"Callahan 09 - Callahan's Key 1.1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robinson Spider)

This e-text was scanned from paperback, proofread, and double checked carefully by Gorgon776 in early June, 2001. It was released 21 June 2001 for your reading pleasure in lit, rtf, html and plain vanilla text format. Cover scans also by Gorgon 776. If you find any errors in this e-text, please correct them, update the version number by .1 and post it to alt.binaries.e-books, with Attn: Gorgon776 in the header. If you enjoy this book, buy it in dead-tree edition to support the author. Better yet, go to Baen Books website and buy the electronic version of Spider Robinson's books, or those of any other author with the balls to release their works in e-book format. If you can't manage that, hunt down his address and send him whatever you think the book is worth.



This edition contains the complete text of the original hardcover edition.
NOT ONE WORD HAS BEEN OMITTED.

CALLAHAN'S KEY
A Bantam Spectra Book

PUBLISHING HISTORY
Bantam Spectra hardcover edition published July 2000
Bantam Spectra paperback edition/May 2001
SPECTRA and the portrayal of a boxed- "s" are trademarks of Bantam
Books, a division of Random House, Inc.

All rights reserved.
Copyright (c) 2000 by Spider Robinson
Cover illustration copyright (c) 2001 by Don Maitz
Cover design by Jamie S. Warren Youll

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 99-051311
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
For information address: Bantam Books.

If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as "unsold and destroyed' to the publisher and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this "stripped book."

ISBN 0-553-58060-4

Published simultaneously in the United States and Canada

Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Random House, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words "Bantam Books' and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, 1540 Broadway, New York, New York 10036.

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
OPM 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1




This one is for Guy Immesa




ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

THIS BOOK WOULD not have been possible without certain key speculations by cosmologists Alan Guth, Sidney Coleman, and Sir Martin Rees, which I encountered in John Brockman's splendid book THE THIRD CULTURE; my thanks to them for their unwitting assistance.
Possible or not, this book would have been much less plausible without the witting assistance of the following friends, colleagues, acquaintances, and kindly strangers: Guy Immega (roboticist), Douglas Beder (physicist), David Sloan (physicist), Jaymie Matthews (astrophysicist), Jef Raskin (interface expert; chief designer for the Macintosh), Douglas Scott (cosmologist), Michael Spencer (blacksmith; philosopher), Bill McCutcheon (astrophysicist), David Measday (astrophysicist), Joseph Green (writer; NASA alumnus), the uncredited creators of the NASA website, Dean Ing (writer; auto designer/builder; military aviation expert) Laurence M. Jamfer (writer; polymath), Ben Bova (writer; space travel expert), Douglas Girling (systems analyst; aerospace expert), Ed Thelen (Internet Nike expert), and Ted Powell (programmer; cyberhistorian; skeptic).
And those are just the people who helped with the science component of this story! (Any errors arising from my misunderstanding of what they told me are, of course, all their fault, for not explaining it better.)
Other invaluable assistance, advice, inspiration, or permission to quote was provided by Spider John Koemer (musician), Don Ross (musician), the Beatles (the Beatles), David Gerrold (writer; cat servant), Stephen Gaskin (hippie; writer; Head Judge for the first and second annual International Cannabis Cup competitions in Amsterdam), Virginia Heinlein (retired naval officer; biochemist; widow of Robert A. Heinlein), Lord Buckley (saint), Will Soto (tightrope-walking juggler), the Key West Cultural Preservation Society and just about every Key West local I've ever met. Special thanks must go to the superb Key West writer Laurence Shames, whose contribution to this story (like those of Rees, Guth, and Coleman, above) was crucial, although quite unwitting. And my ongoing gratitude goes to the alt.callahans Usenet newsgroup, for keeping me grounded.