The Shockwave Rider

Начало книги

People like me who are concerned to portray in fictional terms aspects of that foreign country, the future, whither we are all willy-nilly being deported, do not make our guesses in a vacuum. We are frequently—and in this case I am specifically—indebted to those who are analyzing the limitless possibilities of tomorrow with some more practical aim in view … as for instance the slim yet admirable hope that our children may inherit a world more influenced by imagination and foresight than our own.

The “scenario” (to employ a fashionable cliché) of The Shockwave Rider derives in large part from Alvin Toffler’s stimulating study Future Shock, and in consequence I’m much obliged to him.

J.K.H.B.

BOOK 1

THE BASIC STRAINING MANUAL

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY

Take ’em an inch and they’ll give you a hell.

DATA-RETRIVIAL MODE

The man in the bare steel chair was as naked as the room’s white walls. They had shaved his head and body completely; only his eyelashes remained. Tiny adhesive pads held sensors in position at a dozen places on his scalp, on his temples close to the corners of his eyes, at each side of his mouth, on his throat, over his heart and over his solar plexus and at every major ganglion down to his ankles.

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