Читать онлайн "The Best of Lester del Rey" - Рей Лестер Дель - RuLit

I knew him better than that, but I wanted proof. I had written a short story called “The Years Draw Nigh” rather hastily. So I dug it out, thought about it as I could then only think when aiming a story at Campbell, and rewrote it as it should have been in the first place. I also had an idea about jsome robots (and in case no one has noticed, I :Jc«S| robots and have written a great many stories about’ them) which I wrote up as “Instinct.”

I took both stories in to Campbell. We barely mentioned Dianetics, had a pleasant lunch together, and talked. It had been a couple of years since we’d gotten together, but nothing had changed. Campbell bought both stories at his maximum rate. But for a year after that, I was still being told he was through with me.

“Superstition” and “For I Am a Jealous People” are also connected, in a way. Frederik Pohl was putting together an original anthology for Ballantine Books called Star Short Novels and felt he had to have one outstanding novel with which to end the book. He came to me, and I wrote “Superstition” for him, figuring that the idea of total superstition being absolute fact was a good one. But the story wasn’t strong enough for him. (Campbell bought it almost instantly.) He wanted a controversial story.

Well, I’d had an idea for a long time that couldn’t have been sold to any magazine at the time. And I was pretty sure Pohl wouldn’t take it, either, since it involved setting the God of the Bible—at least the Old Testament—against man. I made the idea sound as controversial as I could in outlining it—and he simply said, “Write it.” So the story that I never expected to write got on paper.

Actually, “Jealous People” is one of the few stories that grew from some of my own philosophy, instead of being pure story. I’d speculated on the responsibility of a man who served both God and Mankind, and who found them in violent opposition. To me, the answer was obvious. So was the result. But for that, I had to put my real ending in a “quotation” from a spurious book of the Bible as a heading for the last chapter.

“Superstition,” incidentally, is one of the few far-future, far-space stories I’ve written. To me, the real drama of a story lies within the characters, and the reality must lie within some reasonable distance of what we know. Beyond that distance, chaos rises to remove the order from drama.

“The Keepers of the House” was a trick story—one without any real surface plot or truly sentient character. I wrote it on a wager to prove that Campbell couldn’t be fooled by writing skill—and he rightly rejected it as having no plot. But so much went into making the trick work that I’ve always felt the final story conveyed far more than if I’d given all the plot and background behind it—which I do know in great detail, incidentally.

“Little Jimmy” was the result of a different kind of challenge. Tony Boucher was a fine editor, who had a stronger requirement for literary flavor than other magazine editors. I’d never sold him anything—nor, in fact, written anything for him. But finally I decided I would and could write something he couldn’t resist. So I took a simple idea and wrote it up in the style I’d previously used under a penname to sell a few slick stories. I wound up very pleased with the result, as was Boucher. I probably should have written others for him, but I never did.

As to “The Seat of Judgment,” it came about as a result of spending too much tune at the bar with Robert Mills, while he was an editor of Venture, a short-lived but excellent magazine. He kept demanding a story when I didn’t really want to do one. Finally, I picked a verse from the Bible and told him I’d only write a story around it, which I knew wasn’t what he wanted. But he bought the story on the spot, and I had to write it—much to my pleasure, as it turned out. There’s a bitter and rather blasphemous ending to the story—beyond the words I’ve written—which is clearly possible and perhaps can be guessed by anyone who cares to think about it.

And finally, there’s “Vengeance is Mine.” It came to be written as many stories were—I needed some money. I wanted to go to a Science Fiction Convention, but didn’t have the cash on hand; and for such things, I always insisted on having money I could safely spare. So Fred Pohl agreed to get me quick payment, and I wrote the story pretty much overnight. As happens with most of the stories I like best in retrospect, this one came very easily, if.

But behind if; of course, lay ideas which were important enough to me to add to my feeling for the story. I’ve studied a lot of history, and I never saw that the so-called positive emotions and ideas ever accomplished more than the “negative” ones. Love did very little for mankind throughout history; and while hate and envy and rage produced much to deplore, often the muse of history could bend such motives to shape the course of advancement and good. God, if you like, can use the Adversary—and usually does.

Judgment, like memory, is prone to color personal things hi ways which may not always stand the test of reality. And these are only the stories which I judge to be my best—for whatever best that may be.

But though there are many others I like (and many I wish I had never written), I am willing to be judged by the ones I have selected for this collection. Look on my works—and I hope you don’t despak!

Lester del Rey

New York City

March, 1978

A Del Rey Book

Published by Baliantine Books

Published in the United States by Baliantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York and simultaneously in Canada by Baliantine Books of Canada, Ltd., Toronto, Canada.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 78-62267

ISBN 0-345-27336-2

Manufactured in the United States of America

First Baliantine Books Edition: September 1978

Cover art by H. R. Van Dongen