"William Tenn - Brooklyn Project" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tenn William)

in the name of national security and the pro-tection of the manufacturing secrets of the atomic bomb.
"Security" was the watchword of the day, a watchword invoked to cover all kinds of investigations and
much more likely to be referred to at that time than the Constitution itself.
In the portentous name of Security, to mention just one hilarious example, supermar-kets that
stocked Polish hams (Poland, after all, was behind the Iron Curtain and was a full-fledged Communist
state) were picketed as being of doubtful patriotism. There were prosecutions in the name of Security;
there were suicides because of Security; there were heavily financed national campaigns in newspapers,
magazines, and the broadcast media; there were even elections based on Security. And one especially
enthusiastic junior Con-gressman had finally proposed that there be a seat in the Cabinet for Security.
It was this last development that sent me, halfway between laughter and outright ter-ror, to the
typewriter. I wrote and rewrote "Brooklyn Project" in a day and a half.
Both Sturgeon and Conklin liked it and marked it as their first purchase for the new magazine.
I was ecstatic. I blocked out a whole series of political and social satires I would write for that
magazine. I had found the form I would be content to concentrate on for the next couple of decades.
And I had found a well-paying market for that form.
Then the roof fell in. Or, rather, a whole series of roofs.
The backers of the magazine unbacked. They'd been involved in bad deals, assets that were
supposed to be liquid had solidified on them, this, thatтАФwhatever: all plans for the new publication were
cancelled. Conklin and Sturgeon tried to find financing elsewhere, and failed.
Sturgeon returned the manuscript to me with the comment: "Sorry, Phil, but you won't have any
trouble peddling a piece this good."
He was wrong. Campbell called me to his office and skimmed the piece back to me across his desk.
"Oh, no," he said. "No, no, no!"
Science-fiction magazine editors on the next level down reacted pretty much the same way. "I
wouldn't touch this with a ten-foot pole," one of them said. "Not in these times. I wish I could, though.
The time-travel gimmick is lovely."
The story finally found a home at what was then the very bottom of the fieldтАФPlanet Stories, which
paid a maximum one-half cent a word and specialized in action stories that took place anywhere but on
Earth.
"The story doesn't fit our book in any way," Malcolm Reiss, the editor, told me, "and it's dangerous
as hell, but I figure this one is for God. An editor is entitled to at least one for God."


Written 1947/Published 1948