To uncover the truth, Morris must enter a shadowy, nightmare world of ghosts and golems where nothing -and no one-is what they seem, memory itself is suspect, and the line between life and death may no longer exist. Noting that science fiction is characterized by an investment in the proliferation of racial difference, Isiah Lavender III argues that racial alterity is fundamental to the genre's narrative strategy.
Race in American Science Fiction offers a systematic classification of ways that race appears and how it is silenced in science fiction, while developing a critical vocabulary designed to focus attention on often-overlooked racial implications.
These focused readings of science fiction contextualize race within the genre's better-known master narratives and agendas. Dick, and Ursula K. Le Guin, among many others. In New York and Baltimore, police cameras scan public areas twenty-four hours a day. Huge commercial databases track you finances and sell that information to anyone willing to pay. Every day, new technology nibbles at our privacy.
Does that make you nervous? David Brin is worried, but not just about privacy. He fears that society will overreact to these technologies by restricting the flow of information, frantically enforcing a reign of secrecy.
Such measures, he warns, won't really preserve our privacy. Governments, the wealthy, criminals, and the techno-elite will still find ways to watch us. But we'll have fewer ways to watch them. We'll lose the key to a free society: accountability. If credit bureaus sell our data, shouldn't we know who buys it? Rather than cling to an illusion of anonymity-a historical anomaly, given our origins in close-knit villages-we should focus on guarding the most important forms of privacy and preserving mutual accountability.
The biggest threat to our freedom, Brin warns, is that surveillance technology will be used by too few people, now by too many. A society of glass houses may seem too fragile.
Fearing technology-aided crime, governments seek to restrict online anonymity; fearing technology-aided tyranny, citizens call for encrypting all data. Brins shows how, contrary to both approaches, windows offer us much better protection than walls; after all, the strongest deterrent against snooping has always been the fear of being spotted.
Furthermore, Brin argues, Western culture now encourages eccentricity-we're programmed to rebel! That gives our society a natural protection against error and wrong-doing, like a body's immune system.
The Transparent Society is full of such provocative and far-reaching analysis. The inescapable rush of technology is forcing us to make new choices about how we want to live. This daring book reminds us that an open society is more robust and flexible than one where secrecy reigns. In an era of gnat-sized cameras, universal databases, and clothes-penetrating radar, it will be more vital than ever for us to be able to watch the watchers. With reciprocal transparency we can detect dangers early and expose wrong-doers.
We can gauge the credibility of pundits and politicians. We can share technological advances and news. But all of these benefits depend on the free, two-way flow of information. Bestselling, award-winning futurist David Brin returns to globe-spanning, high concept SF with Existence. Gerald Livingston is an orbital garbage collector.
For a hundred years, people have been abandoning things in space, and someone has to clean it up. Years later, alone in a rented flat in Edinburgh and lost in memories, Tom recalls the intellectual and sexual awakening of his youth.
In looking back, Tom discovers that only by understanding where he comes from can he make sense of his life as it is now. The Backyard Kiln, based on the brick kiln, has been tested in several locations, and has proved very efficient indeed, reaching very high temperatures, and capable of being fired both quickly and very slowly, and leaving a virtually ash-free firebox at the end!
For the potter who likes to plough his or her own furrow, and who, although welcoming help from friends with firings, prefers not to have to rely on a team in order to get their work finished. A complete manual on how to install an electric kiln, how to use it properly, and how to maintain and repair it. In a perilous future where disposable duplicate bodies fulfill every legal and illicit whim of their decadent masters, life is cheap. No one knows that better than Albert Morris, a brash investigator with a knack for trouble, who has sent his own duplicates into deadly peril more times than he cares to remember.
