"Callahan 01 - Callahan's Crosstime Saloon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robinson Spider)

Manhattan soot clung to the walls. The windows were opaque with grime. (What has
this to do with Spider Robinson? Patience, friend.)
Many times young science fiction fans would come to Manhattan and phone me
from Grand Central Station, which connected underground with the good old
Graybar. "I've just come to New York and I read every issue of Analog and I'd
like to come up and see what a science fiction magazine office looks like," they
would invariably say.
I'd tell them to come on up, but not to expect too much. My advice was always
ignored. The poor kid would come in and gape at the piles of manuscripts, the
battered old metal desks, and mountains of magazines and stacks of artwork, the
ramshackle filing cabinets and bookshelves. His eyes would fill with tears. His
mouth would sag open.
He had, of course, expected whirring computers, telephones with TV
attachments, smoothly efficient robots humming away, ultramodern furniture, and
a general appearance reminiscent of a NASA clean room. (Our present offices, in
the spanking new Conde Nast Building on Madison Avenue, are a little closer to
that dream.)
The kid would shamble away, heartsick, the beautiful rainbow-hued bobble of
his imagination burst by the sharp prick of reality.
Still, despite the cramped quarters and the general dinginess, we managed to
put out an issue of Analog each month, and more readers bought it than any other
science fiction book, magazine, pamphlet, or cuniform tablet ever published.
And then came Spider Robinson.
Truth to tell, I don't remember if he sent in a manuscript through the mail
first, or telephoned for an appointment to visit the office. No matter. And now
he's off in Nova Scotia, living among the stunted trees and frost heaves, where
nobody-not even short-memoried editors-can reach him easily.
Anyway, in comes Spider. I look up from my desk and see this lank, almost-
cadaverous young man, bearded, long of hair, slightly owlish behind his
eyeglasses, sort of grinning quizzically, as if he didn't know what to expect.
Neither did I.
But I .thought, At least he won't be put off by the interiordecor.
You have to understand that those same kids who expected Analog's office to
look like an out-take from 2001: A Space Odyssey also had a firm idea of what an
Analog writer should look like: a tall, broadshouldered, jutjawed, steelyeyed
hero who can repair a starship's inertial drive with one hand, make friends with
the fourteen-legged green aliens of Arcturus, and bring the warring nations of
Earth together under a benignly scientific world government-all at the same
time, while wearing a metallic mesh jumpsuit and a cool smile.
Never mind that no SF writer ever looked like that. Well, maybe Robert A.
Heinlein comes close, and he could certainly do all of those things if he'd just
stop writing for a while. But Asimov is a bit less than heroic in stature;
Silverberg shuns politics; Bradbury doesn't even drive a car, much less a
starship.
Nevertheless, this was the popular conception of a typical Analog writer.
Spider Robinson was rather wider of that mark than most.
He had a story with him, called "The Guy with the Eyes." There wasn't much
science fiction in it. But it was one helluva good story. About a crazy bunch of
guys who get together at a truly unique place called Callahan's.
We went to lunch, and Spider began telling me how he worked nights guarding a