Обычно перед Новым годом я пишу эдакую скептическую колонку главреда. И если есть в ней какой оптимизм, то только в заголовке. Да и то лишь в пожелательном наклонении — типа «» или «». Но в этом году все и так пришиблены кризисом. И я решил: опубликую-ка в этот раз добрую сказочку. Ну или святочный рассказ. При сборке романа «» у меня осталось несколько «веток», которые не вошли в финальный релиз книжки, потому что тянули на отдельные рассказы. Один из них, «», вы уже могли видеть. А тот, что ниже — публикуется впервые. И именно на «Вебпланете», в качестве подарка нашим читателям.
Marid Audran has become everything he once despised. Not so long ago, he was a hustler in the Budayeen, an Arabian ghetto in a Balkanized future Earth. Back then, as often as not, he didn’t have the money to buy himself a drink. But he had his independence.Nominated for Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1990.
Rydell is on his way back to San Francisco. A stint as a security man in a Los Angeles convenience store has convinced him his career is going nowhere, but his friend phoning from Tokyo, says there's more interesting work for him in Northern California. And there is.
Spyder Lee is a happy man who lives in San Francisco and owns a tattoo shop. One night an angry demon tries to bite his head off before he's saved by a stranger. The demon infected Spyder with something awful - the truth. He can suddenly see the world as it really is: full of angels and demons and monsters and monster-hunters. A world full of black magic and mysteries. These are the Dominions, parallel worlds full of wonder, beauty and horror. The Black Clerks, infinitely old and infinitely powerful beings whose job it is to keep the Dominions ...
British author McDonald’s outstanding SF novel channels the vitality of South America’s largest country into an edgy, post-cyberpunk free-for-all. McDonald sets up three separate characters in different eras — a cynical contemporary reality-TV producer, a near-future bisexual entrepreneur and a tormented 18th-century Jesuit agent. He then slams them together with the revelation that their worlds are strands of an immense quantum multiverse, and each of them is threatened by the Order, a vast conspiracy devoted to maintaining the status quo until the end of time. As McDonald weaves together the separate narrative threads, each character must choose between ...
Long identified as a science fiction writer, except in his own eyes, George Alec Effinger had some of his biggest critical and commercial success with a series even he recognized and characterized as SF. Set in the marvelously realized, imaginary Muslim city of Budayeen, the three novels, When Gravity Fails, A Fire in the Sun and The Exile Kiss garnered rave reviews, award nominations and a wide readership. In addition, Effinger came to be recognized as one of the foundational writers of cyberpunk. Although the novels are perhaps how Budayeen and their hero, Marid Audran, are best known, there ...
In this uneven sequel to Ballantyne's , humans can live on as digital clones or "personality constructs" of themselves, leading multiple lives in the numerous matrices of 23rd-century cyberspace and enjoying equal rights with their physical compatriots. Like the first series entry, this novel interweaves several story lines concerning the dubious existence of an omnipotent artificial intelligence known as the Watcher, who controls the Environmental Agency, the organization in charge of all aspects of the digital and physical worlds. With the help of a geisha-garbed agent (and her numerous digital clones), a woman seeks asylum from a cyberspace killer determined ...
Turner, mercenaire, « aide » les transfuges des multinationales ? d?serter leur poste. Cette fois, il a pour mission de r?cup?rer le cerveau de la biotechnologie de Mass-Neotek.Marly, acheteuse d’art ? Paris, est engag?e par un milliardaire excentrique afin de retrouver l’origine de myst?rieuses et fascinantes cr?ations apparues subitement sur le march?.Bobby, ou , jeune et intr?pide pirate de logiciel, op?re dans les faubourgs de la Conurb. Il va se laisser entra?ner par sa curiosit? dans les d?dales du cyberspace.Le cyberspace, c’est l’univers artificiel des r?seaux informatiques, le monde qui ?tait d?j? celui de . Et c’est l? que leurs destins vont se croiser. .
El Buday?n, los bajos fondos de una ciudad ?rabe an?nima, est? construido al lado del cementerio, y quien se interna en sus callejones lo hace consciente del peligro que corre: ni sus habitantes —prostitutas, proxenetas y traficantes de drogas— ni la polic?a se preocupan demasiado si un desconocido aparece acuchillado y tirado en la esquina.Tal es el ambiente en el que se ha criado Mar?d Audran, un hombret?n que nunca ha necesitado llevar armas y que es respetado en su independencia.Pero nadie podr?a haber imaginado la pesadilla en la que se convertir?a su vida despu?s de que un extra?o muriera asesinado por alguien conectado a un m?dulo de James Bond…Una novela vertiginosa, en la que se dan cita los logros de la inform?tica, la novela negra y la ciencia ficci?n.
Punktown: established by Earth colonists on a faraway world, a crime-ridden megalopolis peopled by countless races. There is Stake, the private detective with chameleon-like abilities he can not control. There is his wealthy client, Fukuda, whose company mass produces life forms for labor and as playthings. There is Fukuda's beautiful teenage daughter, whose priceless one-of-a-kind living doll has been stolen. And there is the doll itself, growing in size and resentment. Meanwhile, at an abandoned apartment complex with a dark history, a tough street gang and a band of mutant squatters have been trapped inside by bioengineered life forms mindlessly bent on destroying them like an infestation of vermin. The destinies of all these individuals will converge and collide.
