Download or read book Seveneves written by Neal Stephenson and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2015-05-19 with total page 419 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Anathem, Reamde, and Cryptonomicon comes an exciting and thought-provoking science fiction epic—a grand story of annihilation and survival spanning five thousand years. What would happen if the world were ending? A catastrophic event renders the earth a ticking time bomb. In a feverish race against the inevitable, nations around the globe band together to devise an ambitious plan to ensure the survival of humanity far beyond our atmosphere, in outer space. But the complexities and unpredictability of human nature coupled with unforeseen challenges and dangers threaten the intrepid pioneers, until only a handful of survivors remain . . . Five thousand years later, their progeny—seven distinct races now three billion strong—embark on yet another audacious journey into the unknown . . . to an alien world utterly transformed by cataclysm and time: Earth. A writer of dazzling genius and imaginative vision, Neal Stephenson combines science, philosophy, technology, psychology, and literature in a magnificent work of speculative fiction that offers a portrait of a future that is both extraordinary and eerily recognizable. As he did in Anathem, Cryptonomicon, the Baroque Cycle, and Reamde, Stephenson explores some of our biggest ideas and perplexing challenges in a breathtaking saga that is daring, engrossing, and altogether brilliant.

Download or read book Fall or Dodge in Hell written by Neal Stephenson and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2019-06-04 with total page 896 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York Times Bestseller A New York Times Notable Book The #1 New York Times bestselling author of Seveneves, Anathem, Reamde, and Cryptonomicon returns with a wildly inventive and entertaining science fiction thriller—Paradise Lost by way of Philip K. Dick—that unfolds in the near future, in parallel worlds. In his youth, Richard “Dodge” Forthrast founded Corporation 9592, a gaming company that made him a multibillionaire. Now in his middle years, Dodge appreciates his comfortable, unencumbered life, managing his myriad business interests, and spending time with his beloved niece Zula and her young daughter, Sophia. One beautiful autumn day, while he undergoes a routine medical procedure, something goes irrevocably wrong. Dodge is pronounced brain dead and put on life support, leaving his stunned family and close friends with difficult decisions. Long ago, when a much younger Dodge drew up his will, he directed that his body be given to a cryonics company now owned by enigmatic tech entrepreneur Elmo Shepherd. Legally bound to follow the directive despite their misgivings, Dodge’s family has his brain scanned and its data structures uploaded and stored in the cloud, until it can eventually be revived. In the coming years, technology allows Dodge’s brain to be turned back on. It is an achievement that is nothing less than the disruption of death itself. An eternal afterlife—the Bitworld—is created, in which humans continue to exist as digital souls. But this brave new immortal world is not the Utopia it might first seem . . . Fall, or Dodge in Hell is pure, unadulterated fun: a grand drama of analog and digital, man and machine, angels and demons, gods and followers, the finite and the eternal. In this exhilarating epic, Neal Stephenson raises profound existential questions and touches on the revolutionary breakthroughs that are transforming our future. Combining the technological, philosophical, and spiritual in one grand myth, he delivers a mind-blowing speculative literary saga for the modern age.

Download or read book Reamde written by Neal Stephenson and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2011-09-20 with total page 920 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Stephenson has a once-in-a-generation gift: he makes complex ideas clear, and he makes them funny, heartbreaking, and thrilling.” —Time The #1 New York Times bestselling author of Anathem, Neal Stephenson is continually rocking the literary world with his brazen and brilliant fictional creations—whether he’s reimagining the past (The Baroque Cycle), inventing the future (Snow Crash), or both (Cryptonomicon). With Reamde, this visionary author whose mind-stretching fiction has been enthusiastically compared to the work of Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, Kurt Vonnegut, and David Foster Wallace—not to mention William Gibson and Michael Crichton—once again blazes new ground with a high-stakes thriller that will enthrall his loyal audience, science and science fiction, and espionage fiction fans equally. The breathtaking tale of a wealthy tech entrepreneur caught in the very real crossfire of his own online fantasy war game, Reamde is a new high—and a new world—for the remarkable Neal Stephenson.

