"GL2" - читать интересную книгу автора (vol09)

the thing's allowed to harden. It may be painful for the author
to have the blindness of paternal love removed, but it seems the
most useful thing to do on the spot. What's the good of sitting
here, hearing things before they're in print, if all we're to do is to
pat the father's back and murmur: Any child of yours is'..
welcome, Mr. Ramer. Your fiftieth, is it? Well, well! How they
do all take after their dear father, don't they?'
Lowdham laughed. 'And what you're longing to say, I
suppose, is: Why don't you wipe the brat's nose, and get its hair
cut?'
'Or strangle it!' said Ramer impatiently.
'No, seriously,' Guildford protested, 'I only objected to parts,
not to the whole of your latest infant, Michael. Only to the first
chapter and the end of the last one, really. But there! I suppose
no one has ever solved the difficulty of arriving, of getting to
another planet, no more in literature than in life. Because the



difficulty is in fact insoluble, I think. The barrier cannot and will
not ever be passed in mortal flesh. Anyway, the opening
chapters, the journey, of space-travel tales seem to me always
the weakest. Scientifiction, as a rule: and that is a base alloy. Yes
it is, Master Frankley, so don't interrupt! Just as much as the
word is an ill-made portmanteau: rotten for travelling with.
And that goes for your machine, too, Ramer. Though it's one of
the better failures, perhaps.'
'Thank you for that!' Ramer growled. 'But it's just like you,
Nicholas, to pick on the frame, which is an awkward necessity
of pictures, and easy to change anyway, and say nothing about
what's inside it. I suppose you must have seen something to
praise inside: we know how painful you find praising anything.
Isn't that the real reason why you postpone it?'
'Nonsense!' said Guildford. 'I thought what was inside was
very good, if you must have it. Though I felt there was
something very odd about it.'
'I'm sure you did! '
'I mean odd coming from you. And in its setting. For you
won't get away with that framed excuse. A picture-frame is not
a parallel. An author's way of getting to Mars (say) is part of his
story of his Mars; and of his universe, as far as that particular
tale' goes. It's part of the picture, even if it's only in a marginal
position; and it may seriously affect all that's inside.'
'Why should it?' said Frankley.
'Well, if there are space-ships at all in your imagined universe,
you'll fail to sell it to me, for one thing,' said Guildford.
'That's carrying your anti-machine mania too far,' said
Lowdham. 'Surely poor writers can include things you don't
like in their stories?'
'I'm not talking about dislike at the moment,' Guildford