Ukázky

There before him, a glittering toy no Star-Child could resist, floated the planet Earth with all its peoples. / He had returned in time. Down there on that crowded globe, the alarms would be flashing across the radar screens, the great tracking telescopes would be searching the skies – and history as men knew it would be drawing to a close. / A thousand miles below, he became aware that a slumbering cargo of death had awoken, and was stirring sluggishl…

Yet on further reflection, after the initial amazement had worn off, it was hard to see how a spreading black stain on the face of Jupiter could represent any kind of danger. It was extraordinary – inexplicable – but not as important as the critical events now only seven hours in the future. A successful burn at perijove was all that mattered; they would have plenty of time to study mysterious black spots on the way home. / And to sleep; Floyd had g…

Now that they had so much unexpected time on their hands, Captain Smith had finally agreed to give Victor Willis the long-delayed interview which was part of his contract. Victor himself had kept putting it off, owing to what Mihailovich persisted in calling his ‚amputation‘. As it would be many months before he could regenerate his public image, he had finally decided to do the interview off-camera; the studio on Earth could fake him in later wi…

Chapter 26: Tsienville / In the 1982 preface to „2010: Odyssey Two“, I explained why I named the Chinese spaceship which landed on Europa after Dr Tsien Hsue-shen, one of the founders of the United States and Chinese rocket programmers. As Iris Chang states in her biography „Thread of the Silkworm“ (Basic Books, 1995) ‚his life is one of the supreme ironies of the Cold War‘. / Born in 1911, Tsien won a scholarship which brought him from China to the Un…

Sašovo poslední veřejné vyhlášení znělo: / VĚSTNÍK RUSIČTINY č. 8 / Téma: Tovarišč (tovariš) /   / Našim americkým hostům: / Upřímně řečeno, kamarádi, už si ani nevzpomenu, kdy mě takhle naposledy někdo oslovil. Pro každého sovětského občana jedenadvacátého století to znamená ohlédnutí nazpět ke křižníku Potěmkin – vybavují se nám přitom brigadýrky a rudé vlajky a Vladimír Iljič promlouvající k pracujícím ze schůdků železničního vagónu. / Už v dobách, kdy Jse…

THE LIBRARIAN / THEY LEFT the diamagnetic scooter in a scooter-cubby outside the City limits. Scooters were rare in the City and Terens had no wish to attract unnecessary attention. He thought for a savage moment of those of the Upper City with their diamagnetic ground-cars and anti-gray gyros. But that was the Upper City. It was different. / Rik waited for Terens to lock the cubby and fingerprint-seal it. He was dressed in a new one-piece suit and fel…