Author : Kim Stanley Robinson
Publisher : Macmillan
Page : 288 pages
File Size : 10,36 MB
Release : 1998-05-15
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 0312866097
Robinson's astonishing Mars sequence--"Red Mars, Green Mars", and "Blue Mars"--won the Nebula Award for the first volume and Hugos for the second and third. Clarke), "Icehenge" is the Robinson's first novel set on Mars.
Author : Kim Stanley Robinson
Publisher : Macmillan
Page : 292 pages
File Size : 20,94 MB
Release : 1998-05-15
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9780312866099
Robinson's astonishing Mars sequence--"Red Mars, Green Mars", and "Blue Mars"--won the Nebula Award for the first volume and Hugos for the second and third. Clarke), "Icehenge" is the Robinson's first novel set on Mars.
Author : Kim Stanley Robinson
Publisher : HarperCollins UK
Page : 582 pages
File Size : 45,49 MB
Release : 2008-10
Category : Antarctica
ISBN : 0007304889
In this novel of the near future, the icy continent will become a battleground between those who seek its natural treasures, and those who would keep this wild land untouched--no matter what the cost. "Robinson's most perfect big novel yet."--"The Washington Post."
Author : Kim Stanley Robinson
Publisher : Spectra
Page : 434 pages
File Size : 12,19 MB
Release : 2005-07-26
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 0553585800
The bestselling author of the classic Mars trilogy and The Years of Rice and Salt presents a riveting new trilogy of cutting-edge science, international politics, and the real-life ramifications of global warming as they are played out in our nation’s capital—and in the daily lives of those at the center of the action. Hauntingly yet humorously realistic, here is a novel of the near future that is inspired by scientific facts already making headlines. When the Arctic ice pack was first measured in the 1950s, it averaged thirty feet thick in midwinter. By the end of the century it was down to fifteen. One August the ice broke. The next year the breakup started in July. The third year it began in May. That was last year. It’s a muggy summer in Washington, D.C., as Senate environmental staffer Charlie Quibler and his scientist wife, Anna, work to call attention to the growing crisis of global warming. But as these everyday heroes fight to align the awesome forces of nature with the extraordinary march of technology, fate puts an unusual twist on their efforts—one that will place them at the heart of an unavoidable storm.
Author : Jo Walton
Publisher : Macmillan + ORM
Page : 488 pages
File Size : 40,27 MB
Release : 2014-01-21
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 1466844094
“A remarkable guided tour through the field—a kind of nonfiction companion to Among Others. It’s very good. It’s great.” —Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing As any reader of Jo Walton’s Among Others might guess, Walton is both an inveterate reader of SF and fantasy, and a chronic re-reader of books. In 2008, then-new science-fiction mega-site Tor.com asked Walton to blog regularly about her re-reading—about all kinds of older fantasy and SF, ranging from acknowledged classics, to guilty pleasures, to forgotten oddities and gems. These posts have consistently been among the most popular features of Tor.com. Now this volumes presents a selection of the best of them, ranging from short essays to long reassessments of some of the field’s most ambitious series. Among Walton’s many subjects here are the Zones of Thought novels of Vernor Vinge; the question of what genre readers mean by “mainstream”; the underappreciated SF adventures of C. J. Cherryh; the field’s many approaches to time travel; the masterful science fiction of Samuel R. Delany; Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children; the early Hainish novels of Ursula K. Le Guin; and a Robert A. Heinlein novel you have most certainly never read. Over 130 essays in all, What Makes This Book So Great is an immensely readable, engaging collection of provocative, opinionated thoughts about past and present-day fantasy and science fiction, from one of our best writers. “For readers unschooled in the history of SF/F, this book is a treasure trove.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Author : Kim Stanley Robinson
Publisher : Spectra
Page : 418 pages
File Size : 20,39 MB
Release : 2005-10-25
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 0553902075
Set in our nation’s capital, here is a chillingly realistic tale of people caught in the collision of science, technology, and the consequences of global warming. When the storm got bad, Frank Vanderwal was in his office at the National Science Foundation. When it was over, large chunks of San Diego had eroded into the sea, and D.C. was underwater. Everything Frank and his colleagues feared had culminated in this disaster. And now the world was looking to them to fix it. But even as D.C. bails itself out, a more extreme climate change looms. The melting polar ice caps are shutting down the warm Gulf Stream waters—meaning Ice Age conditions could return. And the last time that happened, eleven thousand years ago, it took just three years to start.…
Author : Philip Hingston
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
Page : 324 pages
File Size : 41,89 MB
Release : 2012-10-19
Category : Computers
ISBN : 3642323235
We share our modern world with bots – chatbots to converse with, roombots to clean our houses, spambots to fill our e-mail inboxes, and medibots to assist our surgeons. This book is about computer game bots, virtual companions who accompany us in virtual worlds or sharpen our fighting skills. These bots must be believable, that is human players should believe they are interacting with entities operating at a human level – bots are more fun if they behave like we do. This book shows how to create believable bots that play computer games, and it discusses the implications of making them appear human. The chapters in this book present the state of the art in research on and development of game bots, and they also look beyond the design aspects to address deep questions: Is a bot that plays like a person intelligent? Does it have emotions? Is it conscious? The topic is inherently interdisciplinary, and the work draws from research and practice in many fields, such as design, creativity, entertainment, and graphics; learning, psychology, and sociology; artificial intelligence, embodiment, agents, machine learning, robotics, human–computer interaction, and artificial life; cognition and neuroscience; and evolutionary computing. The contributing authors are among the leading researchers and developers in this field, and most of the examples and case studies involve analysis of commercial products. The book will be of value to graduate students and academic researchers in artificial intelligence, and to engineers charged with the design of entertaining games.