But when Morris takes on a ring of bootleggers making illegal copies of a famous actress, he stumbles upon a secret so explosive it has incited open warfare on the streets of Dittotown. Yosil Maharal, a brilliant researcher in artificial intelligence, has suddenly vanished, just as he is on the verge of a revolutionary scientific breakthrough. Maharal's daughter, Ritu, believes he has been kidnapped-or worse. Aeneas Polom, a reclusive trillionaire who appears in public only through his high-priced platinum duplicates, offers Morris unlimited resources to locate Maharal before his awesome discovery falls into the wrong hands.
To uncover the truth, Morris must enter a shadowy, nightmare world of ghosts and golems where nothing -and no one-is what they seem, memory itself is suspect, and the line between life and death may no longer exist.
This pottery project book has been created to help you to organize your projects and improve your pottery skills. This log book contains an index to find your projects and 40 double sheets that allow you to: sketch your creations keep track of the type of clay and the technique used take notes about glazing and firing This project book makes a great gift for a potter or pottery lover.
This pottery project book is perfect for you to organize your projects and improve your pottery skills. Until next time, I thought. Back on Alameda, I decided not to wait for Blane to finish in the basement. Let him d-mail me a report. This job was done. My end of it, at least. I was walking back to my car when a feminine voice spoke up from behind me. Yeah, I know. Fat chance. I turned to see a brunette. Taller than the maestra, less voluptuous, with a narrower face and somewhat higher voice.
Still very much worth looking at. Her skin was one of the ten thousand shades of authentic human-brown. She flashed a card covered with splotchy fractals that automatically engaged the optics in my left eye, but the patterns were too complex or newfangled for my obsolete image system to deconvolute.
Irritated, I bit an incisor to frame-store the image. Nell could solve the puzzle later. You have a sheen of celebrity, Mr. Your skills had already come to our attention, before this coup. Might I prevail on you to spare a moment? Someone wants to meet you. An expensive-looking Yugo. I considered. The maestra expected me to call with final assurance that third-hand Wammaker toys would stop flooding the market.
Inside, I felt as if I had already reported to one Gineen—the white ditto. Why should anyone have to go through that twice? Illogical, I know. But Miss Fractal gave me an excuse to put off the delectably unpleasant duty. I shrugged. Some press flacks love to sniff detectives after a showy bust—though reporters seldom drive Yugos. It was dim inside. And lavish. Bioluminescent cressets and real wood moldings. Pseudoflesh cushions beckoned, wriggling voluptuously, like welcoming laps.
Crystal decanters and goblets glittered in the bar. And there, sitting cross-legged on the backseat like he owned the place, was a pale gray golem.
Silver hair and skin like metal, all angles and high cheekbones … not gray, I realized, but a kind of platinum. He looks familiar. I tried sending a snap-image to Nell, but the limo was shielded.
The platinum golem smiled, as if he knew exactly what had happened. I took small comfort from the fact that this creature had no legal rights. So what? It could still buy and sell you in a second, I told myself, taking the opposite seat while Miss Fractal alighted primly onto a living cushion between us. Basic hospitality. My daytime brew is a matter of public profile. No points for research. Morris, let me present Vic Aeneas Kaolin. No wonder he looked familiar! As one of the founders of Universal Kilns, Kaolin was one of the richest men along the entire Pacific coast.
Is there a service I can offer? All this violence seems unsubtle. I wondered—surely Kaolin had employees and retainers to handle security matters. Hiring an outsider suggested something out of the ordinary. Are you interested, Mr. Under a confidentiality seal, agreed? The young woman made a complex gesture, tapping fingers rapidly together.
An instant later, there flashed in my left eye a brief text message from my Volvo, asking permission to slave its autodrive to the big Yugo. It would follow close behind, if I said okay. I did so with a tap of incisors. Perhaps even worth lavishly hiring in the flesh. I wished I caught her name. A forward glance caught the shadow of a driver beyond the smoky panel. Was that servant real, too? Well, the rich are different than you and me. It was still morning rush hour and the limo had to weave slowly around huge dinobuses, discharging golem passengers from racks slung along sinuous flanks.
