"Dan Simmons - The fall of Hyperion" - читать интересную книгу автора (Simmons Dan)

To John Keats
Whose Name Was Writ
in Eternity

"Can God play a significant game with his own creature? Can any
creator, even a limited one, play a significant game with his own creature?"

--norbert wiener, God and Golem, Inc.
". . . May there not be superior beings amused with any graceful,
though instinctive attitude my mind may fall into, as I am entertained
with the alertness of a Stoat or the anxiety of a Deer? Though a quarrel
in the streets is a thing to be hated, the energies displayed in it are fine
... By a superior being our reasonings may take the same tone--


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though erroneous they may be fine-- This is the very thing in which
consists poetry ..."
--john keats, in a letter to his brother
"The Imagination may be compared to Adam's dream--he awoke and
found it truth."
--john keats, in a letter to a friend

PART ONE

ONE
On the day the armada went off to war, on the last day of life
as we knew it, I was invited to a party. There were parties
everywhere that evening, on More than a hundred and fifty
worlds in the Web, but this was the only party that mattered.
I signified acceptance via the datasphere, checked to make sure that
my finest formal jacket was clean, took my time bathing and shaving,
dressed with meticulous care, and used the one-time diskey in the
invitation chip to farcast from Esperance to Tau Ceti Center at the
appointed time.
It was evening in this hemisphere of TC2, and a low, rich light
illuminated the hills and vales of Deer Park, the gray towers of the
Administration complex far to the south, the weeping willows and
radiant femfire which lined the banks of River Tethys, and the white
colonnades of Government House itself. Thousands of guests were
arriving, but security personnel greeted each of us, checked our invitation
codes against DNA patterns, and showed the way to bar and
buffet with a graceful gesture of arm and hand.
"M. Joseph Severn?" the guide confirmed politely.
"Yes," I lied. It was now my name but never my identity.
"CEO Gladstone still wishes to see you later in the evening. You
will be notified when she is free for the appointment."