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The dragons of Eden: speculations on the evolution of human intelligence
By Carl Sagan. 1977
Essays by an award-winning scientist about the possible development of human intelligence, written for nonspecialists. Discusses the biological functions of…
sleep, increasing brain size, and language learning among chimpanzees. Chronicles advances in understanding the brain and implications for the future. BestsellerLiminal Lives: Imagining the Human at the Frontiers of Biomedicine
By Susan Merrill Squier. 2004
Embryo adoptions, stem cells capable of transforming into any cell in the human body, intra- and inter-species organ transplantation--these and…
other biomedical advances have unsettled ideas of what it means to be human, of when life begins and ends. In the first study to consider the cultural impact of the medical transformation of the entire human life span, Susan Merrill Squier argues that fiction--particularly science fiction--serves as a space where worries about ethically and socially charged scientific procedures are worked through. Indeed, she demonstrates that in many instances fiction has anticipated and paved the way for far-reaching biomedical changes. Squier uses the anthropological concept of liminality--the state of being on the threshold of change, no longer one thing yet not quite another--to explore how, from the early twentieth century forward, fiction and science together have altered not only the concept of the human being but the contours of human life. Drawing on archival materials of twentieth-century biology; little-known works of fiction and science fiction; and twentieth- and twenty-first century U. S. and U. K. government reports by the National Institutes of Health, the Parliamentary Advisory Group on the Ethics of Xenotransplantation, and the President's Council on Bioethics, she examines a number of biomedical changes as each was portrayed by scientists, social scientists, and authors of fiction and poetry. Among the scientific developments she considers are the cultured cell, the hybrid embryo, the engineered intrauterine fetus, the child treated with human growth hormone, the process of organ transplantation, and the elderly person rejuvenated by hormone replacement therapy or other artificial means. Squier shows that in the midst of new phenomena such as these, literature helps us imagine new ways of living. It allows us to reflect on the possibilities and perils of our liminal lives.Terreur Sur Wall Street
By Kenneth Eade. 2016
L’effondrement du marché boursier a crée un effet d’entraînement dans des proportions désastreuses. Les banques ont échoué, et les gens…
provoquent des émeutes dans les rues de villes, qui sont en feu. Des pannes localisées ont fait naitre les échecs du système dans son entier. Le professeur d’économie de l’Université de Chicago Harry Mason, Conseiller des président Américains et du Département du Trésor, a rassemblé son équipe de rêve de "jeunes prodiges," les étudiants les plus brillants et diplômés en Economie, pour une classe laboratoire spéciale. Leur mission sauver le monde. Mais est-ce trop tard?Cretaceous Dawn
By Michael S. Graziano, Lisa M. Graziano. 2008
"...An adventure-filled journey... In spite of its references to hard academic science, Cretaceous Dawn is a first-class adventure story, an…
effortless read as engaging as vintage Jules Verne. The descriptive prose is both evocative and illuminating, and the plot has enough twists and cliffhangers to keep readers traveling on to the inevitable conclusion."--Natural History "The Grazianos, sibling scientists, combine speculation and science in a compulsively page-turning time-travel adventure. A physics experiment gone awry sends four people and a dog 65 million years into the past. Day-to-day survival among creatures like giant croc Deinosuchus and T. rex becomes a priority, even as the group of stranded scientists realizes that getting home involves a 1,000 mile trek across the amazing landscape of Hell Creek. Details about plants, animals and insects in the distant past set the stage for a tight, scientifically plausible plot with a wholly unexpected twist that will keep readers guessing."--Publishers Weekly A long-extinct beetle appears in a physics lab. Four-and-a-half people and a dog are hurled 65 million years through time, to the Age of the Dinosaurs, and paleontologist Julian Whitney and his companions have only one chance for rescue. Meanwhile in the lab, police chief Sharon Earles must solve the mystery of why half a body remains where five people had just been. Physicists try to determine what went wrong but can they fix the vault in time to retrieve the missing people--and do they want to? "A rip-snorting good yarn. . . . Cretaceous Dawn's strength is its ability to transport the reader back in time to truly experience the Cretaceous."--Dinosaur News "Rendered with a clarity and vividness that gives the novel its richness, Cretaceous Dawn is plain fun, and educational at that. Short of time travel, this is as close as you'll ever get to the grim, predatory world of the Cretaceous."--Falmouth Enterprise "From the Inland Sea to the infant Rocky Mountains, we see the entirety of a long-gone ecosystem. The authors' scientific knowledge gives the story, and the giant creatures it is centered around, a realism that is immensely entertaining."--Prehistoric Times "[The era is] described so vividly the reader forgets that no human overlapped with a dinosaur in the sands of time."--The Cape Cod Chronicle Lisa M. Graziano, PhD, is a freelance editor and writer living on Cape Cod, Mass. She spent ten years as a professor of oceanography in Woods Hole, Mass. before turning to a full-time writing career. Michael S. A. Graziano, PhD, is a neuroscientist at Princeton University. He is the author of both fiction and nonfiction.Good Luck Have Fun: The Rise of eSports