The buses shuffled and grunted, undulating their long necks gracefully, swinging humanlike heads to gossip with each other as traffic lurched along. From their imposing height, the imprinted pilots had a fine view of the wounded Teller Building. They could even peer into high windows and around corners.
Every kid dreams of becoming a bus driver when he grows up. Soon we departed Old Town with its blend of shabbiness and gaudy color—its derelict buildings taken over by a new race of disposable beings, built either for hard work or hard play. Crossing the river, we made good time even with my car following behind, tethered by invisible control beams. Trollies and dinobuses gave way to bikes and joggers, making me feel lazy and neglectful by comparison.
They tell you in school—take care of your organic body. One rig is all you get. You appear to be resourceful, Mr. Ritu, I noted the name. I see. Well, recovering snatched property is one of my specialties. Tell me, did the ditto have a locator pellet? This was no mere theft. Not a dittograb, as they say on the street. The victim is a real person. In fact, it is my father. Yosil Maharal is a brilliant researcher.
A co-founder of Universal Kilns and a major patent holder in the realm of corporeal duplication. And my close friend, I should add. From emotion? Hard to tell. Did the kidnappers threaten to kill Maharal if you tell? Those officials have been unhelpful. In a situation like this, cops can sift memory files from every public and private camera in the city. For a capital crime, they can even unleash DNA sniffers.
No warrant was issued. She must be a rather rich person in her own right, perhaps a high official in the company that her eminent father helped establish—a company that transformed the way modern people go about their lives. But there are no witnesses or ransom notes. A motivationist from the Human Protection Division thinks that Dad simply snuck away, on his own volition. As a free adult, he has the right. Not many have the skill to pull off a clean escape, deliberately dropping out of the World Village.
Even if you exclude all the private lenses and myob-eyes, that leaves an awful lot of publicams to avoid.
She blinked, hesitantly. Her expression was complex, dour one moment, then briefly beautiful when she smiled. I wondered if Clara would call her attractive.
The limo was driving past Odeon Square. Memories of last night made my toes itch … recalling sensations of having them gnawed off by crabs during that hellish underwater trek. I glimpsed the restaurant where a waiter-dit saved me by distracting the crowd. Naturally, it was closed this early. I vowed to drop by and see if the fellow still had a labor contract there. I owed him one. If he arranged to drop out of sight, there should be signs of preparation in his home, or the most recent place he was spotted.
How long since you saw your father, Ritu? A month! It was all I could do to keep a blank face and not insult the clients.
Some people are naturally gracious, but I had a feeling this fellow did little without calculation. Flattery from the rich can be a danger signal. And permission to interview his associates. Cutting edge technologies and potentially crucial breakthroughs. Duplicates are often empowered to speak for their originals—and the most expensive grays can think as well as their archetype, at some metabolic cost.
Still, I expected this one to defer any final decision till I spoke to the real Vic. Fealty oaths are a big fad among aristos, who like the feudal image of lords and faithful vassals. But the gray ditto surprised me with a firm nod. Anyway, we appear to have arrived. Beyond the guarded gate, campus grounds extended to three huge bubbledomes, gleaming mirrorlike under the sun.
The centermost reared over twenty stories high. No logos or company emblems were needed. Everybody knew this landmark—world headquarters of Universal Kilns. Another giveaway was the crowd of demonstrators, shouting and waving banners at vehicles streaming through the main entrance—a protest that had waxed and waned for over thirty years. In addition to standard placards, a few aimed holo projectors, splatting car windows and a few unwary faces with colorfully irate 3-D comments.
And, of course— One Person: Just One Soul Naturally, these protestors were all archies, continuing a struggle that had been lost in both the courts and the marketplace before many of them were born. Millions of disposable people. At first, looking out the right side, I saw only True Lifers clamoring and carrying on.
Then I realized, several of them were shouting epithets at another crowd—a younger, hipper-looking throng on the left side of the entryway, equipped with more holo throwers and fewer placards.
