The Gone-Away World (Vintage Contemporaries)
Nick Harkaway
Language: English
Pages: 592
ISBN: 0307389073
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
A hilarious, action-packed look at the apocalypse that combines a touching tale of friendship, a thrilling war story, and an all out kung-fu infusedmission to save the world.Gonzo Lubitch and his best friend have been inseparable since birth. They grew up together, they studiedmartial arts together, they rebelled in college together, and they fought in the Go-Away War together. Now, with the world in shambles and dark nightmarish clouds billowing over the wastelands, they have been tapped for an incredibly perilous mission. But they quickly realize that this assignment is not all it seems, and before it is over they will have encountered everything from mimes, ninjas, and pirates to one ultra-sinister mastermind, whose only goal is world domination. Unlike anything else, The Gone-Away World is a remarkable literary debut that will be remembered and rediscovered for years to come.
ambassador, who finds this hilarious. The Master in his one and only film, The Quiet Life, in which he plays a sombre assassin who just wants to be funny. Ike Thermite assures me it is fascinating, and a little sad. It is also the only museum in the world where there is no audio tour. I am amazed that I have never been there. Ma Lubitsch took us to every museum in town when I was a kid. Ike Thermite points out gently that the Master was, at that time, still alive. Ike walks off, a little
not the end. Old Man Lubitsch could barely bring himself to say the last word aloud. Gonzo considered this, and then announced that he had some questions, but that he didn’t want to ask silly questions or bad questions and he didn’t know which ones these might be. Old Man Lubitsch said that there were no questions Gonzo could not ask, here, with his father, at such a time. So Gonzo unburdened himself of the key issues arising from the matter, in no particular order: Why did someone kill Marcus?
he had to do. He had to make people like Bobby Shank. After all, this was for the future of the human race. At first he used bandits. There were plenty of them, ordinary people gone savage and angry, preying on those who’d stuck it out and living, like Ruth Kemner and her gang, in ghastly halls which stank of executions and stale beer. He got fifteen like that. Some of them he just locked away until the EEG readings went like Bobby’s. Others he did things to, sharp, messy things. They didn’t
as the guy in black makes a mistake with his whip-stick and bashing it out of his hand with a solid crunch which must hurt like hell. There is bone showing through Ronnie Cheung’s skin on his left arm, but there’s not really a lot of bleeding. This is the point of all the training he does: various bits of his body are now essentially impervious to normal injuries. Ronnie launches a long, involved combination, arrhythmic and solid, with light skipping footwork to change the angle between them and
hauled away because the trucks are about to explode. They explode, but hardly anyone pays any attention. The journos all stand and stare at the people they have saved from death, completely unsure about what to do with them now. Tobemory Trent weaves through Golgotha not like someone who has just been almost blown up, but like a man come home to a terrible but familiar monstrosity. He whips open his pack and does something brutal and necessary and a man shrieks and then says “Thank you,” but