"Kim Newman - Tomorrow Town" - читать интересную книгу автора (Newman Kim)

"So this is the transport of tomorrow?" said Vanessa.

"A best-guess design," explained Richard. "That's the point of Tomorrow Town.
To experiment with the lives we'll all be living at the turn of the century."

"No teleportation then?"

"Don't be silly. Matter transmission is a fantasy. This is a reasonable
extrapolation from present-day or in-development technology. The Foundation is
rigorous about probabilities. Everything in Tomorrow Town is viable."

The community was funded partially by government research grants and partially
by private sources. It was projected that it would soon be a profitable
concern, with monies pouring in from scientific wonders developed by the
visioneers of the new technomeritocracy. The Foundation, which had proposed
the "Town of 2000" experiment, was a think tank, an academic-industrial
coalition dedicated to applying to present-day life lessons learned from
contemplating the likely future. Tomorrow Town's two-thousand-odd
citizen-volunteers ("zenvols") were boffins, engineers, social visionaries,
health food cranks, and science fiction fans.

Three years ago, when the town was given its charter by the Wilson government,
there had been a white heat of publicity: television programmes hosted by
James Burke and Raymond Baxter, picture features in all the Sunday colour
supplements, a novelty single ("Take Me to Tomorrow" by Big Thinks and the BBC
Radiophonic Workshop) which peaked at Number 2 (prevented from being Top of
the Pops by The Crazy World of Arthur Brown's "Fire"), a line of "futopian
fashions" from Carnaby Street, a heated debate in the letter columns of New
Scientist between Arthur C. Clarke (pro), Auberon Waugh (anti) and J. G.
Ballard (hard to tell). Then the brouhaha died down and Tomorrow Town was left
to get on by itself, mostly forgotten. Until the murder of Varno Zhoule.

Richard Jeperson, agent of the Diogenes ClubтАФleast-known branch of the United
Kingdom's intelligence and investigative servicesтАФwas detailed to look into
the supposedly open-and-shut case and report back to the current Prime
Minister on the advisability of maintaining government support for Tomorrow
Town.

He had given Vanessa the barest facts.

"What does the murder weapon of the future turn out to be?" she asked. "Laser
beam? Poisoned moon rock?"

"No, the proverbial blunt instrument. Letting the side down, really. Anyone
who murders the cofounder of Tomorrow Town should have the decency to stick to
the spirit of the game. I doubt if it's much comfort to the deceased, but the
offending bludgeon was vaguely futurist, a stylised steel rocket ship with a
heavy stone base."

"No home should be without one."