Download or read book I Am Princess X written by Cherie Priest and published by Scholastic Inc.. This book was released on 2015-05-26 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Best friends, big fans, a mysterious webcomic, and a long-lost girl collide in this riveting novel, perfect for fans of both Cory Doctorow and Sarah Dessen, & illustrated throughout with comics. Once upon a time, two best friends created a princess together. Libby drew the pictures, May wrote the tales, and their heroine, Princess X, slayed all the dragons and scaled all the mountains their imaginations could conjure. Once upon a few years later, Libby was in the car with her mom, driving across the Ballard Bridge on a rainy night. When the car went over the side, Libby passed away, and Princess X died with her. Once upon a now: May is sixteen and lonely, wandering the streets of Seattle, when she sees a sticker slapped in a corner window. Princess X? When May looks around, she sees the Princess everywhere: Stickers. Patches. Graffiti. There's an entire underground culture, focused around a webcomic at IAmPrincessX.com. The more May explores the webcomic, the more she sees disturbing similarities between Libby's story and Princess X online. And that means that only one person could have started this phenomenon---her best friend, Libby, who lives.

Download or read book Walkaway written by Cory Doctorow and published by Tor Books. This book was released on 2017-04-25 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kirkus' Best Fiction of 2017 From New York Times bestselling author Cory Doctorow, an epic tale of revolution, love, post-scarcity, and the end of death. "Walkaway is now the best contemporary example I know of, its utopia glimpsed after fascinatingly-extrapolated revolutionary struggle." —William Gibson Hubert Vernon Rudolph Clayton Irving Wilson Alva Anton Jeff Harley Timothy Curtis Cleveland Cecil Ollie Edmund Eli Wiley Marvin Ellis Espinoza—known to his friends as Hubert, Etc—was too old to be at that Communist party. But after watching the breakdown of modern society, he really has no where left to be—except amongst the dregs of disaffected youth who party all night and heap scorn on the sheep they see on the morning commute. After falling in with Natalie, an ultra-rich heiress trying to escape the clutches of her repressive father, the two decide to give up fully on formal society—and walk away. After all, now that anyone can design and print the basic necessities of life—food, clothing, shelter—from a computer, there seems to be little reason to toil within the system. It’s still a dangerous world out there, the empty lands wrecked by climate change, dead cities hollowed out by industrial flight, shadows hiding predators animal and human alike. Still, when the initial pioneer walkaways flourish, more people join them. Then the walkaways discover the one thing the ultra-rich have never been able to buy: how to beat death. Now it’s war – a war that will turn the world upside down. Fascinating, moving, and darkly humorous, Walkaway is a multi-generation SF thriller about the wrenching changes of the next hundred years...and the very human people who will live their consequences. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Download or read book The Rise and Fall of D O D O written by Neal Stephenson and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2017-06-13 with total page 768 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Bestseller From bestselling author Neal Stephenson and critically acclaimed historical and contemporary commercial novelist Nicole Galland comes a captivating and complex near-future thriller combining history, science, magic, mystery, intrigue, and adventure that questions the very foundations of the modern world. When Melisande Stokes, an expert in linguistics and languages, accidently meets military intelligence operator Tristan Lyons in a hallway at Harvard University, it is the beginning of a chain of events that will alter their lives and human history itself. The young man from a shadowy government entity approaches Mel, a low-level faculty member, with an incredible offer. The only condition: she must sign a nondisclosure agreement in return for the rather large sum of money. Tristan needs Mel to translate some very old documents, which, if authentic, are earth-shattering. They prove that magic actually existed and was practiced for centuries. But the arrival of the scientific revolution and the Age of Enlightenment weakened its power and endangered its practitioners. Magic stopped working altogether in 1851, at the time of the Great Exhibition at London’s Crystal Palace—the world’s fair celebrating the rise of industrial technology and commerce. Something about the modern world "jams" the "frequencies" used by magic, and it’s up to Tristan to find out why. And so the Department of Diachronic Operations—D.O.D.O. —gets cracking on its real mission: to develop a device that can bring magic back, and send Diachronic Operatives back in time to keep it alive . . . and meddle with a little history at the same time. But while Tristan and his expanding operation master the science and build the technology, they overlook the mercurial—and treacherous—nature of the human heart. Written with the genius, complexity, and innovation that characterize all of Neal Stephenson’s work and steeped with the down-to-earth warmth and humor of Nicole Galland’s storytelling style, this exciting and vividly realized work of science fiction will make you believe in the impossible, and take you to places—and times—beyond imagining.

