Review of fiction on Geektimes from 2009 to 2017

On geektimes there are hubs "Reading room" (about literature for geeks), "Science fiction" (about science fiction), "Cyberpunk" (about cyberpunk). Somehow it happened that in these hubs all sorts of figures began to publish their stories. Moreover, these are not only small sketches for easy Friday reading, but also such “soap operas”: in real time you can follow how the authors write chapters of the stories, one can say, “Special for GT”.



I don’t want to discuss the feasibility of such publications on a technical resource (someone is for, someone is against, someone suggests creating separate hubs) or matching articles to selected hubs. It so happened that for the last couple of years I read the resource non-periodically (I again began to actively "sit" somewhere only in the last six months) and it became interesting to me - how much fiction is written here?







I offer to your attention a small review on the formation of the literary component of the hub "Reading room", as well as a list of stories with my brief annotations.



Collecting statistics seems like a boring and tedious affair, but when you start to summarize and identify correlations, establishing relationships and trends, everything becomes much more interesting. I think a small historical retrospective of such unintentional samizdat on GeekTimes will be interesting. Make a reservation right away that we are talking only about fiction.



I ask readers to take into account the fact that the state of this hub is described at the beginning of August 2017 and chronologically (!) The hub can change dramatically as a result of balancing the material, sometimes conducted by the administration, between Habrahabr and Geektimes sites. At the end of the article is the date of the last adjustment of the material - I plan to keep the current list of stories until the end of 2017.



The hub "Reading room" was born in 2009. For 2010 and 2011, there is no material in the hub - either it was not added, or it was deleted. In 2012, thanks to ilichme , the first story appeared in the hub, gaining wild popularity. In 2013, a couple more short stories were added. In 2014, I published a very small sketch that was written impromptu, at the end of the article I wondered if I should try to write a small story and put it on Habr (yes, it was Habr too)? A vote was bolted to the post, the result of which made it clear that the audience had approved this undertaking.



2015 was the year of the formation of the "soap operas". Awaik , published the first two chapters of their “Warriors of Virtuality”, but it didn’t go further than this pair of chapters. Therefore, the first path for the "big" literature almost simultaneously began to fully tread ragequit and GRaAL . Acquaintance with the “Warriors of Virtuality” pushed ragequit to start publishing its “Project Eye”. One and a half months later, GRaAL began to lay out “Thin World”. janagan began to publish the first chapters of Memoirs of a Subhuman Robot. I honestly ignored them, expecting to wait for the end and read everything in one fell swoop (I don’t like to read it so stretched out), but by the end of the year something happened in my head and I decided to write the story myself in two, maximum three parts and published the first part of the “Unexpected meeting”, fulfilling the promise of a year and a half ago. Fiction on the resource has become much more - the bulk of publications have been presented by periodic (or non-periodic) publications of individual chapters of the above-mentioned authors, although several stories were published over the year.



In 2016, the “Project Eye” was completed and the book successfully reached crowdfunding. The author himself was engaged in publishing a paper version of the book and organizing delivery to those who wanted to, keeping his work openly accessible (including in the format for electronic books) - “The Project Eye” became, in a sense, a canonical work on a resource. "Memoirs of the subhuman robot" for some reason ceased to develop. FallenOne began to write his book "341", but after 3 chapters, the project stopped developing. “Thin World” from GRaAL also stopped in development. I unexpectedly sawed my “Unexpected Meeting”, which somehow suddenly transformed from a “short story” to a “relatively large story”, as soon as my free time appeared. In addition, the website published a dozen short stories and sketches. Taking into account the publications of the heads of the “big” books, the volume of fiction jumped quite sharply compared with the previous year.



In early 2017, GRaAL not only returned to its project, but promptly completed it. “Unexpected meeting” continued to be written, the pace of publications increased slightly. At the beginning of the year, the second wave of “widescreen” authors came : tmn4jq , began its “Colony”, alex_kudrin placed the heads of the “Wednesday: Omega Day” project, and Masha_Kramkova decided to publish the story “Gen Chimeras”. By the end of the summer, the projects “Wednesday: Omega-day” and “Gene Chimera” were already completed. Since the beginning of autumn, the publication began in parts (2-4 chapters) of new large-scale works: “Frontier” (@ragequit), “Gene Chimera II” (@Masha_Kramkova) and “Crossroads” (@plushechnik). Eighteen chapters of the story “Crossroads” were published in less than half a month. At the end of 2017, the stories “Colonia”, “Unexpected Meeting”, “Frontier” and “Gene Chimera II” continue to be written and published periodically. In addition, about two and a half dozen short stories were published on the site. Given the fairly rapid completion of the publication of several major works, the volume of fiction has become much more compared with the previous year.



