"Paul Preuss - Venus Prime 1 - Breaking Strain" - читать интересную книгу автора (Preuss Paul)

ARTHUR C. CLARKE'S VENUS PRIME: VOLUME I




Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Kristina Anderson, San Francisco artist and bookbinder, for an introduction to the
bookmakerтАЩs craft. Carol Dawson, writer, and Lenore Coral, librarian at Cornell, refreshed my memories
of London in general and SothebyтАЩs in particular. My daughter, Mona Helen Preuss, slogged through old
auction catalogues at the library of the University of California and Berkeley. The staff of the rare-book
room of the San Francisco Public Library were customarily, anonymously, efficient and helpful. Thanks
to them all, and let them be reassured that my mistakes are my own.

тАУPaul Preuss




Introduction

by ARTHUR C. CLARKE



U nlike some authors, I have not generally been given to collaborative work in the science fiction area,
especially in regard to my novels which, for the most part, have been written alone. There have been,
however, some notable exceptions. In the 1960s, I worked with director Stanley Kubrick on the most
realistic SF film done to that time, an ambitious little project called 2001: A Space Odyssey. Over a
decade and a half later, I had another close encounter with a Hollywood director named Peter Hyams,
who produced and directed the visually impressive adaptation of my sequel, 2010.

Both films were rewarding experiences, and I found myself both surprised and delighted by some of the
results. Now I find myself once again involved in an intriguing collaborative venture that has evolved
from my original story, Breaking Strain.

The novella (horrid word!) Breaking Strain was written in the summer of 1948, while I was taking my
belated degree at KingтАЩs College, London. My agent, Scott Meredith, then in his early twenties,
promptly sold it to Thrilling Wonder Stories; it can be more conveniently located in my first collection
of stories, Expedition to Earth (1954).

Soon after Breaking Strain appeared, some perceptive critic remarked that I apparently aspired to be the
Kipling of the Spaceways. Even if I was not conscious of it, that was certainly a noble ambitionтАУ


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 ARTHUR C. CLARKE'S VENUS PRIME: VOLUME I

especially as I never imagined that the dawn of the Space Age was only nine years ahead.