"Alastair Reynolds - Chasm City" - читать интересную книгу автора (Reynolds Alastair)

CHASM CITY

Alastair Reynolds


Dear Newcomer,

Welcome to the Epsilon Eridani system.
Despite all that has happened, we hope your stay here will be a pleasant one. For your
information we have compiled this document to explain some of the key events in our recent
history. It is intended that this information will ease your transition into a culture which may
be markedly different from the one you were expecting to find when you embarked at your
point of origin. It is important that you realise that others have come before you. Their
experiences have helped us shape this document in a manner designed to minimise the
shock of cultural adjustment. We have found that attempts to gloss over or understate the
truth of what happened-of what continues to happen-are ultimately harmful; that the best
approach-based on a statistical study of cases such as yours-is to present the facts in as
open and honest manner as possible.

We are fully aware that your initial response is likely disbelief, quickly followed by anger and
then a state of protracted denial.

It is important to grasp that these are normal reactions.
It is equally important to grasp-even at this early stage-that there will come a time when you
will adjust to and accept the truth. It might be days from now; it might even be weeks or
months, but in all but a minority of cases it will happen. You might even look back upon this
time and wish that you could have willed yourself to make the transition to acceptance
quicker than you did. You will know that it is only when that process is accomplished that
anything resembling happiness becomes possible.

Let us therefore begin the process of adjustment.
Due to the fundamental lightspeed limit for communication within the sphere of colonised
space, news from other solar systems is inevitably out of date; often by decades or more.
Your perceptions of our system's main world, Yellowstone, are almost certainly based on
outdated information.

It is certainly the case that for more than two centuries-until, in fact, the very recent
past-Yellowstone was in thrall to what most contemporary observers chose to term the Belle
Epoque . It was an unprecedented social and technological golden age; our ideological
template seen by all to be an almost perfect system of governance.
Numerous successful ventures were launched from Yellowstone, including daughter
colonies in other solar systems, as well as ambitious scientific expeditions to the edge of
human space. Visionary social experiments were conducted within Yellowstone and its
Glitter Band, including the controversial but pioneering work of Calvin Sylveste and his
disciples. Great artists, philosophers and scientists flourished in Yellowstone's atmosphere
of hothouse innovation. Techniques of neural augmentation were pursued fearlessly. Other
human cultures chose to treat the Conjoiners with suspicion, but we Demarchists-unafraid
of the positive aspects of mind enhancement methods-established lines of rapport with the
Conjoiners which enabled us to exploit their technologies to the full. Their starship drives
allowed us to settle many more systems than cultures subscribing to inferior social models.