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Clockwork Futures: The Science Of Steampunk And The Reinvention Of The Modern World
By Brandy Schillace. 2017
Airships and electric submarines, automatons and mesmerists?welcome to the wild world of steampunk. It is all speculative?or is it? Meet…
the intrepid souls who pushed Victorian technology to its limits and paved the way for our present age. The gear turns, the whistle blows, and the billows expand with electro-mechanical whirring. The shimmering halo of Victorian technology lures us with the stuff of dreams, of nostalgia, of alternate pasts and futures that entice with the suave of James Bond and the savvy of Sherlock Holmes. Fiction, surely. But what if the unusual gadgetry so often depicted as “steampunk” actually made an appearance in history? Zeppelins and steam-trains; arc-lights and magnetic rays: these fascinating (and sometimes doomed) inventions bounded from the tireless minds of unlikely heroes. Such men and women served no secret societies and fought no super-villains, but they did build engines, craft automatons, and engineer a future they hoped would run like clockwork. Along the way, however, these same inventors ushered in a contest between desire and dread. From Newton to Tesla, from candle and clockwork to the age of electricity and manufactured power, technology teetered between the bright dials of fantastic futures and the dark alleyways of industrial catastrophe. In the mesmerizing Clockwork Futures, Brandy Schillace reveals the science behind steampunk, which is every bit as extraordinary as what we might find in the work of Jules Verne, and sometimes, just as fearful. These stories spring from the scientific framework we have inherited. They shed light on how we pursue science, and how we grapple with our destiny—yesterday, today, and tomorrow.Pyongyang
By Hernan Alberto Vanoli. 2017
Cuentos de ciencia ficción política y biológica por uno de los autores jóvenes que más agitan la escena literaria argentina.…
Una empresa de carpooling convoca almas irredentas que son perseguidas por osos callejeros. Una pareja emprende novedosas técnicas de fertilización y logra sus propios bebés de Rosemary. Una logia mundial de cintas de correr planea una revolución. Y el copamiento de 1989 en La Tablada desemboca en una granja de trolls militada por tiernos ancianos. Las historias de Pyongyang hablan de un totalitarismo suave, cariñoso y veloz, donde hacer un duelo parece imposible, las máquinas nos odian y el progreso es la sagrada ideología oficial. Político y pospolítico, trágico e irónico, imaginativo y cruel, Hernán Vanoli es uno de los autores más singulares del panorama narrativo actual. «Su hiperrealismo lingüístico es un viaje por la sociedad, interesada como nunca en las tribus, los grupos, las fracciones, las camarillas y las bandas.» Beatriz SarloWestwind: The classic lost thriller
By Ian Rankin. 2019
It always starts with a small lie. That's how you stop noticing the bigger ones.After his friend suspects something strange…
going on at the launch facility where they both work - and then goes missing - Martin Hepton doesn't believe the official line of "long-term sick leave"...Refusing to stop asking questions, he leaves his old life behind, aware that someone is shadowing his every move.The only hope he has is his ex-girlfriend Jill Watson - the only journalist who will believe his story.But neither of them can believe the puzzle they're piecing together - or just how shocking the secret is that everybody wants to stay hidden...A gripping, page-turning suspense masterclass - experience the brilliance of the iconic Ian Rankin.Opus 100
By Isaac Asimov. 1969
ASIMOV THE GREATEST Isaac Asimov needs no introduction. As the COLUMBUS DISPATCH declares, he is “the man who legitimized Science…
Fiction in the United States." But this is just part of the fabulous Asimov story. For this bestselling author has also explored virtually every branch of human knowledge in his mind- expanding writings. Now, in a blend of Science and Fiction that only he could achieve, Isaac Asimov takes you on a personally guided tour of the brightest adventures and delights in the Asimov galaxy.The Vestigial Heart: A Novel of the Robot Age
By Carme Torras. 2018
A thirteen-year-old girl wakes up in a future where human emotions are extinct and people rely on personal-assistant robots to…