Download or read book Termination Shock written by Neal Stephenson and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2021-11-16 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York Times Bestseller From Neal Stephenson—who coined the term “metaverse” in his 1992 novel Snow Crash—comes a sweeping, prescient new thriller that transports readers to a near-future world in which the greenhouse effect has inexorably resulted in a whirling-dervish troposphere of superstorms, rising sea levels, global flooding, merciless heat waves, and virulent, deadly pandemics. “Stephenson is one of speculative fiction’s most meticulous architects. . . . Termination Shock manages to pull off a rare trick, at once wildly imaginative and grounded.” — New York Times Book Review One man—visionary billionaire restaurant chain magnate T. R. Schmidt, Ph.D.—has a Big Idea for reversing global warming, a master plan perhaps best described as “elemental.” But will it work? And just as important, what are the consequences for the planet and all of humanity should it be applied? Ranging from the Texas heartland to the Dutch royal palace in the Hague, from the snow-capped peaks of the Himalayas to the sunbaked Chihuahuan Desert, Termination Shock brings together a disparate group of characters from different cultures and continents who grapple with the real-life repercussions of global warming. Ultimately, it asks the question: Might the cure be worse than the disease? Epic in scope while heartbreakingly human in perspective, Termination Shock sounds a clarion alarm, ponders potential solutions and dire risks, and wraps it all together in an exhilarating, witty, mind-expanding speculative adventure.

Download or read book Decipher written by Stel Pavlou and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010-03-11 with total page 781 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ancient monuments all over the world - from the Pyramids of Giza, to Mexico, to the ancient sites of China - are also awakening, reacting to a brewing crisis not of this earth, connecting to each other in some kind of ancient global network. A small group of scientists is assembled to attempt to unravel the mystery. What they discover will change the world. Imagine that 12,000 years ago it really did rain for 40 days and 40 nights. That storms reigned supreme. Imagine that survivors of human civilization really were forced to take to boats or hide out in caves on mountaintops. Then consider that these same myths from around the world predict this kind of devastation will occur time and again. What could cause such a catastrophe? What occurs in nature with such frightening and predictable regularity? A pulsar. But this is not just any pulsar - the ordinary type that pulses once a second, a minute, or even a week. This pulses once every 12,000 years and sends out a gravity wave of such ferocity it beggars belief. Not only that, it's closer than anybody has ever imagined. For it lives in our own backyard. It is the Sun.

Download or read book Cryptonomicon written by Neal Stephenson and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-03-17 with total page 1172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With this extraordinary first volume in what promises to be an epoch-making masterpiece, Neal Stephenson hacks into the secret histories of nations and the private obsessions of men, decrypting with dazzling virtuosity the forces that shaped this century. As an added bonus, the e-book edition of this New York Times bestseller includes an excerpt from Stephenson's new novel, Seveneves. In 1942, Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse—mathematical genius and young Captain in the U.S. Navy—is assigned to detachment 2702. It is an outfit so secret that only a handful of people know it exists, and some of those people have names like Churchill and Roosevelt. The mission of Waterhouse and Detachment 2702—commanded by Marine Raider Bobby Shaftoe-is to keep the Nazis ignorant of the fact that Allied Intelligence has cracked the enemy's fabled Enigma code. It is a game, a cryptographic chess match between Waterhouse and his German counterpart, translated into action by the gung-ho Shaftoe and his forces. Fast-forward to the present, where Waterhouse's crypto-hacker grandson, Randy, is attempting to create a "data haven" in Southeast Asia—a place where encrypted data can be stored and exchanged free of repression and scrutiny. As governments and multinationals attack the endeavor, Randy joins forces with Shaftoe's tough-as-nails granddaughter, Amy, to secretly salvage a sunken Nazi submarine that holds the key to keeping the dream of a data haven afloat. But soon their scheme brings to light a massive conspiracy with its roots in Detachment 2702 linked to an unbreakable Nazi code called Arethusa. And it will represent the path to unimaginable riches and a future of personal and digital liberty...or to universal totalitarianism reborn. A breathtaking tour de force, and Neal Stephenson's most accomplished and affecting work to date, Cryptonomicon is profound and prophetic, hypnotic and hyper-driven, as it leaps forward and back between World War II and the World Wide Web, hinting all the while at a dark day-after-tomorrow. It is a work of great art, thought and creative daring; the product of a truly iconoclastic imagination working with white-hot intensity.

