"Rudy Rucker & John Shirley - Pockets" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rucker Rudy)

Rudy Rucker and John Shirley are powerful enough as separate entitiesтАФwhat would happen if you put th
of them together? A frightening thoughtтАФand that's what happened. Rucker, who has a degree in adva
mathematics from Rutgers and is also a computer programmer, is known for his exuberant style (as well as, th
not in this instance, a comic flair comparable to John Sheckley); Shirley, who is the author of more than t
books in sf and dark fantasy (including a recent collection, Really Really Really Really Weird Stories, the ta
which actually do get weirder as the book progresses) has been known for his angry, intense, straight-ahead st
What do you get when you put the two of them together? You get the following, which is fast-p
cyberpunkish, thoughtful, weirdтАФand wonderful.

Pockets
Rudy Rucker & John Shirley

When the woman from Endless Media called, Wendel was out on the
balcony, looking across San Pablo Bay at the lights of the closed-down DeG
Chemicals Plant. On an early summer evening, the lights marking out the columns of steel
the button-shaped chemical tanks took on an unreal glamour; the plant became an otherwo
palace. He'd tried to model the plant with the industrial-strength Real2Graphix program
dad had brought home from RealTek before he got fired. But Wendel still didn't k
the tricks for filling a virtual scene with the world's magic and menace, and his model loo
like a cartoon toy. Someday he'd get his chops and make the palace come alive. You could
a killer-ass game there if you knew how. After high school, maybe he could get in
good gaming university. He didn't want to "go" to an online university if he could hel
virtual teachers, parallel programmed or not, couldn't answer all your questions.
The phone rang just as he was wondering whether Dad could afford to pay tuition
someplace real. He waited for his dad to get the phone, and after three rings he real
with a chill that Dad had probably gone into a pocket, and he'd have to answer the p
himself.
The fake porch, created for window washers, and to create an impression of cozines
place had always lacked, creaked under his feet as he went to climb through the window.
narrow splintery wooden walkway outside their window was on the third floor of an
waterfront motel converted to studio apartments. Their tall strip of windows, designed to s
a view that was now unsavory, looked down a crumbling cliff at a mud beach, the limp
waves sluggish in stretched squares of light from the buildings edging the bluff. Down
beach some guys with flashlights were moving around, looking for the little pocket-bubbles
floated in like dead jellyfish. Thanks to the accident that had closed down the DeG
Research Center, beyond the still-functioning chemicals plant, San Pablo Bay was a good
to scavenge for pocket-bubbles, which was why Wendel and his Dad had ended up living h
To get to the phone, he had to skirt the mercurylike bubble of Dad's pocket, presently a
flattened shape eight feet across and six high, rounded like a river stone. The pocket cov
most of the available space on the living room floor, and he disliked having to touch it. T
was that sensation when you touched themтАФnot quite a sting, not quite an electrical shock
even intolerable. But you didn't want to prolong the feeling.
Wendel touched the speakerphone tab. "Hello, Bell residence."
"Well, this doesn't sound like Rothman Bell." It was a woman's voice coming out o
speakerphoneтАФhumorous, ditzy, but with a heartening undercurrent of business.
"No, ma'am. I'm his son, Wendel.
 "That's right, I remember he had a son. You'd be about fourteen now?"
"Sixteen."
"Sixteen! Whoa. Time jogs on. This is Manda Solomon. I knew your dad when he worke
MetaMeta. He really made his mark there. Is he home?"