navigate daily life. Imagine a future in which many human emotions are extinct, and “emotional masseuses” try to help people recover those lost sensations. Individuals rely on personal-assistant robots to navigate daily life. Students are taught not to think but to employ search programs. Companies protect their intellectual property by erasing the memory of their employees. And then imagine what it would feel like to be a sweet, smart thirteen-year-old girl from the twenty-first century who wakes from a cryogenically induced sleep into this strange world. This is the compelling story told by Carme Torras in this prize-winning science fiction novel. We meet Celia, brought back to life when a cure is found for her formerly terminal disease, and Lu, Celia's adoptive mother, protective but mystified by her new daughter. There is Leo, a bioengineer, who is developing a “creativity prosthesis” to augment humans' atrophied capacities, and the eccentric robotics mogul Dr. Craft. And there is Silvana, an emotional masseuse who reads old books to research the power of emotion. Silvana sees Celia as a living, breathing example of the emotions and feelings that are now out of reach for most people. Torras, a prominent roboticist, weaves provocative ethical issues into her story. What kind of robots do we want when robot companions become as common as personal computers are now? Is it the responsibility of researchers to design robots that make the human mind evolve in a certain way? An appendix provides readers with a list of ethics questions raised by the book.Entanglements: Tomorrow's Lovers, Families, and Friends (Twelve Tomorrows)
By Sheila Williams. 2020
At the intersection of Soonish and Netflix's Black Mirror, award-winning science fiction authors from around the world offer original tales…
of relationships in a future world of evolving technology.In a future world dominated by the technological, people will still be entangled in relationships--in romances, friendships, and families. This volume in the Twelve Tomorrows series considers the effects that scientific and technological discoveries will have on the emotional bonds that hold us together. The strange new worlds in these stories feature AI family therapy, floating fungitecture, and a futuristic love potion. Contributions include Xia Jia's novelette set in a Buddhist monastery, translated by the Hugo Award-winning writer Ken Liu; and a story by Nancy Kress, winner of six Hugos and two Nebulas.Ghost Species: The environmental thriller longlisted for the BSFA Best Novel Award
By James Bradley. 2020
In an intimate portrayal of high-concept big ideas, can we engineer ourselves out of a problem of our own making?Set…
against the backdrop of rapidly escalating climate catastrophe, scientists Kate Larkin and Jay Gunesekera are recruited by tech billionaire and mogul Davis Hucken to the forests of Tasmania, Australia. His Foundation's mission is not only to halt the effects of climate change, but to re-engineer and reverse the damage through the ambitious process of reviving species lost to the earth over time, including a clandestine ambition to resurrect the Neanderthals. When Eve, the first child, is born and grows up in a world crumbling around her, questions arise that she and Kate must face. Is she human or not, real or unnatural, and is she the ghost species or are we?As more and more of us are waking up to the truth about our climate, and our need to reverse the damage we have caused, Ghost Species is timely, poignant and reflective on what it means to be human on a personal and a global scale.A science fiction thriller from the author of THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH.'A fine engrossing novel by a master!'…
Philadelphia EnquirerIn a time when America's power has been eroded by energy depletion, and world control has been virtually given over to the Chinese, only one man has the courage to seek new mineral resources among the stars. He is Ben Belson, one of the richest men in the world, a man haunted by the memory of a loveless childhood and driven by needs and desires he can barely understand or control. His dream is to find the means to help America break the stranglehold of the corrupt interests who are keeping it a second class power.California
By Edan Lepucki. 2014
The highly acclaimed, instant New York Times bestseller that '[gives] expression to a generational anxiety about the near future, one…
rooted in the threat of environmental crisis...The experience of reading California brings validation to anyone who sits upright in the middle of the night struck with the instability of the human project on this planet: others are awake, too' GuardianThe sunshine state lies in darkness.Los Angeles is in ruins, left to the angels now.And the world Cal and Frida have always known is gone.Cal and Frida have left the crumbling city of Los Angeles far behind them. They now live in a shack in the wilderness, working side-by-side to make their days tolerable despite the isolation and hardships they face. Consumed by fear of the future and mourning for a past they can't reclaim, they seek comfort and solace in one other. But the tentative existence they've built for themselves is thrown into doubt when Frida finds out she's pregnant. Terrified of the unknown but unsure of their ability to raise a child alone, Cal and Frida set out for the nearest settlement, a guarded and paranoid community with dark secrets. These people can offer them security, but Cal and Frida soon realise this community poses its own dangers. In this unfamiliar world, where everything and everyone can be perceived as a threat, the couple must quickly decide whom to trust.A gripping and provocative debut novel by a stunning new talent,California imagines a frighteningly realistic near future, in which clashes between mankind's dark nature and irrepressible resilience force us to question how far we will go to protect the ones we love.Ghost Species: The environmental thriller longlisted for the BSFA Best Novel Award
