"Michael Swanwick - The Madness of Gordon van Gelder" - читать интересную книгу автора (Swanwick Michael)

But it didn't...wouldn't...couldn't end there, after all. One thing led to
another. Gordon bought more and increasingly more stories sight unseen.
Stories
by unpublished amateurs. Stories by people he knew couldn't write.

Word got around.

Why drag out the story? Less than a year after that fatal room party, Gordon
found himself standing out on Fifth Avenue, assailed by would be writers.
Gonnabes, wannabes, notachanceinhelltabes filled the street, stopped the
traffic, shrieked like banshees, thrust forward clumsily typed and badly
penciled and incoherently crayoned manuscripts, while Gordon, tattered and
bleeding, accepted all they could give him and demanded more.

The SWAT team was called out. Water hoses were employed, and then live ammo.
Writers were mowed down like the cockroaches they were. Until finally the
street
was cleared and an angry police officer confronted the unrepentant editor.

"All right," the policeman growled, "what's the story here?"

"I don't give a damn," Gordon said. "I'll buy it."