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Reading books fiction Have you ever thought about what fiction is? Probably, such a question may seem surprising: and so everything is clear. Every person throughout his life has to repeatedly create the works he needs for specific purposes - statements, autobiographies, dictations - using not gypsum or clay, not musical notes, not paints, but just a word. At the same time, almost every person will be very surprised if he is told that he thereby created a work of fiction, which is very different from visual art, music and sculpture making. However, everyone understands that a student's essay or dictation is fundamentally different from novels, short stories, news that are created by professional writers. In the works of professionals there is the most important difference - excogitation. But, oddly enough, in a school literature course, you don’t realize the full power of fiction. So using our website in your free time discover fiction for yourself.



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The genre of fiction is interesting to read not only by the process of cognition and the desire to empathize with the fate of the hero, this genre is interesting for the ability to rethink one's own life. Of course the reader may accept the author's point of view or disagree with them, but the reader should understand that the author has done a great job and deserves respect. Take a closer look at genre fiction in all its manifestations in our elibrary.



Read books online » Fiction » Angel's Egg by Edgar Pangborn (best ereader for textbooks txt) 📖

Book online «Angel's Egg by Edgar Pangborn (best ereader for textbooks txt) 📖». Author Edgar Pangborn



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conquering, as far as they pleased. They could have populated a whole Galaxy. They did not, because they believed they were not ready. More precisely—

Not good enough!

Only fifty million years ago, by her account, did they learn, as we may learn eventually, that intelligence without goodness is worse than high explosive in the hands of a baboon. For beings advanced beyond the level of Pithecanthropus, intelligence is a cheap commodity—not too hard to develop, hellishly easy to use for unconsidered ends. Whereas goodness is not to be achieved without unending effort of the hardest kind, within the self, whether the self be man or angel.

It is clear even to me that the conquest of evil is only one step, not the most important. Goodness, she tried to tell me, is an altogether positive quality; the part of living nature that swarms with such monstrosities as cruelty, meanness, bitterness, greed is not to be filled by a vacuum when these horrors are eliminated.

Kindness, for only one example. Anybody who defines kindness only as the absence of cruelty doesn't understand the nature of either.

They do not aim at perfection, these angels, only at the attainable. They passed through many millenia while advances in technology merely worsened their condition and increased the peril of self-annihilation. They came through that, in time. War was at length so far outgrown that its recurrence was impossible, and the development of wholly rational beings could begin. Then they were ready to start growing up, through more millenia of self-searching, self-discipline, seeking to earn the simple out of the complex, discovering how to use knowledge and not be used by it. Even then, of course, they slipped back often enough. There were what she refers to as eras of fatigue. In their dimmer past, they had had many dark ages, lost civilizations, hopeful beginnings ending in dust. Earlier still they had come out of the slime, as we did.

But their period of deepest uncertainty and sternest self-appraisal did not come until twelve million years ago, when they knew a Universe could be theirs for the taking, and knew they were not yet good enough.

They are in no more hurry than the stars. She tried to convey something, tentatively, at this point, which was really beyond both of us. It had to do with time (not as I understand time) being perhaps the most essential attribute of God (not as I was ever able to understand that word). Seeing my mental exhaustion, she gave up the effort, and later told me that the conception was extremely difficult for her, too—not only, I gathered, because of her youth and relative ignorance. There was also a hint that her father might not have wished her to bring my brain up to a hurdle like that one....

Of course they explored. Their little spaceships were roaming the ether before there was anything like man on Earth—roaming and listening, observing, recording; never entering nor taking part in the life of any home but their own. For five million years they even forbade themselves to go beyond their own solar system, though it would have been easy to do so. And in the following seven million years, although they traveled to incredible distances, the same stern restraint was held in force.

It was altogether unrelated to what we should call fear. That, I think, is as extinct in them as hate. There was so much to do at home! I wish I could imagine it. They mapped the heavens, and played in their own sunlight.

Naturally I cannot tell you what goodness is. I know only, moderately well, what it seems to mean to us human beings. It appears that the best of us can, often with enormous difficulty, however, achieve a manner of life in which goodness somewhat overbalances our aggressive, hostile tendencies for the greater part of the time. We are, in other words, a fraction alive; the rest is in the dark. Dante was a bitter masochist; Beethoven a frantic and miserable snob, Shakespeare wrote potboilers. And Christ said: "My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me."

But give us fifty million years—I am no pessimist. After all, I've watched one-celled organisms on the slide, and listened to Brahms' Fourth. Night before last I said to the angel: "In spite of everything, you and I are kindred."

She granted me agreement.

June 9

She was lying on my pillow this morning so that I could see her when I awoke.

Her father has died, and she was with him when it happened. There was again that thought-impression which I could interpret only to mean that his life had been "saved." I was still sleep-bound when my mind asked: "What will you do?"

"Stay with you, if you wish it, for the rest of your life." The last part of the message was clouded, but I am familiar with that now. It seems to mean there is some further element which eludes me. I could not be mistaken about the part I did receive. It gives me amazing speculations. Being only fifty-three, I might live another thirty or forty years.

She was preoccupied this morning, but whatever she felt about her father's death that might be paralleled by sadness in a human being was hidden from me. She did say her father was sorry he had not been able to show me a two-moon night.

