"Robert Reed - Hatch" - читать интересную книгу автора (Reed Robert)

HATCH
ROBERT REED



R
obert Reed sold his first story in 1986, and quickly established himself as a frequent
contributor to The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and AsimovтАЩs Science
Fiction, as well as selling many stories to Science Fiction Age, Universe, New
Destinies, Tomorrow, Synergy, Starlight, and elsewhere. Reed may be one of the
most prolific of todayтАЩs young writers, particularly at short fiction lengths, seriously
rivaled for that position only by authors such as Stephen Baxter and Brian
Stableford. AndтАФalso like Baxter and Stable-fordтАФhe manages to keep up a very
high standard of quality while being prolific, something that is not at all easy to do.
Reed stories such as тАЬSister Alice,тАЭ тАЬBrother Perfect,тАЭ тАЬDecency,тАЭ тАЬSavior,тАЭ тАЬThe
Remoras,тАЭ тАЬChrysalis,тАЭ тАЬWhiptail,тАЭ тАЬThe Utility Man,тАЭ тАЬMarrow,тАЭ тАЬBirth Day,тАЭ
тАЬBlind,тАЭ тАЬThe Toad of Heaven,тАЭ тАЬStride,тАЭ тАЬThe Shape of Every thing,тАЭ тАЬGuest of
Honor,тАЭ тАЬWag-ing Good,тАЭ and тАЬKilling the Morrow,тАЭ among at least a half-dozen
others equally as strong, count as some of the best short work produced by anyone
in the eighties and nineties; many of his best stories were assembled in his first
collection, The Dragons of Springplace. Nor is he nonprolific as a novel-ist, having
turned out eight novels since the end of the eighties, including The Lee Shore, The
Hormone Jungle, Black Milk, The Remarkables, Down the Bright Way, Beyond
the Veil of Stars, An Exaltation of Larks, Beneath the Gated Sky, Marrow, and
Sister Alice. His most recent books are a chapbook novella, Mere, a new collection,
The CuckooтАЩs Boys, and a new novel, The Well of Stars. Coming up is a new novella
chapbook, Flavors of My Genius. Reed lives with his family in Lincoln, Nebraska.

The тАЬSister AliceтАЭ stories, in which advanced humans with the powers and
abilities of gods played out intricate political intrigues and struggles across a time
span of millions of years, eventually collected in the mosaic novel Sister Alice, were
ReedтАЩs first great contribution to the New Space Opera. In 1994, he launched a long
series of stories, still continuing today, about the Great Ship: a Jupiter-sized starship
found abandoned in deep space by exploring humans and retrofitted into a kind of
immense interstel-lar cruise ship, off on a grand tour of the galaxy (circumnavigating
it, in fact, a voyage that will take eons), with dozens of human and alien customers of
different races aboard. In the powerful story that follows, which takes place after a
disastrous attempt to hijack the Great Ship has reduced it nearly to ruins, he shows
us what happens to some human survivors of the battle who are stranded outside of
the Ship, locked out of the interior for generations, forced to create their own society
on the hullтАФa place that, as it turns out, is equipped with quite a few wondersтАФand
dangersтАФof its own.

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Yes, the galaxy possessed an ethereal beauty, particularly when magnified inside the
polished bowl of a perfect mirror. Every raider conceded as much. And yes, the
rocket nozzle on which they lived was a spectacular feature, vast and ancient, its
bowllike depths filled with darkness and several flavors of ice laid over a plain of
impenetrable hyperfiber. Even the refugee city was lovely in its modest fashion,