The Light of Other Days

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But there was much agitation around him. The people here, the rat-hungry, ill-trained technicians and the fat, corrupt managers alike, were turning away from the launch. They were huddling around radio sets and palm-top televisions, jewel-like SoftScreens showing baffling images from America. Vitaly did not know the details, and did not care to know; but it was clear enough that Hiram Patterson had succeeded in his promise, or threat. Kate - Bobby's lover. Journalist who discovered the WormWood asteroid. Hates Hiram because Hiram hates her and is worried she'll take Bobby from him. Works for Hiram anyway...

As Kate Manzoni approached the OurWorld campus, she wondered if she had contrived to be a little more than fashionably just-late-enough for this spectacular event, so brightly was the Washington State sky painted by Hiram Patterson's light show.This book engaged me as much as any sci-fi book ever has. It is so timely and relevant that I am reminded of it constantly-- at work, at home, when watching tv or reading or (of course) surfing the internet.

I was going to ask you anyhow before the old fool jumped in. Come have dinner. And maybe we can have a little fun, get to know each other better…" The design of the Molniya satellites had been utterly ingenious. Korolev's great boosters were incapable of launching a satellite to geosynchronous orbit, that high radius where the station would hover above a fixed point on Earth's surface. So Korolev launched his satellites on elliptical eight-hour trajectories. With such orbits, carefully chosen, three Molniyas could provide coverage for most of the Soviet Union. For decades the U.S.S.R. and then Russia had maintained constellations of Molniyas in their eccentric orbits, providing the great, sprawling country with essential social and economic unity.It was very obvious to Vitaly that he was the oldest person here. The last survivor of the old days, perhaps. That thought gave him a certain sour pleasure. I grew up with enough bad pop-science shows. A wormhole is a shortcut through a fourth dimension. You have to cut a chunk out of our three-dimensional space and join it onto another such chunk.” She came out fighting. "Well, you startled me. Anyhow I know who you are." This was Bobby Patterson, Hiram's only son and heir—and a notorious sexual predator. She wondered how many other unaccompanied women this man had targeted tonight. After that Hiram had diversified. He had developed the world's first successful SoftScreen, a flexible image system based on polymer pixels capable of emitting multicolored light. With the success of the SoftScreen Hiram began to grow seriously rich. Soon his corporation, OurWorld, had become a powerhouse in advanced technologies, broadcasting, news, sport and entertainment.

Ans: "The Cheerful hearts" were cheerful once upon a time but now those people and memories with whom the cheerful hearts were associated are a thing of the past and hence no longer there and thus are now "broken". III. Answer these questions briefly.Answer: The poet’s “fond memories,” which bring him fleeting joy, turn bitter when they are replaced by an overwhelming sense of isolation. The time when the poet realises that his youth, his friends, and the time he spent sharing his love with those who have passed on are all behind him. All at once, the “happy memories” turn tragic. He sheds tears for the people he’s lost touch with or who are far away. After all the laughter and merriment, he feels as though he’s the only one left in a deserted banquet hall. This was a curious experience. The text reads like an Arthur C. Clarke novel (with all the failings and virtues this implies) as written by Steve Baxter (with all the failings and virtues that this implies). Since that's presumably exactly what it is, I guess I shouldn't have been so surprised by the effect, but somehow I'd expected something more of a stylistic amalgamation. With the music still playing around him—so artfully, subtly different from the original recording—Hiram said, "You aren't looking up into the sky, into space. Instead you are looking down, into the deepest structure of matter. A little after dawn, Vitaly Keldysh climbed stiffly into his car, engaged the SmartDrive, and let the car sweep him away from the run-down hotel. OurWorld's campus turned out to be a carpet of neat grass quadrangles separating three-story office buildings, fat, top-heavy boxes of blue glass held up by skinny little beams of reinforced concrete. It was ugly and quaint, 1990s corporate chic. The bottom story of each building was an open car lot, in one of which her car had parked itself.

But gadgets do, you know! Once it was the wheel, agriculture, ironmaking—inventions that took thousands of years to spread around the planet. But now it takes a generation or less. Think about the car, the television. When I was a kid computers were giant walk-in wardrobes served by a priesthood with punch cards. Now we all spend half our lives plugged into SoftScreens. And my gadget is going to top them all.…Well. You'll have to decide for yourself." He studied Kate. "Enjoy tonight. If this young waster hasn't invited you already, come to dinner, and we'll show you more, as much as you want to see. I mean it. Talk to one of the drones. Now, do excuse me.…" Hiram squeezed her shoulders briefly, then began to make his way through the crowd, smiling and waving and glad-handing as he went. Wormhole technology has advanced to the point where information can be passed instantaneously between points in the spacetime continuum. The wormhole technology is first used to send digital information via gamma rays, then developed further to transmit light waves. The media corporation that develops this advance can spy on anyone, anywhere it chooses. A logical development from the laws of space-time allows light waves to be detected from the past. This enhances the wormhole technology into a " time viewer" where anyone opening a wormhole can view people and events from any point throughout time and space. He laughed, pleased. "Well, that too. But I did want to be sure there was one intelligent person in among the air-head politicos and pretty-pretties who crowd out these events. Somebody who would be able to record this moment of history." Shaw produced several highly-regarded collections, including Ship of Strangers (a fix-up novel, 1978) and Cosmic Kaleidoscope (1979). His most famous short story is still fondly remembered today: the Hugo and Nebula nominee “Light of Other Days,” originally published in John W. Campbell’s Analog Science Fiction and Fact in August 1966. The central concept of ‘slow glass’— which slows down light so that it takes years or decades to pass through — was simple and enormously compelling, and Shaw returned to the idea several times, most notably in his 1972 fix-up novel of slow glass stories, Other Days, Other Eyes. Hiram's giant face loomed over the seething quantum foam. He snapped his fingers. The quantum foam disappeared, to be replaced by a single artifact, hanging in the darkness below their feet.The second part of the poem focuses on the speaker's memories of their friends who have passed away, comparing their loss to the falling leaves in winter. The speaker feels a sense of loneliness as if they are walking alone in a deserted banquet hall where the lights have gone out and the decorations have withered. Everyone else has left, and only the speaker remains. I loved the Jesus scene and the explanation of why the day darkened-- it's classic. Also, the search for answers that leads our hero to the extreme past (while most people become voyeurs) gives us the hope that even though history has and will repeat itself, life goes on, even if it's not how we might expect. Ans: One ‘fond’ memory of the poet is this recollection of the boyhood days. The speaker remembers the fond memories from past, replete with joy and the mirth, the tears and laughter that comes with merriment, the vim and vigour of the boyhood years that brings him momentary bliss. There are huge plot holes that don't make any sense. For example, a character is falsely charged with a crime and they can't prove she didn't do it. Even though they have this all-seeing WormCam technology that can even look into the past. They talk about looking over her shoulder when she supposedly committed the crime, but somehow they can't get close enough to see what she was actually doing? It doesn't make any sense. Years later, she is cleared of the charge because they've developed technology to read hard drives through the WormCam. That's rather complex. What's so hard about reading a computer screen? Ans: When the ‘fond memories’ that gives the poet momentary bliss are replaced by an overwhelming sense of loneliness, his fond memories turn bitter. The moment when the realisation dawns on the poet that his boyhood days, his friends and the words of love that he had shared and spent with those departed are now all a thing of the past. The ‘fond memories’ then, at once become sad. He mourns over his dead friends and his dearest ones who are very far away from him. He feels as though he is all alone in a banquet hall which is now deserted after all the mirth and the merry making.