Orson Card - Maps in a Mirror - The Short Fiction of Orson Scott Card

Здесь есть возможность читать онлайн «Orson Card - Maps in a Mirror - The Short Fiction of Orson Scott Card» весь текст электронной книги совершенно бесплатно (целиком полную версию без сокращений). В некоторых случаях можно слушать аудио, скачать через торрент в формате fb2 и присутствует краткое содержание. Город: New York, Год выпуска: 2004, ISBN: 2004, Издательство: Tom Doherty Associates, Жанр: Фантастика и фэнтези, на английском языке. Описание произведения, (предисловие) а так же отзывы посетителей доступны на портале библиотеки ЛибКат.

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Maps in a Mirror For the hundreds of thousands who are newly come to Card, here is chance to experience the wonder of a writer so versatile that he can handle everything from traditional narrative poetry to modern experimental fiction with equal ease and grace. The brilliant story-telling of the Alvin Maker books is no accident; the breathless excitement evoked by the Ender books is not a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
In this enormous volume are forty-six stories, plus ten long, intensely personal essays, unique to this volume. In them the author reveals some of his reasons and motivations for writing, with a good deal of autobiography into the bargain.
THE SHORT FICTION OF ORSON SCOTT CARD brings together nearly all of Card’s stories, from his first publications in 1977 to work as recent as last year. For those readers who have followed this remarkable talent since the beginning, here are all those amazing stories gathered together in one place, with some extra surprises as well. For the hundreds of thousands who are newly come to Card, here is a chance to experience the wonder of a writer so talented, so versatile that he can handle everything from traditional narrative poetry to modern experimental fiction with equal ease and grace. The brilliant story-telling of the Alvin Maker books is no accident; the breathless excitement evoked by ENDER’S GAME is riot a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
In this enormous volume are 46 stories, broken into five books: Ten fables and fantasies, fairy tales that sometimes tell us truths about ourselves; eleven tales of dread—and commentary that explains why dread is a much scarier emotion than horror; seven tales of human futures—science fiction from a master of extrapolation and character; six tales of death, hope, and holiness, where Card explores the spiritual side of human nature; and twelve lost songs.
The Lost Songs are a special treat for readers of this hardcover volume, for here are gathered tales which will not see print again. Here are Card’s stories written for Mormon children, a pair that were published in small literary magazines, a thoughtful essay on the writing of fiction, and three major works which have, since their original publication, been superseded by novel-, or more than novel-length works. First, there is the original novella-length version of Card’s Hugo and Nebula Award-winning novel, ENDER’S GAME. Then there is “Mikal’s Songbird”, which was the seed of the novel SONGMASTER; “Mikal’s Songbird” will never be published again. And finally, the narrative poem “Prentice Alvin and the No-Good Plow”—here is the original inspiration for the Alvin Maker series, an idea so powerful that it could not be contained in a single story, or a hundred lines of verse, but is growing to become the most original American fantasy ever written.
MAPS IN A MIRROR is not just a collection of stories, however complete. This comprehensive collection also contains nearly a whole book’s worth of
material. Each section begins and ends with long, intensely personal introductions and afterwords; here the author reveals some of his reasons and motivations for writing what he writes—and a good deal of autobiography into the bargain.
ORSON SCOTT CARD grew up in Utah and attended Brigham Young University, where he studied drama. Card’s early writing career was devoted to plays; he had his own theater company, which was successful for a number of years. Card spent his missionary years in Brazil, learning to speak fluent Portuguese. He now lives in Greensboro, North Carolina, with his wife and three children. From book flaps:

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They won’t put any more babies out to orphanages now, though. They’re not that dumb.

But now we have you . Maybe we can learn how to block what they do. Or how to heal the people they attack. Or how to identify sparkiness, as you call it, from a distance. All kinds of possibilities. But sometime in the future, Mick, you may be the only weapon we have. Do you understand that?

I don’t want to.

I know.

You wanted to kill me?

I wanted to protect people from you. It was safest. Mick, I really am glad it worked out this way.

I don’t know whether to believe you, Mr. Kaiser. You’re such a good liar. I thought you were so nice to me all that time because you were just a nice guy.

Oh, he is, Mick. He’s a nice guy. Also a damn fine liar. We kind of needed both those attributes in the person we had looking out for you.

Well, anyway, that’s over with.

What’s over with?

Killing me. Isn’t it?

That’s up to you, Mick. If you ever start getting crazy on us, or killing people that aren’t part of this war of ours—

I won’t do that!

But if you did, Mick. It’s never too late to kill you.

Can I see her?

See who?

The lady from Roanoke! Isn’t it about time you told me her name?

Come on. She can tell you herself.

ST. AMY’S TALE

Mother could kill with her hands. Father could fly. These are miracles. But they were not miracles then. Mother Elouise taught me that there were no miracles then. I am the child of Wreckers, born while the angel was in them.

This is why I am called Saint Amy, though I perceive nothing in me that should make me holier than any other old woman. Yet Mother Elouise denied the angel in her, too, and it was no less there.

