Notes from the Internet Apocalypse


Book Description

When the Internet suddenly stops working, society reels from the loss of flowing data and streaming entertainment in Wayne Gladstone's provactive novel, Notes from the Internet Apocalypse. Addicts wander the streets talking to themselves in 140 characters or forcing cats to perform tricks for their amusement, while the truly desperate pin their requests for casual encounters on public bulletin boards. The economy tumbles and the government passes the draconian NET Recovery Act. For Gladstone, the Net's disappearance comes particularly hard, following the loss of his wife, leaving his flask of Jamesons and grandfather's fedora as the only comforts in his Brooklyn apartment. But there are rumors that someone in New York is still online. Someone set apart from this new world where Facebook flirters "poke" each other in real life and members of Anonymous trade memes at secret parties. Where a former librarian can sell information as a human search engine and the perverted fulfill their secret fetishes at the blossoming Rule 34 club. With the help of his friends---a blogger and a webcam girl, both now out of work---Gladstone sets off to find the Internet. But is he the right man to save humanity from this Apocalypse? For those of you wondering if you have WiFi right now, Wayne Gladstone's Notes from the Internet Apocalypse examines the question "What is life without the Web?"




Notes from an Apocalypse


Book Description

AN NPR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • An absorbing, deeply felt book about our anxious present tense—and coming to grips with the future, by the author of the award-winning To Be a Machine. “Deeply funny and life-affirming, with a warm, generous outlook even on the most challenging of subjects.” —Esquire We’re alive in a time of worst-case scenarios: The weather has gone uncanny. A pandemic draws our global community to a halt. Everywhere you look there’s an omen, a joke whose punchline is the end of the world. How is a person supposed to live in the shadow of such a grim future? What might it be like to live through the worst? And what on earth is anybody doing about it? Dublin-based writer Mark O’Connell is consumed by these questions—and, as the father of two young children, he finds them increasingly urgent. In Notes from an Apocalypse, he crosses the globe in pursuit of answers. He tours survival bunkers in South Dakota. He ventures to New Zealand, a favored retreat of billionaires banking on civilization’s collapse. He engages with would-be Mars colonists, preppers, right-wing conspiracists. And he bears witness to places, like Chernobyl, that the future has already visited—real-life portraits of the end of the world as we know it. What emerges is an absorbing, funny, and deeply felt book about our anxious present tense—and coming to grips with what’s ahead.




Thank You, Anarchy


Book Description

Thank You, Anarchy is an up-close, inside account of Occupy Wall Street’s first year in New York City, written by one of the first reporters to cover the phenomenon. Nathan Schneider chronicles the origins and explosive development of the Occupy movement through the eyes of the organizers who tried to give shape to an uprising always just beyond their control. Capturing the voices, encounters, and beliefs that powered the movement, Schneider brings to life the General Assembly meetings, the chaotic marches, the split-second decisions, and the moments of doubt as Occupy swelled from a hashtag online into a global phenomenon. A compelling study of the spirit that drove this watershed movement, Thank You, Anarchy vividly documents how the Occupy experience opened new social and political possibilities and registered a chilling indictment of the status quo. It was the movement’s most radical impulses, this account shows, that shook millions out of a failed tedium and into imagining, and fighting for, a better kind of future.




Leave the World Behind


Book Description

Now a Netflix film starring Julia Roberts, Mahershala Ali, Ethan Hawke, Myha'la, Farrah Mackenzie, Charlie Evans and Kevin Bacon. Written for the Screen and Directed by Sam Esmail. Executive Producers Barack and Michelle Obama, Tonia Davis, Daniel M. Stillman, Nick Krishnamurthy, Rumaan Alam A Read with Jenna Today Show Book Club Pick! Finalist for the 2020 National Book Award in Fiction One of Barack Obama's Summer Reads A Best Book of the Year From: The Washington Post * Time * NPR * Elle * Esquire * Kirkus * Library Journal * The Chicago Public Library * The New York Public Library * BookPage * The Globe and Mail * EW.com * The LA Times * USA Today * InStyle * The New Yorker * AARP * Publisher's Lunch * LitHub * Book Marks * Electric Literature * Brooklyn Based * The Boston Globe A magnetic novel about two families, strangers to each other, who are forced together on a long weekend gone terribly wrong. From the bestselling author of Rich and Pretty comes a suspenseful and provocative novel keenly attuned to the complexities of parenthood, race, and class. Leave the World Behind explores how our closest bonds are reshaped—and unexpected new ones are forged—in moments of crisis. Amanda and Clay head out to a remote corner of Long Island expecting a vacation: a quiet reprieve from life in New York City, quality time with their teenage son and daughter, and a taste of the good life in the luxurious home they’ve rented for the week. But a late-night knock on the door breaks the spell. Ruth and G. H. are an older couple—it’s their house, and they’ve arrived in a panic. They bring the news that a sudden blackout has swept the city. But in this rural area—with the TV and internet now down, and no cell phone service—it’s hard to know what to believe. Should Amanda and Clay trust this couple—and vice versa? What happened back in New York? Is the vacation home, isolated from civilization, a truly safe place for their families? And are they safe from one other?




