"Dan Simmons - The River Styx Runs Upstream" - читать интересную книгу автора (Simmons Dan)

manuscript", "sit-in-the-circle and we'll critique it" kind of writers' conference. It was
my swan song. I went to hear and see the writers present and to begin to view
writing as a hobby rather than obsession.
Then I met Harlan Ellison.
I won't bore you with the details of that meeting. I won't describe the carnage that
acted as prelude as the legendary enfant terrible beheaded, disemboweled, and
generally dismembered the unfortunate would-be writers who had submitted stories
for his critical approval.
Between story critiques, while Harlan Ellison rested and sipped Perrier, officials of
the workshop rushed into the seminar room, carried out the scattered body parts,
hosed down the walls, spread sawdust on the carpet, and generally made ready for
the next sacrifice.
As it turned out, I was the next sacrifice.
"Who is this Simmons?" bellowed Ellison. "Stand up, wave your hand, show
yourself, goddammit. What egomaniacal monstrosity has the fucking gall, the
unmiti-gated hubris to inflict a story of five thousand fucking words on this
workshop? Show yourself, Simmons!"
In one of the braver (read 'insane') moments of my life, I waggled my fingers.
Stood.
Ellison stared at me over the top of his glasses. "At this length, it had better be good,
Simmons ... no, it had bet-ter be fucking brilliant, or you will not leave this room
alive. Comprende? Capish?"
I left the room alive. In fact, I left it more alive than I had been in some years. It was
not merely that Ellison had liked it. He ... he and Ed Bryant and several of the other
writers there ... had found every flaw in the story, had re-vealed every false note and
fake wall, had honed in on the places where I'd tapdanced fast rather than do the
neces-sary work, had pulled the curtain off every crippled sen-tence and humbug
phrase. But they had taken the story seriously.
Harlan Ellison did more than that. He told me what I had known for years but had
lost the nerve to believeтАФhe told me that I had no choice but to continue writing,
whether anything was ever published or not. He told me that few heard the music but
those who did had no choice but to follow the piper. He told me that if I didn't get
back to the typewriter and keep working that he would fly to Colorado and rip my
fucking nose off.
I went back to the typewriter. Ed Bryant was generous enough to allow me to
become the first unpublished writer to attend the Milford Writers' Conference ...
where I learned to play pool with the big boys.
That autumn, I submitted the revised "The River Styx Runs Upstream" to Twilight
Zone Magazine for their first annual contest for unpublished writers. According to
the folks at TZ, more than nine thousand stories came in over the transom and had to
be read and judged. "The River Styx..." tied for first place with a story by W.C.
Norris.
Thus, my first published story reached the stands on February 15, 1982. It happened
to be the same day that our daughter, Jane, was born.
It was some time before anyone, even I, really noticed that I'd been published.
Analogies are fine and the similar-ities between being published and pregnancy are
clever enough, but when it comes to being bornтАФbabies are the real thing.
And so, submitted for your approval (as a certain gen-tleman once said)тАФa story
about love, and loss, and about the sad necessity sometimes to surrender what thou
lov'st well.