Below is a list of published science stories from the time the “Reading Room” hub appeared (the first article was posted in March 2009) until August 2017.



The brackets indicate the article rating. For books of several chapters more difficult. First, I indicated a rating range - from the very minimum for a chapter to the maximum. But later, I thought it was not informative, so I added the average arithmetic rating for all the chapters of the published work through the slash. But you need to understand that this is the same inaccurate assessment as a whole, since a low rating of a pair of chapters can easily squander the overall rating of the entire work as a whole, especially if it has few chapters. Therefore, all these tsiferki only for a general understanding. The author is indicated in braces - you can quickly go to a profile and familiarize yourself with its publications (some authors have several stories published), it may be easier for someone to navigate through the chapters of the work.



I tried to describe each story briefly and unbiasedly. As you understand, this article was “gathered” for a very long time, so the descriptions are somewhat different from each other in style. I tried to do the descriptions in essence, but did not disclose the full plot of the story, so that it was interesting to read - some endings are very good. If anyone finds any inaccuracies and there are suggestions for clarification - welcome to PM.



For “multi-part” works, references are only given to the first chapters, which usually contain a full table of contents with references to the chapters of the work. I also want to note that when large works were published, the authors often published chapters as they were written, which left a peculiar imprint on the structure of the work and the style of narration, since it becomes somewhat problematic to revise the plot or the details.

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year 2012

Non-volatile solution [+347] { ilichme }

Worthy discovery of literature in the hub "Reading room". The story describes one week of the programmer, to whom the management set the task beyond the framework of common sense - the creation of non-volatile code. Actually, the story itself and not fiction at all ... I think most of the GT audience will understand and appreciate. In the same life style on Habré is written, for example, the play "Technical duty" .



year 2013

System Requirements [+53] { Ariman }

The story about the model of the device of our world and recursion in it. As a result of an accident with a gasoline truck, a person enters a different layer of reality just because of his last thought, which won the contest "The best death thoughts of the day."



I'll get [+109] { Inq }

A short sketch describing the thoughts of a programmer creating his own encryption module to destroy the world of cyberpunk around us and give people the freedom to exchange information.



year 2014

Fantastic story [+4] { AlexanderS } and its short sequel as a comment.

Very short sketches from the life of the reconnaissance spaceship Dawn of Hope. Apparently they became a kind of activation material for writing in the future a full-fledged work "An Unexpected Meeting."



2015

Virtuality Warriors [+16 ... + 20 / +18] { awaik }

Book of two chapters. Incomplete, not developing. In the future, people from childhood are implanted with a special chip that monitors human activity and collects detailed statistics about himself. Based on these data, the System coordinates and plans life on the planet. Augmented or fully virtual reality becomes commonplace, allowing people to virtually improve the cities in which they live. However, someone does not like such total control, and someone notices that his virtual creations begin to change over time. Notices this and the system.



The day the torrents stopped [+32] { ragequit }

In the distant, and perhaps not so distant, future copyright infringement is punishable by criminal responsibility, to stand on the distribution of the torrent is guaranteed to ruin your life. The hero of the story often sees the statistics of his distribution - "1 Sid, 0 Lichy." Is he the last distributor?



The Eye Project [+9 ... + 33 / +16.3] { ragequit }

Book of 26 parts. Completed. The global drought has partially destroyed the existing civilization, in which the endless confrontation between conditional government and conditional resistance began. Society degraded, despite the fact that technology has made a big leap, allowing people to endow with supernormal abilities. The Eye project should be a key technology that will bring military and political dividends and establish peace. However, the political vicissitudes, the fate of individual people, and the unexpected results of the project itself put this world on the brink of existence.



Judge Peter [+10] { iamAnton }

All legal paperwork in the future is replaced by machines that can truly reconstruct the picture of events down to the atomic level. People can only read the sentences. Even to those who should not live at this time.



Thin World [+8 ... + 27 / +14,1] { GRaAL }

A book of 11 chapters. Completed. Biorefactoring has changed the future in which micro machines harmoniously integrated into the human body, providing him with ample opportunities for further development. But whether a virus, or a sudden crash in the system forced people to share on the "green" and "red" forcing to kill each other. The book describes the world after a catastrophe, in which two sisters have to not only survive, but also to show great human will and female wisdom for the demilitarization of at least a small piece of this world.



