fb2«В общих словах парадокс, сформулированный Энрико Ферми, можно озвучить следующим образом: если во Вселенной существует множество технологически развитых цивилизаций, почему ни одна из них нас так и не посетила?».
Вы до сих пор теряетесь в догадках, почему же инопланетяне так к нам и не прилетели? Но ведь ответ очевиден — потому что МАКСОПы! Они, родные, обескураживающе знакомые! Не верите? Читайте и — делайте выводы!
«В общих словах парадокс, сформулированный Энрико Ферми, можно озвучить следующим образом: если во Вселенной существует множество технологически развитых цивилизаций, почему ни одна из них нас так и не посетила?».
Вы до сих пор теряетесь в догадках, почему же инопланетяне так к нам и не прилетели? Но ведь ответ очевиден — потому что МАКСОПы! Они, родные, обескураживающе знакомые! Не верите? Читайте и — делайте выводы!
In this weird little alternative history novella, acclaimed futurist Charles Stross takes the familiar clashes of the Cold War and stretches and warps them to fit a flattened Earth where the emergence of new continents incites competitive colonization efforts from the Americans and Soviets. When the colonists encounter 1,000-year-old radioactive ruins and poisonous termite-like creatures that exhibit eerie degrees of intelligence, the true nature of their changed world slowly becomes clear. The result is a blend of 1900s H.G. Wells and 1970s propaganda, updated for the 21st century in the clear, chilly and fashionably cynical style that lets Stross get away with premises that would be absurdly cheesy in anyone else’s hands.
In this weird little alternative history novella, acclaimed futurist Charles Stross takes the familiar clashes of the Cold War and stretches and warps them to fit a flattened Earth where the emergence of new continents incites competitive colonization efforts from the Americans and Soviets. When the colonists encounter 1,000-year-old radioactive ruins and poisonous termite-like creatures that exhibit eerie degrees of intelligence, the true nature of their changed world slowly becomes clear. The result is a blend of 1900s H.G. Wells and 1970s propaganda, updated for the 21st century in the clear, chilly and fashionably cynical style that lets Stross get away with premises that would be absurdly cheesy in anyone else’s hands.
Cyberpunk is dead
The revolution has been co-opted by half-assed heroes, overclocked CGI, and tricked-out sunglasses. Once radical, cyberpunk is nothing more than a brand.
Time to stop flipping the channel
These sixteen extreme stories reveal a government ninja routed by a bicycle repairman, the inventor of digitized paper hijacked by his college crush, a dead boy trapped in a warped storybook paradise, and the Queen of England attacked with the deadliest of forbidden technology: a working modem. You'll meet Manfred Macx, renegade meme-broker, Red Sonja, virtual reality sex-goddess, and Felix, humble sysadmin and post-apocalyptic hero.
Editors James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel (Feeling Very Strange: The Slipstream Anthology) have united cyberpunk visionaries William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, and Pat Cadigan with the new post-cyberpunk vanguard including Cory Doctorow, Charles Stross, and Jonathan Lethem. Including a canon-establishing introduction and excerpts from a hotly-contested online debate, Rewired is the first anthology to define and capture the crackling excitement of the post-cyberpunks.
From the grittiness of Mirrorshades to the Singularity and beyond, it's time to revive the revolution.
Are you ready?
Sex oozes from every page of this erotic futuristic thriller. In a far-future class-driven android society, most of the populace are slave-chipped and owned by wealthy aristos. When low-caste but unenslaved android Freya offends an aristo and needs to get off-world, she takes a courier position with the mysterious Jeeves Corporation, but the job turns out to have dangers of its own. Designed as a pleasure-module, Freya isn’t quite as obsolete as she could be, as androids have sex with each other incessantly. Hugo-winner Charles Stross has a deep message of how android slavery recapitulates humanity’s past mistakes, but he struggles to make it heard over the moans and gunshots. Readers nostalgic for the SF of the ’60s will find much that’s familiar (including Freya’s jumpsuit-clad form on the cover), but that doesn’t quite compensate for the flaws.
An anthology of stories
The Devil is known by many names: Serpent, Tempter, Beast, Adversary, Wanderer, Dragon, Rebel. His traps and machinations are the stuff of legends. His faces are legion. No matter what face the devil wears, Sympathy for the Devil has them all. Edited by Tim Pratt, Sympathy for the Devil collects the best Satanic short stories by Neil Gaiman, Holly Black, Stephen King, Kage Baker, Charles Stross, Elizabeth Bear, Jay Lake, Kelly Link, China Mieville, Michael Chabon, and many others, revealing His Grand Infernal Majesty, in all his forms. Thirty-five stories, from classics to the cutting edge, exploring the many sides of Satan, Lucifer, the Lord of the Flies, the Father of Lies, the Prince of the Powers of the Air and Darkness, the First of the Fallen… and a Man of Wealth and Taste. Sit down and spend a little time with the Devil.
Robin budzi się w szpitalu, stwierdzając, że stracił prawie wszystkie wspomnienia, a chwilę potem odkrywa także, że ktoś próbuje go zabić. Jest XXVII wiek, między gwiazdami podróżuje się bramkami teleportacyjnymi, a narzędziem wojen są sieciowe robaki, cenzurujące osobowości uchodźców i biorące na celownik historyków. Wojna domowa skończyła się, Robina zdemobilizowano, ktoś chce go jednak zlikwidować ze względu na coś, co wiedziała jego poprzednia osobowość. Uciekając przed bezlitosnym prześladowcą i szukając kryjówki, zgłasza się na ochotnika do niezwykłego eksperymentalnego ustroju — Szklanego Domu. Jest on symulacją kultury sprzed Akceleracji, uczestnicy eksperymentu dostają w nim nowe, anonimowe osobowości: wydaje się, że to idealny azyl dla uciekającego postczłowieka. W tym domu, z którego nie da się uciec, Robin przejdzie jeszcze bardziej diametralną zmianę, znalazłszy się na łasce i niełasce eksperymentatorów oraz własnej niezrównoważonej psychiki…
Bob has been behind a desk for too long, busy indexing and archiving the Laundry's secret files, and he's longing for a break when his wife, Mo, announces that she's landed a teaching assignment at a staff college in Cambridge. And he's worrying at the problem of a missing manuscript – an unfinished policy document found in the personal effects of Major-General J. F. C. Fuller (rtd) after his death – which is absent from the Laundry archives. (Fuller was not only the tactician who first invented Blitzkrieg warfare in 1917-18; he was also #2 to Aleister Crowley in the OTO, and a heavyweight Cabalist.) So Bob follows Mo to Cambridge, and is startled to find a Russian spy sneaking around after him. The Fuller Memorandum is missing, and the FSB want it badly. It's got something to do with Fuller's occult obsessions, and something to do with the Laundry's creation in 1941. But Bob doesn't realize just how much is at stake until someone tries to kill Mo, and his boss Angleton starts behaving oddly before lapsing into a coma. The theft of Fuller's document is at the heart of a murderous conspiracy rooted in the GULAGs, and Bob is dumped into a deadly race against time – because if he can't work out where it's been hidden, and how it's connected to Angleton's mysterious illness, it's going to be curtains for the Laundry (and possibly the world) as the cultists of Chernobog try to raise darkness at noon.