By Roland Li. 2017
Esports is one of the fastest growing—and most cutthroat—industries in the world. A confluence of technology, culture, and determination has…
made this possible. Players around the world compete for millions of dollars in prize money, and companies like Amazon, Coca Cola, and Intel have invested billions. Esports are now regularly played live on national TV. Hundreds of people have dedicated their lives to gaming, sacrificing their education, relationships, and even their bodies to compete, committing themselves with the same fervor of any professional athlete. In Good Luck Have Fun, author Roland Li talks to some of the biggest names in the business and explores the players, companies, and games that have made it to the new major leagues. Follow Alex Garfield as he builds Evil Geniuses, a modest gaming group in his college dorm, into a global, multimillion-dollar eSports empire. Learn how Brandon Beck and Marc Merrill made League of Legends the world’s most successful eSports league and most popular PC game, on track to make over $1 billion a year. See how Twitch.tv pivoted from a video streaming novelty into a $1 billion startup on the back of professional gamers. And dive into eSports’ dark side: drug abuse, labor troubles, and for each success story, hundreds of people who failed to make it big. With updates on recent developments, Good Luck Have Fun is the essential guide to the rise of an industry and culture that challenge what we know about sports, games, and competition.Economic Science Fictions (Goldsmiths Press / PERC Papers)
By Edited by William Davies. 2018
An innovative new anthology exploring how science fiction can motivate new approaches to economics.From the libertarian economics of Ayn Rand…
to Aldous Huxley's consumerist dystopias, economics and science fiction have often orbited each other. In Economic Science Fictions, editor William Davies has deliberately merged the two worlds, asking how we might harness the power of the utopian imagination to revitalize economic thinking.Rooted in the sense that our current economic reality is no longer credible or viable, this collection treats our economy as a series of fictions and science fiction as a means of anticipating different economic futures. It asks how science fiction can motivate new approaches to economics and provides surprising new syntheses, merging social science with fiction, design with politics, scholarship with experimental forms. With an opening chapter from Ha-Joon Chang as well as theory, short stories, and reflections on design, this book from Goldsmiths Press challenges and changes the notion that economics and science fiction are worlds apart. The result is a wealth of fresh and unusual perspectives for anyone who believes the economy is too important to be left solely to economists.ContributorsAUDINT, Khairani Barokka, Carina Brand, Ha-Joon Chang, Miriam Cherry, William Davies, Mark Fisher, Dan Gavshon-Brady and James Pockson, Owen Hatherley, Laura Horn, Tim Jackson, Mark Johnson, Bastien Kerspern, Nora O Murchú, Tobias Revell et al., Judy Thorne, Sherryl Vint, Joseph Walton, Brian WillemsTerrore a Wall Street
By Kenneth Eade, Federico Greco. 2017
100% di possibilità di fallimento, ma la speranza di una previsione. Uno “shock and awe” feroce che mescola fiction e…
non-fiction dallo scrittore di best seller che la critica ha salutato come ‘uno dei più robusti autori di thriller sulla scena’. Siamo nel 2020 e il mondo è sull’orlo del collasso economico. Riusciranno a salvarci un gruppo di studenti prodigio guidati da un professore di economia con la testa fra le nuvole e una ragazza di 24 anni? Il crollo del marcato azionario ha generato un effetto domino di proporzioni disastrose. Le banche sono fallite e la gente si ribella per le strade delle città ormai in fiamme. Blackout enormi hanno ceduto il passo a definitivi errori di sistema. Il professore di Economia dell’università di Chicago, Harry Mason, consigliere dei presidenti degli Stati Uniti e del Dipartimento del Tesoro, ha riunito il suo dream team, ‘i genietti’, tra i più brillanti laureati in economia, in un corso sperimentale speciale. La loro missione: salvare il mondo. Ma forse è troppo tardi. Il romanziere Kenneth Eade e il saggista Gordon L. Eade fanno squadra per offrirci un thriler di meta fiction pensato per mostrarci come sopravvivere al prossimo crollo. Ecco cosa dice la critica di questo thriller finanziario: “Un omaggio a un padre e un altro romanzo di prima classe da Kenneth Eade!” Grady Harp, Top 100, Hall of Fame and Vine Voice Ed ecco cosa pensano i lettori di questo libro rivelazione sull’economia mondiale: “Se avessi letto questo libro 30 anni fa, oggi avrei molti più soldi in banca. Non lasciatevi ingannare dal fatto che è scritto come un romanzo. La fiction è utilizzata semplicemente per illuminare i fatti. Userò alcune di queste informazioni per migliorare i profitti dei miei investimenti.” L. Klopping “Dovrebbero leggerlo tutti, ho imparato tanto. 2020: l’economia mondiale sta collassando. Questo libro e tutti gliThe Cobra Event: A Novel
By Richard Preston. 1997
A deadly virus - and a desperate race against time.'One of the most horrifying things I've ever read in my…
entire life' Stephen KingOne spring morning in New York City a seventeen-year-old student wakes up feeling vaguely ill. Hours later she is having violent seizures, blood is pouring out of her nose, and she begins to attack her own body in the most hideous way imaginable. Soon, other gruesome deaths of a similar nature have been discovered, and the autopsies reveal that a previously unknown virus is at large. It replicates horribly fast, it is always fatal - and is just too efficient to be entirely natural.When the Centre for Disease Control sends a forensic pathologist to investigate, her discoveries precipitate a national crisis.THE COBRA EVENT is a dramatic, heart-stopping thriller of an all-too-real threat.Survivors: The gripping, bestselling novel of life after a global pandemic
