"David G. Hartwell - Year's Best SF 8" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hartwell David G)

We try to represent the varieties of tones and voices and attitudes that keep the genre vigorous and
responsive to the changing realities out of which it emerges, in science and daily life. This is a book about
whatтАЩs going on now in SF. The stories that follow show, and the story notes point out, the strengths of
the evolving genre in the year 2002.


David G. Hartwell & Kathryn Cramer
Pleasantville, NY


In Paradise
BRUCE STERLING

Bruce Sterling lives in Austin, Texas. The novel Schismatrix
(1985) and the related stories that made him famous were re-released in 1996 as Schismatrix Plus.
He collaborated with William Gibson on The Difference Engine (1990), became a media figure who
appeared on the cover of Wired, became a journalist who wrote the expos├й The Hacker
Crackdown (1992), and returned his attention to science fiction in 1995, with a new explosion of
stories and novels, including Heavy Weather (1994), Holy Fire (1996), and Distraction (1998). His
most recent novel, Zeitgeist (2000), is fantasy. His interest in the political and cultural implications
of future change has informed his work, and in his recent nonfiction book, Tomorrow Now:
Envisioning the Next Fifty Years (2002), he re-imagines the future after the turn of the 21st century.
тАЬIn ParadiseтАЭ was published in F&SF, a magazine that published a large number of especially
good stories this year. It is a madly jolly, near-future love story, in which the machete of satire is
wielded against the advent and spread of intrusion into the private lives of citizens in the name of

homeland security. Certain moral and ethical problems are oversimplified so that love conquers
all. It is first in this book because we found it so representative of the year 2002 and so much fun.

The machines broke down so much that it was comical, but the security people never laughed about
that.
Felix could endure the delay, for plumbers billed by the hour. He opened his tool kit, extracted a
plastic flask and had a solid nip of Scotch.
The Moslem girl was chattering into her phone. Her dad and another bearded weirdo had passed
through the big metal frame just as the scanner broke down. So these two somber, suited old men were
getting the full third degree with the hand wands, while daughter was stuck. Daughter wore a long baggy
coat and thick black headscarf and a surprisingly sexy pair of sandals. Between her and her minders
stretched the no manтАЩs land of official insecurity. She waved across the gap.
The security geeks found something metallic in the black wool jacket of the Wicked Uncle. Of
course it was harmless, but they had to run their full ritual, lest they die of boredom at their posts. As the
Scotch settled in, Felix felt time stretch like taffy. Little Miss Mujihadeen discovered that her phone was
dying. She banged at it with the flat of her hand.
The line of hopeful shoppers, grimly waiting to stimulate the economy, shifted in their disgruntlement.
It was a bad, bleak scene. It crushed FelixтАЩs heart within him. He longed to leap to his feet and harangue
the lot of them. Wake up, he wanted to scream at them, cheer up, act more human. He felt the urge
keenly, but it scared people when he cut loose like that. They really hated it. And so did he. He knew he
couldnтАЩt look them in the eye. It would only make a lot of trouble.
The Mideastern men shouted at the girl. She waved her dead phone at them, as if another
breakdown was going to help their mood. Then Felix noticed that she shared his own make of cell
phone. She had a rather ahead-of-the-curve Finnish model that heтАЩd spent a lot of money on. So Felix
rose and sidled over.

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