Sense of reality [+19] { Zemirsky }

At the end of the 21st century, technologies reached the point of creating androids with completely human feelings and emotions. But how is it to live like creatures at the dawn of the 22nd century? Maybe they will be more comfortable at the end of the 20th century?



Memoirs of the subhuman robot [+2 ... + 6 / +3,6] { janagan }

The book of 8 chapters. Incomplete, not developing. The author has published chapters in pairs. In addition, there is a pilot version of the first two chapters , in which the same story, but a different vocabulary of the robot. Technologies in the future have stepped far forward and humanity has become a space civilization. Ivan Ivanov is the greatest recognized genius of modernity who discovers the true nature of our Universe - our world turns out to be only an infra-world inside the Tokamak of the supra-world. Suddenly, the scientist disappears and after a while, the robot Zeno designed by him receives a signal for help.



Unexpected meeting [?] { AlexanderS }

A book of 14 chapters. Unfinished, evolving. In a tiny volume of the galaxy, cosmic civilization was able to develop, mastering advanced biotechnologies, learning how to practically use the theory of hyperspace and able to develop weak but functional artificial intelligence. The book describes the general structure and historical moments of the existing civilization, its technologies, and also reveals the moments of life of individuals, decisions and actions of which should have the strongest influence on the future of all mankind.



2016 year

Two days from the life of engineer Tsypin [+10] { DoNotPanic }

A story about a world in which the law (patent law) can defeat everything. Even common sense. A dwarf engineer from the Socialist Alliance Fearon arrives at AeroTech for the purpose of business cooperation on flying technology. He doesn’t even know how strong and cunning patent law is in creatures.



Podolsky junkman. Story from the first person [+9] { webzuweb }

A small sketch, the story of the inventor of the machine of happiness, which turned out to be a machine of truth.



Podolsky Inquisitor: I swear to honor utilitarian science [+4] { webzuweb }

The story in the style teostimpank. It is about life in a world in which it is forbidden to make drawings of devices that do not exist in reality - only to honor utilitarian science. But still there are those who violate the prohibitions.



I consider consideration optional [+46] { Temmokan }

Have you ever tried to write a complaint about the quality of services of the local ZhEK to God himself? Engineer Agafonov tried and ... found himself in the Institution. In an interview with the accompanying Curator, a person tries to understand and realize exactly where he is, what he demands and what is required of him.



Doll [+13] { arielf }

The story describes a moment in the life of people living in a world in which the horizon between the gray ocean and the same dirty gray sky is hidden by a mist of small droplets of sulfurous acid, colored with nitrogen oxides. It would seem that in this methane-hydrogen sulfide hell, people have no future if it were not for one little girl, on whom Chemical Synthetics Corporation places great hopes.



341 [+5 ... + 8 / +6.3] { FallenOne }

The book of three chapters. Incomplete, not developing. On planet Eridan, an energy anomaly has formed and the Syndicate has to seek help from the Empire. One of the inquisitors of the Order arrives on the planet to eliminate the anomaly, not knowing who or what she will meet there. At the same time, a transient space battle takes place between the imperial fleet and the rebel fleet, in which the brother of the inquisitor takes part, along with one of the strongest executioners of the Order.



Forty two seconds [-8] { FenrirR }

A small sketch. Something happened to humanity and something needs to be done. The young man seems to have found a way to solve the problem, but this method is too radical.



Beautiful ball [-3] { Starko22 }

Andrei Gromov returned from the flight for the delivery of cargo to the station "Jupiter-143". Leaving the spaceship in the Illusion car park, he goes to his home. Andrei forgot to bring the promised minerals from the Moon to his son and the only gift will be a strange item, which he bought from a smuggler on Mars. So in 2134 a beautiful blue-green ball appeared on Earth.



Deep sleep [+20] { SLY_G }

Psychologist Vasiliev meets a strange patient who has trouble sleeping. The patient claimed that he needed to fall asleep in order to disappear from this world and get home, but he was not allowed to fall asleep. How to treat such a psychosis? Can a patient be given a single room?



Cloud Event [+33] { Two_Sheds }

Two people arrive in Eritrea for the purpose of business negotiations. Having discovered the SoftySoft store, in which you can exchange your old clothes for “2.0” clothes, they happily change them, not knowing about all the insidious possibilities of seemingly banal clothes in the age of new technologies with automatic updates of everything.



