Whates, Ian (ed) - Paradox / Уэйтс, Йен (ред) - Парадокс [2014, EPUB, ENG]

Catching Rays novelette by David L. Clements The Big Next short fiction by Pat Cadigan Baedeker's Fermi short fiction by Adam Roberts Zeta Reticuli short fiction by Paul Cornell The Ambulance Chaser short fiction by Tricia Sullivan Lost to Their Own Devices short fiction by Adrian Tchaikovsky In the Beginning short fiction by Gerry Webb The Trail of the Creator, the Trial of Creation novelette by Paul Di Filippo Stella by Starlight short fiction by Robert T. Jeschonek and Mike Resnick Fermi's Doubts short fiction by George Zebrowski Audiovisionary short fiction by Stephanie Saulter Aether short fiction by Robert Reed The End of the World short fiction by Keith Brooke and Eric Brown The Worldmaker short fiction by Rachel Armstrong Atonement, Under the Blue-White Sun short story by Mercurio D. Rivera

“Life has had to learn to defend itself against the planet’s random geological savagery.”

– Arthur C. Clarke

He told me who he was and where he was from, this short stocky man with a high-pitched voice. I listened because my thoughts had been drifting his way for some years, and he seemed to know as much. “It’s the look of you,” he said. “You wear a disappointment in your face that wants me to tell you.” I had long imagined cultures beyond our star, who might free me of life’s tiresome cosmic enigma, where I would stand in the vastness and ask, “Does anyone out here know anything about it all?” The brutality of human failures across our lost civilizations had cast a frozen shadow over my life; to look back or beyond my time seemed a useless luxury, yet I could not resist doing so. What was this interior region of personality in which we came to self-awareness? Other forms of intelligent life, equal to seeking purpose in the void, might know more and be merciful enough to tell me. . . .