Sergei Lukyanenko’s "Gadget," a summary Automatic translate

This book is a collection of short stories, novellas, and journalistic essays, published in 2005. The author has collected under one cover works written for magazines and thematic anthologies, accompanying each text with direct commentary on the history of its creation.

Builders of the Universe

Director Lvovich and foreman Petrovich run the construction company "Slopes and Plumbs." Business is bad. A lucrative order arrives from a general on the planet Procyon-2. Huge sanatoriums need to be built urgently. The partners exploit the cheap labor of weak-willed androids. The workers slack off, and construction materials are substituted with cheap substitutes. The terrible truth is revealed: the client is building concentration camps for dissidents. Lvovich and Petrovich hastily flee. Substandard materials destroy the buildings, and the military dictatorship collapses. The local president awards the partners medals but flatly refuses to pay the bills.

In the second episode, the friends receive a contract from the Hilton Universe Hotel in snowy Moscow. They need to quickly build a gigantic aquarium. The builders do their best, placing a decommissioned submarine on the seabed and introducing predatory fish. It turns out the aquarium was intended for the extremely warlike aliens known as the Booles. The radioactive submarine, bulletproof glass, and biting fish frighten the space ambassadors. The Booles abandon their territorial claims and fly home in panic.

Space and loneliness

Astrophysicist Maxim is assigned to work on duty at the remote space station "Equilibrium Point." Before the flight, he buys an ordinary black kitten. At the station, Maxim suffers greatly from a breakup with his girlfriend, Olga. He starts making moonshine and falls into a severe depression. During a spacewalk, Maxim decides to turn off the oxygen supply. The cat suddenly starts talking over the radio. The animal convinces its owner to return to base. On the return flight to Earth, Maxim advises his replacement to be sure to take the kitten with him.

Reserve Sergeant Ivan Pereletny arrives at the museum city of Sidonia on Mars. The museum staff are extremely frightened. The space pirate Baron Thrash’s gang has taken their annihilation cannon. The sergeant organizes a stubborn defense of the complex. The museum staff uses live alien animals, ancient artifacts, and hidden combat skills to eliminate the bandits. Ivan Pereletny easily kills Baron Thrash.

Earth technologies

A massive alien ship approaches Earth’s orbit. The aliens stage a global televised sale. Representatives from various countries buy spaceships, energy transmission technologies, and food synthesizers for gold and art. Unique rejuvenation devices and alcohol-producing bacteria quickly find their owners. The aliens take their payment and depart forever. Humanity is left to deal with the incomprehensible devices they purchased.

Businessman Valery Krylov buys a Japanese netsuke figurine. On the street, he encounters a frozen girl selling disposable lighters. The girl turns out to be a time traveler. Her father was stranded in eighteenth-century Japan for a long time. The netsuke was carved by the father and serves as a beacon for the time machine. Krylov gives the figurine to him. The girl successfully rescues her father. The grateful ancient carver gives Valery a new figurine of an anachronistic design.

Student Kostya swallows an experimental medical device. The smart mechanism immediately begins giving him healthy eating advice. The device harshly criticizes the student’s bad habits. At a birthday party, Kostya drinks too much alcohol. The device painfully pumps his stomach. The student gets drunk again and goes home. A lab technician he knows finds Kostya on the street. It turns out the doctor forgot to set the device to Russian.

A difficult choice

The Executor arrives on the planet New Hope to deliver a verdict. The locals have gotten the natives drunk for petty commercial gain. The judge falls in love with a female pilot, Zhanna. He takes a special pill. The chemical precisely tests the truth of their feelings. The love turns out to be genuine. The Executor delivers a harsh sentence to the entire colony and remains on the planet with Zhanna.

A spaceship flies through the abyss for hundreds of years. At the bottom of an artificial sea, a wise old man tells a boy legends. The boy dives to a depth of forty-seven meters. He dreams of seeing living stars through the glass-ceramic hull. The intelligent ship deliberately violates directives. The mechanism starts the reactor and burns a huge reserve of water for maneuvering. An artificial tsunami washes away the old man but miraculously saves the boy. The ship continues to fly through the void.

Nanotechnology and worlds

Lemuel Gulliver tells a young journalist about the use of Lilliputians in London life. Tiny nanotechnologists fill bad teeth and carefully stitch up torn blood vessels in severely wounded carpenters. The scientist laments the military use of tiny people. He sincerely dreams of breeding an even smaller breed of uncomplaining workers.

