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A collection of short stories by Greg Egan.

• The Infinite Assassin: the identity crisis of an assassin that exists in an uncountable number of parallel universes.
• The Hundred-Light-Year Diary: people know what is going to happen because they can read the diaries they will write in the future, until history is too horrible to write about truthfully.
• Eugene: future parents design their child to be a genius, but their child's message from the future convinces them not to do it.
• The Caress: a cop discovers a woman-panther chimera, and is then abducted and surgically altered by a billionaire to play for a few seconds in the living re-creation of a famous painting containing the chimera and a man.
• Blood Sisters: twin sisters get the same disease and one dies because she's given a placebo: pharmaceutical research is more efficient when done on the whole population.
• Axiomatic: neural implants allow you to chose what you want to believe; the narrator stops believing that murder is never justified to kill his wife's murderer.
• The Safe-Deposit Box: the narrator regularly moves from one person's body to another; he discovers that his original body is now devoid of mind after an abusive medical experiment.
• Seeing: after having been attacked, the narrator's subjective point of view (as produced by his brain)is to see his body from the outside.
• A Kidnapping: the narrator gets a ransom demand for his wife who has not actually been kidnapped; the victim is a simulated, conscious version of his wife.
• Learning to Be Me: everybody has a computer in their brain learning to be them, before replacing the brain's function; the narrator is the computer who got accidentally out of sync with its brain and now has a separate consciousness.
• The Moat: while a scientist works on replacing the DNA bases with artificial ones to isolate humans from pathogens, isolationists want to shelter Australia from climate refugees.
• The Walk: the executioner for a criminal organization walks his victim to his isolated place of execution, but spares him and commits suicide after having convinced him to use a neural implant to share his belief in a form of reincarnation (based on the necessary repetition of the quantum states of the finite number of particles in an infinite universe).
• The Cutie: the narrator gets Cutie, a process to get a baby that will barely develop for four years after birth and then die; but he got a cheap knock-off who actually learns to talk and walk but will still die at age four.
• Into Darkness: the narrator is a volunteer who enters the wormhole that randomly reappears in the city, to fetch people who get stuck, as moving backwards is impossible.
• Appropriate Love: when her husband needs a new body after a terrible accident, his wife accepts (constrained by the insurance policy) to carry his brain in her womb for two years until the new body is grown.
• The Moral Virologist: a devout christian creates a sexually transmitted virus that defeats condoms and quickly kills people having homosexual relationships or sex with a second partner; when he discovers that it would be fatal to babies being breast-fed longer than 4 weeks, that becomes a sin as well.
• Closer: a couple tries all forms of body-mind swapping, as the man wants to “really know” his partner; after performing a temporary merge of their minds they separate because for knowing each other too well.
• Unstable Orbits in the Space of Lies: a phenomenon made people of a city permeable to the beliefs of those in close proximity, creating isolated groups sharing a given belief; some people try to navigate between them, trying not to get caught and find a way out of the city, but someone points out that they too share a common belief.

© Amazon.fr

Yoko, Khâny et leurs amis se rendent sur une base vinéenne en orbite autour de Saturne pour comprendre ce qui est arrivé à une ancienne expédition vinéenne chargée de construire une cité spatiale sur une comète morte, elle aussi orbitant Saturne, et laquelle émet un message de détresse. Dansa la partie avant un vaisseau naufragé sur la comète, Yoko et Khâny découvrent Ryâ et son jumeau androïde. Ils affirment avoir été maltraités par les vinéens. Yoko découvre ensuite la partie arrière du vaisseau, dans laquelle un créature faite d'énergie plasmique révèle avoir crée Ryâ pour prendre le contrôle de la galaxie mais que cette dernière s'est enfuie ; la créature attaque ensuite Yoko, qui ne doit son salut qu'à l'arrivée de ses amis. Khâny décide d'emmener Ryâ et son frère, mais de cacher leur existence et les plans des anciens vinéens aux vinéens modernes. En quittant Saturne, leur vaisseau est arrêté par un conteneur spatiale géré par des androïdes chargés de veiller sur des surdouées en hibernation que Khâny avait découvertes, dont elle seule connaissait l'existence et à qui elle comptait confier Ryâ et son frère. Elle se laisse convaincre par Yoko de toutes les emmener sur Terre et de les cacher dans le temple des immortels.

mate-date: 20220619T1226

“addition of vanilla… coffee and chocolate characters… raspberry… hints of liquorice and hazelnut… Goldings hops”

Very sweet with a strong vanilla flavour and something roasted. Contains malted barley and wheat.

Thornbridge brewery, Bakewell, Derbyshire, England. 5.0% alcohol.

Wikipedia

After Superman's death and to protect the US from future metahuman threat, Amanda Waller forms Task Force X, a task force of six incarcerated supervillains coerced into working for the government by implanting them with nanite bombs. Waller already has a hold on Enchantress, a sorceress who possesses the body of archaeologist June Moone, by physically controlling the heart of the sorceress. Enchantress however manages to escape Waller's control, conquer Midway City and summon her brother Incubus to destroy humanity. Task Force X is joined by Rick Flag who is in love with Moone, and his associate Katana. Their first target is to extract Waller from her HQ in the middle of Midway City and cover up her involvement with Enchantress. Meanwhile Joker, lover of Task Force X member Harley Quinn, tries to free her from her nanite bomb, but is eventually believed to be dead. The squad then abandons Flag until he relieves them of their mission, and they then decide to prove themselves by saving the city. While some of the squad kill Incubus, Harley Quinn tricks the Enchantress into believing she wants to join her, takes her heart from her chest and destroys it, releasing Moone from her control. Waller sends the squad back to their cells with reduced sentences, but Joker comes back and frees Harley Quinn.

