"Robert Sheckley. The Day The Aliens Came (англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

Who knows what I'll be like? For me this is a whole new frankfurter."
I let that pass. An occasional lapse in English doesn't make an alien an
ignoramus.
I got my story done in a week and brought it in to the Synester's office in the
old MGM building on Broadway. I handed him the story and he waved me to a seat
while he read it.
"It's pretty good," he said after a while. "I like it pretty well."
"Oh, good," I said.
"But I want some changes."
"Oh," I said. "What specifically did you have in mind?"
"Well," the Synester said, "this character you have in here, Alice."
"Yes, Alice," I said, though I couldn't quite remember writing an Alice into
the story. Could he be referring to Alsace, the province in France? I
decided not to question him. No sense appearing dumb on my own story.
"Now, this Alice," he said, " she's the size of a small country, isn't she?"

He was definitely referring to Alsace, the province in France, and I had lost
the moment when I could correct him. "Yes," I said, "that's right, just about
the size of a small country."
"Well, then," he said, "why don't you have Alice fall in love with a bigger
country in the shape of a pretzel?"
"A what?" I said.
"Pretzel," he said. "It's a frequently used image in Synestrian popular
literature. Synestrians like to read that sort of thing."
"Do they?" I said.
"Yes," he said. "Synestrians like to imagine people in the shape of
pretzels. You stick that in, it'll make it more visual."
"Visual," I said, my mind a blank.
"Yes," he said, "Because we gotta consider the movie possibilities."
"Yes, of course," I said, remembering that I got sixty percent.
"Now for the film version of your story, I think we should set the action at
a different time of day."
I tried to remember what time of day I had set the story in. It didn't seem to
me I had specified any particular time at all. I mentioned this.
"That's true," he said, "you didn't set any specific time. But you inferred
twilight. It was the slurring sound of your words that convinced me you were
talking about twilight."
"Yes, all right," I said. "Twilight mood."
"Males a nice title," he said.
"Yes," I said, hating it.
"Twilight Mood," he said, rolling it around inside his mouth. "You could
call it that, but I think you should actually write it in a daytime mode.
For the irony."
"Yes, I see what you mean," I said.
"So why don't you run it through your computer once more and bring it back
to me."
When I got home, Rimb was washing dishes and looking subdued. I should mention
that she was a medium-sized blond person with the harassed look that
characterizes aliens of the Ghottich persuasion. And there were peculiar sounds
coming form the living room. When I gave Rimb a quizzical look, she rolled her