"Murray Leinster - The Best of Murray Leinster (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leinster Murray)

fiction, Murray Lemster was one.
In his later years, Leinster came to be known as the Dean of Science
Fiction. His career in the field spanned nearly fifty years-remarkable enough
in itself. More remarkable is that he remained a top-ranked writer for all of
those years.
Leinster, in real life an unassuming Virginian named William Fitzgerald
Jenkins (1896-1975), would have been amused at the Biblical parallel. But like
that of the patriarchs of old, his longevity seemed unbelievable. Dozens of
writers vanished into obscurity; entire schools of writing rose, flourished,
and died-but Leinster carried on.
That took rare ability, but it also took rare dedication. Nowadays, when
science fiction is taught in colleges, and a single, good sf movie bids fair
to gross $100 million, it is hard to appreciate the dedication required of
writers like Leinster to make of a marginal and despised genre something in
which they, and their readers; could take legitimate pride.
A fellow pioneer of those early days once remarked that writing science
fiction took more work and paid less, than bricklaying-he'd tried both and
knew. Bricklaying pays a lot more these days, and so does science' fiction-but
there were and are easier ways of making a living than sf.
It is important to remember that. The pioneers of science fiction were,
by and large, commercial writers. They never talked of Art and Literature;
rather, of "craftsmanship" and "professional" standards. But that didn't mean,
as some of today's less-informed critics seem to think, that they didn't care
about their work. Science fiction might be better off today, if some of these
critics, and their favorite authors, loved sf as much as Leinster and some of
his colleagues did.
When Leinster began writing science fiction, it wasn't even called
science fiction. There weren't any sf magazines-what were called "scientific
romances" or "different stories" appeared mostly in adventure pulps, mixed in
with Westerns, spy thrillers, detective stories, horror tales and the like.
Science fiction had no distinct identity, or any generally recognized
standards.
Leinster's own first story, "The Runaway Skyscraper" (1919), was typical
of what was called for by a market that demanded exciting stories but as yet
had no real appreciation of scientific logic or scientific imagination. A New
York skyscraper suddenly plunges backward in time-never mind how or why-and
its occupants have to rough it in the wilderness.
But even in his early works, Leinster brought a new kind of imagination
to pulp literature. "The Mad Planet" (1920), too long to include, here, was in
the tradition of the "scientific romances" and pitted men reduced to savagery
against a world of giant insects and fungi. Yet the story still somehow seems
fresh today. Leinster was fascinated by the world of insects, and he makes the
reader fascinated-not merely frightened.
When the market called for stories about mad scientists who threatened
the world with their mad inventions, Leinster could supply them-but his always
had a distinct logic behind them. In "The City of the Blind" (1929), a
scientific criminal's invention darkens New York to cover a wave of robberies.
Only to Leinster would it have occurred to consider what such a device would
do to the weather.
But Murray Leinster did more than improve on existing models; he wrote