"Norman Spinrad - He Walked Among Us" - читать интересную книгу автора (Spinrad Norman)

legend that successfully puts the seal on the great Transformation.

In the epilogue, an immense spaceship then manifests itself in the solar system to welcome humanity into
areal Galactic Brotherhood of Advanced Civilizations. Earth has negotiated its Transformation Crisis on
its own. That's the entrance test. That's why the galactic silence. The Galactic Brotherhood has no
interest in communicating with species who have not yet proven themselves worthy.

Dexter poured his heart and soul into this one.

It ended up taking over his life completely, became an obsession, a mission, a cause.

Before he even felt ready to begin, he felt he had to travel the convention circuit, pouring booze and
dope into scientists of his acquaintance and scientists oftheir acquaintance; flattering them, intriguing
them, conning them into serving as his brain trust, creating something not unlike the Transformationalist
cabal in his unwritten novel, at least in his own mind at the time.

By the time Dexter was ready to write page one, six months had passed in a blur since he had signed the
contract, he had gone through about $5000 in travel and entertainment, and he had a dossier of
speculative papers from cutting-edge scientists about 2000 pages thick.

The contract called for Dexter to turn in the manuscript in twelve months. He was eight months late. The
contract called for about 100,000 words, but Dexter turned in 250,000, and after three months of cutting
under editorial supervision, the final version still came in at 220,000. It took harder work over more
months to write than anything Dexter had ever done, and by the time he saw the galley proofs, the
$40,000 was long gone.

But such mundane economic trivia didn't matter. Dexter knew that THE TRANSFORMATION was his
masterpiece, his destiny, the work for which his name would be remembered for a thousand years, the
mission he had been born to fulfill.

It came out six months later, and it bombed.

Well, not exactly. Itdid sell 4500 hardcovers and the paperback reprintdid do 47,000 paperbacks
before it went out of print, not horrendous for a science fiction novel, but of course, not figures that were
going to change the world or earn out a $40,000 advance.

тАЬToo intellectual for the kids who they're marketing sci-fi to these days, Dex,тАЭ his agent told him. тАЬWhat
they want is space opera series, or likewise in wizards and dragons,Star Trek andStar Wars
novelizations, role playing tie-ins, and novels based on the laundry lists of Isaac Asimov and Arthur C.
Clarke.тАЭ

Broke, devastated, with Ellie now pregnant with Jamie, Dexter spent ten days smoking dope, listening to
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his wife whine, and staring into the black hole his life had suddenly become.

His agent had timed it perfectly. On the eleventh day, he called and dropped the other shoe.