"Dan Simmons - 2 Minutes 45 Seconds" - читать интересную книгу автора (Simmons Dan)

Two Minutes Forty-Five Seconds
by Dan Simmons
Introduction
One of my favorite people in publishingтАФif not the worldтАФis Ellen Datlow, fiction
editor of OMNI. For awhile they were calling Ellen the Mother of Cyberbunk, but I
think they were getting her mixed up with Mother Teresa.
One day Ellen phoned me, announced that she was commissioning a bunch of very
short horror-SF pieces for OMNI and asked if I would be interested.
"Ellen, is this so you can pay three grand for seven or eight of us rather than the
same amount for one story?" I ask.
"Sure," she says.
"And is it so you can say you ran eight pieces of fic-tion in the issue instead of the
one measly story they allow you that month?" I persist.
"Of course," says Ellen. "What else?"
"And are you calling me because you know I work cheap, write fast, and essentially
worship the ground you walk on?"
"Sure," says Ellen. "Plus you're behind on payments from the deal where we let you
sit at the OMNI table at the World Fantasy Con banquet two years ago, and I fig-ure
I can deduct most of your fee for this to get you caught up."
"Count me in," I said.
She had only one condition. The other contributors (their stuff was already in, but
there was room for one more story because layout had moved a Trojan ad) had
written horror stories that were horror. "They forgot it was horror/SF," said Ellen.
"Make sure yours is high-tech hor-ror."
"High-tech horror," I said. "Right. No problem."
I hung up the phone, warmed up the computer, flexed nimble fingers over the
keyboard, turned off the computer, and said to myself, "What the hell is high-tech
horror?"
Now I know. "Two Minutes Forty-five Seconds" is high-tech horror.
As a footnote, I should mention that I spent several hours on the phone with
OMNI's lawyers about this story. A partial transcript of one conversation follows:
OMNI LAWYER: Is this story really about the Chal-lenger explosion?
ME: Of course it's really about the Challenger explo-sion.
O.L.: No, it is not about the Challenger explosion.
ME: Of course it's not about the Challenger explosion. Uh ... what's it about?
O.L.: Obviously it's about an alternate reality ... one in which a certain unnamed
shuttle exploded, possibly re-lated to alleged negligence by an unnamed and/or
fic-tional corporation which bears no resemblance to any corporation, individual,
and or planet in this universe. Correct?
ME: Uh, right. That's what I had in mind.
O.L.: One more thing. You'll have to change your working title for this story.
ME: Right! Sure. Why?
O.L.: We think "Love Song to J. M*rt*n Th**k*l" is ... ah ... inadvisable.
ME: OK. How about ... "The Day Corporate Greed and Malfeasance Killed Seven
of Our Astronauts and Al-most Killed Our Space Program?"
O.L.: Let us think about that. We'll get back to you.
Epilogue to the Footnote:
Recently Ellen Datlow chose "Two Minutes Forty-five Seconds'' to be in the second
annual edition of The Year's Best Fantasy, a collection she co-edits with Terry
Windling. Ellen wrote the introduction to the story, and in it she says: