（外文电子版资料）Kim Stanley Robinson - The Lucky Strike.pdf

THE LUCKY STRIKE Kim Stanley Robinson Stories of alternative worlds tend to be very colorful, sometimes even bizarre, as sf writers imagine how different our world might have been if the Romans had colonized North America or if the dinosaurs hadnt become extinct. The alternative world in this thoughtful novelette presents a much more contemporary change in history… a change we see in the making. The result is just as important, though. Kim Stanley Robinsons first novel, The Wild Shore, was nominated for the Nebula Award earlier this year. His second novel is Icehenge. War breeds strange pastimes. In July of 1945 on Tinian Island in the North Pacific, Captain Frank January had taken to piling pebble cairns on the crown of Mount Lasso- one pebble for each B-29 takeoff, one cairn for each mission. The largest cairn had four hundred stones in it. It was a mindless pastime, but so was poker. The men of the 509th had played a million hands of poker, sitting in the shade of a palm around an upturned crate sweating in their skivvies, swearing and betting all their pay and cigarettes, playing hand after hand after hand, until the cards got so soft and dog-eared you could have used them for toilet paper. Captain January had gotten sick of it, and after he lit out for the hilltop a few times some of his crewmates started trailing him. When their pilot Jim Fitch joined them it became an official pastime, like throwing flares into the compound or going hunting for stray Japs. What Captain January thought of the development he didnt say. The others grouped near Captain Fitch, who passed around his battered flask. Hey January, Fitch called. Come have a shot. January wandered over and took the flask. Fitch laughed at his pebble. Practising your bombing up here, eh Professor? Yah, January said sullenly. Anyone who read more than the funnies was Professor to