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Dozois Gardner - Future Sports / Дозуа Гарднер - Спорт будущего [2013, EPUB, ENG]

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OldOldNick

Название: Future Sports / Спорт будущего
Год выпуска: 2013
Под редакцией: Dozois Gardner & Dann Jack / Дозуа Гарднер & Данн Джек
Издательство: Baen
eISBN: 978-1-62579-144-3
Формат: EPUB
Качество: eBook
Язык: английский

Описание:
Подборка рассказов и повестей лучших фантастов о будущих спортивных состязаниях
    Preface
    The Wind from the Sun / Солнечный ветер Arthur C. Clarke
    Arthur Sternbach Brings the Curveball to Mars / Крученый мяч на Марсе Kim Stanley Robinson
    Man-Mountain Gentian Howard Waldrop
    Winning Ian McDonald
    The Dead / Мертвый Michael Swanwick
    Game of the Century Robert Reed
    Streak Andrew Weiner
    The Holy Stomper vs. the Alien Barrel of Death R. Neube
    Stroboscopic Alastair Reynolds
    Vanilla Dunk Jonathan Lethem
STROBOSCOPIC

Alastair Reynolds

“Open the box.”
I wasn’t making a suggestion. Just in case the tone of my voice didn’t make that clear, I backed up my words with an antique but functional blunderbuss; something won in a gaming tournament half a lifetime earlier. We stood in the airlock of my yacht, currently orbiting Venus: me, my wife, and two employees of Icehammer Games.
Between us was a gray box the size of a child’s coffin.
“After all this time,” said the closest man, his face hidden behind a mirrored gold visor on a rococo white helmet. “Still don’t trust us?”
“First rule of complex systems,” I said. “You can’t tell friends from enemies.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence, Nozomi.”
But even as he spoke, White knelt down and fiddled with the latches on the lid of the box. It opened with a gasp of air, revealing a mass of translucent protective sheeting wadded around something very cold. After pausing the blunderbuss to Risa, I reached in and lifted out the package, feeling its bulk.
“What is it?
“An element of a new game,” said the other man, Black. “Something called Stroboscopic.”
I carried the package to a workbench. “Never heard of it.”
“It’s hush-hush,” Black said. “Company hopes to have it up and running in a few months. Rumor is it’s unlike anything else in Tycho.”
I pulled back the last layer of wadding.
It was an animal packed in ice; some kind of hard-shelled arthropod like a cross between a scorpion and a crab—all segmented exoskeletal plates and multi-jointed limbs terminating in various specialized and nasty-looking appendages. The dark carapace was mottled with patches of dirty white, sparkling with tiny reflections. Elsewhere it shone like polished turtleshell. There were ferocious mouth parts but nothing I recognized as an eye, or any kind of sensory organ at all.
“Looks delicious,” I said. “What do I cook it with?”
“You don’t eat it, Nozomi. You play it.” Black shifted nervously as if wary of how much he could safely disclose. “The game will feature a whole ecology of these things—dozens of other species; all kinds of predator-prey relationships.”
“Someone manufactures them?”
“Nah.” It was White speaking now. “Icehammer found ’em somewhere outside the system, using the snatcher.”
“Might help if I knew where.”
“Tough titty. They never told us; we’re just one of dozens of teams working on the game.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “So you’re saying, all I have to go on is one dead animal, which might have come from anywhere in the galaxy?”
“Yeah,” White said, his helmet nodding. “Except it isn’t dead.”

* * *
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