Even to the unaided eye, the sky displays a richness of sights. Stars of different brightnesses and colors spangle the blackness of night. Here and there are pairs and clusters. If the right time of year, a band of white encircles the heavens, the Milky Way, bejewelled with bright stars and stamped with mysterious voids. Binoculars and small telescopes reveal more: the Milky Way is made of countless faint stars, while double stars, clusters, and clouds of swirling gas abound.
This story was written by William Ford Gibson and was first published in Omni in 1982. It tells the story of two hackers who hack systems for profit. The two main characters are Bobby Quine who specializes in software and Automatic Jack who is more into hardware. Automatic Jack comes across a piece of Russian hacking software that is very sophisticated and hard to trace. A third character in the story is Rikki, a girl who Bobby becomes infatuated with and for whom he wants to hit it big. The rest of the story unfolds with Bobby deciding to break into the system of a notorious hacker called Chrome, who handles money transfers for organized crime, and Automatic Jack reluctantly agreeing to help him. One line from this story — "...the street finds its own uses for things" — has become a widely-quoted aphorism for describing the sometimes unexpected uses to which users can put technologies (for example, hip-hop DJs' reinvention of the turntable, which changed it from a medium of reproduction into one of production).
It is as a stand-up comedian that Connolly is best known. His observational comedy is idiosyncratic and often off-the-cuff. He talks about himself, who he is, where he's been, what he thinks and how he reacts to the world around him. He has outraged audiences, critics and, of course, the media with his free use of the word "fuck". He has used masturbation, blasphemy, defecation, flatulence, sex, his father's illness and his aunts' cruelty to entertain. By exploring these subjects with humour, Connolly has done much to strip away the taboos surrounding them. Yet he does not tell jokes in the conventional way.
Philip K. Dick -
The Minority Report and Other Stories (Unabtidged Audiobook)
This collection of five Philip K. Dick tales includes stories that
will make you laugh, cringe in fear, and most of all... think. Stories
included: The Minority Report We Can Remember It For You Wholesale Paycheck Second Variety The Eyes Have It
from THE RETURN OF SHERLOCK HOLMES By ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE
David Timson's reading of the Sherlock Holmes stories must surely be the definitive audio performance featuring this timeless character. Resurrected after his apparent death three years earlier, the older and wiser Holmes of these stories shows a willingness to let his conscience prevail over the letter of the law. Timson's range is remarkable--he gives perfectly tuned accents to characters not only from all of Britain but also from South Africa, Australia, and the United States. By the end, you'll forever associate Holmes and Watson with Timson's voices. As well as being a marvelous narrator of these stories, his own liner notes reveal him as something of a Sherlockian.
