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The Science Fiction Hall of Fame [MultiFormat]
eBook by Robert Silverberg
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eBook Category: Science Fiction
eBook Description: This is the story of a man obsessed by science fiction. He's read it voraciously since childhood, and collects books and magazines. He calls himself the "flesh-and-blood personification of the Science Fiction Hall of Fame." His friends think he's a nut, of course, to go for that aliens-spaceships-blasters sort of stuff. One can easily read this as a criticism of the kind of juvenile SF Silverberg himself had written in the 50s.
eBook Publisher: Fictionwise.com, Published: Infinity 5, 1973
Fictionwise Release Date: July 2005
Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [199 KB], Adobe Acrobat - Large Print (PDF) [202 KB], eReader (PDB) [32 KB], Palm Doc (PDB) [19 KB], Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [18 KB], Microsoft Reader (LIT) [79 KB] - PocketPC 1.0+ Compatible, Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [92 KB], hiebook (KML) [98 KB], Sony Reader (LRF) [55 KB], iSilo (PDB) [16 KB], Mobipocket (PRC) [20 KB], Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [48 KB], OEBFF Format (IMP) [30 KB]
Words: 5307
Reading time: 15-21 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED
 
The look in his remote gray eyes was haunted, terrified, beaten, as he came running in from the Projectorium. His shoulders were slumped; I had never before seen him betray the slightest surrender to despair, but now I was chilled by the completeness of his capitulation. With a shaking hand he thrust at me a slender yellow data slip, marked in red with the arcane symbols of cosmic computation. "No use," he muttered. "There's absolutely no use trying to fight any longer!" "You mean--" "Tonight," he said huskily, "the universe irrevocably enters the penumbra of the null point!" * * * *The day Armstrong and Aldrin stepped out onto the surface of the moon--it was Sunday, July 20, 1969, remember?--I stayed home, planning to watch the whole thing on television. But it happened that I met an interesting woman at Leon and Helene's party the night before, and she came home with me. Her name is gone from my mind, if I ever knew it, but I remember how she looked: long soft golden hair, heart-shaped face with prominent ruddy cheeks, gentle gray-blue eyes, plump breasts, slender legs. I remember, too, how she wandered around my apartment, studying the crowded shelves of old paperbacks and magazines. "You're really into sci-fi, aren't you?" she said at last. And laughed and said, "I guess this must be your big weekend, then! Wow, the moon!" But it was all a big joke to her, that men should be cavorting around up there when there was still so much work left to do on earth. We had a shower and I made lunch and we settled down in front of the set to wait for the men to come out of their module, and--very easily, without a sense of transition--we found ourselves starting to screw, and it went on and on, one of those impossible impersonal mechanical screws in which body grinds against body for centuries, no feeling, no excitement, and as I rocked rhythmically on top of her, unable either to come or to quit, I heard Walter Cronkite telling the world that the module hatch was opening. I wanted to break free of her so I could watch, but she clawed at my back. With a distinct effort I pulled myself up on my elbows, pivoted the upper part of my body so I had a view of the screen, and waited for the ecstasy to hit me. Just as the first wavery image of an upside-down spaceman came into view on that ladder, she moaned and bucked her hips wildly and went into frenzied climax. I felt nothing. Nothing. Eventually she left, and I showered and had a snack and watched the replay of the moonwalk on the eleven o'clock news. And still I felt nothing. * * * *"What is the answer?" said Gertrude Stein, about to die. Alice B. Toklas remained silent. "In that case," Miss Stein went on, "what is the question?"
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