Palimpsest: a collection of short prose

Before you is a collection of short prose by a modern Scottish science fiction writer, author of the novels "Acelerando" and "Singularity Sky". The small volume of the book actually shelters the entire range of styles and ideas with which the author has been fruitfully working in recent years. Here you will find alternative post-apocalyptic faces of the Earth, where the Cold War continues in the entourage of Lovecraftian nightmares or masters the two-dimensional geography of Earth 2.0 in the Small Magellanic Cloud, and close-range science fiction with its climate changes that bother Edinburgh gopniks, and the dangers of state regulation of cable networks, and even a "scientific article" about space spam. The most important work, the title of which gives rise to the entire collection, is a tribute to Asimov's "The End of Eternity." A story about attempts to regulate the history of civilization for its own good, and in the end - cruel exploitation and struggle against those who, forbidding humanity to look towards the distant stars, at the same time ruthlessly manipulate the lives of people and the entire Solar System. "Palimpsest" is a story of truly geological proportions, which unfolds literally from the beginning of the world's existence to its very end.