"Zelazny, Roger - Fire And Or Ice, Exeunt Omnes, A Very Good Year" - читать интересную книгу автора (Zelazny Roger)

Fire and/or Ice, Exeunt Omnes, A Very Good YearЕ
Roger Zelazny
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What can you say about a short short tale? Generally, it enters the mind full-blown and writes itself. This time one was solicited, though, and it set off an interesting chain.

Robert Sheckley was putting together an original collection of Уhumorous and upbeat end-of-the-world storiesФ for Ace Books (After the Fall), I was told, and would I write something for it? I did the following wacky piece and was about to send it off when an idea spun off of it. I immediately put it to paper. It was the succeeding story, УExeunt Omnes.Ф I sent them both off and tried to turn my attention to other matters but couldnТt. I felt that something was still there. I had done the second story in a different style than the first, and the impetus was yet present. I suddenly saw a third story on the same theme, to be done in a third style. So I wrote it to get it out of my system, tossed it to a corner of my deskЧwhere it quickly became buried beneath other papersЧand forgot about it. A week or so later I received a letter saying that heТd liked both stories IТd sent along, but a triplet would be even more esthetically pleasing. Could I do one more short short on the same theme? I stuffed УA Very Good YearУ into an envelope and sent it off by return mail. It was purchased and the three appeared together in that collection. I had felt a tiny impulse to do a fourth after IТd finished the third, but I repressed it successfully. That way lies madnessЕ

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FIRE AND/OR ICE

УMommy! Mommy!Ф

УYes?Ф

УYes?Ф

УTell me again what you did in the war.Ф

УNothing much. Go play with your sisters.Ф

УIТve been doing that all afternoon. They play too hard. I want to hear about the bad winter and the monsters and all.Ф

УThatТs what it was, a bad winter.Ф

УHow cold was it, Mommy?Ф

УIt was so cold that brass monkeys were singing soprano on every corner. It was so cold that it lasted for three years and the sun and the moon grew pale, and sister killed sister and daughters knocked off mommies for a Zippo lighter and a handful of pencil shavings.Ф

УThen what happened?Ф

УAnother winter came along, of course. A lot worse than the first.Ф

УHow bad was it?Ф

УWell, the two giant wolves who had been chasing the sun and the moon across the sky finally caught them and ate them. Damned dark then, but the blood that kept raining down gave a little light to watch the earthquakes and hurricanes by, when you could see through the blizzards.Ф

УHow come we donТt have winters like that anymore?Ф

УUsed them all up for a while, I suppose.Ф

УHow come thereТs a sun up in the sky now, if it got eaten?Ф

УOh, thatТs the new one. It didnТt happen till after the fires and the boiling oceans and all.Ф

УWere you scared?Ф

УWhat scared me was what came later, when a giant snake crawled out of the sea and started fighting with this big person with the hammer. Then gangs of giants and monsters came from all directions and got to fighting with each other. And then there was a big, old, one-eyed person with a spear, stabbing away at a giant wolf which finally ate him, beard and all. Then another person came along and killed the wolf. All of a sudden, it looked familiar and I went outside and caught one of the troops by the sleeve.