The second group had a different message: End the Slavery of Clay People! Rights for Roxes! Unlike the True Lifers, who were a familiar sight, this Emancipation movement had burgeoned much more recently—a crusade that still had many people scratching their heads. The two protest groups despised each other. But they agreed on hatred of Universal Kilns. I wondered, would they put aside their animus and join forces if they knew the company chairman, Vic Aeneas Kaolin himself, was passing nearby?
As if he knew my thoughts, he chuckled. Moralists make a lot of noise … and sometimes mail a pathetic bomb or two … but they are generally predictable and easy to sidetrack. I get a lot more aggravation from practical men. Beyond ravaging every labor union and throwing millions out of work, roxing almost triggered a dozen wars that only quelled after intense diplomacy by some first-rate world leaders.
If you can handle it. Security scanners cleared the limo and we left the demonstrators behind, passing a main entrance where buses delivered ditto workers, discharging them from leathery racks. But most arriving employees were organic humans who would make their copies onsite. Quite a few archies approached on bicycles, glowing from the sweaty workout, looking forward to a steam and massage before getting to work.
Companies like UK take good care of their people. There are benefits to giving a fealty oath. We cruised beyond the main portal, then on past sheltered loading docks, shipping machinery like freezers, imprinting units, and kilns. Most of the ditto blanks that people buy are made elsewhere, but I did glimpse some specialty items as we swept by—rigid figures dimly visible inside translucent packing crates, some of them uncannily tall, or gangly, or shaped like animals out of some legend.
The limo approached a formal entrance, clearly meant for VIP arrivals. Liveried servitors with emerald skin, the same color as their uniforms, rushed up to open our doors and we emerged under a canopy of artificial trees.
Flowers dropped fragrant petals in rainbow profusion, like soft rain, dissolving into sweet, pigmented vapor before touching ground. Looking around, I saw no sign of my Volvo.
It must have peeled off to a more plebeian parking place. Ritu explained. He conducts all business by facsimile. But in most cases it was affectation, a pose—a way to limit access—with exceptions made for important matters.
The disappearance of a renowned scientist might qualify. I started to say this, then saw that Ritu no longer paid attention. Her pale eyes shifted to stare past my right shoulder, both irises flaring while her chin quivered in shock. Ritu vented a single word as I swiveled. This ditto was embossed to resemble a slender man about sixty, walking with a faint limp that seemed more habit than a current affliction. The face, narrow and angular, bore some resemblance to Ritu, especially when it shaped a wan smile.
Her use of the paternal-mimetic greeting meant the Maharal household must have kept real and simulated distinct, even in private. Still, her voice quavered as she grabbed a dark gray hand. I never meant to upset you both. Where are you? I should have a good handle on things in a few days. Or let us know—? But I just wanted to reassure you both that things do feel much better. Naturally, I felt a twinge over losing a lucrative case. But happy endings are never a bad thing.
The one that always haunts me when a job feels unfinished. It suited Clara to live on the water. At a time when most people—even the poor—seem feverishly intent on building up their homes, maximizing both ornate space and possessions, she preferred spartan compactness.
The very day he got released from the hospital—the half of him that remained—in his shiny new life-support chair. Later, as we were about to drive Pal home, Clara brushed aside his apologies. Instead, I found a note for me on the kitchen counter. I muttered sourly. Neighborly relations mattered to Clara. Then I recalled, Oh yes, a war. She did mention something a while back, about her reserve unit being called up for combat duty. For a battle against India, I thought.
Or was it Indiana? Damn, that sort of thing could last a whole week. Sometimes more. I really wanted to talk to her, not spend the time worrying about where she was and what she might be doing, out there in the desert. Glancing toward her little sim-study, I saw light rimming the door. So, before departing, Clara must have made a duplicate, programmed to finish some homework assignment. Me, I was one of a vanishing breed—the employed.