Avery Cates is a very rich man. He's probably the richest criminal in New York City. But right now, Avery Cates is pissed. Because everyone around him has just started to die - in a particularly gruesome way. With every moment bringing the human race closer to extinction, Cates finds himself in the role of both executioner and savior of the entire world.PRAISE FOR – SFSite.com“Exhilarating.”“A dark future of high tech and low dreams.”“First-rate piece of science fiction entertainment.”– SFSignal.com– Blogcritics.com“Dark and evocative.”– SFFWorld.com“A rollicking sci-fi adventure.”– CHUD.com“One of the genre’s most promising newcomers.”
The first thing you notice when reading Eastern Standard Tribe is that it suggests a methodology that Doctorow follows when building his novels: identify and research a cool new idea, add more and more cool bits to that idea, and then build into a story. In Down and Out the cool idea was reputation-based economies, and in Tribe it's a new kind of social group emerging that chooses to abandon its local standard time to live and work in stop with another more desirable one...Damien Broderick, in a recent review, coined the rather amusing term "blogpunk," which ...
In the near future, the only thing growing faster than the criminal population is the Electric Church, a new religion founded by a mysterious man named Dennis Squalor. The Church preaches that life is too brief to contemplate the mysteries of the universe: eternity is required. In order to achieve this, the converted become Monks — cyborgs with human brains, enhanced robotic bodies, and virtually unlimited life spans.Enter Avery Cates, a dangerous criminal known as the best killer-for-hire around. The authorities have a special mission in mind for Cates: assassinate Dennis Squalor. But for Cates, the assignment will be the most dangerous job he's ever undertaken — and it may well be his last.
This is a story about a cat and a dog and their undying devotion to their human master. It doesn’t have anything in common with the family films you have seen. It is a masterpiece you have to listen to.Cat with armor in the city of the dead. Dog chase after the Cat and a story told with epic esoteric language. The master was a god. The dog and the cat learn the master’s words from the small animal in their dreams and set out on a mission to rescue their master.The story ...
In a novel set in the twenty-first century, a bionic woman becomes swept into a world of simulated environments and heightened perception.Nominated for BSFA Award in 1996, for Hugo and Locus awards in 1997.
Саймон Логан — виртуоз в искусстве создания мрачных апокалипсических мирков в небольшом пространстве рассказа, «i-o» — его первый сборник в жанре industrial, состоит из одиннадцати рассказов, в которых автор исследует обитателей футуристических свалок и заброшенных заводов — неудачных гибридов машин и людей, обретших душу. Выбор у этих существ невелик: либо продолжать жесткую борьбу за выживание в первобытно-техногенном мире, либо пойти на запчасти после мучительной смерти в контейнере с кислотой… Искусное сочетание бурной фантазии, стилистики игры «Doom» и черного юмора сделало автора культовым среди поклонников как киберготики, так и классической научной фантастики.
Before the attack, sixteen-year-old Tom Harvey was just an ordinary boy.But now fragments of a shattered iPhone are embedded in his brain and it's having an extraordinary effect...Because now Tom has powers. The ability to know and see more than he could ever imagine. And with incredible power comes knowledge — and a choice. Seek revenge on the violent gangs that rule his estate and assaulted his friend Lucy, or keep quiet?Tom has control when everything else is out of control. But it's a dangerous price to pay. And the consequences are terrifying...ACCLAIM for KEVIN BROOKS:"A compulsive, atmospheric mystery" — SUNDAY TIMES"A masterly writer, and this book would put many authors of 'grown up' detective fiction to shame" — MAIL OF SUNDAY
How far should you go to make a profit? Infoquake, the debut novel by David Louis Edelman, takes speculative fiction into alien territory: the corporate boardroom of the far future. It's a stunning trip through the trenches of a technological war fought with product demos, press releases, and sales pitches.Natch is a master of bio/logics, the programming of the human body. He's clawed and scraped his way to the top of the bio/logics market using little more than his wits. Now his sudden notoriety has brought him to the attention of Margaret Surina, the owner ...
Il est certain que cela va devenir un "collector", pensez-donc une nouvelle de SF dans l'emballage de la "S?rie noire". L'intrusion de la SF dans la SN n'est pas nouvelle mais avec Maurice Dantec, c'est la premi?re fois qu'elle prend autant d'importance.Dans cette nouvelle “?difiante”, Dantec s'autoparodie et parodie les genres SF et policier. Nous sommes en 2045. Un sp?cialiste en informatique qui s'est balad? sur le Net, a fait de la prison et travaille comme d?tective priv? pour une boite priv?e est charg? par un vieil ami de faire une fausse carte ...
? considerata l'opera che, insieme a Neuromante (1984) di William Gibson, ha dato inizio alla stagione della narrativa Cyberpunk.Definito da Sterling stesso come il favorito tra i suoi libri, “La matrice spezzata” racconta di un mondo in cui l'umanit? ? divisa tra i rivoluzionari Shaper, favorevoli a un'umanit? biologica, in lotta contro gli aristocratici Mechanist (che vorrebbero imporre il dominio della macchina) per il definitivo controllo del genere umano. Il volume comprende un romanzo e cinque racconti pubblicati tra il 1982 e il 1984, ambientati nello stesso sfondo fanta-storico e che costituiscono una sorta di minisaga, quasi una summa dell'intenso universo sterlinghiano.Nominato per il premio Nebula per miglior romanzo in 1985, premio BSFA in 1986.
