"Bruce Sterling - Midnight on the Rue Jules Verne (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sterling Bruce)

wildly in a brokerage floor "buy" signal.
Denied his longed-for position in the theater,
Jules groaningly decided that he might condescend to
try prose. He wrote a couple of stories heavily
influenced by Poe, a big period favorite of French
intellectuals. There was a cheapo publisher in town
who was starting a kid's pop-science magazine called
"Family Museum." Jules wrote a couple of pieces for
peanuts and got cover billing. The publisher decided
to try him out on books. Jules was willing. He signed
a contract to do two books a year, more or less
forever, in exchange for a monthly sum.
Jules, who liked hobnobbing with explorers and
scientists, happened to know a local deranged techie
called Nadar. Nadar's real name was Felix Tournachon,
but everybody called him Nadar, for he was one of
those period Gallic swashbucklers who passed through
life with great swirlings of scarlet and purple and
the scent of attar of roses. Nadar was involved in two
breaking high-tech developments of the period:
photography and ballooning. (Nadar is perhaps best
remembered today as the father of aerial photography.)
Nadar had Big Ideas. Jules' real forte was
geography--a date-line or a geodesic sent him into
raptures--but he liked Nadar's style and knew good
copy when he saw it. Jules helped out behind the
scenes when Nadar launched THE GIANT, the largest
balloon ever seen at the time, with a gondola the size
of a two-story house, lavishly supplied with
champagne. Jules never rode the thing--he had a wife
and kids now--but he retired into his study with the
plot-line of his first book, and drove his wife to
distraction. "There are manuscripts everywhere--
nothing but manuscripts," she said in a fine burst of
wifely confidence. "Let's hope they don't end up under
the cooking pot."
_Five Weeks In A Balloon_ was Jules' first hit.
The thing was a smash for his publisher, who

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sold it
all over the world in lavish foreign editions for
which Jules received pittances. But Jules wasn't
complaining--probably because he wasn't paying
attention.
With a firm toehold in the public eye, Jules