"Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle - Fallen Angels" - читать интересную книгу автора (Niven Larry)

science fiction books slowly disappear from the library shelves, beginning
with the children's departments. (That wasn't censorship either. Libraries
couldn't buy every book, now could they? So they bought "realistic"
children's books funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, books
about death and divorce, and really important things like being overweight
or fitting in with the right school crowd.)
Then came paper shortages, and paper allocations. The science fiction
sections in the chain stores grew smaller. ("You can't expect us to stock
books that aren't selling." And they canтАЩt sell if you don't stock them.)
Fantasy wasn't hurt so bad. Fantasy was about wizards and elves, and
being kind to the Earth, and harmony with nature, all things the Greens
loved. But science fiction was about science.
Science fiction wasn't exactly outlawed. There was still Freedom of
Speech; still a Bill of Rights, even if it wasn't taught much in the schools-тАФ
even if most kids graduated unable to read well enough to understand it.
But a person could get into a lot of unofficial trouble for reading SF or for
associating with known fen. She could lose her job, say. Not through
government persecution-тАФof course not-тАФbut because of "reduction in
work force" or "poor job performance" or "uncooperative attitude" or
"politically incorrect" or a hundred other phrases. And if the neighbors
shunned her, and tradesmen wouldn't deal with her, and stores wouldn't
give her credit, who could blame them? Science fiction involved science;
was that attracted me to science fiction?
He raised himself on one elbow, blinked at her change of subject, and
looked quickly around the room, as if suspecting bugs. "No, what?"
"Not Fandom. I was reading the true quill long before I knew about
Fandom and cons and such. No, it was the feeling of hope."
"Hope?"
"Even in the most depressing dystopia, there's still the notion that the
future is something we build. It doesn't just happen. You can't predict the
future, but you can invent it. Build it. That is a hopeful idea, even when the
building collapses."
Bob was silent for a moment. Then he nodded. "Yeah. Nobody's
building the future anymore, 'We live in an Age of Limited Choices.' " He
quoted the government line without cracking a smile. "Hell, you don't take
choices off a list. You make choices and add them to the list. Speaking of
which have you made your choice?"
That electric tickle . . . "Are they even alive?"
"So far. I understand it was some kind of miracle that they landed at all.
They're unconscious but not hurt bad. They're hooked up to some sort of
magical medical widget and the Angels overhead are monitoring. But if we
don't get them out soon, they'll freeze to death."
She bit her lip. "And you think we can reach them in time?"
Bob shrugged.
"You want me to risk my life on the Ice, defy the government and
probably lose my job in a crazy, amateur effort to rescue two spacemen
who might easily be dead by the time we reach them."
He scratched his beard. "Is that quixotic, or what?"
"Quixotic. Give me four minutes."