The chimes sounded, the speakers rustled with static before running through a litany of “doors closing” phrases: English, French, Russian, Urdu, Japanese, Kikuyu, Mandarin, Spanish. The engine spun, the wheels turned, the train jerked and swayed.
Inside, Petrovitch, face pressed uncomfortably against a glass partition, ribs tight against someone’s back, took shallow sips of breath and wondered again why he’d chosen the Metrozone above other, less crowded and more distant cities. He wondered why it still had to be like this, seven thirty-five in the morning, two decades after Armageddon.
By Walter Jon Williams
This Is Not a Game
Deep State
The Fourth Wall
Ambassador of Progress
Knight Moves
Hardwired
Voice of the Whirlwind
The Crown Jewels
House of Shards
Angel Station
Facets (collection)
Elegy for Angels and Dogs
Days of Atonement
Frankensteins and Foreign Devils (collection)
Aristoi
Metropolitan
Rock of Ages
Ten Points for Style
City on Fire
Destiny’s Way
Implied Spaces
DREAD EMPIRE’S FALL
The Sundering
Conventions of War
WRITING AS WALTER J. WILLIAMS
The Rift
WRITING AS JON WILLIAMS
The Privateer
The Yankee
The Raider
The Macedonian
Cat Island
Praise for This Is Not a Game
“This Is Not a Game is a tale every bit as engaging as one of the intrigues its characters might have dreamed up.”
—Bookpage
“Williams’ dialogue is razor-sharp, his plotting breakneck, his eye for trends keen and his empathy with his characters deep.”
—scifi.com
“The characters are realistic and absorbing, and the story deeply compelling.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Praise for Deep State
“There are powerful ideas stirring beneath the skin of what to a first approximation resembles a taut technothriller, and it’s brilliantly executed…”
—Charles Stross
“…a slick, intelligent techno-thriller…”
—The Guardian (UK)
Contents
Title Page
TEASER
ACT 1
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
ACT 2
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
ACT 3
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
extras
meet the author
introducing
By Walter Jon Williams
Praise for Walter Jon Williams
Copyright
Copyright © 2012 by Walter Jon Williams
Excerpt from Equations of Life copyright © 2011 by Simon Morden
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Orbit
Hachette Book Group
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First e-book edition: February 2012
Orbit is an imprint of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The Orbit name and logo are trademarks of Little, Brown Book Group Limited.
The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
ISBN 978-0-316-12630-4