"Mike Resnick - Frankie the Spook" - читать интересную книгу автора (Resnick Mike)

in less time than the last one, since I'd be working within my own
_millieu_..."
"Will you?"
"No."
"You've got decades to spare, remember?" urged Marvin.
"What's a week between friends?"
"We are not friends."
"Collaborators, then."
"Collaborators?" snapped Bacon. "If you think I'd allow _you_
to write a single word of _Henry IX_, you subliterate
anthropoid..."

* * *

It sold seventeen million copies worldwide, and was made
into a megahit movie starring Charlton Heston III as Henry and
Bubbles Vancouver as Betty Jean Plantagenet (a role created
expressly for the film).
More to the point, it won the Hugo, the Nebula, the Nova, the
Supernova, the Pulitzer, and even the prestigious Harold Robbins
Award.
"Listen to this!" enthused Marvin as he read the reviews to
the simulacron inside his computer. "_The New York Times_ says,
'It's as if the Bard himself had taken pen to paper.'"
"I thought time was supposed to take care of critics,"
muttered Bacon. "All it really seems to do is compound their
ignorance."
"And the _Saturday Review_ says, 'There are a few turns of
phrase that Shakespeare himself might have envied,'" continued
Marvin.
"Shakespeare again!" snorted Bacon. "That dolt would envy a
phrase that concisely asked directions to the men's room!"
"Don't take it so personally."
"Five centuries later and he's _still_ getting credit for
_my_ work! How would _you_ take it?"
Marvin shrugged. "I don't know. Why don't you write something
that doesn't read like Shakespeare?"
"A complete, well-constructed sentence doesn't read like
Shakespeare!"
"Well, then, write something that doesn't read so much like
yourself."
"I'm never writing again, thank you."
"Well, if you don't think you can disguise your voice..."
"Of course I can disguise my voice," said Bacon defensively.
Marvin shook his head. "You wrote a smut book and a fantasy,
and the critics still compare you to Shakespeare."
"They are fools."
"They are your audience," Marvin corrected him. "And you
can't hide your identity from them."
"That's what I get for being a ghost writer in the first