"John Varley - Anthology - Super Heroes - Various Authors" - читать интересную книгу автора (Varley John)

that, in my opinion.
But we will, of course, go farther than that. This book is not primarily
concerned with the day-to-day acts of heroism performed by ordinary people
(though there are some stories here concerned with that very thing), but
about the outlandish acts performed by certain obsessive/compulsive
borderline personalities who like to dress up in tight, primary-colored
spandex suits, most of them endowed with powers far beyond those of
mortal men, and physiques far beyond that of Arnold Schwarzenegger, who
like to leap from the pages of comic books and into our hearts, righting
wrongs along the way, and who have come to be known by the generic term
"super-heroes."
So just what are superheroes? Why are we so fascinated by them? What
part of the human psyche do they come from?
John Variey
Should we look for the roots of the superhero in history, in literature?
Was Jesus a superhero? What about Paul Bunyan? Crusader Rabbit?
All very good questions. I don't have the answers to any of them. And the
reason is an admission I am forced to make here, since my experience with
the stamp company made me a firm believer in truth in advertising: I don't
know much about superheroes.
I stopped being a comic-book fan about the time of my traumatic
mail-order experience. Somehow, picking up and reading a comic just didn't
have the pizzazz it used to hold for me. Part of me really didn't enjoy
reading them anymore, probably the same part that had recently graduated to
reading books with no pictures at all in them, something a lot of my friends
thought very weird indeed. The other part was much like what a heroin
addict thinks. I was much better off if I didn't let myself get tempted again.
From time to time I would pick one up, and my pulse would immediately
begin to race as I read the ads withinтАж
(I can't tell you how sorely I was tempted to buy the Pen-Size,
Clips-on-your-pocket SECRET SPY SCOPE, or even better, the X-RAY
SPECS (only one dollar) which showed a leering guy looking at the bones
of his own handтАж but behind the hand was a pretty girl and we all knew
what he was really looking at, and we all wanted a look at it, tooтАж or How
To Build A Body Of Steel, or The Unbeatable Self-Defense Secrets of
KETSUGOl OrтАФand here my heart still skips a beatтАФthe seven-foot-long
Space Rocket, for only $6.98. This later evolved into the seven-foot-long
Polaris Nuclear Sub (they were obviously stamped from the same mold),
and I have a copy of that advertisement before me now, the ad for the sub,
and I want it now almost as much as I wanted it back then.
(I lusted after that Space Rocket for many years. It was said to be made of
200-lb.-test fibreboard, with easy assembly instructions. The picture showed
lots of happy kids playing all over the damn thing. It had an electrically lit
instrument panel and a money-back guarantee: "If you don't think it is the
greatest everтАФthe best toy you ever hadтАФjust send it back
Introduction
for full purchase price refund." How could I go wrong? But then the cold
hand of the Littleton Stamp Company would touch me, and I just knew it
wasn't what it seemed. I mean, six dollars and ninety-eight cents? Come
on. It seemed insanely cheap. So just what was fibreboard, anyway? Maybe