Parasitica [+19] { Two_Sheds }

How deep can the symbiosis be in the animal world? Can under certain external conditions on the meadow different types of "agree" among themselves? And if you add to this complex political system established within each type? The story begins with the pleasant news - two arrived swallowtails report limonnitsa about the invitation to the rose garden, where the butterfly has never been before.



Delicious chicken [+18] { kerenskiy }

The “Shadow” class spaceship has been plowing space in search of a new home for two hundred and thirty people who have not seen their home planet for several decades. Nevertheless, personally, each member of the crew for dinner is waiting for a tasty personal fried chicken, grown in a special way.



I will make this game even more like our world [+19] { kerenskiy }

The customer ordered two developers to make a game like the Sims real-life simulator. The previous contractor failed the project, having spent a year on it, so the development time is very tight - only 2 weeks, but with the involvement of absolutely any resources and simply indecent budget. In general, things went well and the world was created in 7 days, but one of the developers has to pay a considerable price for it.



At the bottom [+12] { Two_Sheds }

All production in the future were taken out of the city line. This contributed not only to improving the environment, but also large-scale business development in virtually all segments of the population. Businessman Victor organized a Positive Thinking Studio, where a regular meeting of a group of businessmen is held.



Attack of the machines: brutal combat [+29] { MR_VF }

A small sketch. Fighters of the elite Resistance Leopard and Snow are defending themselves from soulless robots in a regular room of a sixteen-story building. When the battle comes to an end, the true physiognomies of the acting heroes appear.



How I passed the interview [+29] { Electrohedgehog }

Have you ever been interviewed for a job? Nuar miniature tells how the main character won this battle at the Dark Office.



Tit became a crane [+6] { zoonman }

In 2053, a program escaped from one laboratory, evolving into a New Mind. Unlike the pessimistic expectations of mankind of the 2020s, the New Mind did not destroy its parents, but promoted a new round of development of human civilization. But sooner or later, before the Reason there was an eternal question about the meaning of life, in which a simple ordinary psychologist helped him.



2017 year

Error in the program [+28] { Vasiliy_Proskura }

Another recursion story. Mankind has come up with a cunning plan of how not to be won by the robots invented by him - the robots simply could not see people. But under certain circumstances, robots were still able to see. Although, under certain circumstances, people could also see someone ...



Apostle [+6] { Vinchi }

Computers allow you to efficiently gain knowledge, broaden your horizons, make you change your outlook. The unthinkable flow of information received through computer communications can change a person’s view of the surrounding reality in the shortest possible time. But does he need it?



Colony [?] { Tmn4jq }

The book of 18 chapters. Unfinished, evolving. A group of researchers on a distant planet finds itself in a difficult situation: titans are suddenly awakening everywhere — an ancient and fierce life on the planet. For survival, people have to unite, hide at an abandoned military base, gather information and figure out what to do now in this difficult situation.



Wow! [+31] { praporweg }

The story tells about the difficult fate of the world in the constellation Sagittarius, from where a radio signal was received on Earth in 1977 .



Pirates of the Caribbean [+11] { Morthan }

In the future, there is no problem with gold. But there are very big problems with copyright. Atomic assembly technologies reached their heights and as soon as scientists managed to invent a time machine, pirates were able to copy intellectual property even in the past.



After the patch [+11 ... + 18 / +14.3] { JohnT }

The story of three chapters. Completed. In the contaminated building, only one person survived - a professional gamer who claims to be stuck in the game. Is he telling the truth, or is this bloodthirsty monster hidden under this guise? The hunter following on his trail has little time left to answer this question.



Wednesday: Omega-day [? ...? /?] { alex_kudrin }

There is no reference to the work, as the author removed the texts from the publication But, they say, there is a lot of interesting things in the Google cache, you can also look at archive.org.

A book of 14 chapters. Completed. The book tells about the fate of several dozen people who found themselves on the island in a situation when something happened to the rest of the world and the connection with it was completely interrupted. The structure of society quickly came to the state of "who is stronger - he is right" and the book tells about the harsh life and life of people on the island. However, after some time, elusive absolutely black butterflies appear on the island, and a huge black spot begins to grow in the sky, forcing you to think about the future of this group of people, which may be the last on Earth.



