우주 정거장 1번 / Space Station 1 (영문판)

프랭크 벨크냅 롱 지음

아이보리잉크 2025년 08월 13일 출간

작품소개

책소개

* 이 도서는 영어만으로 구성되어 있습니다.
'우주 정거장 1번 / Space Station 1 (영문판)'은 프랭크 벨크냅 롱의 SF 소설로, 우주 탐사의 최전선에 선 인간의 모험과 미지의 세계에 대한 상상력을 그려냅니다. 독특한 세계관과 긴장감 넘치는 전개가 돋보이며, 인간성과 과학의 미래에 대한 진지한 질문을 던집니다. 이번 영어판을 통해 원어로 작가의 생생한 문체와 원작의 뉘앙스를 직접 경험할 수 있어, 영어 독해력 향상 및 SF 문학의 깊이를 동시에 느끼실 수 있습니다.

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(참고) 분량: 약 28 만자

책 속으로

It was a life-and-death struggle—cruel, remorseless, one-sided. Corriston was breathing heavily. He was in total darkness, dodging the blows of a killer. His adversary was as lithe as a cat, muscular and dangerous. He had a knife and he was using it, slashing at Corriston when Corriston came close, then leaping back and lashing out with a hard-knuckled fist.
Corriston could hear the swish of the man’s heels as he pivoted, could judge almost with split-second timing when the next blow would come. He was bleeding from a cut on his right shoulder, and there was a tumultuous throbbing at his temples, an ache in his groin.
The fact that he had no weapon put him at a terrifying disadvantage. He had been close to death before, but never in so confined a space or in such close proximity to a man who had certainly killed once and would not hesitate to kill again.
His determination to survive was pitted against what appeared to be sheer brute strength fortified by cunning and a far-above-average agility. He began slowly to retreat, backing away until a massive steel girder stopped him. He was battling dizziness now and his heart had begun a furious pounding.
He found himself slipping sideways along the girder, running his hands over its smooth, cold surface. To his sweating palms the surface seemed as chill as the lid of a coffin, but he refused to believe that it could trap him irretrievably. The girder had to end somewhere.
The killer was coming close again, his shoes making a scraping sound in the darkness, his breathing just barely audible. Corriston edged still further along the girder. Inch by inch he moved parallel to it, fighting off his dizziness, making a desperate effort to keep from falling. The wetness on his shoulder was unnerving, the absence of pain incredible. How seriously could a man be stabbed without feeling any pain at all? He didn’t know. But at least his shoulder wasn’t paralyzed. He could move his arm freely, flex the muscles of his back.
How unbelievably cruel it was that a ship could move through space with the stability of a completely stationary object. How unbelievably cruel at this moment, when the slightest lurch might have saved him.
The girder was stationary and immense, and in his tormented inward vision he saw it as a strand in a gigantic steel cobweb, symbolizing the grandeur of what man could accomplish by routine compulsion alone.
In frozen helplessness Corriston tried to bring his thoughts into closer accord with reality, to view his peril in a saner light. But what was happening to him was as hard to relate to immediate reality as a line half remembered from a play. See how the blood of Caesar followed it, as if rushing out of doors to be resolved if Brutus so unkindly knocked or no….
But the killer wasn’t Brutus. He was unknown and invisible and if there had been any Brutuslike nobility in him, it hardly seemed likely that he would have chosen for his first victim a wealthy girl’s too talkative bodyguard and for his second Corriston himself.
The killer was within arm’s reach again when the barrier that had trapped Corriston fell away abruptly. He reeled back, swayed dizzily, and experienced such wild elation that he cried out in unreasoning triumph. Swiftly he retreated backwards, not fully realizing that no real respite had been granted him. He was free only to recoil a few steps, to crouch and weave about. Almost instantly the killer was closing in again, and this time there was no escape.
Another metal girder stopped Corriston in midretreat, cutting across his shoulders like a sharp-angled priming rod, jolting and sobering him.
For an eternity now he could do nothing but wait. An eternity as brief as a dropped heartbeat and as long as the cycle of renewal and rebirth of worlds in the flaming vastness of space. Everything became impersonal suddenly: the darkness of the ships’ between-deck storage compartment; the Space Station toward which the ship was traveling; the Martian deserts he had dreamed about as a boy.

작가정보

저자(글) 프랭크 벨크냅 롱

프랭크 벨크냅 롱(Frank Belknap Long, 1901-1994)은 20세기 미국의 대표적인 SF 및 공포 소설가입니다. H.P. 러브크래프트와의 깊은 우정으로도 유명하며, 코스믹 호러와 사이언스 픽션 장르에서 독특한 작품 세계를 구축했습니다. 평생 동안 다양한 잡지와 단편집을 통해 활발히 활동했으며, 신비로운 상상력과 서정적인 문체로 많은 독자들에게 영감을 주었습니다.