"Bruce Sterling. Catscan {angl., new}" - читать интересную книгу автора

Denied his longed-for position in the theater, Jules groaningly decided
that he might condescend to try prose. He wrote a couple of stories heavily
influenced by Poe, a big period favorite of French intellectuals. There was
a cheapo publisher in town who was starting a kid's pop-science magazine
called "Family Museum." Jules wrote a couple of pieces for peanuts and got
cover billing. The publisher decided to try him out on books. Jules was
willing. He signed a contract to do two books a year, more or less forever,
in exchange for a monthly sum.

Jules, who liked hobnobbing with explorers and scientists, happened to know
a local deranged techie called Nadar. Nadar's real name was Felix
Tournachon, but everybody called him Nadar, for he was one of those period
Gallic swashbucklers who passed through life with great swirlings of
scarlet and purple and the scent of attar of roses. Nadar was involved in
two breaking high-tech developments of the period: photography and
ballooning. (Nadar is perhaps best remembered today as the father of aerial
photography.)

Nadar had Big Ideas. Jules' real forte was geography - a date-line or a
geodesic sent him into raptures - but he liked Nadar's style and knew good
copy when he saw it. Jules helped out behind the scenes when Nadar launched
THE GIANT, the largest balloon ever seen at the time, with a gondola the
size of a two-story house, lavishly supplied with champagne. Jules never
rode the thing - he had a wife and kids now - but he retired into his study
with the plot-line of his first book, and drove his wife to distraction.
"There are manuscripts everywhere - nothing but manuscripts," she said in a
fine burst of wifely confidence. "Let's hope they don't end up under the
cooking pot."

_Five Weeks In A Balloon_ was Jules' first hit. The thing was a smash for
his publisher, who sold it all over the world in lavish foreign editions
for which Jules received pittances. But Jules wasn't complaining - probably
because he wasn't paying attention.

With a firm toehold in the public eye, Jules soon hit his stride as a
popular author. He announced to the startled stockbrokers: "Mes enfants, I
am leaving you. I have had an idea, the sort of idea that should make a
man's fortune. I have just written a novel in a new form, one that's
entirely my own. If it succeeds, I shall have stumbled upon a gold mine. In
that case, I shall go on writing and writing without pause, while you
others go on buying shares the day before they drop and selling them the
day before they rise. I am leaving the Bourse. Good evening, mes enfants."

Jules Verne had invented hard science fiction. He originated the hard SF
metier of off-the-rack plots and characters, combined with vast expository
lumps of pop science. His innovation came from literary naivete; he never
learned better or felt any reason to. (This despite Apollinaire's sniping
remark: "What a style Jules Verne has, nothing but nouns.")

Verne's dialogue, considered quite snappy for the period, was derived from