Allen Steele (b. 1958), a former professional newspaper journalist, often thinks about the influence of science fiction on science and technology in his works. Steele made his debut in 1989 with the novel Orbital Decay. ), followed by "Clark County. Space" ("Clarke County, Space", 1991) and "Lunar Descent", which also takes place in "near space", between the Moon and the Earth. It is interesting to note that in the novel Chronospace (2001), Gregory Benford appears as a minor character. Steele's stories were compiled into three collections: Rude Astronauts (1993), So American Alien ( All-Amencan Alien Whoa", 1996), "Sex and Violence in Zero G", 1999), and in the latter in works about near space are presented in chronological order. The writer himself claims that his stories are a kind of response to Niven’s Tales of Known Space or Heinlein’s Past Thmugh Tomorrow. In the 1990s. Steele is recognized as one of the brightest young science fiction writers. His works are distinguished by talented realism and describe everyday life in space. Steele has even been called a "working-class science fiction writer" because his characters tend to be ordinary people.

Lost in the Mall is Allen Steele's first publication in F&SF. According to Allen, the idea for the story we bring to your attention came to him after a visit to a cybernetics laboratory in Austin, Texas, where he saw a computer-generated “shopping arcade.”

A teenager got lost in a virtual shopping center, and this is not the first time. A specialist in finding children in virtual reality, Joe Bass, comes to help Rebecca.

A supergroup is performing on one of the islands of the World of the River. Consisting of John, Sid and Kate. The king of that island is called Elvis, and their life is cheerful. However, John is worried about the question - where did Jim go, about whom there is no word or word. The story is written based on the novels from the series “The World of the River” by F. Farmer.

Two friends go to hunt igrums, and igrums - the beast is not simple, it’s... I won’t say it, otherwise it won’t be interesting to read!

The near future. Testing on animals is prohibited, so tests are carried out on humans. Something like the “rat” profession appears. The main character is a “good rat”, he patiently tests various medical developments on himself, for which he is generously paid. But he doesn’t even know how to read...

Time travel becomes available to our distant descendants, and despite the possibility of collapse, travelers go to our common past. However, the unexpected happens, and it is impossible not to make changes to the course of history. The significance of these changes has yet to be determined...

Usually the crazy ones gave me a lot of trouble...But once I saw how madness benefited a person.

The story debunks the era of space operas. The era of romance in space, the era of waiting for happiness and miracles in the vacuum of star space, gave way to the era of business and making money, space turned out to be real, cold and indifferent, and not toy, warm and comfortable. Incorrigible romantics are not able to take root in the new world. The famous defender of law and order, Captain Future, is, in fact, a crazy loser who wanders around the solar system on a rusty vessel with nothing to do and without a goal...

The designers of the Lang Electronics corporation created two prototypes of third-generation household self-learning robots under the names "Guardian" and "Companion". These robots will help Lang win the race with his competitor, Cyberserv. But the plant cannot mass-produce two types of new robots at once. You need to choose one project. Which robot is better? This should be decided by the competition.

Kennedy and Khrushchev never found out about this... And what could they have done?

The next observers are trying to understand the causes of the Caribbean crisis and prevent the development of the most unfavorable version of events.

Knowledge, once released, is quite difficult to hide back. The story is based on the novels of E. Burroughs.