Download or read book Rise of the Rocket Girls written by Nathalia Holt and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2016-04-05 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The riveting true story of the women who launched America into space. In the 1940s and 50s, when the newly minted Jet Propulsion Laboratory needed quick-thinking mathematicians to calculate velocities and plot trajectories, they didn't turn to male graduates. Rather, they recruited an elite group of young women who, with only pencil, paper, and mathematical prowess, transformed rocket design, helped bring about the first American satellites, and made the exploration of the solar system possible. For the first time, Rise of the Rocket Girls tells the stories of these women -- known as "human computers" -- who broke the boundaries of both gender and science. Based on extensive research and interviews with all the living members of the team, Rise of the Rocket Girls offers a unique perspective on the role of women in science: both where we've been, and the far reaches of space to which we're heading. "If Hidden Figures has you itching to learn more about the women who worked in the space program, pick up Nathalia Holt's lively, immensely readable history, Rise of the Rocket Girls." -- Entertainment Weekly

Download or read book The Rosewater Insurrection written by Tade Thompson and published by Orbit. This book was released on 2019-03-12 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Rosewater Insurrection continues the award-winning science fiction trilogy by one of science fiction's most engaging voices. All is quiet in the city of Rosewater as it expands on the back of the gargantuan alien Wormwood. Those who know the truth of the invasion keep the secret. The government agent Aminat, the lover of the retired sensitive Kaaro, is at the forefront of the cold, silent conflict. She must capture a woman who is the key to the survival of the human race. But Aminat is stymied by the machinations of the Mayor of Rosewater and the emergence of an old enemy of Wormwood. Innovative and genre-bending, Tade Thompson's ambitious Afrofuturist series is perfect for fans of Jeff Vandermeer, N. K. Jemisin, and Ann Leckie. Praise for The Wormwood Trilogy: "Smart. Gripping. Fabulous!" —Ann Leckie, award winning-author of Ancillary Justice "Mesmerising. There are echoes of Neuromancer and Arrival in here, but this astonishing debut is beholden to no one." —M. R. Carey, bestselling author of The Girl with All the Gifts "A magnificent tour de force, skillfully written and full of original and disturbing ideas." —Adrian Tchaikovsky, Arthur C. Clarke Award-winning author of Children of Time The Wormwood Trilogy Rosewater The Rosewater Insurrection The Rosewater Redemption

Download or read book Nine Hundred Grandmothers written by R. A. Lafferty and published by Wildside Press LLC. This book was released on 1970-01-01 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Here at last are the finest of Lafferty's shorter works, stories about: a man who found one day that he knew absolutely everyone in the world; a race who kept their most ancient ancestors on shelves in the basements; a speeded-up world where a man could earn and lose a dozen fortunes a night; a friendly bearlike creature named Snuffles who said he was God ... In all, twenty-one immensely enjoyable stories that will continue to delight you long after you've finished reading them."--Page 1

Download or read book The Art of Living written by Epictetus and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-01-03 with total page 30 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No writings of Epictetus himself are really known. His discourses were transcribed and compiled by his pupil Arrian (author of the Anabasis Alexandri). The main work is The Discourses, four books of which have been preserved (out of an original eight). Arrian also compiled a popular digest, entitled the Enchiridion, or Handbook. In a preface to the Discourses, addressed to Lucius Gellius, Arrian states that "whatever I heard him say I used to write down, word for word, as best I could, endeavouring to preserve it as a memorial, for my own future use, of his way of thinking and the frankness of his speech."

