Download or read book Deus Ex Machina written by Andrew Foster Altschul and published by Catapult. This book was released on 2011-02-01 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On a distant island, reality show contestants battle for bragging rights and a slot on next week's episode. They've perfected their dramatic roles and are prepared to do whatever it takes to win. There's the take–no–prisoners Marine sergeant, the gay hairdresser, the ruthless lawyer, the brainy poet. But one player refuses to compete—Gloria Hamm, a sullen dental hygienist, voted least likely to win by the show's crew. The higher–ups are desperate for ratings and sensational twists to trump the plots of seasons past. But the producer—haunted by personal tragedies all too real—is losing control of the show and its crew. While he obsesses about Gloria, the crew plots mutiny, a contestant dances with insanity, and disease threatens to halt the show completely. When real catastrophes strike, the producer finds it harder and harder to navigate his surreal landscape, where boundaries of the real, imagined, and orchestrated have blurred beyond recognition. Deus Ex Machina deconstructs our notions of narrative, revealing how tricky it is for any auteur to disappear from his creation. In an age when people will seemingly do anything to be on television, it asks what is the true nature of "reality," and what is its cost?

Download or read book Deus Ex Machina written by Jennifer Pilch and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Poetry. Winner of the 2014 Kelsey Street Press FIRSTS Contest. "Jennifer Pilch's DEUS EX MACHINA pulls the ache from a fractured century, stitching the bloom past artifice into an urgent, prismatic form unlike any we have seen. Each voice 'risks/transforms night' into 'a blossom that punctures that blots.' A book like this, assembled from music and ruin and light, is rare and necessary." Joshua Poteat "In DEUS EX MACHINA, Jennifer Pilch crashes classical tragedy into melodrama, foregrounding the parameters of representation in an analog of early photography's impact. With lush language, she explores the photograph's obviating violence, focusing on the 'taken' part of the picture and the lens's seizure of sensory mechanics. Working at varying distances from the stage, the page, and the photographic image, her historical characters successively worry the line between romance and fidelity, presence and preservation, and contend with a colonizing mode of 'perception stuck to where there's light.'" Kate Colby"

Download or read book Brain Jack written by Brian Falkner and published by Ember. This book was released on 2011-08-09 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Top Ten YALSA Pick for Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults! Fans of Cory Doctorow's Little Brother and M. T. Anderson's Feed will love this high-octane cyber thriller. In a dystopian near-future, neuro-headsets have replaced computer keyboards. Just slip on a headset, and it's the Internet at the speed of thought. For teen hacker Sam Wilson, a headset is a must. But as he masters the new technology, he has a terrifying realization. If anything on his computer is vulnerable to an attack, what happens when his mind is linked to the system? Could consciousness itself be hacked? Brian Falkner, author of The Tomorrow Code and The Project, delivers an action-packed and thought-provoking sci-fi thriller in which logging on to a computer could mean the difference between life and death.

Download or read book Deus Ex Machina written by Mel Croucher and published by Andrews UK Limited. This book was released on 2016-04-04 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The billion dollar video games industry had to start somewhere, and this is the hilarious, heartbreaking, inside story of how it all began and where it's all headed. And in the middle of it all there was a game hailed as the best ever written. It was called Deus Ex Machina. It was a creative triumph and it was a commercial disaster. Meet the pirates, the nerds, the innovators, the charlatans, the superstars, the winners, the sinners, the good, the bad and the downright ugly. A remarkable story revealed by the founder of the industry himself, with gut-wrenching honesty and merciless humor. If you ever wondered how computer gaming turned us all into willing slaves, you're about to find out in glorious style.

Download or read book Work Done for Hire written by Joe Haldeman and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2014-01-07 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Joe Haldeman’s “adept plotting, strong pacing, and sense of grim stoicism have won him wide acclaim” (The Washington Post) and numerous honors for such works as The Forever War, The Accidental Time Machine, and the Marsbound trilogy. Now, the multiple Hugo and Nebula award–winning author pits a lone war veteran against a mysterious enemy who is watching his every move—and threatens him with more than death unless he kills for them. Wounded in combat and honorably discharged nine years ago, Jack Daley still suffers nightmares from when he served his country as a sniper, racking up sixteen confirmed kills. Now a struggling author, Jack accepts an offer to write a near-future novel about a serial killer, based on a Hollywood script outline. It’s an opportunity to build his writing career, and a future with his girlfriend, Kit Majors. But Jack’s other talent is also in demand. A package arrives on his doorstep containing a sniper rifle, complete with silencer and ammunition—and the first installment of a $100,000 payment to kill a “bad man.” The twisted offer is genuine. The people behind it are dangerous. They prove that they have Jack under surveillance. He can’t run. He can’t hide. And if he doesn’t take the job, Kit will be in the crosshairs instead.

