"Jeff VanderMeer - A Heart For Lucretia" - читать интересную книгу автора (Vandermeer Jeff)

of the present-day. I have long been fascinated by meerkats -- their
quick, agile movements, their complex social and family life, and
ability
to survive human encroachment. So the idea of making the species
created
by humankind be based on meerkat genetic stock appealed to me greatly.
As
other stories in this cycle indicate, these are not just giant
meerkats,
but enriched with genes from other groups, including human beings.
The Flesh Dog character is stolen, in a way, from the 1977 remake of
Invasion of the Body Snatchers. When I saw the movie, there was one
scene
that stood out for me -- a brief glimpse of a dog with a human head. It
scared me to death -- the juxtaposition really seemed alien. So the
idea
of Flesh Dog being remade to have a human face came from that movie.
The
other general idea behind Flesh Dog is to have a character, alien in
the
exterior, who is actually almost more human than the "hero" -- there is
something heroic and sympathetic about Flesh Dog. This also creates a
nice
juxtaposition with the meerkats, whose intentions are sinister...
All of this may sound rather calculated, but in execution it wasn't.
What
I do is find elements I would like to deal with in a story, and then
when
the opportunity arises, because I've been thinking about them a great
deal, they tend to organically embed themselves in the story.
As for the ending, it is implied in the beginning. One thing I like to
do
in stories is present the reader with a situation that seems clear and
self-evident, but by the end of the story invert the meaning of the
scene
or situation that began the story. This process of transformation, if
done
well -- not as a twist, but as part of the natural evolution of the
story
-- doesn't just dislocate the reader. It, hopefully, makes the reader
question the assumptions he or she makes in processing what we call
"reality". It's like a reminder that the world is more complex than the
elements we break it down into.

┬й Jeff VanderMeer 1993, 1999
"A Heart for Lucretia" first appeared in The Silver Web, Winter/Spring
1993.