Astro the Alien Learns about Responsibility


Book Description

Astro the Alien is excited to meet his friends’ new pet turtle named Shelly. Ben and Eva teach him about responsibility as they help prepare her new home and care for their new pet. This introduction to life skill concepts includes a note to caregivers with additional resources, reading activities, and a word list. Meet Astro the Alien! Astro landed on Earth and now lives in Ben and Eva’s backyard in a space pod. In each set of books, the group explores various topics so that Astro can learn more about the world the alien now lives in! Written at a slightly higher level than the introductory Dear Dragon series, Astro the Alien books help early readers build on previous skills, expanding vocabulary and learning more complex concepts. Each book includes a note to caregivers, a word list, and activities to promote reading success.




Project Hail Mary


Book Description

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the author of The Martian, a lone astronaut must save the earth from disaster in this “propulsive” (Entertainment Weekly), cinematic thriller full of suspense, humor, and fascinating science—in development as a major motion picture starring Ryan Gosling. HUGO AWARD FINALIST • ONE OF THE YEAR’S BEST BOOKS: Bill Gates, GatesNotes, New York Public Library, Parade, Newsweek, Polygon, Shelf Awareness, She Reads, Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal • “An epic story of redemption, discovery and cool speculative sci-fi.”—USA Today “If you loved The Martian, you’ll go crazy for Weir’s latest.”—The Washington Post Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission—and if he fails, humanity and the earth itself will perish. Except that right now, he doesn’t know that. He can’t even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it. All he knows is that he’s been asleep for a very, very long time. And he’s just been awakened to find himself millions of miles from home, with nothing but two corpses for company. His crewmates dead, his memories fuzzily returning, Ryland realizes that an impossible task now confronts him. Hurtling through space on this tiny ship, it’s up to him to puzzle out an impossible scientific mystery—and conquer an extinction-level threat to our species. And with the clock ticking down and the nearest human being light-years away, he’s got to do it all alone. Or does he? An irresistible interstellar adventure as only Andy Weir could deliver, Project Hail Mary is a tale of discovery, speculation, and survival to rival The Martian—while taking us to places it never dreamed of going.




Exegesis


Book Description

------------------------------------------------------------------ Date: Sun, 16 Jan 2000 14:27:39 (PST) From: [email protected] To: [email protected] Subject: Hello ------------------------------------------------------------------ Hello, Alice.




Astro City


Book Description

Written by KURT BUSIEK Art by BRENT ANDERSON Cover by ALEX ROSS A new hardcover starring Astro City's most popular heroes, collecting ASTRO CITY: ASTRA #1-2, ASTRO CITY: SILVER AGENT #1-2 and ASTRO CITY: BEAUTIE #1. Astra Furst, a third-generation super hero of Astro City, is graduating from college. It's a time of friends and family, new opportunities, changing relationships - and danger! Featuring the First Family, the creatures of Monstro City, a new hero team and more on a graduation night nobody's ever going to forget! Also in this volume: at last, the full story of the Silver Agent's fateful journey through time is revealed - including his origin, his greatest battles and his ultimate fate. Plus, Beautie, the life-size super-powered fashion-doll member of Honor Guard, doesn't know who she is. Now, she's determined to get answers. On sale APRIL 13 - 208 pg, FC




Superheroes!


Book Description

Modern myths, cheap trash or the objects of fetishist desire? Most people know something about Superman, Batman, Spider-Man and Wonder Woman, even if what they know is heavily filtered through film and television versions, rather than the comics in which they first appeared. Yet, even though the continuity of the DC and Marvel Comics universes rival or surpass in size almost anything else in Western culture, surprisingly little attention has been paid to comics, which we were supposed to grow out of. In "Superheroes!", acclaimed cultural commentator Roz Kaveney argues that this is a mistake, that, at their best, superhero comics are a form in which some writers and artists are doing fascinating work, not in spite of their chosen form, but because of it. "Superheroes!" discusses the slow accretion of comics universes from the thirties to the present day, the ongoing debate within the conventions of the superhero comic about whether superheroes are a good thing and the discussion within the comics fan community of the extent to which superhero comics are disfigured by misogyny and sexism. Roz Kaveney attempts to explain the differences between Marvel and DC, the notion of the floating present (or why Spider-Man, fifteen when he adopted the costume, is still only in his early thirties), and the various attempts by both companies to re-invent and re-boot individual characters and their entire continuity universes. She also looks at the influence of comics on the group of film and television screenwriters she calls 'the fanboy creators', all of whom moonlight as comics script writers, using Joss Whedon as her case study, and examines the adaptation of well-known comics into large-budget feature films, not always to the advantage of the material.




Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication


Book Description

Addressing a field that has been dominated by astronomers, physicists, engineers, and computer scientists, the contributors to this collection raise questions that may have been overlooked by physical scientists about the ease of establishing meaningful communication with an extraterrestrial intelligence. These scholars are grappling with some of the enormous challenges that will face humanity if an information-rich signal emanating from another world is detected. By drawing on issues at the core of contemporary archaeology and anthropology, we can be much better prepared for contact with an extraterrestrial civilization, should that day ever come.




Learn Corona SDK Game Development


Book Description

Corona SDK is one of the most popular app and game mobile development platforms in the world, and Learn Corona SDK Game Development walks you through creating a full-featured Corona game from scratch to the App Store. You'll learn Lua basics (the foundation of Corona), how to add and manipulate graphics, and how to use controls like multitouch, accelerometer, and gyroscope. You'll also learn how to use Box2D (Corona physics under the hood), and how to add sound effects and music. As you're polishing your game, you'll also learn about ads, in-app purchases, and OpenFeint and Game Center integration. Finally, you'll learn the ins and outs of getting a game into the App Store or other app marketplaces. Whether you're developing exclusively for iOS, or whether you're developing for Android or other platforms, Learn Corona SDK Game Development explains just what you need to launch your career as a mobile game developer. What you’ll learn Just enough Lua to get started with Corona How to put your Corona code together How to work with images and effects Adding music and sound Game physics and AI Working with app stores and marketplaces Who this book is for Beginning mobile game developers, with a grasp of the basics of programming, who want a complete walkthrough of the Corona app and game development tool, or iOS or Android developers who want to learn about Corona SDK. Table of ContentsPart I: Get Ready... Get Set... 1. Introducing Corona 2. Getting To Know Lua Part II: Go! 3. Application Structure 4. Title, main menu and settings screens 5. The Game, Part I: Core Game Code 6. The Game, Part II: The Main Loop 7. The Game, Part III: Player Control Input 8. The Game, Part IV: Collision Events 9. Wrapping Up Part III: The Post-Game Show 10. Odds And Ends 11. Testing And Publishing




Astrobiology


Book Description

ASTROBIOLOGY This unique book advances the frontier discussion of a wide spectrum of astrobiological issues on scientific advances, space ethics, social impact, religious meaning, and public policy formulation. Astrobiology is an exploding discipline in which not only the natural sciences, but also the social sciences and humanities converge. Astrobiology: Science, Ethics, and Public Policy is a multidisciplinary book that presents different perspectives and points of view by its contributing specialists. Epistemological, moral and political issues arising from astrobiology, convey the complexity of challenges posed by the search for life elsewhere in the universe. We ask: if a convoy of colonists from Earth make the trip to Mars, should their genomes be edited to adapt to the Red Planet’s environment? If scientists discover a biosphere with microbial life within our solar system, will it possess intrinsic value or merely utilitarian value? If astronomers discover an intelligent civilization on an exoplanet elsewhere in the Milky Way, what would be humanity’s moral responsibility: to protect Earth from an existential threat? To treat other intelligences with dignity? To exploit through interstellar commerce? To conquer? Audience The book will attract readers from a wide range of interests including astronomers, astrobiologists, chemists, biologists, space engineers, ethicists, theologians and philosophers.




Manga and the Representation of Japanese History


Book Description

This edited collection explores how graphic art and in particular Japanese manga represent Japanese history. The articles explore the representation of history in manga from disciplines that include such diverse fields as literary studies, politics, history, cultural studies, linguistics, narratology, and semiotics. Despite this diversity of approaches all academics from these respective fields of study agree that manga pose a peculiarly contemporary appeal that transcends the limitation imposed by traditional approaches to the study and teaching of history. The representation of history via manga in Japan has a long and controversial historiographical dimension. Thereby manga and by extension graphic art in Japanese culture has become one of the world's most powerful modes of expressing contemporary historical verisimilitude. The contributors to this volume elaborate how manga and by extension graphic art rewrites, reinvents and re-imagines the historicity and dialectic of bygone epochs in postwar and contemporary Japan. Manga and the Representation of Japanese History will be of interest to students and scholars of Asian studies, Asian history, Japanese culture and society, as well as art and visual culture




Bowl of Heaven


Book Description

SF masters Gregory Benford and Larry Niven spin a tale of alien encounters and strange technologies on an epic scale In Bowl of Heaven, the first collaboration by science fiction authors Larry Niven (Ringworld) and Gregory Benford (Timescape), the limits of wonder are redrawn once again as a human expedition to another star system is jeopardized by an encounter with an astonishingly immense artifact in interstellar space: a bowl-shaped structure half-englobing a star, with a habitable area equivalent to many millions of Earths...and it's on a direct path heading for the same system as the human ship. A landing party is sent to investigate the Bowl, but when the explorers are separated—one group captured by the gigantic structure's alien inhabitants, the other pursued across its strange and dangerous landscape—the mystery of the Bowl's origins and purpose propel the human voyagers toward discoveries that will transform their understanding of their place in the universe. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.