"Barry N. Malzberg - A Galaxy Called Rome" - читать интересную книгу автора (Malzberg Barry N)

Conceive then of a faster-than-light spaceship which would
tumble into the black galaxy and would be unable to leave.
Tumbling would be easy, or at least inevitable, since one of the
characteristics of the black galaxy would be its invisibility, and
there the ship would be. The story would then pivot on the
efforts of the crew to get out. The ship is named Skipstone. It
was completed in 3892. Five hundred people died so that it
might fly, but in this age life is held even more cheaply than it is
today.
Left to my own devices, I might be less interested in the
escape problem than that of adjustment. Light housekeeping in

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 A Galaxy Called Rome by Barry N. Malzberg



an anterior sector of the universe; submission to the elements, a
fine, ironic literary despair. This is not science fiction however.
Science fiction was created by Hugo Gernsback to show us the
ways out of technological impasse. So be it.

IV


As interesting as the material was, I quailed even at this series
of notes, let alone a polished, completed work. My personal life
is my black hole, I felt Re pointing out (who would listen?); my
daughters provide more correct and sticky implosion than any
neutron star, and the sound of the pulsars is as nothing to the
music of the paddock area at Aqueduct racetrack in Ozone Park,
Queens, on a clear summer Tuesday. “Enough of these
breathtaking concepts, infinite distances, quasar leaps, binding
messages amidst the arms of the spiral nebula,” I could have

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 A Galaxy Called Rome by Barry N. Malzberg



pointed out. “I know that there are those who find an ultimate
truth there, but I am not one of them. I would rather dedicate
the years of life remaining (my melodramatic streak) to an
understanding of the agonies of this middle-class town in
northern New Jersey; until I can deal with those, how can I
comprehend Ridgefield Park, to say nothing of the extension of
fission to include progressively, heavier gases?” Indeed, I almost
abided to this until it occurred to me that Ridgefield Park would
forever be as mysterious as the stars and that one could not
deny infinity merely to pursue a particular that would be