Arc 1.4: Forever alone drone

Arc 1.4: Forever alone drone
Author:
Publisher: Arc
Total Pages: 221
Release:
Genre:
ISBN: 1909203149

Explore the technological wilderness across more than 180 pages of forward-thinking fact, fiction and opinion. Meet Smari McCarthy and the isolationists building a digital fortress in Iceland’s wilderness; heed the call of the wild with Kim Stanley Robinson and the ultraliters; and join Frank Swain as he trespasses his way across the once public spaces of our forbidden cities. Jack Womack’s first short work in 17 years is set in his signature ultra-exploitative New York. Nancy Kress’s city feels more congenial, but proves no less forgiving of human folly. Robert Reed’s blasted and disfigured streets provide a bitterly ironic backdrop to a tale of the world’s salvation, while Liz Jensen’s nurse offers push-button closure to a city’s dying. Bruce Sterling builds a new urban experience out of mud and virtual reality, while new talent Romie Stott takes the anonymity of the singles bar pick-up to its logical, extreme, and surprisingly humane conclusion. American writer Madeline Ashby finds herself trapped inside a hostile America; Sumit Paul-Choudhury keeps to the shadows as he traces drone culture back to Voyager 2; and Simon Ings goes wandering Under Tomorrow’s Sky.

Ancillary Justice

Ancillary Justice
Author: Ann Leckie
Publisher: Orbit
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2013-10-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0316246638

Winner of the Hugo, Nebula, and Arthur C. Clarke Awards: This record-breaking novel follows a warship trapped in a human body on a quest for revenge. A must read for fans of Ursula K. Le Guin and James S. A. Corey. "There are few who write science fiction like Ann Leckie can. There are few who ever could." -- John Scalzi On a remote, icy planet, the soldier known as Breq is drawing closer to completing her quest. Once, she was the Justice of Toren -- a colossal starship with an artificial intelligence linking thousands of soldiers in the service of the Radch, the empire that conquered the galaxy. Now, an act of treachery has ripped it all away, leaving her with one fragile human body, unanswered questions, and a burning desire for vengeance.

A History of the Future in 100 Objects

A History of the Future in 100 Objects
Author: Adrian Hon
Publisher: Skyhook
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2013
Genre: Future, The
ISBN: 9780955181092

What are the 100 objects, ideas, developments, or events that future historians will use to sum up our century? Smart drugs that change the way we think? A wedding ring between a human and an AI? A society which no longer has work to do? A cure for hate? Adrian Hon's eloquent, playful and informed survey takes its cue from the popular BBC Radio 4 Series A History of the World in 100 Objects, and explores what the future might hold - not just in the fields of technology and science, but also religion, advertising, wars, economics, fashion, education and politics. These hundred essays, hybrids of near fact and outright fiction, gather personal experiences, newspaper stories, official reports and scientific papers in a speculative narrative of how we will live, work and play. [Book description]

Earthfall

Earthfall
Author: Orson Scott Card
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 385
Release: 1996-01-15
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1429966041

Earthfall, the fourth volume in Orson Scott Card's space opera Homecoming series The Oversoul of the colony planet Harmony selected the family of Wetchik to carry it back to long-lost Earth. Now grown to a tribe in the years of their journey to Harmony's hidden starport, they are ready at last to take a ship to the stars. But from the beginning there has been bitter dispute between Nafai and Elemak, Wetchick's youngest son and his oldest. On board the starship Bailica, the children of the tribe will become pawns in the struggle. Two factions are each making secret plans to awaken the children, and themselves, early from the cold-sleep capsules in which they will pass the long decades of the journey. Each side hopes to gain years of influence on the minds of the children, winning their loyalty in the struggle for control of reclaimed Earth. But the Oversoul is truly in control of this journey. It has downloaded a complete copy of itself to the Ship's computers. And only Nafai, who wears the Cloak of the Starmaster by the Oversoul's command, really understand what this will mean to all their plans for the future. Homecoming series The Memory of Earth The Call of Earth The Ships of Earth Earthfall Earthborn At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

The Eye

The Eye
Author: Simon Ings
Publisher: Bloomsbury Paperbacks
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2008
Genre: Evolution (Biology)
ISBN: 9780747592860

We spend about one-tenth of our waking hours completely blind - only one percent of what we see is in focus at any one time. You don't need eyes to see - blind volunteers have been taught to see through their chests. Through a spellbinding mix of scientific research, mathematics, philosophy, history, myth, anecdote and language theory, Simon Ings brilliantly unravels the never-ending puzzle of how and why we see in the way that we do. With the help of a beguiling mix of illustrated visual conundrums and enigmas, Ings triumphs with a compelling dissection of the eye's age-old mysteries that is both seriously interesting and interestingly fun.