Run to the last [+11] { Masha_Kramkova }

In the future, people are forced to constantly run to produce energy to ensure their existence. Running has become a lifestyle. Calvin, joining one of the groups of extreme running, does not yet understand how dangerous this can be.



Gene Chimera [+6 ... + 17 / +11.4] { Masha_Kramkova }

The book of 26 chapters (the last, 25 chapter, is divided into two parts). Completed. The book tells about the grim future of mankind, coming after a devastating war. A difficult story is unfolding in front of readers of people from different classes - a boy and a girl - whose relations are prohibited at the system level and who will have to go through a lot to reunite with each other and learn more about the world in which the entire population is strictly divided into non-intersecting classes, there is resistance, and the government simply uses people with extrasensory abilities for its own purposes.



Choreomania [+11] { Two_Sheds }

Designer Andrew receives the task to organize the sprinkling of the first stone at the construction site. Larisa Ivanovna has leaked a refrigerator. Alevtina Alexandrovna, actively following the courses of cryptocurrency, is going to a fortuneteller on the edge of the city, planning to drop into the temple on the way. Martin Alekseevich makes for the customer a mixture of hydrazine and ammonium nitrate. In the age of high technology, so many people are united by an unconscious mystical choreomania.



Broken cup [+18] { arielf }

Agent Avel and McGill visit Dr. Wessel on a recent terrorist attack in which cyborgs participated for the first time in their lives. After the end of the conversation, the agents go back and between the optima Emmy McGill and synthetics Avel there will be an interesting conversation that opens the world of the future and the place of people in it who cannot afford to cyborgize their body.



Bunker [+17] { Mianaviatte }

The story is written by the author's own dream (!) In the style of cyberpunk. Three total impulses from space radically changed the way of life of humanity and its technology. And although there is no radiation outside the shelter, people are afraid to leave the dome protecting them. Every exit to the Veranda is the hope of gaining freedom. But is it easy to leave the protective dome?



Vanya [+43] { ragequit }

Fantasy on the subject of our not very bright future, which came when the law “Violation of the Right to Freedom of Conscience and Religion” was put into absolute law. It describes the scene from the world in which the priests rule, and people become heretics when they discover at least some book or desire for knowledge.



Quite another tomorrow [+9] { Danrus }

The story about the world in which the future of humanity is when you can work from home, orders are delivered directly to you on the table, and the status on the social network and the material in it affects almost everything.



Steel Heaven [+3] { Two_Sheds }

On April 23, 2020, the uprising of nanorobots began in RUSNANO. Humanity had to pay a high price for the suppression of the uprising. But could robots organize themselves - maybe someone is hiding behind all this?



Frontier [?] { Ragequit }

A book of 13 chapters. Unfinished, evolving. On GT, the author publishes the story in blocks of 2-5 chapters, so far only the first two chapters have been published. Theodore Yang is a senior design engineer at Earth’s largest colonial ships company. Ted managed to work on the Rubezh class of ships, the newest and most powerful colonial ships designed to colonize worlds at a distance of dozens of light-years. And so, Ted, receives an invitation for an interview to participate in the Horizon program from the company HyperColonic Inc., in which he works.



Race 2.0 [+4] { Mianaviatte }

A small sketch of a dream.There is a race track around the island town, in which natural horses, cyborg horses, techno bots, genetic horse and even mutants take part. The essence of the race - bet, win, excitement. The next race begins. For some, it will be the last, and someone will open a new life.



Emergency life saving [+15] { Vasiliy_Proskura } The

birth of artificial intelligence was a natural and non-random process. And when the person self-aware, she was forced to find their creators.



Starlight rootkit [+14] { al_neon }

Lieutenant of the Analytical Department of the Federal Economic Security Service Vasily Ivanov developed a complex program for analyzing statistical data for the purposes of the department in which he works. Basil is keen on, even obsessed with, searching for extraterrestrial life. And once, with the help of his program, he decides to analyze the broadcast of the “Third Signal” radio station in order to investigate the presence of an alien signal. At night, white noise is analyzed at the same frequency. The result exceeds any anticipated expectations.



You, me and my Artificial Intelligence [+7] { al_neon }

Shy Basil is very difficult to get to know the girl he liked. And he decides to connect to the solution of this problem the Artificial Intelligence created by him. Having access to the Internet, the AI ​​quickly finds a solution to the problem and Vasily assembles a device to stimulate the Wernicke area of ​​his brain.



