"Gordon R. Dickson - The Human Edge" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dickson Gordon R)

lumped Dickson and another sf master, Poul Anderson, together, there was a notable difference.
Anderson's characters might prevail, or they might fail in spite of their valiant struggle, in stories "written
from a floor of brave gloom" (as I recall Blish putting it), but Dickson's characters struggledand
prevailed. Dickson's universe was neither impersonal nor hostile, and the human spirit would win, Blish
wrote approvingly.
I recall several Dickson stories (but no novels) with downer endings, so he definitely wasn't writing
from the Pollyanna side of the Force. (I also recall quite a few Blish stories that I consider gloomy, so he
wasn't, either.) But on the whole, in Dickson's universe, man not only endures, but prevails, to crib a line
from Faulkner. (Washe in Bach's league? You decide.)
Algis Budrys once stated that a sure-fire recipe for being thought profound was frequently to
reiterate that the universe is very big, and insignificant humans are very, very small. After noting that
though the instruments do show that the universeis very big, that doesn't necessarily say anything about
humans. "They are our instruments, after all," he added, "and we somehow managed to build them." He
was writing about a writer whom he praised for having "wider horizons" than other writers who were
stuck in the big universe/puny humans mode. And while the writer wasn't Gordon R. Dickson, the same
description fits his work very well.
So here Dickson is, spinning virtuoso variations on a theme, in stories written years apart,
appearing in many different publications, sometimes with humor, sometimes with grim seriousness, and
always with wide horizons; not to mention a towering talent for entertaining.
And you definitelywill be entertained.
Itold you that you should feel lucky, didn't I?

—Hank Davis




My appreciative thanks to Jim Baen, who had the idea for a Dickson collection on this theme, gave
it its title, and suggested the story "Danger: Human" as the opening shot.




DANGER—HUMAN
For a curtain raiser, this one takes the viewpoint of the extraterrestrials, a
sympathetic bunch of regular guys, who capture a strange monster called a "human" and
make the mistake of experimenting on him. There may be things that extraterrestrials
Were Not Meant to Know. . . .

The spaceboat came down in the silence of perfect working order—down through the cool, dark
night of a New Hampshire late spring. There was hardly any moon and the path emerging from the
clump of conifers and snaking its way across the dim pasture looked like a long strip of pale cloth,
carelessly dropped and forgotten there.
The two aliens checked the boat and stopped it, hovering, some fifty feet above the pasture, and all
but invisible against the low-lying clouds. Then they set themselves to wait, their woolly, bearlike forms
settled on haunches, their uniform belts glinting a little in the shielded light from the instrument panel,
talking now and then in desultory murmurs.
"It's not a bad place," said the one of junior rank, looking down at the earth below.
"Why should it be?" answered the senior.
The junior did not answer. He shifted on his haunches.