"William W. Johnstone - Ashes 03 - Anarchy in the Ashes" - читать интересную книгу автора (Johnstone William W)

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To Charles and Rosemary
The enemy say that Americans are good at a long
shot, but cannot stand the cold iron. I call upon you
instantly to give a lie to this slander. Charge!
-Winfield Scott
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters,
places and incidents are either the product of the
author's imagination or are used fictitiously.
Any resemblance to actual persons,
living or dead, events, or locales is
entirely coincidental.
PROLOGUE: A NEW BEGINNING
It looked good.
Yes, Ben Raines thought as he drove the area
of the nation known to a few as the new Tri-States, it
did look good. As he drove he gazed out at the
fertile land that would soon bring forth beans and cotton
and corn and the many hundreds of small gardens that would
feed the people.
Ben smiled.
For the first time since the arrival of Ben and his
Rebels in portions of Arkansas, Louisiana,
and Mississippi, Ben felt some degree of
optimism for the future of those who chose to follow his
dream.
The spring of 2001 was, Ben felt, a long
way from what most science fiction writers of his
generation had envisioned. Those writers envisioned
robots doing much of the tasks formally relegated to the
unskilled. They imagined numerous space
shuttles to faraway worlds, an easing of the world's
hunger, great strides and breakthroughs in the field of
medicine-and so very much more.
Instead, the world now hung by a slender
thread: on one side a chance for civilization
to flourish; on the other, anarchy, barbarism, a
return to the caves.
We've got to make it, Ben mused as he
drove. Some group of people must show the rest of the world that
civilization and order can once more prevail over
chaos.
We've got to make it.

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