The Cybernetic Tea Shop

The Cybernetic Tea Shop
Author: Meredith Katz
Publisher:
Total Pages: 116
Release: 2019-10-25
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9781989646144

Clara Gutierrez is an AI repair technician and a wanderer. Her childhood with her migrant worker family has left her uncomfortable with lingering for too long, so she moves from place to place across retro-futuristic America. Sal is a fully autonomous robot. Older than the law declaring her kind illegal due to ethical concerns, she is at best out of place in society and at worst vilified. She continues to run the tea shop previously owned by her long-dead master, lost in memories of the past, struggling to fulfill her master's dream for the shop while slowly breaking down. They meet by chance, but as they begin to spend time together, they both start to wrestle with the concept of moving on... A F/F retro-future sci-fi asexual romance. A story about artificial intelligence and real kindness, about love, and the feeling of watching steam rising softly from a teacup on a bright and quiet morning.

Beauty and Cruelty

Beauty and Cruelty
Author: Meredith Katz
Publisher: Less Than Three Press
Total Pages: 236
Release: 2015-10-29
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9781620046876

Cruelty, once an evil fairy and now working in fast food, comes home one day to find the lazy, drooling King of Cats on her doorstep. Worse, he comes bearing news Cruelty would be happier not hearing: Sleeping Beauty has gotten tired of lying around and is trying to save the world Cruelty left long ago. Any respectable Archetype knows it's a waste of time; their chances of survival are much better if they can hide in the human world. But since nobody sent her an invitation to the world-saving, she's practically obligated to interfere.

The Hundreds

The Hundreds
Author: Lauren Berlant
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 181
Release: 2019-01-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1478003332

In The Hundreds Lauren Berlant and Kathleen Stewart speculate on writing, affect, politics, and attention to processes of world-making. The experiment of the one hundred word constraint—each piece is one hundred or multiples of one hundred words long—amplifies the resonance of things that are happening in atmospheres, rhythms of encounter, and scenes that shift the social and conceptual ground. What's an encounter with anything once it's seen as an incitement to composition? What's a concept or a theory if they're no longer seen as a truth effect, but a training in absorption, attention, and framing? The Hundreds includes four indexes in which Andrew Causey, Susan Lepselter, Fred Moten, and Stephen Muecke each respond with their own compositional, conceptual, and formal staging of the worlds of the book.

Of the Wild

Of the Wild
Author: Elizabeth Wambheim
Publisher:
Total Pages: 236
Release: 2021-06-28
Genre:
ISBN: 9781735753201

Aeris, a shapeshifter of the Wild, steals children from unloving homes and raises them as his own in an enchanted grove deep in the Woods. Under the protective eye of their new guardian, the children absorb the forest's magic and grow more fey-like than human: some of them sprout mushrooms or flowers while others develop scales or wings. But the reserve of magic that keeps Aeris and his forest home alive is inexplicably running dry. With his life waning and the dangers of the Wild creeping closer and closer, Aeris will do anything to protect his family, even set his hopes on an unlikely new arrival in the Woods: a human stranger.

Bloodlust & Bonnets

Bloodlust & Bonnets
Author: Emily McGovern
Publisher: Andrews McMeel Publishing
Total Pages: 203
Release: 2019-09-17
Genre: Comics & Graphic Novels
ISBN: 1524856363

Set in early nineteenth-century Britain, Bloodlust & Bonnets follows Lucy, an unworldly debutante who desires a life of passion and intrigue—qualities which earn her the attention of Lady Violet Travesty, the leader of a local vampire cult. But before Lucy can embark on her new life of vampiric debauchery, she finds herself unexpectedly thrown together with the flamboyant poet Lord Byron (“from books!”) and a mysterious bounty-hunter named Sham. The unlikely trio lie, flirt, fight, and manipulate each other as they make their way across Britain, disrupting society balls, slaying vampires, and making every effort not to betray their feelings to each other as their personal and romantic lives become increasingly entangled. Both witty and slapstick, elegant and gory, Emily McGovern’s debut graphic novel pays tribute to and pokes fun at beloved romance tropes, delivering a joyous, action-packed world of friendship and adventure.

Noor

Noor
Author: Nnedi Okorafor
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2022-07-26
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0756418305

"When everything goes wrong on a trip to the local market, AO, a woman with a ton of major and necessary body augmentations, must race against time across the deserts of Northern Nigeria with a Fulani herdsman named DNA in a world where everything is streamed"--

Nexus

Nexus
Author: Ramez Naam
Publisher: Axon Press
Total Pages: 356
Release: 2012-12-18
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 194294800X

