"Henry Kuttner - Private Eye" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kuttner Henry)

PRIVATE EYE
by “Lewis Padgett” (Henry Kuttner, 1914-1958 and
C.L. Moore, 1911- ; this story is generally believed to
have been written by Kuttner)
Astounding Science Fiction, January


The Kuttners were so prolific that they made extensive use of pen
names—in addition to Kuttner and Moore, singly and listed together, they
wrote as “Lewis Padgett” and as “Lawrence O’Donnell,” producing
important stories under both of these pseudonyms. The present
selection is the first of three in this book—the late 1940s were
tremendously produc-tive for this wonderful writing team.

As Isaac points out, “Private Eye” is a classic blend of mystery and
science fiction and fully deserves the title of “classic.” It is not now
unusual for such combinations to see print; indeed, in the last twenty
years dozens of stories in-corporating a murder mystery with sf have
appeared, and many have been collected in such anthologies as Miriam
Allen deFord’s Space, Time & Crime (1964), Barry N. Malzberg and Bill
Pronzini’s wonderful Dark Sins, Dark Crimes (1978), and our own (along
with Charles G. Waugh) The 13 Crimes of Science Fiction
(1979).—M.H.G.

(John Campbell, the greatest of all science fiction editors, was one
of the most prescient people I have ever met—and yet he was given to
peculiar blind spots. For instance, during the 1940’s he frequently
maintained that science fiction mysteries were impossible, because it
was so easy to use futuristic gimmicks to help the detective crack his
case.

I eventually showed, in 1953, that a classic mystery could be
combined with science fiction if one simply set up the boundary
conditions at the start and stuck to them. I reso-lutely allowed no
futuristic gimmicks to appear suddenly and give the detective an unfair
advantage.

In “Private Eye” however, Henry Kuttner [preceding me by four
years] took the harder task of allowing a futuristic gimmick—one that
would seem to make it impossible to get away with murder—and then
labored to produce an honest murder mystery anyway. The result was an
undoubted classic—I.A.)

****

The forensic sociologist looked closely at the image on the wall screen.
Two figures were frozen there, one in the act of stabbing the other through
the heart with an antique letter cutter, once used at Johns Hopkins for
surgery. That was before the ultra-microtome, of course.