Читать онлайн «The Falling Woman»
Автор Пэт Мэрфи
Pat Murphy
THE FALLING WOMAN
This is the true account, when all was vague, all was silence, without motion and the sky was still empty. This is the first account, the first narrative. There was neither man nor beast, no bird, fish nor crab, no trees, rocks, caves nor canyons, no plants and no shrubs. Only the sky was there.
Gateway Introduction
Enter the SF Gateway…
In the last years of the twentieth century (as Wells might have put it), Gollancz, Britain’s oldest and most distinguished science fiction imprint, created the SF and Fantasy Masterworks series. Dedicated to re-publishing the English language’s finest works of SF and Fantasy, most of which were languishing out of print at the time, they were – and remain – landmark lists, consummately fulfilling the original mission statement:
‘SF MASTERWORKS is a library of the greatest SF ever written, chosen with the help of today’s leading SF writers and editors. These books show that genuinely innovative SF is as exciting today as when it was first written. ’
Now, as we move inexorably into the twenty-first century, we are delighted to be widening our remit even more. The realities of commercial publishing are such that vast troves of classic SF & Fantasy are almost certainly destined never again to see print. Until very recently, this meant that anyone interested in reading any of these books would have been confined to scouring second-hand bookshops. The advent of digital publishing has changed that paradigm for ever.
The technology now exists to enable us to make available, for the first time, the entire backlists of an incredibly wide range of classic and modern SF and fantasy authors. Our plan is, at its simplest, to use this technology to build on the success of the SF and Fantasy Masterworks series and to go even further.
Welcome to the new home of Science Fiction & Fantasy. Welcome to the most comprehensive electronic library of classic SFF titles ever assembled.
Welcome to the SF Gateway.
Introduction
Elizabeth Butler, one of the two viewpoint characters in Pat Murphy’s Nebula Award-winning novel, possesses a rare talent: she is able to see and hear the long-dead people of the past as they go about their daily lives. This is a boon to her professionally, because she is an archaeologist, and her observations of the living past amidst the ruins she and her colleagues are excavating, enable her to make discoveries that can only be explained with reference to ‘luck’ or ‘intuition’.
But, as all good writers (and observant readers) know, a magical gift never comes free. There is a cost, always, to the user. To a great extent, Elizabeth, once certified insane but now a respected academic, has paid the price by forfeiting close, personal relationships with others. The more interested she is in the dead, the more distant and unreal to her are the people of her own time. Her students and colleagues are used to the way she stares beyond them and a potential lover must settle for a hands-off friendship, while her ex-husband is a chilly enemy, and her own daughter has grown up a virtual stranger.
