"Robert A. Heinlein - Revolt in 2100 (Collected Stories)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Heinlein Robert A)

REVOLT IN 2100
By ROBERT A. HEINLEIN
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY HENRY KUTTNER

CONTENTS
The Innocent Eye: An Introduction by Henry Kuttner
“If This Goes On—”
Coventry
Misfit
Concerning. Stories Never Written: Postscript




2
For Stan and Sophia Mullen




3
 The Innocent Eye: An Introduction
ROBERT A. HEINLEIN is probably the best story-teller in the science-fiction field
today. If I were backed into a corner and forced to tell why in one sentence, I’d say,
“Heinlein’s got a sense of proportion.” Well, how does one get a sense of proportion?
By experience, I think. And there is only one kind of experience that counts as
necessary to a competent writer: experience of mankind.
Literary and scientific techniques are very useful to a writer, but I don’t think the study
of them is necessary. They are intellectual concepts. Man is also an emotional animal.
And a good story must be about man—not man after a lobotomy, but about the
irrational part of him as well as the rational. Sentimentality is no substitute; it degrades
man instead of treating him with the respect that, God knows, he deserves.
Unfortunately, too many science-fiction stories might have been written by robots or
spirits.
Now Heinlein does something that is vitally necessary to good writing: he perceives
people. He knows how they feel. He has felt that way himself. He has even bridged the
difficult gap of realizing that people feel much the same way everywhere, allowing for
constitutional differences.
He has accepted membership in the human race.
I don’t think you can be a good writer unless you do that. I’m biased I know; I like good
writing, and I have a great deal of respect for it. Good writing is well proportioned.
Basically, it treats of man in his environment, and both of those elements must haw
verisimilitude. That’s where Heinlein’s sense of proportion comes in. He’s eclectic. He
follows the principles but not the rules. His stories have verisimilitude because they are
about people, and he uses other materials only insofar as they affect those people.
And here is the precise point where his sense of proportion appears. The story-
elements he uses, technological, sociological, psychological, are chosen according to
their natural relation to the center of interest: man. These elements are symbolic of
man’s values. But it is man, realistically handled, who is the nucleus of each Heinlein
story.