"Cordwainer Smith - The Best of Cordwainer Smith" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Cordwainer)

force" meant to Bergson and ShawтАФback to mankind. Founders of the Vomact family, they represent a
force in human nature that can be either good or evil, but is perhaps ultimately beyond either, and a
necessary means for the working out of human destiny through evolution.
The dual nature of the Vomacts and the force they represent is symbolized in the origin of their
name: "Acht" is a German word with a double meaning: "proscribed" or "forbidden" and "care" or
"attention." And the Vomacts alternate as outlaws and benefactors throughout the Smith epic.
But the gift of vitality sets a new cycle of history in motionтАФthe heroic age of the scanners,
pinlighters and Go-captains. What stands out in these early stories is the starkness of the emotional
impactтАФthe impact of strange new experiences and relationships, whether of the telepathic symbiosis of
men and partners in "The Game of Rat and Dragon" or the woman become a functioning part of her
spacecraft in "The Lady Who Sailed The Soul."
Some of Linebarger's own experiences went into his work. Captain Wow was the name of one of
his cats at his Washington home when he wrote "The Game of Rat and Dragon" at a single sitting one day
in 1954. Cat Melanie was later to inspire C'mell, heroine of the under-people, who were created by men
from mere animals. Then, too, Linebarger's frequent stays in hospitals, dependent on medical technology,
gave him a feel for the linkage of man and machine.
But in "The Burning of the Brain," we already begin to see signs of the Pleasure Revolution, a trend
which Linebarger detested in his own time and which he saw putting an end to the heroic age in his
imagined future. Near immortalityтАФthanks to the santaclara drug, or stroon, grown in NorstriliaтАФmakes
life less desperate, but also less meaningful.
Real experience gives way to synthetic experience; in "Golden the Ship WasтАФOh! Oh! Oh!" (as in
"The Lady Who Sailed The Soul," which was also co-authored by Genevieve Linebarger), the hero
seeks pleasure directly from an electric currentтАФand only an epoch-making crisis affords him a chance
to see that there is a better way.
Under the ruthless benevolence of the Instrumentality, a bland Utopia takes shape. Men are freed of
the fear of death, the burden or labor, the risks of the unknownтАФbut deprived of hope and freedom. The
underpeople, created to do the labor of mankind, are more human than their creators. The gift of vitality,
seemingly, has been lost, and history come to a stop.
In these stories, it is the underpeopleтАФand the more enlightened lords of the Instrumentality who
heed themтАФwho hold the salvation of humanity in their hands. In "The Dead Lady of Clown Town," the
despised, animal-derived workers and robots must teach humans the meaning of humanity, in order to
free mankind from its seeming euphoria.
Lord Jestocost is inspired by the martyrdom of the dog-woman D'joan, and Santuna is transformed
by the experiences in "Under Old Earth" into the Lady Alice More. Together, they become the architects
of the Rediscovery of ManтАФbringing back freedom, risk, uncertainty and even evil.
Paralleling these events are glimpses of other parts of the universe of the Instrumentality. In "Mother
Hitton's Littul Kittons," we learn why Old North Australia is the most heavily defended planet in the
galaxy; but Viola Siderea is just as strange. And where else in science fiction is there a world like "A
Planet Named Shayol," where a daring conception in biological engineering is wedded to a classic vision
of Hell?
Oriental narrative techniques, especially in "The Dead Lady of Clown Town" and "The Ballad of
Lost C'mell" are prominent in the later stories. So is the sense of myth, whereby the just-mentioned
stories are supposedly explanations of popular legends. But just how much of what is told "Under Old
Earth" ever really took place?
Smith creates a sense of immense time having passed. To Paul and Virginia, newly freed by the
Rediscovery of Man in "Alpha Ralpha Boulevard," our own age is lost in the dim past and is seen only
through layer upon layer of half-forgotten history. Smith's effect has rarely been duplicatedтАФthe first half
of Robert Silverberg's Nightwings is (perhaps) the most successful approximation.
Smith's universe remains infinitely greater than our knowledge of itтАФwe shall never know what
empire once conquered Earth and brought tribute up that fabulous boulevard; nor the identity of the