The Escher Man

The Escher Man
Author: T. R. Napper
Publisher: Titan Books (US, CA)
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2024-09-17
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1803368160

A cartel enforcer across South-east Asia must escape a world of paranoia and violence to save his family in this cerebral and multi-layered cyberpunk science fiction novel, from the award-winning author of 36 Streets. Perfect for fans of William Gibson's The Peripheral and Five Minds by Guy Morpuss. Your name is Endel ‘Endgame’ Ebbinghaus. It is Saturday, 3 September, 2101. You’re head of security for Mister Long, boss of the Macau Syndicate, a drug cartel. Your memories are being wiped and re-written. You keep this log because you’re hard pressed to remember what day it is. But today is a special day, mate. This is your last day on the job.” ‘Endgame’ is a violent man, the perfect enforcer. But Endel is also a father and husband, haunted by the memories of his estranged family, and the life they once had. Endel wants them back, and he wants out. But life in the syndicate isn’t one you can simply leave. Endgame is a violent man. Or is he? In a world where memory manipulation is the weapon of choice for the powerful, Endel can’t tell friends and enemies apart anymore, can’t be sure if he’s a person or a tool. Trapped in a taut, twisting nightmare, Endel must find a way to escape the labyrinth they’ve made of his mind, and take revenge.

36 Streets

36 Streets
Author: T.R. Napper
Publisher: Titan Books (US, CA)
Total Pages: 432
Release: 2022-02-08
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1789097428

Altered Carbon and The Wind-Up Girl meet Apocalypse Now in this award-winning, fast-paced, intelligent, action-driven cyberpunk, probing questions of memory, identity and the power of narratives. Lin ‘The Silent One’ Vu is a gangster in Chinese-occupied Hanoi, living in the steaming, paranoid alleyways of the 36 Streets. Born in Vietnam, raised in Australia, everywhere she is an outsider. Through grit and courage, Lin has carved a place for herself in the Hanoi underworld under the tutelage of Bao Nguyen, who is training her to fight and survive. Because on the streets there are no second chances. Meanwhile the people of Hanoi are succumbing to Fat Victory, an addictive immersive simulation of the US-Vietnam war. When an Englishman – one of the game’s developers – comes to Hanoi on the trail of his friend’s murderer, Lin is drawn into the grand conspiracies of the neon gods: the mega-corporations backed by powerful regimes that seek to control her city. Lin must confront the immutable moral calculus of unjust wars. She must choose: family, country, or gang. Blood, truth, or redemption. No choice is easy on the 36 Streets.

Neon Leviathan

Neon Leviathan
Author: T. R. Napper
Publisher:
Total Pages: 358
Release: 2019-11-30
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780648663584

A collection of stories about the outsiders - the criminals, the soldiers, the addicts, the mathematicians, the gamblers and the cage fighters, the refugees and the rebels. From the battlefield to alternate realities to the mean streets of the dark city, we walk in the shoes of those who struggle to survive in a neon-saturated, tech-noir future. Twelve hard-edged stories from the dark, often violent, sometimes strange heart of cyberpunk, this collection - as with all the best science fiction - is an exploration of who were are now. In the tradition of Dashiell Hammett, Philip K Dick, and David Mitchell, Neon Leviathan is a remarkable debut collection from a breakout new author. "Haunting and iridescent--combines the paranoid weirdness of the best Philip K Dick, the chilly but cool-as-fuck future gleam of cyberpunk, and an achingly beautiful literary inflection reminiscent of mainstream heavyweights like Murakami or Ishiguro. T. R. Napper's futures feel at once gritty and vertiginous and close-focus human in the way only the best SF can manage. Whatever roadmap he's working from, I can't wait to see where he's taking us next." Richard Morgan, author of Altered Carbon "It is easier to write about violence than to write about the aftermath--the grief, the guilt, the long-held trauma. It's easier to write about the shouted argument than the taut silence which follows it. It's easier to write about dreamlike unreality than it is to invest a reader in the mundane and the everyday. And yet the stories within Neon Leviathan balance all these competing demands with a deft and masterful hand." Adrian Tchaikovsky, author of Children of Time "Heartbreaking... it evokes the depth of Chinese history, the successive wars, the poetry that expresses both the love of the landscape and the pain of the soldier leaving home, perhaps never to return." (for Dark on a Darkling Earth) Lois Tilton, Locus Magazine "T. R. Napper's cyberpunk story is a standout [in the collection], featuring a download with the tension of a high-speed chase" (for Twelve Minutes to Vinh Quang) Publisher's Weekly "The story is by turns blackly funny, speculatively impressive, and bleakly moving." (for A Strange Loop) Rich Horton, Locus Magazine "Wonderfully strange" (for An Advanced Guide to Successful Price-Fixing in Extra-Terrestrial Betting Markets) Sci Fi Review "Darkly gonzoid" (for An Advanced Guide to Successful Price-Fixing in Extra-Terrestrial Betting Markets) Lois Tilton, Locus Magazine "Thrilling and Moving" (for Ghosts of a Neon God) Rocket Stack Rank "The whole reads like a fever dream" (for Great Buddhist Monk Beat Down) Tangent Online

