There followed a letter and a meeting. Her letter contained some flattery of a nature quite overwhelming until tempered by the meeting, at which I was quickly made aware of the fact that nobody who had actually sold a story to a magazineЧeven a minor story to a minor magazineЧcould escape her awe. In other words, the status Writer was of greater importance to her than any writer. Even me.
At the time she had not yet sold a word, and her chant, her theme was, "I want to be a Writer!" and the anomaly in this was that she was one, and that anyone in the scrivening trade who ever talked to her knew immediately that she was; that she was a writer in every respect, from top to toe to inside to out, who could write and would write and must write if it was on wet cardboard in the pouring rain with a pointed stick; and she didn't know it!
Telling her did no good, because she didn't believe it. YetЧwhat is a writer, anyway? What elements produce that subspecies? Why, only those she had, and has in such full measure; and I shall enumerate:
A respect for the craft. One way to restate this is to say that the pen is mightier than the sword; and the fair extrapolation of that, these nuclear days, is that the word is mightier than the bombЧit is, indeed, truly the ultimate weapon, and the writer writes respectfully, knowing this.
Something to say. This is what the Writer does with what he has, and the more he respects what he has, the more significant is what he does.
Empathy. Some say a writer has to be interested in people. Some go further and say he has to love people. But a Writer must be able to see out through other people's eyes and feel with their fingertips.
Humility. One expression of this is "It isn't finished yet," in the sense that anything alive is mutable in every fibre; changing, growing; so that a Writer's writing has about it the quality of lifeЧnot harvested and handed you dewy and fresh, and you'd better gobble it before it goes bad, but able, rather, to live as you live, grow as you grow Чto bring you fruits of sight and insight to the degree that the soil and climate of You can nurture it.
Finally, if the writer is to write fiction, there must be the acquisition of the techniques of fiction, and the most profound understanding that a story about an Idea or a Thing might be a tract or an article or an anecdote, but unless and until it is about people, it is not fiction.
From the very beginningЧand even before that!ЧJudith Merril was a Writer. It may be, however, that she marks the very beginning with THAT ONLY A MOTHER (humility at work, you see.) And I would like to say a special few words about this extra-special story.
I have gone over the contents of this collection (incredibly, her first) in its pre-natal form of galleys and tear-sheets, and I wish you could see it that way too. For every story shows work and more workЧtouch here, polish there, rewrite, re-proportionЧall the effort which means only that this author regards these stories as alive and growing, even as she has lived and grown since she first wrote them, and as, therefore, they must live and grow with you. But in one special case I have requested that the story run just as it first appeared, so that, along with the story, you may read the author.