Card, Orson Scott (ed) - Future on Ice / Кард, Орсон Скотт (ред) - Будущее на льду [2000, EPUB, ENG]

Preface by Orson Scott Card Science Fiction and "The Force" by Orson Scott Card Robot Dreams / Сны роботов short story by Isaac Asimov Portraits of His Children / Портреты его детей novelette by George R. R. Martin Tourists short story by Lisa Goldstein Blood Music / Музыка, звучащая в крови novelette by Greg Bear Time's Rub short story by Gregory Benford Shanidar / Шанидар novelette by David Zindell Speech Sounds / Звуки речи short story by Octavia E. Butler Snow short story by John Crowley Klein's Machine short story by Andrew Weiner Pots novelette by C. J. Cherryh Press Enter■ / Нажмите «ВВОД» novella by John Varley Dinosaurs novelette by Walter Jon Williams Face Value short story by Karen Joy Fowler Cabracan short story by Lewis Shiner Rockabye Baby novelette by S. C. Sykes The Pure Product novelette by John Kessel Out of All Them Bright Stars / Среди всех ярких звёзд short story by Nancy Kress The Fringe / На краю пустыни novelette by Orson Scott Card

SNOW

John Crowley

I don’t think Georgie would ever have got one for herself: She was at once unsentimental and a little in awe of death. No, it was her first husband—an immensely rich and (from Georgie’s description) a strangely weepy guy, who had got it for her. Or for himself, actually, of course. He was to be the beneficiary. Only he died himself shortly after it was installed. If installed is the right word. After he died, Georgie got rid of most of what she’d inherited from him, liquidated it. It was cash that she had liked best about that marriage anyway; but the Wasp couldn’t really be got rid of. Georgie ignored it. In fact the thing really was about the size of a wasp of the largest kind, and it had the same lazy and mindless fight. And of course it really was a bug, not of the insect kind but of the surveillance kind. And so its name fit all around: one of those bits of accidental poetry the world generates without thinking. O Death, where is thy sting? Georgie ignored it, but it was hard to avoid; you had to be a little careful around it; it followed Georgie at a variable distance, depending on her motions and the numbers of other people around her, the level of light; and the tone of her voice. And there was always the danger you might shut it in a door or knock it down with a tennis racket. . . .