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อลา - NET
NYET
Novel. Amphora, St. Petersburg 2004, 499 pages
Set in the 2060's, 30 years have passed since the "Great Inflation". China has bought Japan. Israel and the Arab world live in peace. Drug possession carries a higher penalty than rape. Developments in plastic surgery have resulted in a new and booming industry: the "metamorphosis" of chimera. People can have their phenotype changed in almost any manner: it started with radical rejuvenating cures and went as far as the transplanting of animal organs (gills, pelts, claws, tails, for example). The global and meanwhile socially acceptable pornography industry has also developed in the face of the disappearing market for ordinary erotic films. Nowadays it is not only the "visuals" that are sold, but also the so-called "biones", spherical data carriers which enable consumers to not only watch the recorded scenes and sensations, but to be able to feel and experience them as well.
Whoopy's one night stand with a "morph" is surreptitiously recorded. When she tries to prevent this recording from getting onto the black market she unwittingly ends up the maelstrom of the pornography industry.
For Kshisya, a dream has come true: she is a member of a police unit investigating illegal violent pornography involving minors (so-called "snuff"). Head of the investigation is the secretive Skinner. Kshisya is to infiltrate the scene under the guise of an actress and to this end she is metamorphosed into a minor. They manage a coup against one of the studios but, in her next deployment, Kshisya falls victim to gruesome torture.
The journalist Hipperstein is also on the trail of the "snuff" phenomenon. No-one really knows whether it actually exists - the post-editing is now so perfect that almost everything can be faked authentically. Kshisya's tragic end, however, brings her former colleague Sukhrab to leak the relevant details to Hipperstein. The suspicion that Skinner is in fact working together with the porn studios is confirmed.
Goralik and Kuznetsov paint the picture of a decadent society which, in an age of absolute manipulation of body and mind, appears to be consuming itself. In the midst of this callous, ice cold and profit hungry machinery the protagonists set out on a quest for love, recognition and humanity. And as often as it fails, it is this quest which ultimately brings the novel to its conclusion.