Gypsy
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- US$9.99
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- US$9.99
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Since his debut in Terry Carr’s legendary Ace Specials of the 1980s, Carter Scholz has occupied an enviable, if demanding, position on the cutting edge of modern speculative literature (vulgarly called SF).
Proudly debuting in this volume, Gypsy is his first major work since his 2002 nuclear thriller Radiance. An interstellar adventure grounded in the hard science of accurate physics and biology, Gypsy soars far beyond the heliosphere of conventional science fiction. Jettisoning the easy warp-drives of fantasy and space opera, Scholz chronicles with chilling realism the epic voyage of a team of far-seeing scientists, who crowdsource a secret starship and abandon the doomed Earth for the Alpha Centauri system, our nearest stellar neighbor and last desperate chance. Heartbreak and hope collide in this moving and visionary tale.
Plus...
An epistolary story about a story, “The Nine Billion Names of God,” uses a classic SF text to deconstruct literary deconstruction itself, with hilarious results. In the wickedly droll “Bad Pennies,” a spy tasked with trashing a foreign economy testifies before a complacent Congress. Quietly furious, “The United States of Impunity” is an alarming look under the tent of today’s political sideshow. Adults only.
And Featuring: “Gear. Food. Rocks.”—our Outspoken Interview, in which a postmodern Renaissance man charts the synergies and dissonances of a career that embraces both literary and musical composition, reveals the hidden link between winemaking and deep space astronomy, and tells you how to steal his car.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This sardonic collection from the author of Radiance is a bracing cold-water shower for readers more familiar with the upbeat problem-solving spirit of classic science fiction. In the title story, a starship flees a deteriorating Earth for safe harbor in Alpha Centauri. Engineers on the ship awaken sporadically from their multi-decade hibernation to confront technological glitches that defy their scientific expertise. The satirical "Bad Pennies," about an economic scam that's designed to bring down an imaginary third-world country but proves amusingly counterproductive, makes a savvy companion piece to "The United States of Impunity," a scathing essay that relates the California energy crisis of 2000 1 to many of America's current economic and political problems. As Scholz reveals in the final piece, a freewheeling interview with Terry Bisson, he's a multifaceted artist who first became interested in science fiction when he realized it was "the nearest extant thing to modernism." This compilation will appeal to fans of thought-provoking parables.
