Cassada

Начало книги

This novel about flying is drawn from another, earlier one, The Arm of Flesh, published in 1961 and largely a failure. It lay forgotten for a long time until Jack Shoemaker, the editor-in-chief of Counterpoint, suggested that it might be a companion piece to another book he had republished, The Hunters, which was my first novel.

I had revised The Hunters slightly for its second appearance. The Arm of Flesh, however, had serious faults and needed to be rewritten completely. Even the title deserved to be changed to, in this case, one of the principal characters. It may have been a mistake to try to stand on its feet again a failed book, but there were elements in it that continued to be interesting, among them the fact that it was sometimes the best along with the worst pilots who got killed for reasons the reader may come to understand, and that the group’s acceptance of certain, sometimes very promising individuals is not always foregone or easy.

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