"Mike Resnick & Martin Greenberg - Christmas Ghosts" - читать интересную книгу автора (Resnick Mike)

Chanukah." Sigh. So I gave her the go-ahead.
Mark Aronson's story came in. "I know you said to leave Dickens alone," he replied, "but I thought of a
really interesting way of using the material, and besides I didn't believe you." So okay, we've got a
Dickens story, too.

Alan Rodgers heard about the book and contacted me. "I'm working on a kind of unclassifiable novelette
that involves a ghost," he explained; "it wouldn't take
much rewriting to set it at Christmas." So all right, not all the stories have to be classifiable.

Then Brian Thomsen checked in with one of his Mouse Chandler mysteries. I gently pointed out that the
last time I read a Mouse Chandler story, it was set ten thousand years in the future and halfway across
the galaxy. "So what?" asked Brian with an innocent smile.

Puck Schimel handed in a 400-word vignette. I had asked for 3,000 to 6,000 words. "I know," he said,
"but this was exam week at Yale, and besides, Alan told me he was coming in long."

And, of course, in every case, the stories were good.

I won't recite my experiences with each author, except to tell you that they're all cut from the same mold.
What you hold in your hands is a collection of amazingly varied stories about what I had thought was a
rather restrictive seasonal theme. Once again, my hat is off to the men and women who write imaginative
literature for a living; they not only manage to please the readers, but to constantly (and pleasantly)
surprise this editor.

тАФMike Resnick


HUNGER
by Michelle Sagara

Fantasy novelist Michelle Sagara was a 1992 Campbell Award nominee.

I used to hate Christmas more than any other time of the year.

Not because of the commercialism. Hell, with my VCR and my laser disk player and my stereo sound
system and car and you name it, I'm just as much a consumer as anyone else. And I didn't hate the
hypocrisy of it, at least not in the later years, because I understood it. I didn't hate the religious overtones,
and I'm not a religious man; I didn't hate the idiotic television specials or the hype or the gathering of the
family.

I hated Christmas because every Christmas after my fifth year, I saw her.

Let me tell you about her, really briefly; it'll make the rest of it all make sense. Well, at least I hope it will.

When I was five, I went traveling with my parents. We had three weeks at ChristmasтАФand three weeks,
at least to a five-year-old, are forever. My dad didn't like snow much, and he especially didn't like to
shovel it, so when we chose a place to travel, we went south. Fifty years ago and more, South America
wasn't a really civilized place; hell, hi many places it's pretty primitive now. But it had warm weather, and
it had lots of people fussing over my dad, which made nun happy; it had good food, and Christmas was
still celebrated.