Странник по звездам / The Star-Rover

Жанр: Научная фантастика / Социальная фантастика / Классика фантастики

Автор

Страниц

Год

2020

Профессор Дэррел Стэндинг, ранее осужденный за преступление, которое он никогда не совершал, находится в тюрьме Сан-Квентин, известной своей жестокостью и суровыми условиями содержания заключенных. Надзиратели применяют неконвенциональные методы контроля за заключенными, включая использование "смирительной рубашки". Однако самообладание и воля Стэндинга позволяют ему не только выживать в этой суровой среде, но и проводить уникальные путешествия в мире своего воображения.

Благодаря силе своего разума, профессор Стэндинг обретает способность погружаться в транс и выходить за пределы своего физического тела. В этих "путешествиях" он переносится в различные эпохи и страны, позволяя себе испытать уникальные приключения и познакомиться с разными культурами и временами.

В издании этой книги, помимо захватывающего рассказа, представлены грамматический комментарий и словарь, которые значительно облегчают понимание и чтение текста. Это делает книгу идеальным выбором для тех, кто хочет развить свои навыки чтения на английском языке и достичь высшего уровня владения им (4 – Upper Intermediate).

Погрузитесь в мир профессора Стэндинга и откройте для себя не только удивительные истории, но и возможность расширить свой словарный запас и укрепить грамматические навыки. Это приключение, которое невозможно пропустить для всех, кто стремится стать гораздо более свободным и уверенным в использовании английского языка.

Читать бесплатно онлайн Странник по звездам / The Star-Rover - Джек Лондон

Chapter I

All my life I have had an awareness of other times and places. I have been aware of other persons in me.

Our dreams are grotesquely compounded of the things we know. My reader, as a child, you dreamed you flew through the air; you were vexed by crawling spiders; you heard other voices, saw other faces, and gazed upon sunrises and sunsets other than you know now.

Very well. These child glimpses are of other-worldness[1], of other-lifeness, of things that you had never seen in this particular world of your particular life. Then whence? Other lives? Other worlds?

Truly, shades of the prison close about us[2], and we all forget. And yet, when we were new-born we did remember other times and places. Yes; and we endured the torment and torture of nightmare fears of dim and monstrous things. We new-born infants, without experience, were born with fear, with memory of fear; and memory is experience.

As for myself, even at the beginning of my life, I knew that I had been a star-rover. Yes, I, whose lips had never lisped the word “king,” remembered that I had once been the son of a king. More—I remembered that once I had been a slave and a son of a slave, and worn an iron collar round my neck.

Still more. When I was three, and four, and five years of age, I was not yet I[3]. I was a mere becoming, a flux of spirit. Silly, isn’t it? But remember, my reader, remember, please, that I have thought much on these matters. I have gone through the hells of all existences to bring you news which you will share with me over these pages.

So, I say, during the ages of three and four and five, I was not yet I. Other voices screamed through my voice, the voices of men and women aforetime, of all shadowy hosts of progenitors.

A few weeks, I shall be led from this cell to a high place with unstable flooring, graced above by a rope; and there they will hang me by the neck until I am dead.

It is time that I introduce myself. I am neither fool nor lunatic. I am Darrell Standing[4]. Eight years ago I was Professor of Agronomics in the College of Agriculture of the University of California. Eight years ago the sleepy little university town of Berkeley[5] was shocked by the murder of Professor Haskell[6] in one of the laboratories. Darrell Standing was the murderer.

I am Darrell Standing. I was caught. In a surge of anger, obsessed by red wrath, I killed that professor.

No; I am not to be hanged for his murder. I received a life-sentence[7] as my punishment. I was thirty-six years of age at the time. I am now forty-four years old. I have spent eight years in the California State Prison of San Quentin[8]. Five of these years I spent in the dark. Solitary confinement[9], they call it. But through these five years I managed to attain freedom such as few men have ever known. Not only did I range the world, but I ranged time. Truly, thanks to Ed Morrell[10], I have had five years of star-roving. But Ed Morrell is another story. I shall tell you about him a little later. I have so much to tell.

Well, a beginning. I was born in Minnesota. And I knew agriculture. It was my profession. I was born to it, reared to it, trained to it; and I was a master of it. I can look, not at land, but at landscape, and pronounce the virtues and the shortcomings of the soil. Corn? Who else knows corn? And farm management! I know it. Who else knows it?

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