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tipped him to the isotope separation problem? "And that is vhy Mr. Campbell received his visitors."
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So the great, resonant legend of early hard sf was, in fact, triggered by the quiet, distant "fan" community
among the scientists themselves. For me, closing the connection in this fundamental fable of the field
completed my own quizzical thinking about the link between the science I practice, and the fiction I
deploy in order to think about the larger implications of my work, and of others. Events tinged with fable
have an odd quality, looping back on themselves to bring us messages more tangled and subtle than we
sometimes guess.
I am sure that the writers of that era, and perhaps of this one as well, would be pleased to hear this
footnote to history. Somebody really was listening out there. I suspect today is no different. Perhaps the
sf writers are indeed the unacknowledged legislators of tomorrow.
GREGORY BENFORD and DAVID BRIN
PARIS CONQUERS ALL
* The second of our War of the Worlds stories is the third story in the issue by a columnist. Gregory
Benford collaborated with award-winner David Brin in this tale of yet another writer, Jules Verne, and his
encounter with the Martians.
I commence this account with a prosaic stroll at eventide -- a saunter down the avenues of la Ville
Lumiere, during which the ordinary swiftly gave way to the extraordinary. I was in Paris to consult with
my publisher, as well as to visit old companions and partake of the exquisite cuisine, which my provincial
home in Amiens cannot boast. Though I am now a gentleman of advanced age, nearing my 70th year, I
am still quite able to favor the savories, and it remains a treat to survey the lovely demoiselles as they
exhibit the latest fashions on the boulevards, enticing smitten young men and breaking their hearts at the
same time.
I had come to town that day believing -- as did most others -- that there still remained weeks, or days
at least, before the alien terror ravaging southern France finally reached the valley of the Seine. Ile de
France would be defended at all costs, we were assured. So it came to pass that, tricked by this false
complaisance, I was in the capital the very afternoon that the crisis struck.
Paris! It still shone as the most splendid exemplar of our progressive age -- all the more so in that
troubled hour, as tense anxiety seemed only to add to the city's loveliness -- shimmering at night with
both gas and electric lights, and humming by day with new electric trams, whose marvelous wires
crisscrossed above the avenues like gossamer heralds of a new era.
I had begun here long ago as a young attorney, having followed into my father's profession. Yet that
same head of our family had also accepted my urge to strike out on a literary road, in the theater and
later down expansive voyages of prose. "Drink your fill of Paris, my son!" the good man said, seeing me
off from the Nantes railway station. "Devour these wondrous times. Your senses are keen. Share your
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insights. The world will change because of it."
Without such help and support, would I ever have found within myself the will, the daring, to explore the
many pathways of the future, with all their wonders and perils? Ever since the Martian invasion began, I
had found myself reflecting on an extraordinary life filled with such good fortune, especially now that all
human luck seemed about to be revoked. Now, with terror looming from the south and west, would it all
soon come to nought? All that I had achieved? Everything humanity had accomplished, after so many
centuries climbing upward from ignorance?
It was in such an uncharacteristically dour mood that I strolled in the company of M. Beauchamp, a
gentleman scientist, that pale afternoon less than an hour before I had my first contact with the horrible
Martian machines. Naturally, I had been following the eye-witness accounts which first told of plunging
fireballs, striking the Earth with violence that sent gouts of soil and rock spitting upward, like miniature
versions of the outburst at Krakatau. These impacts had soon proved to be far more than mere
meteoritic phenomena, since there soon emerged, like insects from a subterranean lair, three-legged
beings bearing incredible malevolence toward the life of this planet. Riding gigantic tripod mechanisms,
these unwelcome guests soon set forth with one sole purpose in mind -- destructive conquest!
The ensuing carnage, the raking fire, the sweeping flames -- none of these horrors had yet reached the
fair country above the river Loire . . . not yet. But reports all too vividly told of villages trampled,
farmlands seared black, and hordes of refugees cut down as they fled.
Invasion. The word came to mind all too easily remembered. We of northern France knew the pain just
twenty-eight years back, when Sedan fell and this sweet land trembled under an attacker's boot. Several
Paris quarters still bear scars where Prussian firing squads tore moonlike craters out of plaster walls,
mingling there the ochre life blood of communards, royalists and bourgeois alike.
Now Paris trembled before advancing powers so malign that, in contrast, those Prussians of 1870 were
like beloved cousins, welcome to town for a picnic!
All of this I pondered while taking leave, with Beauchamp, of the Ecole Militaire, the national military
academy, where a briefing had just been given to assembled dignitaries, such as ourselves. From the
stone portico we gazed toward the Seine, past the encampment of the Seventeenth Corps of Volunteers,
their tents arrayed across trampled grass and smashed flower beds of the ironically named
Champ-de-Mars. The meadow of the god of war.
Towering over this scene of intense (and ultimately futile) martial activity stood the tower of M. Eiffel,
built for the recent exhibition, that marvelously fashioned testimonial to metal and ingenuity . . . and also
target of so much vitriol.
"The public's regard for it may improve with time," I ventured, observing that Beauchamp's gaze lay
fixed on the same magnificent spire.
My companion snorted with derision at the curving steel flanks. "An eyesore, of no enduring value," he
countered, and for some time we distracted ourselves from more somber thoughts by arguing the relative
merits of Eiffel's work, while turning east to walk toward the Sorbonne. Of late, experiments in the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]