towards the unMaking of Heaven, You Human: the Leander Chronicle


Book Description

You Human: The Leander Chronicle is the dark core, the gravitational mass of the quintet, towards the unMaking of Heaven. Within You Human genetic manipulation and genocide will be encountered, sexual obsession/gratification and the nature of love will be explored. You Human is the book towards which the first two books, Balant and Happiness, led; and spinning off from its gravitational mass will be the final two books, Not Now: Death, Dreams and Reasons for Living and finally the unMaking of Heaven.




towards the unMaking of Heaven, Not Now: Death, Dreams & Reasons for Living


Book Description

An SF exploration of desire, dreams and self-deceit. Okinwe Orbinson is recruited from his artificial city world--part of a moribund space civilisation--his mission is to save a rumoured hybrid-human race, Talkers, from self-extinction. Talkers are telepathic, and individual suicides among the Talkers are becoming epidemic. Left on one of their planets Okinwe is witness to 3 suicides in quick succession. Suspicious of all around him, doubting himself, not knowing if his thoughts are his own, he becomes friends with a Talker woman, worries for her safety and falls in love with her daughter. Their love affair is not easy. Nor is the solution to the suicides.




The Unmaking of Heaven


Book Description

In this the fifth and final book of the series all the characters are post-organic beings, minds become machines, calling themselves Synths or Eternals. Some Synths - led by the Shining Knight - decide that all Synths, including Sexthetes and Puzzlers, are Abominations, themselves included, and they set out to destroy them all. The survivors are those who hid. As initially did the Shining Knight.




towards the unMaking of Heaven, Happiness: a Planet


Book Description

towards the unMaking of Heaven, Happiness: A Planet, is the second novel in a series of five. All five novels can be read and understood independently of the others. Where the first book was about 3 young men being marooned on the planet Balant, this installment is about a planet that finds its moon has gone missing. This story is told in the third person from the viewpoint of its many different characters. At the same time that the moon disappeared all radio communication to and from that planet was blocked. Within Space only farmers and cranks live on planets. An unseen force destroys any craft that tries to leave the planet, except the one Space police ship. During the investigation into the missing moon, and its consequences, the principal one of which is the building of a road though mountainous terrain for the convenience of Nautili, there are 2 love affairs and many considerations upon the nature of government and society.




towards the unMaking of Heaven, Balant: A Beginning


Book Description

The greatest Sci-fi sagas ask is there anyone out there and how do they live and exist. In towards the unMaking of Heaven, Sam Smith takes us to one of these places, where humans are not necessarily the dominant species and first steps of life are emerging from wherever it desires. Balant is book one in a series of five. Each book is intricately linked and delves deeper into what is known as the Supreme Civilisation, until the ultimate drawing together in the finale. Balant, has Dag Olvess, Malamud Bey and Pi Pandy marooned on the edge of the universe. Narrator is the priggish Pi Pandy. En route from his mother's substation to university in another galaxy, the ship he was travelling upon encountered a storm of cosmic proportions. The ship about to implode, he escaped in the ship's shuttle with two other young men, Malamud Bey and Dag Olvess. They end up on the planet, Balant, where they adapt to life in a cave, and then come across ancient robots, savages, slave traders, the Nautili.




The Beauty of the Purple


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Rochester


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The Beginnings of Poetry


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Broken Idols of the English Reformation


Book Description

Why were so many religious images and objects broken and damaged in the course of the Reformation? Margaret Aston's magisterial new book charts the conflicting imperatives of destruction and rebuilding throughout the English Reformation from the desecration of images, rails and screens to bells, organs and stained glass windows. She explores the motivations of those who smashed images of the crucifixion in stained glass windows and who pulled down crosses and defaced symbols of the Trinity. She shows that destruction was part of a methodology of religious revolution designed to change people as well as places and to forge in the long term new generations of new believers. Beyond blanked walls and whited windows were beliefs and minds impregnated by new modes of religious learning. Idol-breaking with its emphasis on the treacheries of images fundamentally transformed not only Anglican ways of worship but also of seeing, hearing and remembering.