By Terry Nation. 1976
Survivors of a global plague battle for life on an empty planet. A gripping vision of a post-apocalyptic world...'A fine…
piece of British post-apocalyptic fiction' 'Nation's novel is based on his original cult series...and is all the better for it, being far, far more gritty and realistic' SUNDAY SUNA virus has wiped out 95 per cent of the world's population in just a few weeks, leaving the remaining 5 per cent to stay alive in a world devoid of the most basic amenities - electricity, transport and medicine. The few survivors of the human race are forced to fall back on the most primitive skills in order to live and re-establish some semblance of law and order.Abby Grant, widowed by the plague, moves through this new dark age with determination, sustained by hope that her son, who fled his boarding school at the onset, has survived. She knows she must relearn the skills on which civilisation was built. With others, she founds a commune and the group return to the soil. But marauding bands threaten their existence. For Abby, there's a chance for a new life and love when she encounters James Garland, the fourteenth Earl of Woodhouse, who is engaged in a desperate fight to save his ancestral home. But more important, she must find her son.Survivors: The gripping, bestselling novel of life after a global pandemic
By Terry Nation. 1976
Survivors of a global plague battle for life on an empty planet. A gripping vision of a post-apocalyptic world...'A fine…
piece of British post-apocalyptic fiction' 'Nation's novel is based on his original cult series...and is all the better for it, being far, far more gritty and realistic' SUNDAY SUNA virus has wiped out 95 per cent of the world's population in just a few weeks, leaving the remaining 5 per cent to stay alive in a world devoid of the most basic amenities - electricity, transport and medicine. The few survivors of the human race are forced to fall back on the most primitive skills in order to live and re-establish some semblance of law and order.Abby Grant, widowed by the plague, moves through this new dark age with determination, sustained by hope that her son, who fled his boarding school at the onset, has survived. She knows she must relearn the skills on which civilisation was built. With others, she founds a commune and the group return to the soil. But marauding bands threaten their existence. For Abby, there's a chance for a new life and love when she encounters James Garland, the fourteenth Earl of Woodhouse, who is engaged in a desperate fight to save his ancestral home. But more important, she must find her son.Time Shelter: Winner of the International Booker Prize 2023
By Georgi Gospodinov. 2022
A GUARDIAN AND FINANCIAL TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR'The most exquisite kind of literature... I've put it on a special…
shelf in my library that I reserve for books that demand to be revisited every now and then. 'OLGA TOKARCZUK, author of Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead'Could not be more timely... It's funny and absurd, but it's also frightening, because even as Gospodinov plays with the idea as fiction, the reader begins to recognise something rather closer to home... A writer of great warmth as well as skill'GUARDIAN'In equal measure playful and profound, Time Shelter renders the philosophical mesmerizing, and the everyday extraordinary. I loved it'CLAIRE MESSUD, author of The Woman Upstairs 'A genrebusting novel of ideas... Gospodinov's vision of tomorrow is the nightmare from which Europe knows it must awake. And accident, in combination with the book's own merits, may just have created a classic'THE TIMES 'Gospodinov is one of Europe's most fascinating and irreplaceable novelists, and this his most expansive, soulful and mind-bending book'DAVE EGGERS, author of The Circle'Touching and intelligent'NEW YORK TIMES'A powerful and brilliant novel: clear-sighted, foreboding, enigmatic'SANDRO VERONESI, author of The Hummingbird'An immensely enjoyable book which achieves depth with an affable narrative voice'IRISH TIMES In Time Shelter, an enigmatic flâneur named Gaustine opens a 'clinic for the past' that offers a promising treatment for Alzheimer's sufferers: each floor reproduces a decade in minute detail, transporting patients back in time. As Gaustine's assistant, the unnamed narrator is tasked with collecting the flotsam and jetsam of the past, from 1960s furniture and 1940s shirt buttons to scents and even afternoon light. But as the rooms become more convincing, an increasing number of healthy people seek out the clinic as a 'time shelter', hoping to escape from the horrors of our present - a development that results in an unexpected conundrum when the past begins to invade the present. Intricately crafted, and eloquently translated by Angela Rodel, Time Shelter cements Georgi Gospodinov's reputation as one of the indispensable writers of our times, a major voice in international literature. Georgi Gospodinov is one of Europe's most acclaimed writers. Originally from Bulgaria, his novels have won his country's most prestigious literary prize twice and have been shortlisted for more than a dozen international prizes - including the 2015 PEN Literary Award for Translation, the Premio Gregor von Rezzori, the Premio Strega Europeo, the Bruecke Berlin Preis, and the Haus der Kulturen der Welt Literaturpreis. He has won the 2016 Jan Michalski Prize for Literature, the 2019 Angelus Literature Central Europe Prize and the 2021 Premio Strega Europeo, among others.