Palazzo Inverso

Palazzo Inverso
Author: D.B. Johnson
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Total Pages: 45
Release: 2010-05-03
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 0547488254

Mauk, mischievous apprentice to the master architect, must not draw on the plans for the new Palazzo. But by turning the plans a bit each day, he finds a way to alter them, turning the master’s creation onto its head! Discover what mystery and excitement a small change of perspective has brought to the Palazzo. In this M.C. Escher-inspired masterpiece, D.B. Johnson pushes the picture book form to new extremes. With its continuous narrative and illustrations that can viewed upside down, readers can turn the book over on page thirty two and read all the way back to page one. Enter the Palazzo Inverso...and see if you can find your way out.

Gödel, Escher, Bach

Gödel, Escher, Bach
Author: Douglas R. Hofstadter
Publisher: Penguin Group(CA)
Total Pages: 832
Release: 2000
Genre: Art and music
ISBN: 9780140289206

'What is a self and how can a self come out of inanimate matter?' This is the riddle that drove Douglas Hofstadter to write this extraordinary book. In order to impart his original and personal view on the core mystery of human existence - our intangible sensation of 'I'-ness - Hofstadter defines the playful yet seemingly paradoxical notion of 'strange loop', and explicates this idea using analogies from many disciplines.

The Octopus Man

The Octopus Man
Author: Jasper Gibson
Publisher: Hachette UK
Total Pages: 368
Release: 2021-01-21
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1474616100

'An exceptional work . . . A brilliant and necessary book' Douglas Stuart, author of the Booker Prize-winning SHUGGIE BAIN 'THE OCTOPUS MAN reminds us that behind the words "mental health" lies a universe of WILD CREATIVITY, HUMANITY and SPANKING BIG LIFE. Now is the time for this book.' DBC Pierre, author of the Booker Prize-winning VERNON GOD LITTLE 'Funny. Disturbing. Brilliant' Lily Allen 'A joy to read' Johnny Flynn Once an outstanding law student Tom is now lost in the machinery of the British mental health system, talking to a voice no one else can hear: the voice of Malamock, the Octopus God - sometimes loving, sometimes cruel, but always there to guide him through life. After a florid psychotic break, the pressure builds for Tom to take part in an experimental drugs trial that promises to silence the voice forever. But no one, least of all Tom, is prepared for what happens when the Octopus God is seriously threatened. Deeply moving and tragi-comic, THE OCTOPUS MAN takes us into the complex world of voice-hearing in a bravura literary performance that asks the fundamental questions about belief, meaning, and love.

Escher on Escher

Escher on Escher
Author: Maurits Cornelis Escher
Publisher:
Total Pages: 164
Release: 1989-03-25
Genre: Art
ISBN:

This book provides a solid image of Escher as he saw himself--not as an 'artist' but as an artisan, a graphic artist with heart and soul, obsessed by contrasts and possessed by a unique creativity.

The Graphic Work

The Graphic Work
Author: Maurits Cornelis Escher
Publisher: Taschen America Llc
Total Pages: 76
Release: 1992
Genre: Design
ISBN: 9783822896341

""Graphic Work"" presents over 80 of Escher's most interesting pictures selected by the artist himself. It includes Escher's commentaries on his work, which make his startling visual effects more easy to interpret. The book also features Escher's own account of his evolution as an artist. An authentic source book of high significance, it offers the best introduction to the fantastic universe of the grand master of illusion.

The Man Who Saved Geometry

The Man Who Saved Geometry
Author: Siobhan Roberts
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 416
Release: 2024-10-29
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0691264740

An illuminating biography of one of the greatest geometers of the twentieth century Driven by a profound love of shapes and symmetries, Donald Coxeter (1907–2003) preserved the tradition of classical geometry when it was under attack by influential mathematicians who promoted a more algebraic and austere approach. His essential contributions include the famed Coxeter groups and Coxeter diagrams, tools developed through his deep understanding of mathematical symmetry. The Man Who Saved Geometry tells the story of Coxeter’s life and work, placing him alongside history’s greatest geometers, from Pythagoras and Plato to Archimedes and Euclid—and it reveals how Coxeter’s boundless creativity reflects the adventurous, ever-evolving nature of geometry itself. With an incisive, touching foreword by Douglas R. Hofstadter, The Man Who Saved Geometry is an unforgettable portrait of a visionary mathematician.