"Arcady And Boris Strugatsky. Prisoners of Power" - читать интересную книгу автора

Arcady And Boris Strugatsky. Prisoners of Power


Copyright Arcady And Boris Strugatsky
Copyright Introduction by Theodore Sturgeon.
Copyright Translated from the Russian by Helen Saltz Jacobson, 1977
Copyright Collier Books: A Division of Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc,
New York; Collier Macmillan Publishing, London
Origin: "Obitaemyj ostrov"
OCR: Vladislav Zarya



INTRODUCTION

Early in these pages, when young Maxim dips his hand into a river on
the alien planet on which he has just been marooned, and withdraws it
hastily because the water is radioactive, the knowledgeable science fiction
reader is likely to say, "Come on, now, fellows - how could he know? Or, if
it were so devastatingly, dangerously radioactive that he could determine it
without instruments, how could he notnot know before he stuck iris silly
hand in it?" But one forgives, proceeds in a smug and self-satisfied way,
because Maxim's adventures are adventurous indeed, his encounters
believable, suspenseful, unexpected, and quite beyond anticipation, the
Strugatskys being the plot-masters that they are.
Then, some hundred-or-so pages in, the reader realizes that Maxim,
being what he is, could most certainly perform that small feat at the river,
and would; further, the reader realizes that this discovery was made some
time back, indirectly, in the gradual unfolding of Maxim's character.
This knack - the conscious commission of apparent illogic, quietly
rectified in later narration - is typical Strugatsky. It is the gleeful and
deliberate provocation of criticism, in the sure knowledge that the
criticism is made on the basis of insufficient data, and that the critic
will be shown to be, in the true sense of the word, prejudiced -
pre-judging. After this has happened to the reader a number of times (and it
does) the reader has no recourse but to trust the authors - and no author
could ask for more than that. Few, however, can command your trust so
deftly.
There is a great deal more in the Strugatsky bag of tricks. They will,
for example, build up a vertiginous altitude of suspense (as in the scene
where Maxim is sent to execute prisoners, one of them a woman) ending with a
shocking twist - and then proceed with something else, happening to someone
else days later, joyfully refusing for the longest time to tell you just
what has happened to Maxim. And when they do, what has happened to him is
all over, part of his past, and we find him engaged in something quite new.
Yet the tapestry is ultimately done and hung, the authors having completed
certain panels while you weren't looking.
Then there's the matter of the shifting point-of-view. Any good
creative writing professor (though there are those who maintain there is no
such thing) will tell you that only one character permits the reader inside