Читать книгу When The Stars Fade - Adam L. Korenman - Страница 5

FOREWORD

BY SCOTT TIPTON

When you start to see a little success as a writer, a curious thing happens. Suddenly everyone you know is also a writer, even if they’ve never published a thing in their entire lives. Sometimes they’ve never even finished writing a thing in their entire lives. And now they want you to read what they’re working on, as if you’ve somehow cracked the code and can just swing open the door to a life of book tours and movie deals, canapés and caviar.

We all know it doesn’t really work like that.

Sometimes, you can politely beg off, explaining that you can’t read their knockout, can’t-fail idea for a Star Trek/Land of the Lost crossover series, because you’re working on Star Trek already and don’t want to risk being accidentally influenced by their work. Sometimes you agree to look at something and have to find a way to be polite about the work, because you know your friend doesn’t really want to hear the truth. Sometimes they insist, and sometimes you lose a friend.

And sometimes, if you’re really lucky, someone will hand you a book and you realize you’ve already been friends with an incredibly gifted writer; it’s just that nobody knows it yet.

That’s what happened to me when Adam Korenman handed me a copy of When The Stars Fade.

What Korenman has done in the pages that follow is take a lifetime of influences in science fiction, film, video games, comic books—all the things he loves—and masterfully fused it all with the kind of real-world insight, fears, and experience that only come from being at the controls of a three-million-dollar M1A1 Abrams battle tank (Mr. Korenman’s day job, believe it or not). The result is a tremendously ambitious first novel, a galaxy-spanning tale of “hard science fiction” that tackles interplanetary diplomacy, the realities of combat in the vacuum of space, and most of the other tropes you see in countless “war in outer space” stories, only here it all feels so much more…tangible. It’s approachable, even identifiable, thanks to Korenman’s keen ear for dialogue and dead-on instincts about character.

Sure, it’s a big outer-space war epic. But it’s about people. And it’s got heart.

One of the best compliments a writer can get from another writer is a simple “Damn, I wish I’d written that.” As much I’d like to be able to say that, I know I’d never have been able to write When the Stars Fade. But I’m delighted to have it here to enjoy.

And Korenman will get the book tours and caviar all on his own, no doubt.

– November 2015