"Peter F. Hamilton - A Second Chance At Eden" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hamilton Peter F)

The stories assembled for this collection are set in the universe of my NightтАЩs Dawn
trilogy. Now, they form a series of snapshot glimpses into the history of the Confederation
leading up to the time of Joshua Calvert and Quinn Dexter. It wasnтАЩt always so.
During the early nineties I wrote several short stories centred around the affinity
technology. They didnтАЩt belong to any particular hard and fast version of future history, I was
just interested in the potential of the idea. Then along came David Garnett, who had just
bought тАЬCandy BudsтАЭ for his New Worlds anthology, and said: You should turn this into a
novel.
Impossible, I told him.
That was back in the days of my foolish youth, before I learned the hard way that the
editor is always right.
He convinced me to go away and think about it. тАЬNightтАЩs DawnтАЭ was the result. OK, so I
didnтАЩt get the last laugh, but at least I managed to frighten him with the size of volume one,
The Reality Dysfunction, all 374,000 words of it.
As to the stories themselves, some are new, some have appeared in magazines before,
in which case IтАЩve altered them slightly so they fit into the Confederation timeline.
Peter F. Hamilton
Rutland, February 1998


Timeline
2020 . . . Clavius base established. Mining of Lunar subcrustal resources starts.
2037 . . . Beginning of large-scale geneering on humans; improvement to immunology
system, organ efficency increased.
2041 . . . First deuterium-fuelled fusion stations built; inefficient and expensive.
2044 . . . Christian reunification.
2047 . . . First asteroid capture mission. Beginning of Earth's O'Neill Halo.
2049 . . . Quasi-sentient bitek animals employed as servitors.
2055 . . . Jupiter mission.
2055 . . . Lunar cities granted independence from founding companies.
2057 . . . Ceres asteroid settlement founded.
2058 . . . Affinity symbiont neurons developed by Wing-Tsit Chong, providing control
over animals and bitek constructs.
2064 . . . Jovian Sky Power Corporation (JSKP) industrial consortium formed, begins
mining Jupiter's atmosphere for He3, using aerostat factories.
2064 . . . Islamic secular unification.
2067 . . . Fusion stations begin to use He3 as fuel.
2069 . . . Affinity bond gene spliced into human DNA.
Earth
2070
Sonnie's Edge
It was daylight, so Battersea was in gridlock. The M500 motorway above the Thames
had taken us right into the heart of London at a hundred and fifty kilometres an hour, then
after we spiralled down an off ramp onto the Chelsea Bridge our top speed braked to a solid
one kph. Our venue was another three kilometres ahead of us.
We joined the queue of chrome-silver vehicles jamming the street, turning up the
reflectivity of our own windscreen against the glare. Bikes slithered through the narrow gaps,
their riders in slick-skinned kooler suits. Lighthorns flared and blared in fury as they cut
through the two-way tailback, chasing after them like some kind of runway strobe effect. As
if that wasn't bad enough, every vehicle on the road was humming urgently, hub motors and