"Mike Resnick & David Gerrold - Jellyfish" - читать интересную книгу автора (Resnick Mike)

Hi-ho!

So it goes.

See?

And that’s how you make cynicism palatable. You put it in a silver
spaceship and hurl it out toward the stars at FTL velocities. It’s another way
to run away.

Filk paused and considered.

The Runaway Rocket. There’s a possible story. Filk scratched the title
onto a pink Post-It note and stuck it to the wall, where it would sit unnoticed
for months between a hundred or more other pink Post-It notes, until one
day the adhesive would wear out, the note would fall to the floor, and Filk
would pick it up, read it, and frown, trying to remember what he had
intended when he wrote it. Then he’d either abandon the effort of memory
and discard the note or he’d invent some new meaning for himself.

But today, for some unknown reason, when his cycle of thought finally
came down from the last hillock of distraction, he stumbled his way back to
his typewriter, sat down, and began pecking.

Once upon a time, when the world was young enough to still be
wetting its bed, there was a man named—
 Damn.

Once, Filk had attended a convention. They’d put him on a panel.
Someone in the audience had asked him what he thought the hardest part
of writing was. He’d said, “Thinking up names for things.”

Everyone in the room had laughed. They’d assumed he’d been
making a joke. Filk had frowned at that.

Things weren’t simply known by their names— they were their names.
And whatever the name meant, that’s what the thing was. Words existed in
their own fantasy realm and the real things were servants to the words that
represented them. A thing’s name defined it. That was the magic of
lan-guage.

So, yes. Naming things was the hardest part. Because naming them
made them real. Naming things gave them existence.

And that’s why there are no more Tryllifandillorians. As soon as they
were named, they could no longer be.

Filk had to consider this thought at length. He finished his tea and put
the chipped mug down. He picked up the kettle and refilled it. The teabag