FERENČS KASAJI

TELECILVĒKS

Fantastiska hronika

IZDEVNIECĪBA «LIESMA» RlGĀ 1967

No krievu valodas tulkojis Eižens Rauhvargers Mākslinieks Indulis Zvagūzis

In his electrifying debut, The Mirrored Heavens, David J. Williams created a dark futuristic world grounded in the military rivalries, terror tactics, and political wrangling of our own time. Now he takes his masterful blend of military SF, espionage thriller, and dystopian cyberpunk one step further - to the edge of annihilation ….

Life as U.S. counterintelligence agent Claire Haskell once knew it is in tatters - her mission betrayed, her lover dead, and her memories of the past suspect. Worse, the defeat of the mysterious insurgent group known as Autumn Rain was not as complete as many believed. It is quickly becoming clear that the group's ultimate goal is not simply to destroy the tenuous global alliances of the 22nd century - but to rule all of humanity. And they're starting with the violent destruction of the Net and the assassination of the U.S. president. Now it's up to Claire, with her ability to jack her brain into the systems of the enemy, to win this impossible war.

Battling ferociously across the Earth-Moon system, and navigating a complex world filled with both steadfast loyalists and ruthless traitors, Claire must be ready for the Rain's next move. But the true enemy may already be one step ahead of her.

Somebody should make a movie of this one. There’s a new form of entertainment in town - the Feelies. You are placed in a capsule, wired up with electronic stimulators and drugged to the eyeballs, the better to live out your virtual-reality dreams. Be the Marquis de Sade, Billy the Kid, Thongar the Planet-Waster, or even Jesus if that’s your kink. Pick your fantasy from a catalog or have one tailor-made. Naturally, the Corporations charge a fortune for this ultimate luxury, but on the TV gameshows the top prize of the moment is a free lifetime Feelie contract. All you have to do is humiliate yourself in public – again and again and again – to win. And, should you finally climb into that capsule, you’ll discover that the Corporations haven’t quite mastered the technology, and your dream becomes a living (and dying) nightmare. A vicious satire on mass entertainment, corporate greed and media manipulation, probably Farren’s best novel.

Moscow, 2138. With the world only beginning to recover from the complete societal collapse of the late 21st Century, Zoya scrapes by prepping corpses for funerals and dreams of saving enough money to have a child. When her brother forces her to bring him a mysterious package, she witnesses his murder and finds herself on the run from ruthless mobsters. Frantically trying to stay alive and save her loved ones, Zoya opens the package and discovers two unusual data cards, one that allows her to fight back against the mafia and another which may hold the key to everlasting life.

Moscow, 2138. With the world only beginning to recover from the complete societal collapse of the late 21st Century, Zoya scrapes by prepping corpses for funerals and dreams of saving enough money to have a child. When her brother forces her to bring him a mysterious package, she witnesses his murder and finds herself on the run from ruthless mobsters. Frantically trying to stay alive and save her loved ones, Zoya opens the package and discovers two unusual data cards, one that allows her to fight back against the mafia and another which may hold the key to everlasting life.

A dying assassin is given one last assignment and one last chance for survival. The job: to find God Almighty and destroy Him. The payment: eternal life. With the aid of a beautiful lady gambler, an ancient Hollywood witch, and a telepathic smartass of a girl, Dell Ammo breaches the gates of Heaven and Hell to pull the Cosmic Trigger.

Self-consciously styled after a hard-boiled detective novel, this is a most unusual and entertaining work of satirical SF. An assassin by trade, Dell Ammo works in a bombed-out section of Los Angeles that has been irradiated by a nuclear explosion. Terminally ill, Ammo is offered immortality by a millionaire evangelist if he will do one job: kill God. Accepting the assignment, Ammo embarks on a bizarre hunt through postnuclear L.A., assisted by Ann Perrine, a woman claiming to be an accountant but whose skills are considerably more interesting, and a nymphet with powerful, sexually telepathic abilities. In his search for God, Ammo encounters a powerful group of clerics eager to protect God, the source of their power, whether he exists or not. In other hands this could be pretentiously silly, but Koman carries it off with wit and energy.