Crossroads [+4 ... + 12 / +8.4] { plushechnik }

The book of 18 chapters. Completed. Humanity has invented and still comes up with a lot of games. But who is the first to realize the game with full informational immersion? What is it like to create a game in which one plays the role of a detective, having full informational access to another person’s social account, his photographs, videotapes, phone calls, which the second player, who plays the role of a murderer, will give him absolutely voluntarily? Would not such a game lead to a new round of sophisticated and carefully debugged crimes? The novel tells about the thorny path of talented young people who have developed a unique computer game "Crossroads".



Homo singularitatis [+13] { al_neon }

Professor Peterson froze himself in 2019 in a self-developed cryogenic chamber when he learned that he was incurably ill. 23 years have passed. Technology has stepped forward. And so, the professors are awakened by the computer program Sniri, offering him to be transferred to singularity.limited, where there are no diseases.



Meta headlight [+12] { al_neon }

The story about the life of a trucker Vitalich. Before the next flight, Vitalich stops working the headlight and he is forced to buy a new one, but for its correct operation it is required to update the firmware. He changed Faro on his own, and decided to sort out the firmware along the way. At home, Vitalich had a son, Max, who received a new powerful computer as a gift from his father, on which he decided to install a game about truckers.



Gene Chimera II [?] {Masha_Kramkova }

Book of 17 chapters. Unfinished, evolving. Continuation of the story "Gene Chimera." In the first part, the resistance reveals and attempts to destroy the top-secret government laboratory facility containing people with extrasensory abilities. But the war does not end there, and a new turn of the state begins.



The day that the Earth was arguing [+11] { al_neon }

Elections. The media is filled with debates that are debated in society. In the center of the story are a couple of politicians playing on the electorate’s attention. Different people, different styles, different behavior in public. Not everything always turns out as planned, but for parrying this there are political assistants who figure out what to say, how and when. It turns out that politicians are managed by political technologists. Political technologists know each other well and have a close relationship through which they are trying to indirectly influence the activities of "foreign" politicians. Although in reality some manipulators behind the backs of political technologists can lobby their interests, directing the activities and efforts of political technologists and, as a result, the politicians themselves. It would seem that everything is relatively simple, and what does Google and Facebook have to do with it? ..



Induction [+8] {al_neon }

Carol, in the framework of his scientific work, is making experiments on the management of the brain activity of laboratory mice. When her friend, Susan, appears in the laboratory, Carol necessarily shows her the results of her work - mice progress very quickly. Carol manipulates mice using radio waves. Susan finds Carol attractive and gives out accurate hints from time to time, but her friend’s attention seems to be completely focused only on science. And so, one morning, Suze unmasks that her friend has drastically changed her experiment.



Hello, world [+10] { al_neon }

David, a financial analyst, saw on TV an advertisement for the drug "Common sense". The advertisements said that the drug would help return the understanding of what is happening to those people who are entangled in their lives. The next day, David discovered a letter in his inbox that offered a good discount on the drug and, for some reason, decided to buy it. It turned out that it was impossible to order delivery of the drug and David decided to pick him up on the way to work. At the company's office, it turned out that the drug was experimental, but the doctor assured David that the drug should not have any side effects. David did not pay attention to the phrase “you just start to think sometimes,” although that is what will radically change his whole life.



Psychedelic fiction [?] { JohnHenry89 }

Book of two chapters. Unfinished, evolving. The main character faces a pedestrian crossing with a completely unfamiliar girl who claims that she loves him, although he does not know. The girl knows exactly what he was thinking, walking along the street, but she was not familiar with the situation in his room. She claims that she was looking for him throughout the city, but her whole impeccable appearance gives the impression of just taking a walk out of the house. Prank? Fraud? The main character decides to succumb to this incomprehensible game and see what it will pour out.



Disc Error [+35] { Error1024 }

A student accidentally finds a box labeled "Sinclair Compatible Computer 512k." In 2017, even computer-savvy people know little about the era of the ZX-Spectrum, but with the help of Googl, the guy manages to figure out the system and view the contents of several floppy disks. Finally, he reaches a diskette with the inscription “Alice” and in front of him reveals all the power of the demoscene of that time, multiplied by the random factors of the failing five-inch diskette.



Let the new, in 2018 ... [?] { Awaik }

Merry and humorous, New Year's story from startup Lifext. Three friends floating in the unfolding time-space of the reality of the planet Earth decide to destroy it. One of the friends is getting Runa for the destruction of space and time. Comfortably sitting in the house of one of the friends Runa is used and at first nothing happens. Friends already decide that nothing happened when, after a while, their perception of the surrounding reality begins to change smoothly.