My philosophy: why stay in school when you have a marketable skill? The magnetic latch released silently when I touched it, easing open the door of the study. True, her note asked me stay out, but I feel insecure sometimes. Maybe I was just checking to be sure that my biometrics still had full trust access, throughout the boat. They did. And yes, there was her gray, studying at a tiny desk cluttered with papers and dataplaques.
Only the legs showed—pasty-clay in texture but realistically shapely. Everything above the waist lay shrouded under holo-interactive fabric that kept bulging and shifting as the ditto waved, pointed, and typed with wriggling hands.
Word mumbles escaped the muffling layers. I need information on the real event! Not history books but raw debriefing transcripts having specifically to do with bio-crimes like TARP…. Then adapt to the old data protocols and … Oh, you dim-witted excuse for a … and they call this artificial intelligence?
Mere duplicate or not, it was Clara right down to the soul—cool in a crisis yet capable of great affection. And all too prickly toward the incompetence of strangers, especially machines. How does that help you learn anything? Well, you do it too, sometimes, I thought. Never came back, as I recall. Not that I mind. I hope we had some good, scholarly fun. Though tempted, I decided against bothering the homework-ditto. Clara liked specialists.
This one would be all drive and intellect, toiling till its ephemeral brain expired. Again, it comes down to personality. The houseboat reflected this. Tools were evident, many showing handmade touches, like an all-weather navigation system worked into the grain of a carved mahogany walking stick or a set of formidable, self-targeting fighting bolas wrought from meteoritic nickel-iron.
Or the his and hers armored chadors that hung from a nearby coatrack. Decorative outer layers of burnished titanium chain mail covered the real apparatus—a floppy cowl of plush emitters that could transport you anywhere you want to go in VR space.
Assuming you had a good reason to visit that sterile digital realm. Our matched set of chadors stayed here on the boat—the closest thing to a firm expression of commitment I had from her so far. That and a pair of solido-dolls of us hiking together on Denali— her straight brown hair cropped close, almost helmetlike, around a face that Clara always dismissed as too elongated to be pretty, though I had no complaints.
To me she looked grown-up, a real woman, while my own too-youthful features seem forever pinched in a dark moodiness of adolescence. No clutter of collectibles. At one level, I was involved with a college student. At another level, a warrior and international celebrity.
I looked back at the note Clara left for me. Pondering the well-proportioned silhouette, I felt like a husband whose absent wife left a ready-to-heat supper in the fridge. And yes, Clara likes to make specialists. But not now. Anyway, a vague sense of unease gnawed as I drove back to my own place.
My house computer answered in a customary mezzo-soprano. The restaurant reports that one of their waiters lost his service contract last night, for upsetting clients. They are hiring skilled dittos from another source, starting tonight.
Meanwhile, you have ongoing cases. Our normal routine had gone completely off-kilter. Instead of collapsing into bed, I headed for my kiln unit and lay down while Nell thawed several blanks for imprinting. I looked away as they slid into warming trays, doughlike flesh puffing and coloring as millions of tiny achilles catalysis cells began their brief, vigorous pseudolives.
I completed the contract. There are no quibbles. Wammaker noticed that you were abrupt with her this morning, and subsequently refused her calls. That could have put you in a position of strength, psychologically speaking. She may worry that she provoked you once too often, perhaps losing your services for good.
I felt no desperate need to keep working for the maestra. I said the job is done. Her offer is our top-standard fee, plus ten percent for a confidential consultation early this afternoon.
Too many random currents surging in your brain. Top-standard rate plus thirty. Take it or leave it. Shall I also continue preparing an ebony? Maybe he can finish with Wammaker early and get home in time to help. An urgent. From someone named Ritu Lizabetha Maharal. Do you know this woman?
Advanced embedding details, examples, and help! Albert Morris, private investigator, is his own sidekick as he attempts to uncover the murderer of a prominent imprinting research scientist.
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