"Harlan Ellison - Stalking the Nightmare" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ellison Harlan)

[Readers of the above-entered praise, seeking in vain for the story “Invulnerable” (published in the April, 1957 issue of
Super-Science Fiction--you get the Mad Hound of the Moors award for deductive logic, Steve), will be confused, bemused and even
dismayed--as will Stephen King--to find the work absent from this book. I suppose some sort of explanation is in order. It goes like
so; “Invulnerable” was one of the original selections included in the twenty tales slated for this collection. It was among the
tearsheeted stories sent to Steve prior to final editing, so he could write his Foreword in a leisurely fashion. Subsequently, when I
went back over the stories and read them more closely, I realized some of the older tales desperately needed extensive revision,
updating, smoothing and rethinking. One of these stories was “Invulnerable.” I had forgotten that Steve mentioned it so
prominently in his essay. The qualities admired by Steve are definitely present in the story, but the quality embodied in Steve’s
remark that “there’s a certain amount of dating” was too great to allow to pass untended. Yet to leach out that dated aspect would
have meant virtually writing a new story. I decided not to do it. I started revising the original manuscript, written very early in my
career, and realized after three pages that the job was akin to rebuilding an edifice that had been burned to the ground, from bottom
up. Instead of doing that, I decided to include a recent story, “Grail.” at twice or three times the length. So Stephen King has
whetted your appetite for a “lost” story, one that I may some day rewrite and update completely. But search not for
“Invulnerable” in these pages. It ain’t here. --Harlan Ellison ]

So there’s a certain amount of dating in the story; it doesn’t just happen to the best of us, it happens to all of
us. And yet, even ‘way back then, in those fabled Old Days when there was such an artist as Emsh and such an organ
as Super-Science Fiction, we find Harlan Ellison’s true voice--clear in tone, dark in consideration. This was the era
when science fiction’s really big guns--guys like Robert A. Heinlein, for instance--were touting space exploration as
The Great Panacea for All Mankind, The Last Frontier, and The Solution to Just About Everything. There’s a certain
amount of that in “Invulnerable” (but then, why not? I suspect there’s a certain amount of that wistful fairy-tale still in
Harlan’s soul... and mine... and maybe in yours, too--read “Saturn, November 11th,” and see how you react), but
Harlan also sounds the horn of the skeptic, loud and clear:

Forstner was waiting. He was surrounded by the top brass. The place was acrawl with guards; guards on
the guards; and guards to guard the guard’s guards. The same old story. It wasn’t as noble an endeavour as they
would have had me believe.
It was an arms race, an attempt for superiority of space before someone else got there...

Yeah, it was an arms race. We all know that... now. But to have said it back in the days when Good Old
General Ike was still the top hand in the old Free World Corral (and let’s not forget his chief ramrod, good old Tricky
Dick Nixon--I know we’d like to, but maybe we’d better not), when Reddy Killowatt was supposed to be our friend and
nuclear power was going to solve all of our energy problems, back when the only two stated reasons we had for
getting Up There was to beat the Russians and to study the sun’s corona for the International Geophysical Year
(which every subscriber to My Weekly Reader knew as IGY)... to have had such a dark thought back in those
days--and about us as well as them--well, that was tantamount to treason. It’s a little amazing that Harlan got it into
print... unless you know Harlan, of course. And it’s damn fine to have it here, preserved between the boards of one of
the admirable Phantasia Press books.
But I promised not to chew your food for you, didn’t I?
So I’ll get out of here now. Harlan’s going to come along very soon, grab you by the earlobe, and drag you
off to a dozen different worlds. You’re going to be glad you went, I promise you (and you may be a little bit surprised
to find you’ve made it back alive).
Just one final comment, and then I promise to go quietly: there’s no significant correlation between the
quality of a writer’s writing and the quality of that same writer’s personality. When I tell you that reading Harlan is
overwhelming enough to start me writing like the guy--taking his flavor as my mother said milk takes the flavor of
whatever you put it next to in the icebox--I am speaking of ability, not personality.
Harlan Ellison’s personality is every bit as striking as his prose style, and this makes the man a pleasure to
dine with, to visit, or to entertain. But let’s tell the gut-level, bottom-line truth. Most of you reading this are never
going to eat a meal with Harlan, visit him in his home, or be visited by him. He gives of himself in a way that is
profligate, almost dangerous--as does any writer worth his salt. He’ll tell you the truth in a manner which is sometimes