Download or read book A Deus ex Machina Revisited written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2006-04-01 with total page 389 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume of essays provides a fresh and innovative look at colonial trade and its impact on economic development in Europe. It is unique in its coverage of countries that are usually ignored, such as Denmark and Sweden, while also including in its chronology more than the 18th century alone.

Download or read book My Sister s Keeper written by Jodi Picoult and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2009-05-19 with total page 529 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Anna is not sick, but she might as well be. By age 13, she has undergone countless surgeries, transfusions, and shots so that her older sister Kate can somehow fight the leukemia that has palgued her since childhood.

Download or read book Swank Rally written by Deus Ex Machina and published by Silvana Editoriale. This book was released on 2019-04-23 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hosted in Italy by Australian company Deus Ex Machina, the Deus Swank Rally is a championship for riders of Enduro off-road dirt bikes. Presented here are photographs documenting the championship and the eccentric events surrounding it, including amusing competitions and parties.

Download or read book The Adventurer s Guide to Successful Escapes written by Wade Albert White and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2016-09-13 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A thrilling debut novel where fantasy and science fiction meet, dragons aren't as innocent as they look, and nothing is quite what it seems. Anne has spent most of her thirteen years dreaming of the day she and her best friend Penelope will finally leave Saint Lupin's Institute for Perpetually Wicked and Hideously Unattractive Children. When the big day arrives, a series of very curious happenings lead to Anne being charged with an epic quest. Anne, Penelope, and new questing partner Hiro have only days to travel to strange new locales, solve myriad riddles, and triumph over monstrous foes--or face the horrible consequences. Packed with action, humor, and endless heart, this debut novel marks the first volume in an irresistible and original fantasy series.

Download or read book The Flash 2016 772 written by Jeremy Adams and published by DC Comics. This book was released on 2021-07-20 with total page 30 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Leaving past mistakes behind and racing into the future, Wally West returns as Central City’s Scarlet Speedster! Now reunited with his wife, Linda, and their two children, the former Kid Flash begins a new chapter in his life. But Wally quickly remembers that saving lives and fighting super-villains may make him a hero, but they don’t pay the bills. Luckily, an old friend may have just the right job for this blue-collar champion.

Download or read book Deus in Machina Religion Technology and the Things in Between written by Jeremy Stolow and published by Fordham Univ Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The essays in this volume explore how two domains of human experience and action--religion and technology--are implicated in each other. Contrary to commonsense understandings of both religion (as an "otherworldly" orientation) and technology (as the name for tools, techniques, and expert knowledges oriented to "this" world), the contributors to this volume challenge the grounds on which this division has been erected in the first place. What sorts of things come to light when one allows religion and technology to mingle freely? In an effort to answer that question, Deus in Machina embarks upon an interdisciplinary voyage across diverse traditions and contexts where religion and technology meet: from the design of clocks in medieval Christian Europe, to the healing power of prayer in premodern Buddhist Japan, to 19th-century Spiritualist devices for communicating with the dead, to Islamic debates about kidney dialysis in contemporary Egypt, to the work of disability activists using documentary film to reimagine Jewish kinship, to the representation of Haitian Vodou on the Internet, among other case studies. Combining rich historical and ethnographic detail with extended theoretical reflection, Deus in Machina outlines new directions for the study of religion and/as technology that will resonate across the human sciences, including religious studies, science and technology studies, communication studies, history, anthropology, and philosophy.

Download or read book Animal Man written by Grant Morrison and published by Vertigo. This book was released on 2002 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In this long-awaited second collection of the groundbreaking series Animal Man, .. questions become more and more troubling-and the answers less and less clear."- p .[4] of cover.