Book 1 of the Nexus Trilogy - Continued in Book 2: Crux In the near future, the experimental nano-drug Nexus can link humans together, mind to mind. There are some who want to improve it. There are some who want to eradicate it. And there are others who just want to exploit it. When a young scientist is caught improving Nexus, he's thrust over his head into a world of danger and international espionage - for there is far more at stake than anyone realizes. From the halls of academe to the halls of power, from the headquarters of an elite US agency in Washington DC to a secret lab beneath a top university in Shanghai, from the underground parties of San Francisco to the illegal biotech markets of Bangkok, from an international neuroscience conference to a remote monastery in the mountains of Thailand - Nexus is a thrill ride through a future on the brink of explosion. Shortlisted for the Arthur C Clarke Award Shortlisted for the Prometheus Award Shortlisted for the Kitschies Award An NPR Best Book of 2013! "Good. Scary good." - Wired "Provocative... A double-edged vision of the post-human."- The Wall Street Journal "A lightning bolt of a novel, with a sense of awe missing from a lot of current fiction."- Ars Technica "Starred Review. Naam turns in a stellar performance in his debut SF novel... What matters here is the remarkable scope and narrative power of the story."- Booklist "A superbly plotted high-tension technothriller ... full of delicious, thoughtful moral ambiguity ... a hell of a read."- Cory Doctorow "A gripping piece of near future speculation... all the grit and pace of the Bourne films."- Alastair Reynolds, author of Revelation Space "A sharp, chilling look at our likely future."- Charles Stross, author of Singularity Sky and Halting State "The most brilliant hard SF thriller I've read in years. Reminds me of Michael Crichton at his best."- Brenda Cooper, author of The Creative Fire "A rich cast of characters...the action scenes are crisp, the glimpses of future tech and culture are mesmerizing."- Publishers Weekly "Any old writer can take you on a roller coaster ride, but it takes a wizard like Ramez Naam to take you on the same ride while he builds the roller coaster a few feet in front of you."- John Barnes, author of Directive 51 "Michael Crichton-like."- SFX Magazine "An incredibly imaginative, action-packed intellectual romp!"- Dani Kollin, Prometheus Award-winning author of The Unincorporated Man "The only serious successor to Michael Crichton."- Scott Harrison, author of Archangel

The Human Use Of Human Beings

The Human Use Of Human Beings
Author: Norbert Wiener
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Total Pages: 202
Release: 1988-03-22
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 0306803208

Only a few books stand as landmarks in social and scientific upheaval. Norbert Wiener's classic is one in that small company. Founder of the science of cybernetics—the study of the relationship between computers and the human nervous system—Wiener was widely misunderstood as one who advocated the automation of human life. As this book reveals, his vision was much more complex and interesting. He hoped that machines would release people from relentless and repetitive drudgery in order to achieve more creative pursuits. At the same time he realized the danger of dehumanizing and displacement. His book examines the implications of cybernetics for education, law, language, science, technology, as he anticipates the enormous impact—in effect, a third industrial revolution—that the computer has had on our lives.

Cybernetic Revolutionaries

Cybernetic Revolutionaries
Author: Eden Medina
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 343
Release: 2014-01-10
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 0262525968

A historical study of Chile's twin experiments with cybernetics and socialism, and what they tell us about the relationship of technology and politics. In Cybernetic Revolutionaries, Eden Medina tells the history of two intersecting utopian visions, one political and one technological. The first was Chile's experiment with peaceful socialist change under Salvador Allende; the second was the simultaneous attempt to build a computer system that would manage Chile's economy. Neither vision was fully realized—Allende's government ended with a violent military coup; the system, known as Project Cybersyn, was never completely implemented—but they hold lessons for today about the relationship between technology and politics. Drawing on extensive archival material and interviews, Medina examines the cybernetic system envisioned by the Chilean government—which was to feature holistic system design, decentralized management, human-computer interaction, a national telex network, near real-time control of the growing industrial sector, and modeling the behavior of dynamic systems. She also describes, and documents with photographs, the network's Star Trek-like operations room, which featured swivel chairs with armrest control panels, a wall of screens displaying data, and flashing red lights to indicate economic emergencies. Studying project Cybersyn today helps us understand not only the technological ambitions of a government in the midst of political change but also the limitations of the Chilean revolution. This history further shows how human attempts to combine the political and the technological with the goal of creating a more just society can open new technological, intellectual, and political possibilities. Technologies, Medina writes, are historical texts; when we read them we are reading history.

Mage Against the Machine

Mage Against the Machine
Author: Shaun Barger
Publisher: S&S/Saga Press
Total Pages: 512
Release: 2019-07-30
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1534403051

Harry Potter meets The Terminator in this action-packed adventure about a young man who discovers that everything he believed about his world is a lie. The year is 2120. The humans are dead. The mages have retreated from the world after a madman blew up civilization with weaponized magical technology. Safe within domes that protect them from the nuclear wasteland on the other side, the mages have spent the last century putting their lives back together. Nikolai is obsessed with artifacts from twentieth-century human life: mage-crafted replica Chuck Taylors on his feet, Schwarzenegger posters on his walls, Beatlemania still alive and well in his head. But he’s also tasked with a higher calling—to maintain the Veils that protect mage-kind from the hazards of the wastes beyond. As a cadet in the Mage King’s army, Nik has finally found what he always wanted—a purpose. But when confronted by one of his former instructors gone rogue, Nik tumbles into a dark secret. The humans weren’t nuked into oblivion—they’re still alive. Not only that, outside the domes a war rages between the last enclaves of free humans and vast machine intelligences. Outside the dome, unprepared and on the run, Nik finds Jem. Jem is a Runner for the Human Resistance. A ballerina-turned-soldier by the circumstances of war, Jem is more than just a human—her cybernetic enhancement mods make her faster, smarter, and are the only things that give her a fighting chance against the artificial beings bent on humanity’s eradication. Now Nik faces an impossible decision: side with the mages and let humanity die out? Or stand with Jem and the humans—and risk endangering everything he knows and loves?