Sift your fingers through the soil, all you who read my words. Take your spades of iron and your picks of stone. Dig deep. You will find no ancient works of man hidden there. For the Wreckers passed through the world, and all the vanity was consumed in fire; all the pride broke in pieces when it was smitten by God’s shining hand.

Elouise leaned on the rim of the computer keyboard. All around her the machinery was alive, the screens displaying information. Elouise felt nothing but weariness. She was leaning because, for a moment, she had felt a frightening vertigo. As if the world underneath the airplane had dissolved and slipped away into a rapidly receding star and she would never be able to land.

True enough, she thought. I’ll never be able to land, not in the world I knew.

“Getting sentimental about the old computers?”

Elouise, startled, turned in her chair and faced her husband, Charlie. At that moment the airplane lurched, but like sailors accustomed to the shifting of the sea, they adjusted unconsciously and did not notice the imbalance.

“Is it noon already?” she asked.

“It’s the mortal equivalent of noon. I’m too tired to fly this thing anymore, and it’s a good thing Bill’s at the controls.”

“Hungry?”

Charlie shook his head. “But Amy probably is,” he said.

“Voyeur,” said Elouise.

Charlie liked to watch Elouise nurse their daughter. But despite her accusation, Elouise knew there was nothing sexual in it. Charlie liked the idea of Elouise being Amy’s mother. He liked the way Amy’s sucking resembled the sucking of a calf or a lamb or a puppy. He had said, “It’s the best thing we kept from the animals. The best thing we didn’t throw away.”

“Better than sex?” Elouise had asked. And Charlie had only smiled.

Amy was playing with a rag doll in the only large clear space in the airplane, near the exit door. “Mommy Mommy Mamommy Mommy-o,” Amy said. The child stood and reached to be picked up. Then she saw Charlie. “Daddy Addy Addy.”

“Hi,” Charlie said.

“Hi,” Amy answered. “Ha-ee.” She had only just learned to close the diphthong, and she exaggerated it. Amy played with the buttons on Elouise’s shirt, trying to undo them.

“Greedy,” Elouise said, laughing.

Charlie unbuttoned the shirt for her, and Amy seized on the nipple after only one false grab. She sucked noisily, tapping her hand gently against Elouise’s breast as she ate.

“I’m glad we’re so near finished,” Elouise said. “She’s too old to be nursing now.”

“That’s right. Throw the little bird out of the nest.”

“Go to bed,” Elouise said.

Amy recognized the phrase. She pulled away. “La-lo,” she said.

“That’s right. Daddy’s going to sleep,” Elouise said.

Elouise watched as Charlie stripped off most of his clothing and lay down on the pad. He smiled once, then turned over, and was immediately asleep. He was in tune with his body. Elouise knew that he would awaken in exactly six hours, when it was time for him to take the controls again.

Amy’s sucking was a subtle pleasure now, though it had been agonizing the first few months, and painful again when Amy’s first teeth had come in and she had learned to her delight that by nipping she could make her mother scream. But better to nurse her than ever have her eat the predigested pap that was served as food on the airplane. Elouise thought wryly that it was even worse than the rnicrowaved veal cordon bleu that they used to inflict on commercial passengers. Only eight years ago. And they had calibrated their fuel so exactly that when they took the last draft of fuel from the last of their storage tanks, the tank registered empty; they would burn the last of the processed petroleum, instead of putting it back into the earth. All their caches were gone now, and they would be at the tender mercies of the world that they themselves had created.

Still, there was work to do; the final work, in the final checks. Elouise held Amy with one arm while she used her free hand slowly to key in the last program that her role as commander required her to use. Elouise Private, she typed. Teacher teacher I declare I see someone’s underwear, she typed. On the screen appeared the warning she had put there: “You may think you’re lucky finding this program, but unless you know the magic words, an alarm is going to go off all over this airplane and you’ll be had. No way out of it, sucker. Love, Elouise.”

Elouise, of course, knew the magic words. Einstein sucks, she typed. The screen went blank, and the alarm did not go off.

Malfunction? she queried. “None,” answered the computer.

Tamper? she queried, and the computer answered, “None.”

Nonreport? she queried, and the computer flashed, “AFscanP7bb55.”

Elouise had not really been dozing. But still she was startled, and she lurched forward, disturbing Amy, who really had fallen asleep. “No no no,” said Amy, and Elouise forced herself to be patient; she soothed her daughter back to sleep before pursuing whatever it was that her guardian program had caught. Whatever it was? Oh, she knew what it was. It was treachery. The one thing she had been sure her group, her airplane would never have. Other groups of Rectifiers—wreckers, they called themselves, having adopted their enemies’ name for them—other groups had had their spies or their fainthearts, but not Bill or Heather or Ugly-Bugly.

Specify, she typed.

The computer was specific.

Over northern Virginia, as the airplane followed its careful route to find and destroy everything made of metal, glass, and plastic; somewhere over northern Virginia, the airplane’s path bent slightly to the south, and on the return, at the same place, the airplane’s path bent slightly to the north, so that a strip of northern Virginia two kilometers long and a few dozen meters wide could contain some nonbiodegradable artifact, hidden from the airplane, and if Elouise had not queried this program, she would never have known it.

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