Download or read book The Authenticity of Faith written by Richard Allan Beck and published by Leafwood Publishers & Acu Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A popular strategy among contemporary critics of religion is to explain religiosity as an evolutionary adaptation -- a behavior pattern that exists simply because it helped our early human ancestors thrive. An effective response to this type of argument requires the ability to integrate social scientific research, philosophical viewpoints, and theological beliefs. Using social scientific research, Beck identifies the flaws in Freud's dismissal of religion as a neurotic defense against mortal dread. Instead, Beck draws on the writings of William James to show the complexity of religious belief, which emphasizes the uniqueness of the individual believer. Written in a way that is accessible to readers who aren't trained in social scientific research, but rigorous in meeting the standards of the social sciences, The Authenticity of Faith is a masterful example of the "new apologetics." (Steven V. Rouse).

Download or read book The Songs of the Kings written by Barry Unsworth and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2017-11-14 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A brilliant retelling of an ancient myth, The Songs of the Kings offers up a different narrative of the Trojan War, one devoid of honor, wherein the mission to rescue Helen is a pretext for plundering Troy of its treasures. As the ships of the Greek fleet find themselves stalled in the straits at Aulis, waiting vainly for the gods to deliver more favorable winds, Odysseus cynically advances a call for the sacrifice of Agamemnon’s daughter, Calchas the diviner interprets events for the reader, and a Homer-like figure called the Singer is persuaded to proclaim a tale of a just war to hide the corrupt motivations of those in power. But couched within the Singer’s spin is a message at once timely and timeless: “There is always another story. But it is the stories told by the strong, the songs of kings, that are believed in the end.”

Download or read book Lingua Ex Machina written by William H. Calvin and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A neuroscientist and a linguist show how evolution could have given rise to structured language. A machine for language? Certainly, say the neurophysiologists, busy studying the language specializations of the human brain and trying to identify their evolutionary antecedents. Linguists such as Noam Chomsky talk about machinelike "modules" in the brain for syntax, arguing that language is more an instinct (a complex behavior triggered by simple environmental stimuli) than an acquired skill like riding a bicycle. But structured language presents the same evolutionary problems as feathered forelimbs for flight: you need a lot of specializations to fly even a little bit. How do you get them, if evolution has no foresight and the intermediate stages do not have intermediate payoffs? Some say that the Darwinian scheme for gradual species self-improvement cannot explain our most valued human capability, the one that sets us so far above the apes, language itself. William Calvin and Derek Bickerton suggest that other evolutionary developments, not directly related to language, allowed language to evolve in a way that eventually promoted a Chomskian syntax. They compare these intermediate behaviors to the curb-cuts originally intended for wheelchair users. Their usefulness was soon discovered by users of strollers, shopping carts, rollerblades, and so on. The authors argue that reciprocal altruism and ballistic movement planning were "curb-cuts" that indirectly promoted the formation of structured language. Written in the form of a dialogue set in Bellagio, Italy, Lingua ex Machina presents an engaging challenge to those who view the human capacity for language as a winner-take-all war between Chomsky and Darwin.

Download or read book Lady Lazarus written by Andrew Foster Altschul and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2008 with total page 582 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this sprawling debut novel, Calliope Bird Morath is the daughter of legendary punk-rock star Brandt Morath, whose horrific suicide devastates the world.

Download or read book Batman Detective Comics written by Peter Tomasi and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Joker is waging a war on Batman, and he's going to use every ghost from the Dark Knight's past to win! As the Bat-Family reels from the recent loss of Alfred Pennyworth, no one has taken this death harder than Bruce Wayne. Alfred wasn't just a friend and partner to Gotham's favorite son; he was a father figure and a mentor to Bruce...and the loss has left the dark detective wounded. The Joker knows that now is the time to strike--and strike hard. The Clown Prince of Crime has unleashed a wave of friends, foes, and failures to attack Gotham's protector from the inside out. First up is Harvey Dent, a.k.a. Two-Face, whose violent impulses have been amplified to deadly new heights by the Joker--unleashing a cadre of zealots known as the Church of the Two on Gotham City! But that's not all--Lincoln March, Lucius Fox, Killer Croc, and countless more have been moved around the Joker's diabolical chessboard to bury the Bat once and for all. Will the Dark Knight rise? Or be drowned in laughter?"--