By James Bradley. 2020
In an intimate portrayal of high-concept big ideas, can we engineer ourselves out of a problem of our own making?Set…
against the backdrop of rapidly escalating climate catastrophe, scientists Kate Larkin and Jay Gunesekera are recruited by tech billionaire and mogul Davis Hucken to the forests of Tasmania, Australia. His Foundation's mission is not only to halt the effects of climate change, but to re-engineer and reverse the damage through the ambitious process of reviving species lost to the earth over time, including a clandestine ambition to resurrect the Neanderthals. When Eve, the first child, is born and grows up in a world crumbling around her, questions arise that she and Kate must face. Is she human or not, real or unnatural, and is she the ghost species or are we?As more and more of us are waking up to the truth about our climate, and our need to reverse the damage we have caused, Ghost Species is timely, poignant and reflective on what it means to be human on a personal and a global scale.The Ninth Metal: The Comet Cycle Book 1 (The Comet Cycle #1)
By Benjamin Percy. 2021
'Great characters, fine writing, totally engrossing' STEPHEN KING It might have been the end of days. Instead it was the…
beginning of something shockingly new. They called the comet Cain, after the astronomer who discovered it. It passed 500,000 miles from Earth. We were spared planetary destruction and granted a light show like no other. But, one year later, Earth span into the debris field left by the comet and a meteor storm struck. Roads, buildings and even a small town were annihilated.The meteors impacted heavily around the dying mining town of Northfall, Minnesota. It was the night of a mysterious double murder, the deed overshadowed by the discovery that the burning remains of the rock contained an unknown substance more precious than gold: the Ninth Metal. And with that discovery, everything changed.Benjamin Percy is an award-winning novelist, celebrated comic books writer and author of the Wolverine podcast. The Ninth Metal is the first of a cycle of novels set in a shared universe.Praise for The Ninth Metal:'Whether you choose to think of him as the Elmore Leonard of rural Minnesota or the Stephen King of Science Fiction, Percy - with his extraordinary and unrelenting eye - dishes up humanity like some kind of otherworldly blue plate special, at once deeply familiar and wildly new' Margaret Stohl, No. 1 New York Times Bestselling Author'Take one part dystopia, one part sci-fi, two parts apocalypse, then ride them roughshod through a bleak and bloody western, and it still wouldn't get close to what Ben Percy does here, which is blow open the core of humanity's dark heart' Marlon James, Booker Prize winning author of Black Leopard, Red Wolf'The Ninth Metal continues his streak of thrilling, incisive genre bending goodness. It's a sci-fi novel, a crime novel and a super-hero novel, too. Audacious and intelligent and exactly what I was dying to read' Victor LaValle, author of The ChangelingThe Moon: 365 reflections
By Pyramid. 2018
Throughout history, legend and myth, the Moon has symbolized immortality and eternity, enlightenment and adventure and has inspired poets, philosophers,…
astronomers and artists. Reflections upon the Moon from literature, philosophy, science and ancient wisdom are gathered together in this enchanting collection.Imagining Apocalyptic Politics in the Anthropocene (Routledge Environmental Humanities)
By Earl T. Harper. 2022
Bringing together scholars from English literature, geography, politics, the arts, environmental humanities and sociology, Imagining Apocalyptic Politics in the Anthropocene…
contributes to the emerging debate between bodies of thought first incepted by scholars such as Mouffe, Whyte, Kaplan, Hunt, Swyngedouw and Malm about how apocalyptic events, narratives and imaginaries interact with societal and individual agency historically and in the current political moment. Exploring their own empirical and philosophical contexts, the authors examine the forms of political acting found in apocalyptic imaginaries and reflect on what this means for contemporary society. By framing their arguments around either pre-apocalyptic, peri-apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic narratives and events, a timeline emerges throughout the volume which shows the different opportunities for political agency the anthropocenic subject can enact at the various stages of apocalyptic moments. Featuring a number of creative interventions exclusively produced for the work from artists and fiction writers who engage with the themes of apocalypse, decline, catastrophe and disaster, this innovative book will be of great interest to students and scholars of the politics of climate change, the environmental humanities, literary criticism and eco-criticism.The Love Makers