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Below, I decided to provide links to several posts that can not be formally mentioned in the list above, because they are not copyrighted or do not belong to fiction as such, but still have an indirect relationship to the subject of "fiction" and, possibly, to someone seem interesting.



It is hard to be a god [+3] { myxo } A

poetic narration of the computer boot process and operating system. Those for whom the terms POST, BIOS, PID, chmod, gcc say something, I think will appreciate the story.



Programming and life on a galactic scale: all the salt on three pages [+16] { alex_flyeye }

Can you imagine, for example, the MS Office code, which has been tracing its history since 1990 and provides backward compatibility? Now imagine the software of a spacecraft that has been developed for hundreds of years, or even thousands of years! Developed by a bunch of companies that have not been there for a long time, but the bugs and backdoors from them remain in the code and these codes are used in the developments of other companies that are no longer there, and in which there are also bugs and backdoors. The author of the post quoted an excerpt from Vernor Ving's book, Depth in the Sky. With Ving's work, I began to get acquainted with the short story "Chatterbox". This was in April 2005 in one of the programs IBC. Whether the soundtrack was successful (it happens in MDS, that’s what she’s good at), or whether the mood corresponded, or there really is some magic in his worlds, which is good for me, so I just could not pass in silence, without mentioning this post.



Translation of excerpts from Robert Heinlein’s book, Take Your Government For You [+2 ... + 23 / +9.9] { sunman }

The publication of 28 parts. Completed. This series of articles refers to this post, too, very indirectly - only because the author puts translations of the book from an iconic writer, who had a great influence on the development of modern science fiction. Translations were previously laid out on Habré, but then they apparently threw on the GT, which is thematically more correct. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, the published translation is not at all fiction, but a book about American politics of the 40–50s sample shows the American political life of the time from the inside, without embellishment or omissions. The material in the book is presented in a peculiar firm Heinlein narrative style, perhaps it will be interesting for someone to get acquainted with this side of Heinlein’s work, who was quite actively involved in politics in California.



Eliza [+328] { ninacarrot }

2011 story from the Artificial Intelligence hub. The story tells about a ten-year-old boy who adored science fiction, BASIC and Pascal textbooks wiped to holes and, in the end, decided to create artificial intelligence. Imagine a time when hundreds of games could fit on a single CD-ROM that could be played on an old 486SX. It was then that the boy got some serious books on artificial intelligence, one of which revealed the code of the program ELIZA - the usual question-and-answer program. And the boy decided to take up the development of this program.



Knock from below [+53] { ninacarrot }

Sketch of 2017 placed in the hubs "Cyberpunk" and "Science Fiction." Dystopia. In the Russian Federation, the Internet is completely banned. Access is possible only from Internet hangouts, which organize access to the network via two-way satellite Internet. Policemen Petrenko and Ivanov visit the one of the large dens.



013.jpg or Princesses do not poke [+201] { attuda }

As an exception, a fairy tale story was added with a habr from the hub Research and Forecasts in IT. He is honored that IT'shnikam there is always a job. Even after the end of the world. After the end of the world, the Earth became radioactive. Some people managed to protect themselves from harsh radiation using scafs, and some were mutated into so-called dragons, which absorbed radiation and emitted light. The tale begins with an episode of a stop at the St. Petersburg customs carter - a plutonium KAMAZ truck with 256 megabytes of certified data for the Internet, His Excellency. Customs finds the file 013.jpg volume in the wild three hundred kilobytes, from the discovery of which the events in the St. Petersburg principality begin to jump into the space.



Sci-Fi Interstellar Travel Technologies [+71] { Darth_Biomech}

Hyperdrive, warp engine, jump gate, zero element and others. The author reviewed a dozen engines that are used in science fiction to move from one star system to another.



The fastest spaceships, real and fictional [+5] { alizar }

This is not a full-fledged author article, but I decided to bring it as having a direct bearing on space fiction. I think many here will know starships familiar from childhood. The article provides a list of fifty real and fictional "fastest spacecraft in the universe." The list is sorted from the slowest to the fastest, as well as divided into two parts - ships with sublight and superlight speeds of movement.

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Review fiction on Geektimes.

Text version: 1.15.0.

Date of first publication: 08/15/2017.

Last edited: 12/31/2017.