"Joanna Russ - Female Man" - читать интересную книгу автора (Russ Joanna)

on Mars, Ganymede, and in the Asteroids, the Selenic League assisting according to the Treaty of Mare
Tenebrum (A.C. 240). Asked what she expected to find in space, Betty Murano made the immortal quip,
"Nothing." By the third century A.C. intelligence was a controllable, heritable factor, though aptitudes
and interests continued to elude the surgeons and intelligence itself could be raised only grossly. By the
fifth century, clan organization had reached its present complex state and the re-cycling of phosphorus
was almost completely successful; by the seventh century Jovian mining made it possible to replace a
largely glass-and-ceramics technology with some metals (which were also re-cycled) and for the third
time in four hundred years (fashions are sometimes cyclic too) duelling became a serious social
nuisance. Several local Guilds Councils voted that a successful duellist must undergo the penalty of an
accidental murderer and bear a child to replace the life lost, but the solution was too simple-minded to
become popular. There was the age of both parties to consider, for example. By the beginning of the
ninth century A.C. the induction helmet was a practical possibility, industry was being drastically
altered, and the Selenic League had finally outproduced South Continent in kg protein/person/annum. In
913 A.C. an obscure and discontented descendant of Katy Ansky put together various items of
mathematical knowledge and thus discovered—or invented—probability mechanics.

In the time of Jesus of Nazareth, dear reader, there were no motor-cars. I still walk, though, sometimes.

That is, a prudent ecologist makes things work as nearly perfectly as they can by themselves, but you
also keep the kerosene lantern in the barn just in case, and usually a debate about keeping a horse ends
up with the decision that it's too much trouble, so you let the horse go; but the Conservation Point at La
Jolla keeps horses. We wouldn't recognize them. The induction helmet makes it possible for one
workwoman to have not only the brute force but also the flexibility and control of thousands; it's turning
Whileawayan industry upside down. Most people walk on Whileaway (of course, their feet are perfect).
They make haste in odd ways sometimes. In the early days it was enough just to keep alive and keep the
children coming. Now they say "When the re-industrialization's complete," and they still walk. Maybe
they like it. Probability mechanics offers the possibility—by looping into another continuum, exactly

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 Joanna Russ - The Female Man

chosen—of teleportation. Chilia Ysayeson Belin lives in Italian ruins (I think this is part of the Vittore
Emmanuele monument, though I don't know how it got to Newland) and she's sentimental about it; how
can one add indoor plumbing discreetly without an unconscionable amount of work? Her mother, Ysaye,
lives in a cave (the Ysaye who put together the theory of probability mechanics). Pre-fabs take only two
days to get and no time at all to set up. There are eighteen Belins and twenty-three Moujkis (Ysaye's
family; I stayed with both). Whileaway doesn't have true cities. And of course, the tail of a culture is
several centuries behind the head. Whileaway is so pastoral that at times one wonders whether the
ultimate sophistication may not take us all back to a kind of pre-Paleolithic dawn age, a garden without
any artifacts except for what we would call miracles. A Moujki invented non-disposable food containers
in her spare time in A.C. 904 because the idea fascinated her; people have been killed for less.

Meanwhile, the ecological housekeeping is enormous.

IX

JE: I bore my child at thirty; we all do. It's a vacation. Almost five years. The baby rooms are full of
people reading, painting, singing, as much as they can, to the children, with the children, over the
children… Like the ancient Chinese custom of the three-years' mourning, an hiatus at just the right time.
There has been no leisure at all before and there will be so little after— anything I do, you understand, I