2021
How artificial intelligence and robotics are transforming the future of love and desire: a philosophical thriller and essays.A chance encounter…
between two women and a road trip into the future: It's Christmas Eve, and Scarlett, banker-turned-technologist, is leaving a secret underground lab to catch the last flight that will get her home in time to open presents with her three-year-old son. She offers a lift to a young woman in distress, who shares her intimate life story as they drive to the airport. These revelations will have devastating consequences for both of them. The Love Makers is a philosophical thriller about female friendship, class, motherhood, women, and work--and how artificial intelligence and robotics are transforming the future of love and desire. Aifric Campbell combines her novel with essays from leading scientists and commentators who examine what's at stake in our human-machine relationships. What is our future as friends, parents, lovers? Will advances in intelligent machines reverse decades of progress for women? From robot nannies to generative art and our ancient dreams of intelligent machines, The Love Makers blends storytelling with science communication to investigate the challenges and opportunities of emergent technologies and how we want to live. ContributorsRonny Bogani, Joanna J. Bryson, Julie Carpenter, Stephen Cave, Anita Chandran, Peter R. N. Childs, Kate Devlin, Kanta Dihal, Mary Flanagan, Margaret Rhee, Amanda Sharkey, Roberto Trotta, E. R. Truitt, and Richard WatsonThe Unfamiliar Garden: The Comet Cycle Book 2 (The Comet Cycle #2)
By Benjamin Percy. 2022
From award-winning author Benjamin Percy comes the second novel in his grippingly original sci-fi series, The Comet Cycle, in which…
a passing comet has caused irreversible change to the growth of fungi, spawning a dangerous, invasive species in the Pacific Northwest that threatens to control the lives of humans and animals alike.It began with a comet. They called it Cain, a wandering star that passed by Earth, illuminating the night with a swampy green light and twinning the sky by day with two suns. A year later, Earth spun through the debris field the comet left behind. Suddenly, hundreds of thousands of meteors plummeted into the atmosphere, destroying swaths of electrical grids, leaving shores of beaches filled with deceased sea life, and setting acres of land ablaze. It was then, they say, that the sky fell. It was then that Jack lost Mia.Five years after the disappearance of his daughter, Jack has fallen. Once an accomplished professor of botany, he's now a shell of a man who has all but withdrawn from life. Nora, his ex-wife, has thrown herself into her investigative work. Separately, they have each bandaged over the hole Mia left behind.Just as Jack is uncovering a new form of deadly parasitic fungus in his lab, Nora is assigned to investigate the cases of ritualistic murders dotting Seattle. The rituals consist of etchings - crosshatches are carved into bodies and eyes are scooped out of their sockets. The attackers appear to be possessed.It only takes a moment - for a sickness to infect, for a person to be killed, for a child to be lost. When Nora enlists Jack to identify the cause of this string of vicious deaths, Jack is quick to help. Together, they fight to keep their moments - the unexpected laughter, the extraordinary discoveries, the chance that Mia could come back home - but they find that what they're up against defies all logic, and what they have to do to save the world will change every life forever.The World of Flying Saucers A Scientific Examination of a Major Myth of the Space Age (Classics To Go)
By Donald H. Menzel. 1952
Excerpt: "Both as scientists and as devotees of science fiction, we have long been interested in space travel. When reports…
of unidentified flying objects began to increase in the years between 1947 and 1952, one of us (D.H.M.) collected and studied the limited information available about the sightings. He soon concluded (with a slight feeling of disappointment!) that the flying saucers were not vehicles from other worlds but were only mundane objects and events of various kinds, some of them commonplace, some familiar chiefly to meteorologists, physicists, and astronomers."Our Shared Storm: A Novel of Five Climate Futures
By Andrew Dana Hudson. 2022
Through speculative fiction, five interlocking novelettes explore the possible realities of our climate future.What is the future of our climate?…
