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

Spider, in his scrawly handwriting, had scribbled across the top of the
clipping a brief note, followed by an arrow that pointed unerringly to the bowl
and the separator blade. The note said, "Ben: Near as I can figure, the shit is
supposed to hit the fan!"
As I said, nobody's perfect. But Spider comes pretty damned close. Read about
him and his friends at Callahan's Place. Enjoy.


April, 1976
New York City




Foreword

by Spider Robinson




Books get written for the damndest reasons. Some are written to pay off a
mortgage, some to save the world, some simply for lack of anything better to do.
One of my favorite anecdotes concerns a writer who bet a friend that it was
literally impossible to write a book so B*A*D that no one could be found to
publish it. As the story goes, this writer proceeded to write the worst, most
hackneyed novel of which he was capable-and not only did he succeed in selling
it, the public demanded better than two dozen sequels (I can't tell you his
name: his estate might sue, and I have no documentation. Ask around at any SF
convention; it's a reasonably famous anecdote).
This book, as it happens, was begun for the single purpose of getting me out
of the sewer.
I mean that literally. In 1971, after seven years in college, with that Magic
Piece of Paper clutched triumphantly in my fist, the best job I was able to get
was night watchman on a sewer project in Babylon, New York--guarding a hole in
the ground to prevent anyone from stealing it. God bless the American
educational system.
What with one thing and another, I seemed to have a lot of time on my hands.
So I read a lot of science fiction, a custom I have practiced assiduously since,
at the age of five, I was introduced to Robert A. Heinlein's Rocket Ship
Galileo. One evening, halfway through a particularly wretched example of



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Sturgeon's Law ("Ninety percent of science fiction-of anything-is crap"), I sat
up straight in my chair and said for perhaps the ten thousandth time in my life,
"By Jesus, I can write better than this turnip."