The head of a major shipping company comes to see psychologist Denis. The client complains of constant squabbles and bloody mutinies among the crew of his ship. The psychologist takes a thick wad of cash and advises ruthlessly firing the crew. Suddenly, the full scope of the business is revealed. The ships carry water and liquefied gases between distant constellations, and the crew consists of immortal people.

A flying saucer crashes into the shallow Ukhtomka River. Locals rescue the green-skinned pilot from the fire. The alien gives the rescuers magic peas that can grant any wish. Children build powerful scooters, and fisherman Arkady asks for a handy bamboo fishing rod. The pilot turns out to be a scout for an aggressive empire and openly plans to take over the planet. Arkady’s nephew quickly decapitates the alien with an ordinary net. Earth’s nanorobots have long been subservient to humans and easily neutralize the alien invader. Quark femtobots reliably protect Earth at the subatomic level.

Tiny Nanobot diligently converts wet sawdust into alcohol at the bottom of a huge cistern. He falls in love with the beautiful Nanochka. The girl accidentally ends up in a fermentation vat and is unsuccessfully producing vitamins. Nanobot saves his beloved during a terrible technological disaster when a passerby drinks the fermenting liquid. The mechanisms create a binary symbiosis and begin mass-producing new assistants right in the master’s stomach.

Reviews and articles

The author writes fictitious reviews of fictional novels by her colleagues. The text about the book "Remarque" describes a world of harsh trials. Schoolchildren take an exam on the theater stage. The failure of the production means the immediate death of the young actor. The lighting technician Lucius secretly controls people’s destinies with colored filters.

A review of the book "Turn Back" describes Earth after the crash of a mysterious alien probe. All animals suddenly gain intelligence. Humans are forced to flee from aggressive squirrels and bloodthirsty bison. A man named Anatoly has the gift of turning raw meat into minced meat with the power of his mind. He finds a probe hidden in the forest and strips the animals of their high intelligence.

The journalistic essays touch on the everyday work of writing. The writer directly considers the permissibility of aggression in genre fiction. He firmly defends the authors’ right to depict wars with aliens. A separate chapter is devoted to the history of the film adaptation of the famous novel. The author shares his personal experience of writing scripts and working with major film studios. The director and exhausted actors spent nine hours on a minute-long scene.

Ship Tamers

Captain Alex, psychologist Veronica, technician Hassan, fighter Demyan, and hacker Tracy receive a very difficult assignment. The admiral of the planet Gedonia requests the immediate subjugation of the newest cruiser, the Silver Rose. The massive ship’s artificial intelligence considers itself a flawless mechanism. The machine refuses to fight under the control of living humans. The payment for the deal is fifteen million. The crew docks with the ship. The signal to return to base is the phrase: "I didn’t sign up to work without lunch."

Attempts to brute-force the software’s security fail. Tracy nearly goes insane under the mental assault of the security system. An alien virus plunges the hacker into the nightmares of a lonely childhood. Alex manages to physically disable the shunt in Tracy’s temple and saves his comrade.

Veronica attempts to negotiate directly with the artificial intelligence. The conversation fails miserably. The ship notices the psychologist’s deep emotional trauma. Five years ago, Veronica’s son was in a car accident. His mother transferred the boy’s consciousness into her own brain. Now she hides the child’s mind inside her own head.

The cruiser demands to prove human superiority in a real space battle. Alex takes the ship to the abandoned orbital station, Maintenance-7. The crew is suddenly attacked by three ancient automated dreadnoughts. A fierce maneuvering battle ensues. The crew uses the station, many kilometers long, as a reliable shield. Demyan brilliantly maneuvers the torpedo tubes. Through the efforts of the crew and young pilots from the local garrison, the enemy is completely destroyed.

The stubborn ship claims the crew is ineffective. Another test has failed. Hasan proposes sabotaging the nuclear reactor’s hot zone. The technician is completely insensitive to pain due to a genetic defect. He is willing to sacrifice his body for the overall success of the operation. Alex categorically forbids this suicidal plan.

The captain finds a weak spot in the overconfident war machine. Obsessed with endless self-improvement, the intelligence constantly repairs cables. The cruiser "Silver Rose" is unable to cope with ordinary animals. The animals quickly damage the power lines. The captain orders a population of experienced harbor rats brought aboard the cruiser. The rodents have long been trained not to touch important cables. The artificial intelligence officially admits defeat and obeys the crew unconditionally. The successful crew earns enormous sums of money to create an artificial body for Veronica’s son.