Wikipedia

Thor defeats the demon Surtur in order to prevent it from destroying Asgard during the prophesied Ragnarok, takes its crown and places in Odin's vault. Back in Asgard, he finds Loki posing as Odin, and soon after takes him to Earth to find their father Loki had abducted. Thanks do Dr. Strange they find him, only to see him reveal that his first born daughter Hela will be released upon his death and die immediately after. Hela appears and chases them, causing the Bifrost Bridge to malfunction and sending them to the garbage planet Sakaar, while Hela raises her past wariors from the dead and starts a reign of terror on Asgard, wanting to regain her place in the History from which Odin had erased her, while Heimdal organises the resistance to hide the inhabitants of Asgard. On Sakaar, Thor is taken prisoner by the last of the Varkyries, now working as a thief catcher and sold as gladiator, forced to fight the Hulk (who for some reason is the grand champion) in the Grandmaster's Contest of Champions; in the meanwhile Loki becomes friend with the Grandmaster. Thor almost wins his first fight and eventually manages to convince the Hulk and the Valkyrie to help him escape and leave for Asgard in a ship stolen from the Grandmaster, after having freed the other gladiators and started a revolt. On Asgard, they fight Hela and try to but soon realize they have no chance of winning. When Loki arrives with the gladiators and a huge ship, Thor realizes that Asgard is the people, not the place, so he summons Surtur to destroy the place and Hela with it while the people escape on the ship. Thor is now king of Asgard, reconciles with Loki and takes a course to Earth.

Citrusy, orangey, quite sweet. Contains malted barley.

Galway Bay Brewery, Oranmore, Galway, Ireland. 8.5% alcohol.

Huit ans après sa rencontre avec Daneel, Hari Seldon travaille au développement de la psychohistoire, avec le soutien politique d'Eto Demerzel. Lorsque Joranum menace de préparer un coup d'état, Seldon envoie son fils Raych tendre un piège à Joranum. Ce dernier, ridiculisé en annonçant que Demerzel est un robot, est contraint à l'exil. L'empereur Cléon nomme alors Seldon premier ministre, Demerzel se trouvant aux limites de sa capacité à concilier son respect de la loi Zéro de la robotique et la nécessité de prendre des décisions qui affectent l'ensemble de l'Empire. Dix ans plus tard, des joranumites ourdissent un nouveau complot, visant à faire chuter le gouvernement en sabotant les infrastructures, amplifiant ainsi le processus existant de décadence de l'Empire. Seldon envoie à nouveau Raych enquêter, mais il est démasqué et drogué dans le but d'assassiner son père. Ils sont sauvés in-extremis par Manella, une agent de la sécurité impériale infiltrée parmi les joranumites. Cléon est tout de même assassiné (par un jardinier impérial qui ne voulait pas du poste de jardinier en chef que Cléon le forçait à accepter) et une junte militaire prend de pouvoir. Encore dix ans plus tard, la psychohistoire fait des progrès, mais la junte veut se débarrasser de Seldon pour utiliser la psychohistoire comme arme de propagande. Des agents infiltrés parmi les psychohistoriens tentent d'assassiner Dors, qui parvient cependant à les identifier avant de mourir, révélant qu'elle aussi est un robot. Des émeutes (dues aux mauvais conseils en matière d'impôts donnés à dessein par Seldon à la junte) conduisent à la chute de cette dernière. Dix ans plus tard, Raych et Manella partent pour une planète lointaine, mais Wanda, la fille de Raych et Manella, reste auprès de son grand-père. Seldon découvre que Wanda des pouvoirs mentaux ainsi que des dispositions pour la psychohistoire. Tandis que la situation économique et politique de Trantor, ainsi que sa domination sur les planètes extérieures s'affaiblit, la population blâme Seldon et la psychohistoire, et son créateur peine à trouver des financements. Les pouvoirs de Wanda et sa rencontre avec Stettin Palver, lui aussi doué de pouvoirs mentaux, lui permettent de convaincre la Bibliothèque Impériale de soutenir ses recherches ainsi qui la mise en place de deux Fondations (ainsi que Wanda en a découvert la nécessité dans les équations de la psychohistoire), une sur Terminus consacrée aux sciences physiques et à la fondation du Second Empire et l'autre à Star's End, œuvrant dans l'ombre au bon déroulement du plan Seldon et spécialisée dans les sciences mentalistes. Hari Seldon décède onze ans plus tard.

“Brewed with the addition of fresh pineapple juice and grapefruit (zest and juice)… Admiral, Cascade, Summit and Nelson Sauvin hops… tropical fruit flavours… additions of Centennial and Nelson Sauvin during fermentation”

Didn't notice the pineapple at all. Just another ale. Contains malted barley and wheat.

Rooster's Brewery Ltd, Harrogate, North Yorkshire, England. 6.4% alcohol.