"Limits (stories)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Niven Larry)

LIMITS
By Larry Niven
Copyright (c) 1985
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CONTENTS
Introduction vii
The Lion in His Attic 1
Spirals by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle 20
A Teardrop Falls 56
Talisman by Larry Niven and Dian Girard 66
Flare Time 96
The Locusts by Larry Niven and Steve Barnes 133
Yet Another Modest Proposal: The Roentgen Standard 169

MORE TALES FROM THE DRACO TAVERN.
Folk Tale 175
The Green Marauder 188
War Movie 192
The Real Thing 197
Limits 201
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INTRODUCTION

Half my output used to be short stories.

It's common knowledge in this field that the money is in novels; but it's also true that stories come in their own length. Stretching an idea beyond its length is even worse than overcompressing it. Ordinarily I would have continued to write short stories,

What happened was, I hit a bump in my career.

A novice writer shouid try anything, not just to pay the rent, but because he needs practice, versatility, skills. Later he must learn to turn down bad offers: the first bump.

The second bump comes when he learns to turn down good offers.

I'm a slow learner.

I learned to say no; but that was only a couple of years ago. Show me a contract and I flinch; but III committed myself years ago, it gets signed; and then the book must be written.

Footfall, being written with Jerry Pournelle, is a year and a half overdue and finished. But everything else is backed up behind it.

I didn't know whether The Integral Trees and The Smoke Ring would be one book or two; it was conceived as Siamese twins. It's two, and The Smoke Ring is awaiting Footfall.

So are a children's book to be written with Jerry Pournelle and Wendy All; and The Legacy of Heoro4 with Jerry (again) and Steven Barnes. A collection of the Warlock stories needed rewriting to remove redundancies. I've been rewriting speeches into articles for the Philcon. Where would I find time to write short stories?

But I did.

In 1983, Fred Saberhagen wrote me with a strange proposal. How would I like to write a Berserker story?

The idea: Fred will ask half a dozen friends to write tales of humanBerserker encounters. Fred will shuffle them into the order he likes, and write a beginning and an ending to turn it all into a novel.

Sure I wanted to write a Berserker story! I didn't have to do any research; it was all in my head. I've been reading them long enough. I wrote "A Teardrop Falls" and sent copies to Fred and to Omni, which bought it for an indecently large sum considering that I hadn't even built my own background.