The Machinery of Light
Read The Machinery of Light Online
Authors: David J. Williams
Praise for David J. Williams
“David J. Williams writes on the finest edge of science fiction. The Autumn Rain novels are driving and relentless, full of rock ’em sock ’em cyber warfare, space commandos, cutthroat politics and one stunning reversal after another. Strap yourself in. These books start fast and never let up.”
—J
EFF
C
ARLSON
, author of
Plague WarPraise for
THE MIRRORED HEAVENS“Williams’s first novel delivers a powerful, rapid-fire SF adventure/intrigue story with echoes of cyberpunk. This stellar hard SF debut with hopes of sequels belongs in most SF collections.”
—Library Journal
“Slam-bang action and realpolitik speculations.”
—
Sci Fi Weekly“A crackling cyberthriller. This is Tom Clancy interfacing Bruce Sterling. David Williams has hacked into the future.”
—S
TEPHEN
B
AXTER
, author of the Manifold series“The Mirrored Heavens
is a complex view of global politics in time of crisis. Williams understands that future wars will be fought as much on-line as off. It’s also rousing adventure with breathless, non-stop action—Tom Clancy on speed. And you will
not
be able to guess the ending.”—N
ANCY
K
RESS
, author of the Probability trilogy“Explodes out the gate like a sonic boom and never stops. Adrenaline bleeds from Williams’s fingers with every word he hammers into the keyboard. The razors of
The Mirrored Heavens
would eat cyberpunk’s old-guard hackers and cowboys as a light snack.”—P
ETER
W
ATTS
, Hugo-nominated author of
Blindsight“The
Mirrored Heavens
presents an action-jammed and audacious look at a terrifyingly plausible future.”—L. E. M
ODESITT
Jr., author of the Saga of Recluse series“The
Mirrored Heavens
is a twenty-first-century
Neuromancer
set in a dark, dystopian future where nothing and no one can be trusted, the razors who rule cyberspace are predators and prey, and ordinary human life is cheap. It starts out at full throttle and accelerates all the way to the end.”—J
ACK
C
AMPBELL
, author of the Lost Fleet series“The
Mirrored Heavens
has almost non-stop action. … [It] seems the verbal equivalent of a first-person shooter video game. The action is hard-hitting, as well as highly destructive and widely fatal. … The work … evokes some of the best of cyberpunk.”—Blogcritics
Magazine“David J. Williams’s
The Mirrored Heavens
is a definite frontrunner for my ‘Unexpected Surprise of the Year’ Award. If Robert Ludlum, Tom Clancy, and William Gibson had ever teamed up to write a book, this is the sort of thing they would have come up with.”—Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist
“Calling to mind Clint Eastwood and Dirty Harry …
Mirrored Heavens
’s action is wild and relentless. …
Mirrored Heavens
cleaves closely enough to the cyberpunk canon to be clearly identified with it, while departing from it sharply enough to refresh and renew its source.”—Seattle Times
Praise for
THE BURNING SKIES
“[Williams] is standing toe to toe with Richard Morgan at his best.”
—Rescued By Nerds
“I loved it! …
The Burning Skies
is a great blend of military science fiction and cyberthriller that should appeal to fans of Richard Morgan.”—Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist, 8 out of 10
“About as perfect of a middle book as you could ask for. … [The] perfect mix of physics, technology, and action.”
—MentatJack
“If any Hollywood producer is reading this please do take up this series and think of it as a cross between
The Matrix, Star Wars
and
The Spy Game
. David J. Williams is a terrific writer and his vision is definitely one which is vastly different from what is being currently offered on the SF market scene. His books are the kinds which are truly made for the big screen … and with the dramatic ending in
The Burning Skies
… you’ll be shaking with anticipation for the third book to see how it all ends.”—Fantasy Book Critic
BY DAVID J. WILLIAMS
THE AUTUMN RAIN TRILOGY
THE MIRRORED HEAVENS
THE BURNING SKIES
THE MACHINERY OF LIGHT
To the Muses
For carrying me through
The Earth-Moon System on the Eve of World War Three
Flash Priority: Control to Senior Handlers
How then to do justice to such sketches? Start by saying that they were imperfect representations of imperfect things. They were flesh that wants to live reduced to ink or keystrokes—or just to memory ground beneath the mill of time. Yet those images, they might survive that flesh … that memory may yet evade the oblivion of eons, become instead the foundation for the tales that flow from old to young to ancient in endless migration across the chains of generation all the way to when the arks of the third planet scatter before the ravaging sun, when the descendants of apes watch the very concept of the years melt in flame behind them. Phrase the words just so, write them just right, and maybe they’ll make it that far. Maybe they’ll do justice to what really went down: the two twenty-second-century superpowers that watched each other across endless steppes and ocean—that feared and hated each other, that built arsenals that spanned the globe and more, looking down upon our planet from on high in space.
Space
. For even as the radio signals from the first Cold War echoed on the fringes of the Milky Way and sped toward the galaxy’s heart—even as the transmissions from Sputnik and Soyuz raced out into the endless parsecs to join forever with those of Gemini and Apollo … the spark of conflict that set those vessels in motion flared anew in an hour when our race’s promise
and
our race’s tragedy surged together in a collision that shattered across the shards of time, leaving in its wake only this poor substitute for the real thing, babbled by a madman long gone on the sheerest midnight, riding astride that which might comprise the story of Autumn Rain, tales of pandemonium and glory, sketches of the after to end all others, liquid words flung down from the sky, absorbing all tears, frozen in the ground for all of winter, yet pregnant with the possibility of coming forth one day someday into eternal spring …
NFO
C
OM
INTELLIGENCE
22:05 GMT 10.01.2110
FROM:
CONTROL
TO:
ALL SENIOR HANDLERS
CC:
PRESIDENT STEPHANIE MONTROSE
FLASH PRIORITY FLASH PRIORITY FLASH PRIORITY
>
PRESIDENT HARRISON IS DEAD
>
PRESIDENT MONTROSE HAS ASSUMED COMMAND OF ALL U.S. FORCES
>TEXT AS FOLLOWS:
PREEMPTIVE STRIKE AGAINST EURASIAN COALITION UNDERWAY
While we have every confidence that the integrity of our zone/net infrastructure will be maintained intact during the destruction of the Coalition’s military capability, each of you must be prepared to operate in isolation should the eventuality arise. It is therefore necessary to familiarize you with the overall contours of our calculations. Three factors are paramount.
The Eurasian Coalition:
We anticipate that our DE/KE strikes will combine with our superior zone capabilities to deliver rapid and overwhelming advantage against the East. Establishing control of the Moon early will be critical, along with all libration points. In addition, the Coalition itself is just that: a coalition, and this can be turned to our advantage, as substantial fault lines exist between the Russian and Chinese nets, along with much mutual suspicion.
SpaceCom:
The partnership between InfoCom and SpaceCom has been instrumental in Montrose’s securing of the presidency/the zone’s executive node. That said, we must regard this alliance as temporary at best. All SpaceCom agents within your respective purviews should be monitored in anticipation of eventual termination; orders for this could come at any time, possibly before the cessation of combat with the Eurasians.