Albion's Seed

Albion's Seed
Author: David Hackett Fischer
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 981
Release: 1991-03-14
Genre: History
ISBN: 019974369X

This fascinating book is the first volume in a projected cultural history of the United States, from the earliest English settlements to our own time. It is a history of American folkways as they have changed through time, and it argues a thesis about the importance for the United States of having been British in its cultural origins. While most people in the United States today have no British ancestors, they have assimilated regional cultures which were created by British colonists, even while preserving ethnic identities at the same time. In this sense, nearly all Americans are "Albion's Seed," no matter what their ethnicity may be. The concluding section of this remarkable book explores the ways that regional cultures have continued to dominate national politics from 1789 to 1988, and still help to shape attitudes toward education, government, gender, and violence, on which differences between American regions are greater than between European nations.

Self-Reference ENGINE

Self-Reference ENGINE
Author: EnJoe Toh
Publisher: VIZ Media LLC
Total Pages: 231
Release: 2013-03-19
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1421561824

This is not a novel. This is not a short story collection. This is Self-Reference ENGINE. Instructions for Use: Read chapters in order. Contemplate the dreams of twenty-two dead Freuds. Note your position in spacetime at all times (and spaces). Keep an eye out for a talking bobby sock named Bobby Socks. Beware the star-man Alpha Centauri. Remember that the chapter entitled “Japanese” is translated from the Japanese, but should be read in Japanese. Warning: if reading this book on the back of a catfish statue, the text may vanish at any moment, and you may forget that it ever existed. From the mind of Toh EnJoe comes Self-Reference ENGINE, a textual machine that combines the rigor of Stanislaw Lem with the imagination of Jorge Luis Borges. Do not operate heavy machinery for one hour after reading. -- VIZ Media

Love Minus Eighty

Love Minus Eighty
Author: Will McIntosh
Publisher: Hachette UK
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2013-06-11
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0316217778

In the future, love is complicated and death is not necessarily the end. Love Minus Eighty follows several interconnected people in a disquieting vision of romantic life in the century to come. There's Rob, who accidentally kills a jogger, then sacrifices all to visit her in a cryogenic dating facility, seeking forgiveness but instead falling in love. Veronika, a shy dating coach, finds herself coaching the very woman who is stealing the man she loves. And Mira, a gay woman accidentally placed in a heterosexual dating center near its inception, desperately seeks a way to reunite with her frozen partner as the years pass. In this daring and big-hearted novel based on the Hugo-winning short story, the lovelorn navigate a world in which technology has reached the outer limits of morality and romance.

Klara and the Sun

Klara and the Sun
Author: Kazuo Ishiguro
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2021-03-02
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0593318188

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Once in a great while, a book comes along that changes our view of the world. This magnificent novel from the Nobel laureate and author of Never Let Me Go is “an intriguing take on how artificial intelligence might play a role in our futures ... a poignant meditation on love and loneliness” (The Associated Press). • A GOOD MORNING AMERICA Book Club Pick! Here is the story of Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, who, from her place in the store, watches carefully the behavior of those who come in to browse, and of those who pass on the street outside. She remains hopeful that a customer will soon choose her. Klara and the Sun is a thrilling book that offers a look at our changing world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator, and one that explores the fundamental question: what does it mean to love?

The Last Shadow

The Last Shadow
Author: Orson Scott Card
Publisher: Tor Books
Total Pages: 284
Release: 2021-11-16
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 125025213X

Orson Scott Card's The Last Shadow is the long-awaited conclusion to both the original Ender series and the Ender's Shadow series, as the children of Ender and Bean solve the great problem of the Ender Universe—the deadly virus they call the descolada, which is incurable and will kill all of humanity if it is allowed to escape from Lusitania. One planet. Three sapient species living peacefully together. And one deadly virus that could wipe out every world in the Starways Congress, killing billions. Is the only answer another great Xenocide? At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.