"David Gerrold - In the Quake Zone" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gerrold David)

In the Quake Zone
DAVID GERROLD
From Gardner Dozois - The Year's Best Science Fiction 23rd Annual Collection (2006)

David Gerrold has been a hardworking and highly acclaimed professional in several different
fields since the sixties. As a screenwriter, he produced the screenplay for one of the most famous
of all of the episodes of the original Star Trek, "The Trouble with Tribbles." He later produced a
book about the experience, The Trouble with Tribbles, as well as a study of the show, The World
of Star Trek, and two Star Trek novels, Encounter at Far Point and The Galactic Whirlpool. He
won both Hugo and Nebula Awards in 1995 for his story "The Martian Child." His many SF
novels include the well-known The Man Who Folded Himself, as well as When Harlie Was One, A
Matter for Men, A Rage for Revenge, A Season for Slaughter, The Middle of Nowhere, The
Voyage of the Star Wolf, Space Skimmer, Star Hunt, Yesterday's Children, A Covenant of Justice,
A Day for Damnation, Blood and Fire, The Martian Child, Chess with a Dragon, Under the Eye of
God, Jumping off the Planet, Bouncing off the Moon, and Leaping to the Stars. His short fiction
has been collected in With a Finger in My I. As editor, he has produced the anthologies
Protostars, Generation, Science Fiction Emphasis, Alternities, and Ascents of Wonder. In addition
to the Star Trek study, his nonfiction includes Worlds of Wonder: How to Write Science Fiction
and Fantasy. His most recent books are a new novel, Child of Earth, and a new collection,
Alternate Gerrolds.

In the intricate and subtle story that follows, where all is mutable and nothing is certain or solid
or imperishable, he gives a whole new meaning to the expression on shaky ground…

The day after time collapsed, I had my shoes shined. They needed it.

I didn't know that time had collapsed, wouldn't find out for years, decades —and several months of
subjective time. I just thought it was another local timequake.

Picked up a newspaper—The Los Angeles Mirror, with its brown-tinted front page—and settled into
one of the high-backed, leather chairs in the Hollywood Boulevard alcove. There were copies of the
Herald, the Examiner, and the Times here as well, but the Mirror had Pogo Possum on the funny
pages. "Mighty fine shoes, sir," Roy said, and went right to work. He didn't know me yet. I snapped the
paper open.

I didn't have to check the papers for the date, this was late fifties, J already knew from the cars on the
boulevard, an ample selection of Detroit heavy-iron; the inevitable Chevys and Fords, a few Buicks and
Oldsmobiles, the occasional ostentatious Cadillac, a few Mercurys, but also a nostalgic scattering of
others, including DeSoto, Rambler, Packard, Oldsmobile, and Studebaker. Not a foreign care to be
seen, just a bright M&M flow of chrome-lined monstrosities growling along, many of them two-toned.
The newer models had nascent tailfins, the evocation of jet planes and rocketships, giddy metal evolution,
the hallmark of a decade and an industrial dead end.

The Mirror and The Examiner both disappeared late '58, maybe early '59, if I remembered correctly,
the result of a covert deal by the publishers. Said Mr. Chandler to Mr. Hearst, I'll shut down my morning
paper if you'll shut down your afternoon. "Let us fold our papers and go."

A new Edsel cruised by—right, this was '58. But I could already smell it. The Hollywood day felt gritty.
The smog was thick enough to taste. The Hollywood Warner's theater had another Cinerama travelogue
—the third or fourth, I'd lost track. I was tempted; not a lot of air-conditioning in this time zone. A dark