"Andrew Weiner - Changes" - читать интересную книгу автора (Weiner Andrew)

Changes
Andrew Weiner

Born in Britain but now a Canadian citizen living in Toronto, Weiner
has published short fiction in F&SF, Asimov’s, Interzone and others, and
has published an SF novel, Station Gehenna. He tells us that ‘Changes’
‘is part of a cycle which I’ve been writing backwards. Martha Nova and
Robert Duke (identified, for some obscure reason, only as the “dancer”)
first appeared in Getting Near the End, a story about the end of the world
published in a 1981 Ace anthology, Proteus. More recently, I wrote a
novella called Seeing (recently sold to F&SF), which is a kind of prequel
to Getting Near. “Changes”, in turn, is a prequel to Seeing.’

No doubt the cycle will be finished any decade now; but ‘Changes’
stands in its own right as a seriously political speculative fiction story
that works from the personal level to give a wider sense of a society
shaking itself to pieces on an apocalyptic rollercoaster ride. It is all the
more effective because of the beautifully quiet and transparent narrative,
and the meticulous verisimilitude of its stadium rock backdrop, for which
Andrew Weiner has drawn upon his experience as a freelance rock
writer in the early seventies. ‘I stopped because I figured I was getting
too old,’ he says, ‘but I’ve since come back to the subject again and
again in my fiction.’

****



W
ell?’ Sykes asked.

The tape was half-over. Duke had not said a word since it began. Now
he looked up, shrugged. ‘It’s what I expected.’

‘But you don’t like it.’

‘Liking it wasn’t part of the deal.’

Another song began, perhaps the best thing Duke had written in
years. Like all the others, Sykes had choked the life out of it.
 ‘This is the new sound, Robert,’ Sykes said. ‘The old sounds are
over. Finished.’

‘So I’ve been told.’

Duke got up. He stared blankly for a moment at the walls of Sykes’s
office. They were blanketed with gold and plati-num discs, Grammies,
Producer of the Year Awards.

‘I think I’ve heard enough,’ he said.