"Bruce Sterling - The Spearhead of Cognition" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sterling Bruce)

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruiswijk/Mijn%20doc.../spaar/Bruce%20Sterling%20-%20The%20Spearhead%20of%20Cognition.txt




Bruce Sterling
[email protected]
CATSCAN 2 "The Spearhead of Cognition"

You're a kid from some podunk burg in Alabama.
From childhood you've been gnawed by vague
numinous sensations and a moody sense of your own
potential, but you've never pinned it down.
Then one joyful day you discover the work of a
couple of writers. They're pretty well-known (for
foreigners), so their books are available even in your
little town. Their names are "Tolstoy" and
"Dostoevsky." Reading them, you realize: This is it!
It's the sign you've been waiting for! This is your
destiny-- to become a *Russian Novelist*!
Fired with inspiration, you study the pair of
'em up and down, till you figure you've got a solid
grasp of what they're up to. You hear they're pretty
well-known back in Russia, but to your confident eye
they don't seem like so much. (Luckily, thanks to some
stunt of genetics, you happen to be a genius.) For
you, following their outline seems simple enough--in a
more sophisticated vein, of course, and for a modern
audience. So you write a few such books, you publish
'em, and people adore them. The folks in 'Bama are fit
to bust with pride, and say you've got Tolstoy beat
all hollow.
Then, after years of steadily growing success,
strange mail arrives. It's from Russia! They've been
reading your stuff in translation, and you've been
chosen to join the Soviet Writers' Union! Swell! you
think. Of course, living in backwoods Alabama, it's
been a little tough finding editions of contemporary
Russian novelists. But heck, Tolstoy did his writing
years ago! By now those Russians must be writing like
nobody's business!
Then a shipment of modern Russian novels
arrives, a scattering of various stuff that has
managed to elude the redtape. You open 'em up and--
ohmiGod! It's . . . it's COMMUNISM! All this stupid
stereotyped garbage! About Red heroes ten feet tall,
and sturdy peasants cheering about their tractors, and

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruiswij...%20Sterling%20-%20The%20Spearhead%20of%20Cognition.txt (1 of 6)20-2-2006 23:36:57
 file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruiswijk/Mijn%20doc.../spaar/Bruce%20Sterling%20-%20The%20Spearhead%20of%20Cognition.txt