"Vladimir Savchenko. Self-discovery (англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

Alvin Toffler (who invented the term) while realizing that he need not have;
the phenomenon and its effects are quite evident to anyone who cares to
look. Science fiction writers and their proliferating and increasingly
addicted readers are, and have been all along, the people who care to look.
They look with practiced eyes, not only at what is and what will be, but at
that entrancing infinity of what might be: alternate worlds, alternate
cultures and mores, extrapolations of the known, be it space flight, organ
transplants, social security, ecological awareness, or any other current,
idea, or force in a perpetually moving universe: if this goes on, where will
it go? For stasis, and stasis alone, is unnatural and unachievable and has
failed every time mankind has been tempted to try it. The very nature of
science fiction is to be aware of this and to recognize that the only
security lies in dynamic equilibrium, like that of the gull in flight, the
planet in orbit, the balanced churning of the galaxies themselves ... and of
course, the demonstrable fact that the cells of your body and the molecules
which compose them are not at all what they were when you picked up this
book. The future can shock only those who are wedded to stasis.
(Parenthetically, science fiction writers are not immune to future
shock, though it may take the form of an overpowering urge to kick
themselves. Example: up until very recently there was-as far as I know-not
one single science fiction story which included a device like the wristwatch
my wife wears, which delivers the time, day, date, adjusts itself for months
of varying lengths, is a stopwatch and elapsed-time recorder, and has a
solar panel which gulps down any available light and recharges its battery.
The development of these microelectronic devices, now quite common and
inexpensive, was simply unthought of by science fiction professionals, and
is by no means the only example of technological quantum leaps which season
our arrogance. It is beneficial to all concerned when our dignitaries are
observed, from time to time, to slip and sit down in mud puddles.)
Mud puddles, or their narrative equivalent, are far from absent in this
book, for Savchenko has a delicious sense of humor and a lovely appreciation
of the outrageous. Let us posit, for example, that you are a brilliant but
not particularly attractive man with little concern for the more gracious
amenities, who happens to be loved by a beautiful and forgiving lady. In the
course of your work you produce a living, breathing version of yourself who
is a physical Adonis and who, further, has a clear recollection of every
word, every intimacy, that has ever passed between you and the woman.
And they meet, and she likes him.
How do you feel?
Why?
And then there's Onisimov-poor, devoted, duty-bound Onisimov-a
detective in whose veins runs the essence of the Keystone Kop, up against a
case with a perfectly rational solution which he is utterly unequipped to
solve-not at all because he is unable to understand it, but because he
simply cannot believe it.
Then there's the offensive Hilobok, unfortunately (as mentioned above)
not quite a parody, but the object of not a few instances of
Krivoshein/Savchenko's irrepressible puckishness, and a gatekeeper who is
certainly Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern rolled into one, and a fine
sprinkling of smiles amid the cascades of heavy ideation.