"Dan Simmons - Remembering Siri" - читать интересную книгу автора (Simmons Dan)

Remembering Siri
by Dan Simmons
Introduction
I'm interested in how few writers cross the osmotic boundaries between science
fiction and horror, between genre and what those in genre call mainstream. Or,
rather, I should say that I'm fascinated with how many cross and do not return.
Part of it, I think, is the vast difference in states of mind between dreaming the dark
dreams of horror and con-structing the rational structures of SF, or between tripping
the literary light fantastic and being shackled by the grav-ity of "serious" fiction. It is
hard to do both—painful to the psyche to allow one hemisphere to become
dominant while bludgeoning the other into submission. Perhaps that's why
readership of SF and horror, genre and New Yorker fiction overlap less than one
would think.
Whatever the reason, it's a pity that more writers feel constrained—sometimes by
limitations of talent or interest but more frequently by market considerations and the
sim-ple fact that they find success in one field—to stay in one genre.
Of course, the exceptions are always interesting. George R.R. Martin moves easily
between genres and ex-pectations, rarely repeating, always surprising. Dean Koontz
left SF just as he was becoming a star there—possibly because he sensed his destiny
lay in becoming a supernova elsewhere. Edward Bryant took a "sabbatical" from SF
a few years ago and has been producing world-class horror ever since. Kurt
Vonnegut and Ursula K. LeGuin "graduated" from SF to mainstream acceptance.
(To Vonnegut's credit for honesty if nothing else, he allows as to how he gets
nostalgic every once in a while, opens the lowest desk drawer where he keeps his old
pulp SF ef-forts, and then urinates into it.) Doris Lessing, Margaret Atwood and
others write their most memorable fiction in SF, but they deny any association with
the field. Neither lady mentions urinating into desk drawers, but one sus-pects that
they would feel a certain pressure on their re-spective bladders if forced to accept a
Hugo or Nebula.
Harlan Ellison simply refused ever to be nailed down to a genre—even while he
revolutionized them. We all have heard the stories where Ellison suffers the
ten-millionth reporter or critic or TV personality who is de-manding to know what
descriptive word comes before "writer" in this case. Sci-fi? Fantasy? Horror?
"What's wrong with just ... writer?" Ellison says softly in his most cordial cobra
hiss.
Well, what's wrong with it is that the semi-literate have feeble but tidy little minds
filled with tidy little boxes, and no matter how much one struggles, the newspaper
article (or review, or radio intro, or TV superimposed title) will read something akin
to—"sci-fi guy says his sci-fi stuff not sci-fi."
And the next step is for someone to stand up at a con-vention (sorry, a Con), grab
the microphone, and shout—"How come you're always saying in interviews and
stuff that you're not just a science fiction writer? I'm proud to be associated with
science fiction!" (Or horror. Or fantasy. Or ... fill in the blank.)
The crowd roars, righteousness fills the air, hostility lies just under the surface as if
you're a black at a Huey Newton rally who's been caught "passing"—revealed as an
oreo, or a Jew in the Warsaw ghetto who's been caught helping the Nazis with the
railroad timetables, or—worse yet, a Dead Head at a Grateful D. concert who's been
found listening to Mozart on his Walkman.
I mean, you are at this guy's convention. (Sorry, "Con.")
How do you explain to the guy gripping the mike that there are a thousand pressures