Orson Scott Card is a true superstar of the science fiction of the '80s. Not helped shape the imagination of that time and later as the prophet of cyberpunk William Gibson, nor was a guru Bruce Sterling or as influential as a writer Kim Stanley Robinson and Gene Wolfe, or estimated as Lucius Shepard. But it was much loved. In the middle of the decade, with Ender's Game (Ender's Game ) - extension homonymous tale written in 1977 at the beginning of his career - and the redemption of Ender ( Speaker for the Dead ) Cards won for two years in a row that both the Hugo Award Nebula Award for best novel. Never happened before or since. Never change a winning team, and has since extended the broth by adding novels and stories galore (few people arrived in Italy after Xenocide, the third chapter in the long run), but was actually counting the initial fulminant 1:00 to 2:00 , moreover it can certainly do without ;-).
mortal back to the early days of his career, but already the story of a writer mature and aware of her means. Card no accident the year before he received the John Campbell Award for most promising writer in the field of sf. The story is far from convincingly military atmosphere of the great cycle that will give him the fame (and will attract criticism, the more justified in cases of Heinlein or Poul Anderson), but subtly explores the religious dimension of the sacred and the other pole which is fundamental Card of life, devout Mormon.
of the short story is soon told: a fine day the aliens arrive on Earth. And these aliens, vaguely amoeboid, enter into contracts to acquire plots of land a bit 'all over the planet and build buildings. Religious buildings: synagogues, churches, mosques, temples varied. Buildings as they were in effect. And within enriched by works of art such as churches and so on. Nothing else. No changes are striking, and indeed the arrival of the aliens makes it clear that there is not much to know in science (always a bit confusing 'anti-scientific mentality on display for several science fiction writers).
The amoeboid merely as architects and welcome humans who enter their buildings talking amiably with them. Willard Crane is a very old man, a widower, now close to death. Will he discover the purpose of the aliens. One day, pushed a little 'out of boredom, a little' out of curiosity and partly from years of disenchantment, alien crosses the threshold of the temple in Salt Lake City, and during the dialogue with an alien who was there to ask the right questions and get the answers clarify the mystery. He discovers that the aliens are on Earth to worship - literally - human beings. Without going into detail, suffice it to say that death, such as genetic variation, is unknown in the galaxy outside of our planet (this "special" man was a theme dear to John Campbell, here is the card in a very particular way). The aliens came to Earth to be able to penetrate the secret of death, immortal worship creativity that goes with and ultimately yearn for something that is closed to them to have.
If the theme is simple, slender, and the performance is linear and solved in a few pages, this that stands out is the beauty of the narrative. "Beautiful" in itself, clearly it means nothing. The beauty of the mortal derives almost all the vigor with which the young author has described the figure of his old protagonist. Crane is anything but a shining hero, but for this is described with a realism and clarity that unfold a whole psychology, a whole life in the limited space of a sketch. An old age and disease won, but irreducible, whose cynicism is tempered by wisdom and cunning down to earth but very effective. Attached to life at the time of death as in every moment of his earthly existence, and not at all seduced by the idea of \u200b\u200bthe blessing of death, unattainable pipe dream for all other living beings in the galaxy. Cares about everything, Willard, if not the fact that dying is not something that just goes down. Card describes all this with a dry, conversational prose, making even inelegant in his character to perfection, but in the mouth to the grumpy old man is transformed into a heroic and lyrical portrait.
Although the figure of Willard dominated the economy of the story, the reasons for interest in it do not stop in his old role. The crown which ambiguously his story a few months after that his conversation with the unnamed alien coming to the temple and dying inside, cursing the death and the aliens themselves raccoltivisi to attend the theophany of his death. But curses have been true? Because only you thought of us the gift of kinder. Just want to let her attend his death. So Willard turns to one of the aliens. And Willard responds: thought to have come to damn your souls to hell, that's why I'm here, ugly bastards who have come to make the sarcasm about me in the last hours I have left to live. In reality both lie and tell the truth. There is a tangle of emotions and feelings at that Willard Crane dying on him. Deep hatred and deep emotion in the old man, whose ego is titillated by the attention of the aliens as much as his resentment for their immortality, and the catch that nature is instead pulling him is sincere. And worship, equally sincere, individuals from across the galaxy creeps with evidence, and almost violence, a perverse result. The final scene of the dying man's body shaken by the gruesome turns to pure agony and ecstasy of the mystic aliens morbid vein is very clear. Moreover in the act of adoration of the pain and suffering of the morbid and macabre connotation has no implication, never divorced and has primary aspect: the pain of God is ineffable emotion for believers, thrill mystical love for God and consubstantial.
Reflection Card is not only an anthropological and psychological. The "mortal" human mirror embody the diversity of the divine in relation to their factor. Mortal man of them forge their own immortal immortal recognizing the alien element in the divine spark that lightning is consumed in the glory of a creative frenzy that develops and revises continuously varying shape, as opposed to the infinite self-preservation that is the fate of all in galassia a eccezione dell’uomo.
Il racconto รจ apparso in Italia sull’Urania Millemondiestate 1992, una di quelle corposissime antologie miscellanee che sarebbe bello riavere.
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