Since his debut in Terry Carr’s legendary Ace Specials of the 1980s, Carter Scholz has occupied an enviable, if demanding, position on the cutting edge of modern speculative literature (vulgarly called SF). Proudly debuting in this volume, Gypsy is his first major work since his 2002 nuclear thriller Radiance . An interstellar adventure grounded in the hard science of accurate physics and biology, Gypsy soars far beyond the heliosphere of conventional science fiction. Jettisoning the easy warp-drives of fantasy and space opera, Scholz chronicles with chilling realism the epic voyage of a team of far-seeing scientists, who crowdsource a secret starship and abandon the doomed Earth for the Alpha Centauri system, our nearest stellar neighbor and last desperate chance. Heartbreak and hope collide in this moving and visionary tale. Plus ... An epistolary story about a story, “The Nine Billion Names of God,” uses a classic SF text to deconstruct literary deconstruction itself, with hilarious results. In the wickedly droll “Bad Pennies,” a spy tasked with trashing a foreign economy testifies before a complacent Congress. Quietly furious, “The United States of Impunity” is an alarming look under the tent of today’s political sideshow. Adults only. And Featuring : “Gear. Food. Rocks.”—our Outspoken Interview, in which a postmodern Renaissance man charts the synergies and dissonances of a career that embraces both literary and musical composition, reveals the hidden link between winemaking and deep space astronomy, and tells you how to steal his car. “Scholz’s writing crackles with energy, intelligence and dark humor.” — Publishers Weekly “Not just intellectually provocative, but emotionally rich, even saturated.” — Washington Post Book World “I doubt there’s another writer in the country who can match Scholz as a stylist.” —Karen Joy Fowler, author of The Science of Herself “Scholz weaves the analytical, the literal, the literary, the imaginary, and the emotional.” — Boston Globe Born in New York, educated on the East Coast, Scholz set foot in Berkeley in the 1970s—and never looked back. Considered a “writer’s writer” he is perhaps the best-kept secret in SF, with a prophetic voice that points to the future and rarely looks back. Gypsy By Carter Scholz PM Press Copyright © 2015 Gypsy, Carter Scholz All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-62963-118-9 Contents Gypsy, The Nine Billion Names of God, The United States of Impunity, Bad Pennies, "Gear. Food. Rocks." Outspoken Interview with Carter Scholz, Bibliography, About the Author, CHAPTER 1 GYPSY The living being is only a species of the dead, and a very rare species. — Nietzsche When a long shot is all you have, you're a fool not to take it. — Romany saying for Cheryl 1. The launch of Earth's first starship went unremarked. The crew gave no interviews. No camera broadcast the hard light pulsing from its tail. To the plain eye, it might have been a common airplane. The media battened on multiple wars and catastrophes. The Arctic Ocean was open sea. Florida was underwater. Crises and opportunities intersected. World population was something over ten billion. No one was really counting anymore. A few billion were stateless refugees. A few billion more were indentured or imprisoned. Oil reserves, declared as recently as 2010 to exceed a trillion barrels, proved to be an accounting gimmick, gone by 2020. More difficult and expensive sources — tar sands in Canada and Venezuela, natural gas fracking — became primary, driving up atmospheric methane and the price of fresh water. The countries formerly known as the Third World stripped and sold their resources with more ruthless abandon than their mentors had. With the proceeds they armed themselves. The US was no longer the global hyperpower, but it went on behaving as if. Generations of outspending the rest of the world combined had made this its habit and brand: arms merchant to expedient allies, former and future foes alike, starting or provoking conflicts more or less at need, its constant need being, as always, resources. Its waning might was built on a memory of those vast native reserves it had long since expropriated and depleted, and a sense of entitlement to more. These overseas conflicts were problematic and carried wildly unintended consequences. As the president of Venezuela put it just days before his assassination, "It's dangerous to go to war against your own asshole." The starship traveled out of our solar system at a steep angle to the ecliptic plane. It would pass no planets. It was soon gone. Going South. SOPHIE (2043) Trying to rise up out of the cold sinking back into a dream of rising up out of the. Stop, stop it now. Shivering. So dark. So thirsty. Momma? Help me? * * * Her parents were wealthy. They had investments, a great home, they sent her to the best schools. They told her how privileged she was. She'd always assumed this meant she would be okay