"James P. Hogan - Mind, Machines and Evolution" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hogan James P)

Preface to the Baen Books Edition


The original edition of Minds, Machines, & Evolution, published by Bantam
Books in June, 1988, produced some enthusiastic responses, and readers were
still tracking me down to ask how they could obtain a copy long after it had
gone out of print. So, when, early in 1996, Jim Baen decided to put together a
second, similar collection, Rockets, Redheads, & Revolution, we thought it
would be a good idea to reissue the first also as a companion volume.

Views and opinions that remained totally unchanged after eight years would be
a sure sign of little or nothing much new having been learned in the meantime.
All material, however, has been left as it appeared in the original. Where
appropriate, I have added an afterword to reflect any updates that would seem
in order today.


SILVER SHOES FOR A PRINCESS

The girl had always been called Taya. She propped her elbows on the sill below
the window and rested her chin in her hands while she stared out at the stars.
Her eyes, wide with a nine-year-old's wonder, mirrored a million jewels
spilling endlessly across carpets of glowing nebulas painted over black
infinity by brushes softer than the yellow hair framing her face.

It was a pretty face, with clear skin and an upturned nose, and a mouth that
could push itself out into a pout when she frowned, or pull itself back into
dimples when she smiled. She was wearing just a simple dress of pale blue,
which tightened as she leaned forward across the sill, outlining the curves
just beginning to form on her body. And as she gazed out at the stars, she
wriggled her toes in the soft pile covering the floor, and she wondered . . .

She wondered why everything she could see beyond the window that looked out of
Merkon was so different from the things inside. That was one of the things she
often wondered about. She liked wondering things . . . such as why the stars
never changed, as they should have if Merkon was really moving the way Kort
said it was. Kort said it was moving toward a particular star that he called
Vaxis. He had pointed it out to her in the sky, and shown it to her on the
star pictures that they could make on the screensтАФas if there were something
special about it. But it always looked the same as all the other stars to her.

Kort said that Merkon had always been moving toward Vaxis. But if that was
true, why didn't Vaxis ever get any bigger? Outside the rooms in which Taya
lived was a long corridor that led to the place where capsules left for other
parts of Merkon. When Taya walked along the corridor, the far end of it would
at first be smaller than her thumb; but as she carried on walking it would
grow, until by the time she got there it was bigger even than Kort. Kort said
that Vaxis didn't seem to get any bigger because it was much farther away than
the end of the corridor. But he also said that Merkon had been moving for
years and yearsтАФlonger than she could rememberтАФand that it was moving even