One adult, then, remains in this world. Except to say that he is two hundred years old and full of knowledge, and that he endured the long journey without serious ill effects, she has told me little about him. And there are ten children including herself.

Something was sparkling at her throat. When she was aware of my interest in it, she took it off and I fetched a magnifying glass. A necklace; under the glass, much like our finest human workmanship, if your imagination can reduce it to the proper scale. The stones appeared similar to the jewels we know; diamonds, sapphires, rubies, emeralds, the diamonds snapping out every color under heaven; but there were two or three very dark purple stones unlike anything I know—not amethysts, I am sure. The necklace was strung on something more slender than cobweb, and the design of the joining clasp was too delicate for my glass to help me. The necklace had been her mother's, she told me. As she put it back around her throat, I thought I saw the same shy pride that any human girl might feel in displaying a new pretty.

She wanted to show me other things she had brought, and flew to the table where she had left a sort of satchel an inch and a half long—quite a load for her to fly with, but the translucent substance is so light that when she rested the satchel on my finger I scarcely felt it. She arranged a few articles eagerly for my inspection, and I put the glass to work again.

One was a jeweled comb; she ran it through the down on her chest and legs to show me its use. There was a set of tools too small for the glass to interpret them; I learned later they were a sewing kit. A book, and some writing instrument much like a metal pencil. The book, I understand, is a blank record for her to use as needed.

And finally, when I was fully awake and dressed and we had finished breakfast, she reached in the bottom of the satchel for a parcel that was heavy for her and made me understand it was a gift for me. "My father made it for you, but I put in the stone myself, last night." She unwrapped it. A ring, precisely the size for my little finger.

I broke down somewhat. She understood that, and sat on my shoulder patting my earlobe till I had command of myself.

I have no idea what the jewel is. It shifts with the light from purple to jade green to amber. The metal resembles platinum in appearance, except for a tinge of rose at certain angles of light. When I stare into the stone, I think I see—never mind that now. I am not ready to write it down, and perhaps never will be, unless I am sure.

We improved our housekeeping, later in the morning. I showed her over the house. It isn't much—Cape Codder, two rooms up and two down. Every corner interested her, and when she found a shoebox in the bedroom closet, she asked for it. At her direction, I have arranged it on a chest near my bed and the window which shall be always open. She says the mosquitoes will not bother me, and I don't doubt her.

I unearthed a white silk scarf for the bottom of the box. After asking my permission—as if I could want to refuse her anything!—she got her sewing kit and snipped off a piece of the scarf several inches square, folded it on itself several times, and sewed it into a narrow pillow an inch long. So now she has a proper bed and a room of her own. I wish I had something less coarse than silk, but she insists she's pleased with it.

We have not talked very much today. In the afternoon she flew out for an hour's play in the cloud-country. When she returned, she let me know that she needed a long sleep. She is still sleeping, I think. I am writing this downstairs, fearing the light might disturb her.

Is it possible I can have thirty or forty years in her company? I wonder how teachable my mind still is. I seem to be able to assimilate new facts as well as I ever could; this ungainly carcass should be durable, with reasonable care. Of course, facts without a synthesizing imagination are no better than scattered bricks, but perhaps my imagination—

I don't know.

Judy wants out. I shall turn in when she comes back. I wonder if poor Judy's life could be—the word is certainly "saved." I must ask.

June 10

Last night when I stopped writing I did go to bed, but I was restless, refusing sleep. At some time in the small hours—there was light from a single moon—she flew over to me. The tensions dissolved away like an illness and my mind was able to respond with a certain calm.

I made plain that I would never willingly part company with her, which I am sure she already knew, and she gave me to understand that there are two alternatives for the remainder of my life. The choice, she says, is altogether mine, and I must take time to be sure of my decision.

I can live out my natural span, whatever it proves to be, and she will not leave me for long at any time. She will be there to advise, teach, help me in anything good I care to undertake. She says she would enjoy this; for some reason she is, as we'd say in our language, fond of me.

Lord, the books I could write! I fumble for words now, in the usual human way. Whatever I put on paper is a miserable fraction, of the potential; the words themselves are rarely the right ones. But under her guidance—

I could take a fair part in shaking the world. With words alone. I could preach to my own people. Before long, I would be heard.

I could study and explore. What small nibblings we have made at the sum of available knowledge! Suppose I brought in one leaf from outdoors, or one common little bug—in a few hours of studying it with her, I'd know more of my own specialty than a flood of the best textbooks could tell me.

She has also let me know that when she and those who came with her have learned a little more about humanity, it should be possible to improve my health greatly, and probably my life expectancy. I don't imagine my back could ever straighten, but she thinks the pain might be cleared away, entirely without drugs. I could have a clearer mind, in a body that would neither fail nor torment me.

Then there is the other alternative.

It seems they have developed a technique by means of which any unresisting living subject, whose brain is capable of memory at all, can experience total recall. It is a by-product, I understand, of their silent speech, and a very recent one. They have practiced it for only a few thousand years, and since their own understanding of the phenomenon is very incomplete, they classify it among their experimental techniques.

In a general way, it may somewhat resemble that reliving of the past which psychoanalysis can sometimes bring about in a limited way for therapeutic purposes. But

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