As he's chauffeured about in his official limousine, aging City Commissioner of Streets Bobbo Druff comes to a frightening realization: he's lost force, the world has started to condescend to him. His once fear-inspiring figure has become everyone's "little old lady." In retaliation, Druff constructs a paranoid plot-his "MacGuffin"-within which (he believes) everyone is out to get him. With unabashed enthusiasm Druff starts an illicit affair (in order to incriminate himself), instigates fights with his employees, invents lies for his family-in short, does everything in his power to create a world in which he is placed safely and firmly at the scandalous center. One of Elkin's greatest comic figures, Druff's self-conscious madness is surprisingly smart and hilariously inventive. Few characters in modern literatureshow such immense creativity and courage in the face of such a hopeless dilemma-the very slipperiness of existence itself

Nicholas Marten's former girlfriend is mysteriously killed-along with her child and congressman-husband. A former LA cop, Marten learns her husband had just discovered a secret and illegal bioweapons program. When the feds fail to investigate, Marten pursues the killers himself. At a NATO summit in Warsaw, President John Henry Harris meets with Europe 's heads of state. When Harris learns secret a White House cabal has ordered the German chancellor's assassination, he angrily objects. The cabal not only threatens to kill Harris, they pull the secret service off his detail. Escaping incognito, he joins two strangers-Nicholas Marten and the beautiful but enigmatic French photo-journalist, Demi Picard. Swept from Warsaw to Washington, D.C. to Malta to Barcelona, the three of them flee a ruthless clique of military leaders and transnational corporate chieftains-as well as top Washington officials-all of whom want them dead… The assassination of world leaders, the massacre of millions, assaults on the US with weapons of mass destruction-nothing is beyond the coterie's cunning. The group's origins go back 500 years. In the 16th century, the dying Machiavelli fashioned a sinister work entitled, The Covenant-an ominous plan for gaining true power and keeping it. For centuries this wealthy, despotic order has hidden the plan away, inspired and emboldened by its bloody insights and near-preternatural power. Bonded by vicious rites and ritual slaughter, dedicated to their vision of global rule, they have over the centuries prospered beyond dreams of greed and domination. Three people now stand between the Brotherhood and its final apocalyptic conquest

Beth lives alone on a desolate housing estate near the sea. She came here to rebuild her life following her husband’s return from the war. His memories haunted him but a machine promised salvation. It could record memories, preserving a life that existed before the nightmares. Now the machines are gone. The government declared them too controversial, the side-effects too harmful. But within Beth’s flat is an ever-whirring black box. She knows that memories can be put back, that she can rebuild her husband piece by piece. A Frankenstein tale for the 21st century, The Machine is a story of the indelibility of memory, the human cost of science and the horrors of love

They were broadcasts from nowhere – sinister emanations flooding in from space – smashing any receiver that picked them up. What possible defence could Earth devise against science such as this?

Рассказ вошёл в сборники: The Machineries of Joy (Механизмы радости) Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales (Сборник ста лучших рассказов)

With The Machinery of Light, David J. Williams completes his furiously paced, stunningly imagined trilogy - a work of vision, beauty, and pulse-pounding futuristic action. September 26, 2110. 10:22 GMT. Following the assassination of the American president, the generals who have seized power initiate World War Three, launching a surprise attack against the Eurasian Coalition's forces throughout the Earth-Moon system. Across the orbits, tens of thousands of particle beams and lasers blast away at one another. The goal: crush the other side's weaponry, paving the way for nuclear bombardment of the cities. As inferno becomes Armageddon, the rogue commando unit Autumn Rain embarks on one last run. Matthew Sinclair, an imprisoned spymaster, plots his escape. And his former protégé Claire Haskell, capable of hacking into both nets and minds, is realizing that all her powers may merely be playing into Sinclair's plans. For even as Claire evades the soldiers of East and West amid carnage in the lunar tunnels, the surviving members of the Rain converge upon the Moon, one step ahead of the Eurasian fleets but one step behind the mastermind who created Autumn Rain - and his terrible final secret