Everyday Apocalypse


Book Description

Mining popular media, Dark redefines the term apocalypse as a more honest, watchful way of being in the world and higlights how the imagination can expose our moral condition.




Dead Inside: Do Not Enter


Book Description

Post Secret meets World War Z in this chilling vision of the fallout following a global zombie pandemic. A gradual mutation of a virulent strain of super flu gives rise to millions of the undead, who quickly overwhelm treatment facilities and swarm cities around the world, leaving survivors on their own against a legion of the infected. This chilling story is told through the scraps of paper, scrawled signs, and cryptic markers left by survivors as they struggle to stay alive and find those they ve lost in a world overrun by zombies. Through these found notes and messages letters to loved ones, journal fragments, confessions, and warnings readers can uncover the story of what went wrong, and come to know the individual voices of those affected by the zombie crisis.




Reports on the Internet Apocalypse


Book Description

"In this third and final installment of the [series], Gladstone, the would-be Internet Messiah, finds himself in exile from America, falsely accused of murder. Meanwhile, a government special agent is hot on his trail and has joined forces with a would-be Hollywood producer who is bent on finding Gladstone to option his story for film. When the World Wide Web returns in a highly compromised and commercialized state under the new regime of a billionaire-turned-President, Gladstone and his pursuers must collaborate in an attempt to reclaim a free and open Internet"--




After the Apocalypse


Book Description

In this post-apocalyptic rollercoaster ride, philosopher Srećko Horvat invites us to explore the Apocalypse in terms of ‘revelation’ (rather than as the ‘end’ itself). He argues that the only way to prevent the end – i.e., extinction – is to engage in a close reading of various interconnected threats, such as climate crisis, the nuclear age and the ongoing pandemic. Drawing on the work of neglected philosopher Günther Anders, this book outlines a philosophical approach to deal with what Horvat, borrowing a term from climate science and giving it a theological twist, calls ‘eschatological tipping points’. These are no longer just the nuclear age or climate crisis, but their collision, conjoined with various other major threats – not only pandemics, but also the viruses of capitalism and fascism. In his investigation of the future of places such as Chernobyl, the Mediterranean and the Marshall Islands, as well as many others affected by COVID-19, Horvat contends that the ‘revelation’ appears simple and unprecedented: the alternatives are no longer socialism or barbarism – our only alternatives today are a radical reinvention of the world, or mass extinction. After the Apocalypse is an urgent call not only to mourn tomorrow’s dead today but to struggle for our future while we can.




The Tropic of Serpents


Book Description

The thrilling adventure of Lady Trent continues in Marie Brennan's Tropic of Serpents . . . Attentive readers of Lady Trent's earlier memoir, A Natural History of Dragons, are already familiar with how a bookish and determined young woman named Isabella first set out on the historic course that would one day lead her to becoming the world's premier dragon naturalist. Now, in this remarkably candid second volume, Lady Trent looks back at the next stage of her illustrious (and occasionally scandalous) career. Three years after her fateful journeys through the forbidding mountains of Vystrana, Mrs. Camherst defies family and convention to embark on an expedition to the war-torn continent of Eriga, home of such exotic draconian species as the grass-dwelling snakes of the savannah, arboreal tree snakes, and, most elusive of all, the legendary swamp-wyrms of the tropics. The expedition is not an easy one. Accompanied by both an old associate and a runaway heiress, Isabella must brave oppressive heat, merciless fevers, palace intrigues, gossip, and other hazards in order to satisfy her boundless fascination with all things draconian, even if it means venturing deep into the forbidden jungle known as the Green Hell . . . where her courage, resourcefulness, and scientific curiosity will be tested as never before. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.




Agents of the Internet Apocalypse


Book Description

"Gladstone, the so-called "Internet Messiah," has not only failed to bring back the Web, but his search has landed him in a New York City psychiatric ward. The rest of the world isn't doing so well either. The economy continues to suffer, further stoking the discontent of frenzied former Internet users still looking for a fix. More importantly, the government has ramped up its draconian NET Recovery Act, interrogating and detaining anyone deemed a "person of interest." For Gladstone, finding the Net has taken a backseat to winning over his ex-wife. But even though he follows her to Los Angeles, he still can't shake the demands of his followers when his former account of the Internet Apocalypse goes "paper viral." This newfound celebrity makes him a target for desperate online addicts, anarchic members of Anonymous, and shadowy government agents who have their own plans for him. Full of funny yet cutting social commentary, Agents of the Internet Apocalypse continues the trilogy that imagines a dystopian world without the Web"--