"Spider Robinson - C1 - Callahan' s Crosstime Saloon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robinson Spider)

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Callahan's
Crosstime
Saloon




By
Spider Robinson
©1977




Spider Robinson:
The SF Writer As Empath

By Ben Bova




When Analog magazine was housed over at Graybar Building on Lexington Avenue,
our offices were far from plush. In fact, they were grimy. Years worth of
Manhattan soot clung to the walls. The windows were opaque with grime. (What has
this to do with Spider Robinson? Patience, friend.)
Many times young science fiction fans would come to Manhattan and phone me
from Grand Central Station, which connected underground with the good old
Graybar. "I've just come to New York and I read every issue of Analog and I'd
like to come up and see what a science fiction magazine office looks like," they
would invariably say.
I'd tell them to come on up, but not to expect too much. My advice was always
ignored. The poor kid would come in and gape at the piles of manuscripts, the
battered old metal desks, and mountains of magazines and stacks of artwork, the
ramshackle filing cabinets and bookshelves. His eyes would fill with tears. His
mouth would sag open.
He had, of course, expected whirring computers, telephones with TV
attachments, smoothly efficient robots humming away, ultramodern furniture, and
a general appearance reminiscent of a NASA clean room. (Our present offices, in
the spanking new Conde Nast Building on Madison Avenue, are a little closer to
that dream.)
The kid would shamble away, heartsick, the beautiful rainbow-hued bobble of


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