|
''The Eye of Argon'' is a heroic fantasy novella that narrates the adventures of Grignr, a barbarian. It was written in 1970 by Jim Theis (August 9, 1953 – March 26, 2002) and circulated anonymously in science fiction fandom since then. It has been described as "one of the genre's most beloved pieces of appalling prose",〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Bottom of the Barrel )〕 the "infamous 'worst fantasy novel ever' published for fans' enjoyment," and "the apotheosis of bad writing", and has subsequently been used as part of a common science fiction convention party game. ==History== The novelette was written in 1970 by Jim Theis, a St. Louis, Missouri science fiction fan, at age 16. The work was first published in 1970 in ''OSFAN'' (the journal of the Ozark SF Society) No. 10. David Langford described Theis in ''SFX'' as "a malaprop genius, a McGonagall of prose with an eerie gift for choosing the wrong word and then misapplying it."〔 Some time in the 1970s author Thomas N. Scortia obtained a copy, which he mailed to Californian SF writer Chelsea Quinn Yarbro. Yarbro wrote in an e-mail from late 2003 to Darrell Schweitzer: She showed it to other fans, and it met with a tremendous and incredulous reaction. The work was copied and distributed widely around science fiction fandom, often without Theis's name attached. Readings quickly became a common item on science fiction convention programmes. "People sit in a circle and take turns reading from photocopies of the story. The reader's turn is over when he begins to laugh uncontrollably."〔 The version which currently circulates on the Internet was manually transcribed by Don Simpson from a mimeograph of Theis' original, and bears his note at the bottom: :No mere transcription can give the true flavor of the original printing of The Eye of Argon. It was mimeographed with stencils cut on an elite manual typewriter. Many letters were so faint as to be barely readable, others were overstruck, and some that were to be removed never got painted out with correction fluid. Usually, only one space separated sentences, while paragraphs were separated by a blank line and were indented ten spaces. Many words were grotesquely hyphenated. And there were illustrations — I cannot do them justice in mere words, but they were a match for the text. These are the major losses of this version (#02) of TEoA. :Otherwise, all effort has been made to retain the full and correct text, preserving even mis-spellings and dropped spaces. An excellent proofreader has checked it for errors both omitted and committed. What mismatches remain are mine. The Internet text does contain typos not in the original and is incomplete, although a complete copy of the original fanzine was discovered in January 2005. The Internet Speculative Fiction Database lists an edition having been published by Hypatia Press in 1987 (ISBN 0-940841-10-X).〔 The story was also reprinted in 1995. In 2006, a trade paperback edition of the text was published by Wildside Press. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「The Eye of Argon」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|