"Richard A" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lupoff Richard A)

The Asia-Pacific Co-prosperity Sphere continued to evolve.
It was, beyond question, the center of world power, economic development,
political leadership. It was also a gigantic realm sprawling across
continents and oceans, including scores of great cities and billions of
citizens.
Its first city was Peking. Secondary centers of authority were established
in Lhasa, Bombay, Mandalay, Quezon City, Adelaide, Christchurch, Santa
Ana.
The first great leader of the Sphere, Vo Tran Quoc, had become a figure of
legendary proportions within a century of his death. Schools contended as
to his true identity. He was not Vietnamese despite his name. That much
was known. One group of scholars held that he was Maori. Another, that he
was Ainu. A third, that he was a Bengali woman, the product of rape during
the war of independence of Bangladesh from Pakistan, posing as a man (or
possibly having undergone a sex-change operation involving the grafting of
a donated penis and testes).
At any rate, Vo Tran Quoc died.
In the wake of his death a struggle broke out. Some who contended for the
power of the dead leader did so on the basis of purely personal ambition.
Others, from ideological conviction. The great ideological dispute of the
year 2137 dealt with the proper interpretation of an ancient political
dictum.
The ancient political dictum was: Just as there is not a single thing in
the world without a dual nature, so imperialism and all reactionaries have
a dual nature -- they are real tigers and paper tigers at the same time.
While political theorists in Peking quarreled over the meaning of this
political dictum, a new force arose with its center in the eldritch city
of Angkor Wat deep in the jungles of old Cambodia. The new political force
brought about a world feminist order. Its leader, following the example of
Vo Tran Quoc, took the name of a mythic personage from another culture
than her own.
She proclaimed a New Khmer Empire stretching from the Urals to the
Rockies.
She took the name Vidya Devi. This means goddess of wisdom.
The former Slavic domain and the Maghreb suffered rivalry that led, after
a century, to convergence and ultimate amalgamation. The old Roman Empire
was reborn. It included all of Europe, the Near East, Africa, and North
America from the Atlantic to the Pacific. (Niagara Falls now poured its
waters directly into the ocean; the former west bank of the Hudson River
was choice seashore property. The Rockies overlooked pounding waves that
stretched to the Asian shore.
The empire was ruled by an absolute monarch under the tutelage of the
world feminist order. She was known as the Empress Fortuna Pales I.
Latin America, from Tierra del Fuego to the southern bank of the Rio
Grande (but excluding Baja), was the greater Hai Brasil. The empress
claimed pure Bourbon ancestry. Her name was Astrud do Muiscos.
In the Antarctic a great land reclamation project had been undertaken.
Geothermal power was used to melt the ice in a circle centered on the
South Pole. The cleared area measured 1.5 million square kilometers. The
soil was found to be incredibly rich in minerals. It was hugely fertile.