In Voice of the Whirlwind, humanity and its economies were still dominated by space colonies, but Earth had become not so much oppressed as nearly irrelevant. The Orbital Soviet was gone, and tensions between Earth and its children had diminished.
How did one future lead into the other? In Hardwired, a clue had been given in the form of the character Reno, who at the very end of the novel had been transplanted, via the Black Mind program, into the mind of the Orbital boss Roon. In contemplating the gap in my future chronology, I decided to write a story about Reno.
“Solip:System” was originally published, with what is perhaps the ugliest cover ever seen on a professional publication, as a limited-edition chapbook from Axolotl Press, and reprinted in Asimov’s magazine for September 1990.
It hasn’t stopped people bugging me about a sequel to Hardwired, though.
Table of Contents
Solip:System
Midpoint
Solip:System Page 6