Given that our summers now regularly feature Arctic heat waves and wildfire blood skies, polar vortex winters that reach all the way down to Texas, and “100-year” storms that hit every few months, it may seem that catastrophe is a done deal. As grim as things are, however, we still have options. Combining fiction and nonfiction and employing speculative tools for scholarly purposes, Our Shared Storm explores not just one potential climate future but five possible outcomes dependent upon our actions today. Written by speculative-fiction writer and sustainability researcher Andrew Dana Hudson, Our Shared Storm features five overlapping fictions to employ a futurist technique called “scenarios thinking.” Rather than try to predict how history will unfold—picking one out of many unpredictable and contingent branching paths—it instead creates a set of futures that represent major trends or counterposed possibilities, based on a set of climate-modeling scenarios known as the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs).The setting is the year 2054, during the Conference of the Parties global climate negotiations (a.k.a., The COP) in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Each story features a common cast of characters, but with events unfolding differently for them—and human society—in each alternate universe. These five scenarios highlight the political, economic, and cultural possibilities of futures where investments in climate adaptation and mitigation promised today have been successfully completed, kicked down the road, or abandoned altogether. From harrowing to hopeful, these stories highlight the choices we must make to stabilize the planet.Our Shared Storm is an experiment in deploying practice-based research methods to explore the opportunities and challenges of using climate fiction to engage scientific and academic frameworks.Blockbuster Science: The Real Science in Science Fiction
By David Siegel Bernstein. 2017
If you've ever wondered how much real science goes into movies like Gravity, novels like The Martian, and television shows…
like Doctor Who, this is the book for you. Written by an author who is both a data scientist and a science fiction writer, this entertaining and accessible book uses popular science fiction movies, stories, and TV shows to explain the science behind popular narrative concepts like time travel, lightsabers, AI, genetic mutation, asteroids, cyborgs, black holes, alien invasion, the zombie apocalypse, and more.What could be a more fun way to explore the world of science than through its use—accurately or fantastically—in science fiction entertainment: movies, books, and TV shows?Learn about relativity through Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game and the movie Interstellar; black holes and wormholes in connection with Contact and Planet of the Apes; theories about the origin of life as reflected in Battlestar Galactica, Star Trek: The Next Generation, and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy; computer science and artificial intelligence in reference to A.I. Artificial Intelligence; and much, much, more.Written with wit, clarity, and a great sense of fun, Blockbuster Science will inspire science fiction fans to get excited about real science while also putting an engaging pop culture spin on science for any curious reader.LEO the Maker Prince
By Carla Diana. 2014
LEO the Maker Prince teaches children (both young and old) about 3D printing by following Carla and LEO's journey through…
Brooklyn. LEO is a walking, talking robot who has the magical ability to to print (in plastic) any object that Carla draws. The other robots have their own special capabilities: H1-H0 prints in metal, Sinclair-10 can find and print objects from a huge catalog of designs, and the others (including AL1C3-D, IRIS-7, and NiXie) have unique talents, too. Readers can come along for the journey, too: all of the objects in the book are printable one way or another.21st Century Robot
By Brian David Johnson. 2015
When companies develop a new technology, do they ask how it might affect the people who will actually use it?…
That, more or less, sums up Brian David Johnson's duties as Intel's futurist-in-residence. In this fascinating book, Johnson provides a collection of science fiction prototyping stories that attempt to answer the question.These stories focus on the same theme: scientists and thinkers exploring personal robotics as a new form of artificial intelligence. This isn't fanciful speculation. Johnson's stories are based on Intel's futurecasting research, which uses ethnographic field studies, technology research, trend data, and science fiction to develop a pragmatic vision of consumers and computing. 21st Century Robot presents science fiction designed to bring about science fact.Get real insight into technology and the future with this book. It will open your eyes.