"Gardner Dozois & Jonathan Strahan - The New Space Opera" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dozois Gardner)

THE EMPEROR AND THE MAULA тАв Robert Silverberg

THE WORM TURNS тАв Gregory Benford
 SEND THEM FLOWERS тАв Walter Jon Williams

ART OF WAR тАв Nancy Kress

MUSE OF FIRE тАв Dan Simmons

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SAVING TIAMAAT
GWYNETH JONES
O

ne of the most acclaimed British writers of her generation, Gwyneth Jones was a cowinner of the James
Tiptree Jr. Memorial Award for work exploring genre issues in science fiction, with her 1991 novel
White Queen, and has also won the Arthur C. Clarke Award, with her novel Bold as Love, as well as
receiving two World Fantasy AwardsтАФfor her story тАЬThe Grass PrincessтАЭ and her collection Seven
Tales and a Fable. Her other books include the novels North Wind, Flowerdust, Escape Plans,
Divine Endurance, Phoenix Cafe, Castles Made of Sand, Stone Free, Midnight Lamp, Kairos,
Life, Water in the Air, The Influence of Ironwood, The Exhange, Dear Hill, and The Hidden Ones,
as well as more than sixteen young adult novels published under the name Ann Halam. Her too-infrequent
short fiction has appeared in Interzone, AsimovтАЩs Science Fiction, Off Limits, and in other magazines
and anthologies, and has been collected in Identifying the Object: A Collection of Short Stories, as
well as Seven Tales and a Fable. She is also the author of the critical study Deconstructing the
Starships: Science Fiction and Reality. Her most recent book is a new novel, Rainbow Bridge. She
lives in Brighton, England, with her husband, her son, and a Burmese cat.

In the vivid and compelling story that follows, she proves that coming to really know your enemy may
make your problems harder rather than easier to solve.

****

I had reached the station in the depth of Left SperanzaтАЩs night; I had not slept. Fogged in the
confabulation of the transit, I groped through crushing eons to my favorite breakfast kiosk: unsure if the
soaring concourse outside Par-liament was ceramic and carbon or a metaphor; a cloudy internal
warningтАФ

Now what was the message in the mirror? Something pitiless. Some blank-eyed, slow-thinking,
long-grinned crocodileтАФ

тАЬDebra!тАЭ

It was my partner. тАЬDonтАЩt do that,тАЭ I moaned. The internal crocodile shattered, the concourse lost its
freight of hyperdetermined meaning, too suddenly for comfort. тАЬDonтАЩt you know you should never startle
a sleep-walker?тАЭ