"Jack Williamson - Brother to Demons, Brother to Gods" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williamson Jack)

BROTHER TO DEMONS,
BROTHER TO GODS
To Joan
Parts of this novel first appeared in Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact and in Galilo/Magazine
of Science and Fiction.
Copyright┬й 1976, 1977, 1978, 1979 by Jack Williamson
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form Published
by The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc. Indianapolis New York
Manufactured in the United States of America



ONE: STEPSON TO CREATION
The multiverse creates itself.
It had no beginning; neither will it end.
Each new universe is wombed as a fire-egg, born through a contracting black hole. Expanding
in space-time, ripening new black holes, it sows the eternal manifold with new fire-eggs of its
own. Cooling, each new cosmos gives birth to galaxies and suns, to worlds of life and change,
sometimes to intellect.
Flowing out of chaos, the multiverse is blind. Its law is chance. It has neither plan nor will. Its
creatures are chance atoms, tossed together in the flux of mindless force. Such were the premen,
who called themselves men.
Evolved by chance mutation on the hallowed planet Earth, the premen came by chance upon
the art of genetic engineering and so became their own Creators, the mortal precursors who
fathered the Four Creations.
The first act of creation formed the trumen, the perfected human race, purged of all ancestral
evil and planned to supplant the premen.
The second act of creation produced the mumen, the variform men, shaped to fit their several
functions in many universes.
The third act of creation gave being to the stargods themselves.
Still merely premen, blind to the splendor of true perfection, the Creators then neglected to
rest from their triumphs, but went on instead to father yet another creation. The issue of their
error was a race of demons, creatures of power without beauty, mind without truth, desire without
justice. Evil revivals of the ancestral beast, they rebelled against their makers and the gods,
seeking to usurp the whole multiverse.
The god Belthar perceived their emergent malevolence. Returning across space from his own
domain, he reconquered the holy Earth, ended the folly of the Creators, and erased their
monstrous last creation.
In benign solicitude, the supreme Belthar continues to rule the sacred planet, granting power
to his variform defenders, wisdom to the trumen, sons to their most fortunate daughters, and
mercy to the surviving premen. His sovereign will gives law to chaos, and his omniscience
illuminates the multiverse.
 His glory endures forever.
тАФThe Book of Belthar


Two naked waifs, paternity unknown. A black halfgod, proud son of Belthar himself. A lovely
young goddess, touring the sacred sites of her ancestral Earth. A yelping dog and a frightened rat.
A red-scaled mutant guardian, its third eye flashing thunderbolts.
Old chaos in collision with stellar divinity . . .