In this alternately chilling and hilarious sequel to The Atrocity Archives (2004) from Hugo-winner Stross, Bob Howard is a computer übergeek employed by the Laundry, a secret British agency assigned to clean up incursions from other realities caused by the inadvertent manipulation of complex mathematical equations: in other words, magic. In 1975, the CIA used Howard Hughes's Glomar Explorer in a bungled attempt to raise a sunken Soviet submarine in order to access the Jennifer Morgue, an occult device that allows communication with the dead. Now a ruthless billionaire intends to try again, even if by doing so he awakens the Great Old Ones, who thwarted the earlier expedition. It's up to Bob and a collection of British eccentrics even Monty Python would consider odd to stop the bad guy and save the world, while getting receipts for all expenditures or else face the most dreaded menace of all: the Laundry's own auditors. Stross has a marvelous time making eldritch horror appear commonplace in the face of bureaucracy.

What's the best way to create artificial intelligence? In 1950, Alan Turing wrote, “Many people think that a very abstract activity, like the playing of chess, would be best. It can also be maintained that it is best to provide the machine with the best sense organs that money can buy, and then teach it to understand and speak English. This process could follow the normal teaching of a child. Things would be pointed out and named, etc. Again I do not know what the right answer is, but I think both approaches should be tried.”

The first approach has been tried many times in both science fiction and reality. In this new novella, at over 30,000 words, his longest work to date, Ted Chiang offers a detailed imagining of how the second approach might work within the contemporary landscape of startup companies, massively-multiplayer online gaming, and open-source software. It's a story of two people and the artificial intelligences they helped create, following them for more than a decade as they deal with the upgrades and obsolescence that are inevitable in the world of software. At the same time, it's an examination of the difference between processing power and intelligence, and of what it means to have a real relationship with an artificial entity.

In a time not far from our own, Lawrence sets out simply to build an artifical intelligence that can pass as human, and finds himself instead with one that can pass as a god. Taking the Three Laws of Robotics literally, Prime Intellect makes every human immortal and provides instantly for every stated human desire. Caroline finds no meaning in this life of purposeless ease, and forgets her emptiness only in moments of violent and profane exhibitionism. At turns shocking and humorous, Prime Intellect looks unflinchingly at extremes of human behavior that might emerge when all limits are removed.

An international Internet phenomenon, Prime Intellect has been downloaded more than 10,000 times since its free release in January 2003. It has been read and discussed in Australia, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, Slovenia, South Africa, and other countries.

Angel Cardenas is a hardworking police detective in 21st Century Los Angeles. But Cardenas is no ordinary cop - as an intuit he possesses the special talent of knowing what others will do in any given situation. When a business man is found murdered, missing his vital organs and all his money Cardenas is on the case. His investigation takes him to the victim's home, where an explosion nearly kills him. Now, he has to figure out where the woman and the young girl who have been living there have disappeared to. And why doesn't the victim's I.D. match his DNA scan? Exploring the underworlds of Los Angeles, Cardenas will stop at nothing in his search for The Mock, a stonecold killer who will do anything to get what he wants.

Welcome to the Metrozone—post-apocalyptic London of the future. While the rest of Britain has devolved to anarchy, the M25 cordon protects a decaying city filled with homeless refugees, street gangs, exiled yakuza, crooked cops and mad cults. And something else; something new and dangerous.

Enter Samuil Petrovitch: a Russian émigré with a smart mouth, a dodgy heart and a dodgier past. He’s brilliant, friendless, cocky and—armed only with a genius-level intellect, prototype cyberware and a prodigious vocabulary of Russian swear words—might just be most unlikely champion a city has ever had.

Welcome to the future. Mind the gap.

This omnibus edition contains EQUATIONS OF LIFE, THEORIES OF FLIGHT and DEGREES OF FREEDOM

An omnibus of Rudy Rucker's groundbreaking series [Software, Wetware, Freeware, and Realware], with an introduction by William Gibson, author of Neuromancer.