Author : Kim Stanley Robinson
Publisher : Spectra
Page : 777 pages
File Size : 11,64 MB
Release : 2003-06-03
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 0553897608
With the same unique vision that brought his now classic Mars trilogy to vivid life, bestselling author Kim Stanley Robinson boldly imagines an alternate history of the last seven hundred years. In his grandest work yet, the acclaimed storyteller constructs a world vastly different from the one we know. . . . “A thoughtful, magisterial alternate history from one of science fiction’s most important writers.”—The New York Times Book Review It is the fourteenth century and one of the most apocalyptic events in human history is set to occur—the coming of the Black Death. History teaches us that a third of Europe’s population was destroyed. But what if the plague had killed 99 percent of the population instead? How would the world have changed? This is a look at the history that could have been—one that stretches across centuries, sees dynasties and nations rise and crumble, and spans horrible famine and magnificent innovation. Through the eyes of soldiers and kings, explorers and philosophers, slaves and scholars, Robinson navigates a world where Buddhism and Islam are the most influential and practiced religions, while Christianity is merely a historical footnote. Probing the most profound questions as only he can, Robinson shines his extraordinary light on the place of religion, culture, power—and even love—in this bold New World. “Exceptional and engrossing.”—New York Post “Ambitious . . . ingenious.”—Newsday
Author : Howard V. Hendrix,
Publisher : McFarland
Page : 223 pages
File Size : 14,4 MB
Release : 2011-02-21
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 0786484705
Seventeen wide-ranging essays explore the evolving scientific understanding of Mars, and the relationship between that understanding and the role of Mars in literature, the arts and popular culture. Essays in the first section examine different approaches to Mars by scientists and writers Jules Verne and J.H. Rosny. Section Two covers the uses of Mars in early Bolshevik literature, Wells, Brackett, Burroughs, Bradbury, Heinlein, Dick and Robinson, among others. The third section looks at Mars as a cultural mirror in science fiction. Essayists include prominent writers (e.g., Kim Stanley Robinson), scientists and literary critics from many nations.
Author : Lindsay Ellis
Publisher : St. Martin's Press
Page : 397 pages
File Size : 30,86 MB
Release : 2020-07-21
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 1250256747
THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The alternate history first contact adventure Axiom's End is an extraordinary debut from Hugo finalist and video essayist Lindsay Ellis. Truth is a human right. It’s fall 2007. A well-timed leak has revealed that the US government might have engaged in first contact. Cora Sabino is doing everything she can to avoid the whole mess, since the force driving the controversy is her whistleblower father. Even though Cora hasn’t spoken to him in years, his celebrity has caught the attention of the press, the Internet, the paparazzi, and the government—and with him in hiding, that attention is on her. She neither knows nor cares whether her father’s leaks are a hoax, and wants nothing to do with him—until she learns just how deeply entrenched her family is in the cover-up, and that an extraterrestrial presence has been on Earth for decades. Realizing the extent to which both she and the public have been lied to, she sets out to gather as much information as she can, and finds that the best way for her to uncover the truth is not as a whistleblower, but as an intermediary. The alien presence has been completely uncommunicative until she convinces one of them that she can act as their interpreter, becoming the first and only human vessel of communication. Their otherworldly connection will change everything she thought she knew about being human—and could unleash a force more sinister than she ever imagined.
