About the book: 2009 / The story "The Ship Rats" is written in the best traditions of pirate science fiction, familiar to us since the time of Jack Williamson. From the author: “Ship Rats is a prime example of this. The idea arose in the fall of 2000, but at the time I thought that a story about a hijacking of a starship, in which the crew and passengers encounter misogynistic terrorists, would look strange. There were no plane hijackings news for several years now, and the topic seemed irrelevant to me, much more suitable for fantasy than science fiction. Nevertheless, I still wrote the story, and it was supposed to be published in Asimov's just before the nightmare of September 11th. That's when I realized what this story was really about.».