Читать книгу Maxwell's Demon онлайн

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Cupid’s Engine became a global phenomenon, and continues to sell in huge numbers, year after year after year. And it should; it should. Andrew Black is a genius. The book is – there is no way to deny it – an out-and-out masterpiece.

This particular copy has been read almost to destruction: the spine is a mass of white fracture lines; its glue is cracked; and dozens of yellowing, dog-eared leaves poke out of it at odd angles. It’s an arresting object, a great, shabby monolith that’s so big, so dominant in fact, that you could easily miss the book behind it.

Tucked away on the far side of Cupid’s Engine, sitting so far back on the shelf as to half vanish into the shadows, is a second copy of my novel, The Qwerty Machinegun. This one’s damaged, its spine horribly buckled from a collision with something hard.

If you were to take this copy down from the shelf and open it, you’d discover that its pages were crammed almost to obliteration with changes, crossings-out, and hundreds and hundreds of neat, handwritten notes and corrections made with a fine black pen. Flipping to the front, to the title page, you’d find a small, equally neat inscription: