Sisters Sputnik , livre ebook

Ecw Press - Terri Favro

Découvre YouScribe en t'inscrivant gratuitement

Je m'inscris

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

219 pages

English

Vous pourrez modifier la taille du texte de cet ouvrage

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

A propos
Informations
Extrait

Description

'An odyssey wrapped in a love story, set in a near-future of artificial people The Sisters Sputnik are a time-traveling trio of storytellers-for-hire who are much in demand throughout the multiverse of 2,052 alternate worlds. Each world was created by the detonation of a nuclear bomb in Earth Standard Time, home of the Sisters leader, aging comic book creator Debbie Reynolds Biondi, her 20-something apprentice Unicorn Girl, and their pop culture loving AI, Cassandra. Tales of Earth Standard Time-That-Was, from World Wars to the space race to Hollywood celebrities, have turned the Sisters into storytelling rock stars. In a distant reality where books and music have disappeared, Debbie finds herself in bed with an old Earth Standard Time lover who begs her to tell him a story. Over one long, eventful night, she spins the epic of the Sisters adventures in alternate realities, starting with the theft of a book of evil comic strips in a post-pandemic Toronto ful

Sujets

Science-fiction

Science fiction

Informations

Publié par	Ecw Press
Date de parution	17 mai 2022
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781773059075
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	2 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0500€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Sisters Sputnik A Novel
Terri Favro

Contents Praise for Sputnik’s Children Also by Terri Favro Dedication Epigraph New York State Isolation Trail, also known as the Pilgrimage of Lazarus Central Transalpine Region The Adventures of Sputnik Chick: Girl with No Past One: Death Sentence in the Garden State Two: Bigot and Bots Three: The Goaltender’s World Four: Bedtime in Cozy World Five: Thieves in the Garden of Stories Six: Frank’s World Seven: Wee Hours in Cozy World Eight: Cloud Café Nine: Passion Play Ten: Pandora’s Book Eleven: The Child Soldier’s World Twelve: Little Library Thirteen: Non-fungible Assets Fourteen: Hard Stop Fifteen: The Storyteller and Her Lover on the Longest Night of the Year The Alternate Adventures of Sputnik Chick: Girl with No Past Itinerary One: The Storyteller in Purgatory Two: On the Beach Three: Adventure or Dementia Four: Return to New Rome Five: Somewhere on Lake Ontario Six: Aboard the Centaur Seven: Going Home Eight: Mutiny Nine: Z-Lands Ten: Meanwhile in Cozy World Eleven: Shipman’s Corners Twelve: Mother Thirteen: 1919 Unicorn Girl Comix™ Presents: The Untold Adventures of Sputnik Chick: Girl with No Past One: Falling into Paradiso Two: Nowellville House Three: Cast-offs of the Accidental Time Tourists Four: The Maid’s Room Five: Christmas in Springtime Six: The Chairman, the Princess and the King Seven: Old Friends and Family Ghosts Eight: The Show Must Go On in Cozy World Acknowledgements About the Author Copyright

Praise for Sputnik’s Children
The Globe 100 Best Books of 2017
Shortlisted for the Sunburst Award 2018
Longlisted for Canada Reads 2020
“It is a book so full of feeling, I thought that my heart would explode as I read it. I loved it. It comes with humour, insight and Cold War nostalgia as well. It’s a really great novel.”
— CBC’s Ontario Morning
“A noodle-bending literary sci-fi novel that puts its hero in the box with Schrödinger’s cat.”
— Kirkus Reviews
“Funny, touching, genre-bending and one-of-a-kind, this is an exuberant romp of a novel that is nonetheless unafraid of serious subjects.”
— Publishers Weekly
“You’ll love weaving your way through Debbie’s lorazepam- and-martini-induced memories in this genre-bending ode to the unreliable narrator, with a touch of Cold War–era nostalgia thrown in for good measure.”
— Canadian Living
“Sputnik Chick’s origin story is fun — a twist on pop culture and Cold War nostalgia, well paced with zero slack . . . Debbie is the girl with no past — a tragic fate; but for a character, an interesting place to start.”
— Globe and Mail
“ Sputnik’s Children is one of those rare novels that starts out as one thing, and ends up being something else altogether — an impressive high-wire act that is also a cracking good story.”
— Quill & Quire

Also by Terri Favro
The Proxy Bride
Once Upon a Time in West Toronto
Sputnik’s Children
Generation Robot: A Century of Science Fiction, Fact, and Speculation

Dedication
For Ron, and all the storytellers who’ve shaped us both

Epigraph
“I’m impatient with stupidity. My people have learned to live without it.”
Klaatu, The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)
“I may be synthetic, but I’m not stupid.”
Bishop, Aliens (1986)
“. . . in American history, panic about technological change is almost always tangled up with panic about immigration.”
Jill Lepore, The New Yorker (2019)

New York State Isolation Trail, also known as the Pilgrimage of Lazarus Central Transalpine Region
2029
Co-Ordinated Zeroth Time (C.O.Z.T.)
Unicorn Girl and I stumble our way out of the woods on the shortest day of the year. We’ve been in the shadows of giant hemlocks for so long that the sun looks like that gauzy stuff Nonna Peppy used for wrapping up boozy fruitcakes — whaddyacallit? Cheesecloth. It’s almost Christmas in Earth Standard Time and I could go for a slice of that cake along with a shot of my grandmother’s homemade cherry brandy. But Nonna Peppy is long dead and Earth Standard Time is a thousand worlds away. Best not to let myself be ambushed by nostalgia.
In the anemic winter light, I can just make out the gleam of a lamppost on the far side of a rocky stream. I’m guessing we’re in this world’s version of the Catskills. Dirty Dancing country, without the sex and music and that hunky actor who died so young. The people of Co-Ordinated Zeroth Time — or Cozies, as Unicorn Girl calls them — are suspicious of anything that hints at physical contact, like dancing and music. And sex, come to that. Not that they don’t enjoy hearing stories about such things.
“We’re burning daylight,” I tell Unicorn Girl.
A gentle nudge. But instead of getting a move on, she shrugs off her knapsack, falls to her knees and screams. When her voice gives out, she takes a deep shaky breath and screams again. And again.
I stand a few paces away, arms crossed. “Finished?”
“No,” croaks Unicorn Girl.
She upends her knapsack into the stream. Brightly coloured sweaters, toques, scarves and socks rush down the slope. A green scarf snags on a rock, its fringe fluttering in the current like comic book seaweed. Next, she tears off her boots and socks and hurls them in. One boot bobs its way out of sight. The other tangles in the scarf.
“Sure hope somebody farther down the mountain can use your gear,” I comment.
Unicorn Girl gives a hoarse sob. “We crossed this spot yesterday, Debbie! We’re going in circles!”
I stoop to dig a branch out of the snow. “Didn’t you see the lamppost? We’ve reached the end of the pilgrimage.”
But Unicorn Girl is in no mood to be comforted. “Stupid Cozies, making us wander around in the middle of nowhere. If we were home in Earth Standard Time, they’d’ve sent out a rescue party by now.”
I bear down on the branch to test its strength. “You can’t blame the Cozies for worrying about germs. And a pilgrimage in the open air beats the hell out of being quarantined indoors for weeks on end. As long as we get our bearings before dark, we’ll be sleeping in warm beds tonight. Avanti! ”
Unicorn Girl grunts her annoyance as she hops from rock to rock in bare feet. She’s annoyingly agile. I’m nimble for my age, but she’s young. Twenty-five years to my seventy-three. Steadying myself with the branch, I’m still picking my cautious way over the icy rocks when she pulls herself up onto an erratic boulder dropped by a glacier that scraped across the face of this world millennia ago. She tugs her heavy black hair out of its ponytail and twists it into a topknot.
While she waits for me to make my slow way across the stream, I give her something to mull over. “Have you ever wondered why the Cozies think The History of the Known World is make-believe?”
Unicorn Girl takes a fresh pair of socks and boots from her magically replenished knapsack. “What’s the difference? Even back in the Real World there are conspiracy theorists who think the moon landing was a hoax.”
I steady myself on a rock to shake a finger at Unicorn Girl. “Don’t you dare refer to the world you come from as the ‘Real World.’ Every world is real, not just your precious Earth Standard Time.”
Unicorn Girl shrugs. “Sorry, Debbie, I forgot how touchy you are about not being from the Real World yourself. But there are an infinite number of worlds, so every story has to be true somewhere.”
“Bullshit,” I reply as my foot slides off a rock, sending icy water gushing into my boot. I toss away the branch and step down into the stream to slosh to the shoreline.
As I rummage through my knapsack for dry socks, I lecture Unicorn Girl, once again, on the nature of the multiverse. “There are only two thousand and fifty-eight alternate realities. One for every nuclear detonation in Earth Standard Time, less the worlds I destroyed. If the Koreans or Russians or Americans have been at it again while we’ve been gone, they may have calved a few more.”
“That’s still lots of worlds,” argues Unicorn Girl.
“ Lots is not infinity. So don’t hand me that ‘every story is true somewhere’ crap. Truth is truth, no matter what world you’re in.”
Atop the boulder, Unicorn Girl stretches back into downward dog, her way of changing the subject. “The Cozies are a pretty dull bunch if they can’t make up their own stories. They don’t even have music.”
“They’re not inventive, I agree. They must have started off with the same myths and songs as Earth Standard Time, but forgot most of them. They didn’t even progress technologically after their first great plague in 1945. When a second one struck, then another, and another, they cut themselves off from each other and focused on survival. And they’re monolinguists, completely inept at languages other than their own. Comes from their cultural isolation, I assume. But that’s good for business. We’re practically rock stars here. Speaking of which, we’d better find our host for the night.”
“Roger that,” agrees Unicorn Girl. “Our next gig is where?”
“About a two-day hike south, roughly where you’d expect to find New York