Download or read book The Sound of Butterflies written by Rachael King and published by Penguin Random House New Zealand Limited. This book was released on 2011-11-01 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An international bestseller this novel follows an unforgettable journey from the demure gentility of turn-of-the-twentieth-century England into the heart of darkness. In 1904, the young lepidopterist Thomas Edgar arrives home from a collecting expedition in the Amazon. His young wife Sophie is unprepared for his emaciated state and, even worse, his inability - or unwillingness - to speak. Sophie's genteel and demure life in Edwardian England contrasts starkly with the decadence of Brazil's rubber boom, as we are taken back to Thomas's arrival in the Amazon and his search for a mythical butterfly. Up the river, via the opulent city of Manaus - where the inhabitants feed their horses champagne and aspire to all things European - Thomas's extraordinary, and increasingly obsessed, journey carries him through the exotic and the erotic to some terrible truths. Back home, unable to break through Thomas's silence, Sophie is forced to take increasingly drastic measures to discover what has happened. But as she scavenges what she can from Thomas's diaries and boxes of exquisite butterflies, she learns as much about herself as about her husband.

Download or read book News from Gardenia written by Robert Llewellyn and published by Unbound Publishing. This book was released on 2012-03-23 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Gavin Meckler's light aircraft encounters a mysterious cloud and crashes to earth, he discovers that the eerily quiet landscape in which he has landed is 200 years older than the one from which he took off. In this gentle, peaceful, sustainable new world, it is possible to travel from one side of the globe to the other in a matter of minutes without burning fuel, and everyone is a gardener because that's how they can be sure to eat. Inspired by William Morris's utopian novel News from Nowhere, Robert Llewellyn shows us a future where we don't burn anything to make anything else and which isn't hovering on the brink of disaster; where aliens haven't invaded, meteors haven’t hit and zombies haven’t taken over. In short, a world where humanity eventually gets it right. All the technology described in the novel has seen the light of day in reality. Llewellyn's future isn't perfect and may not be very likely, but it is entirely possible.

Download or read book Salvation written by Peter F. Hamilton and published by Del Rey. This book was released on 2018-09-04 with total page 500 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Humanity’s complex relationship with technology spirals out of control in this first book of an all-new series from “the owner of the most powerful imagination in science fiction” (Ken Follett). “How far ‘space opera’ has come! The Old Masters of sci-fi would admire the scope and sweep of Salvation.”—The Wall Street Journal In the year 2204, humanity is expanding into the wider galaxy in leaps and bounds. Cutting-edge technology of linked jump gates has rendered most forms of transportation—including starships—virtually obsolete. Every place on Earth, every distant planet humankind has settled, is now merely a step away from any other. All seems wonderful—until a crashed alien spaceship of unknown origin is found on a newly located world eighty-nine light-years from Earth, carrying a cargo as strange as it is horrifying. To assess the potential of the threat, a high-powered team is dispatched to investigate. But one of them may not be all they seem. . . . Bursting with tension and big ideas, Peter F. Hamilton’s Salvation is the first book of an all-new series that highlights the inventiveness of an author at the top of his game. Praise for Salvation “[A] vast, intricate sci-fi showstopper . . . The journey grips just as hard as the reveal.”—Daily Mail (U.K.) “Exciting, wildly imaginative and quite possibly Hamilton’s best book to date.”—SFX “Dynamic, multifaceted characters, strong mind-expanding concepts, and impressive flair for language [make Salvation a] rare celestial event. . . . One of Britain’s bestselling sci-fi authors has launched an addictive new book as the initial stage of what is sure to be an intriguing new series called the Salvation Sequence.”—SyFyWire “Peter Hamilton just keeps getting better and better with each book, more assured and more craftsmanly adroit, and more inventive. [Salvation is] a bravura performance from start to finish. . . . Hamilton is juggling chainsaws while simultaneously doing needlepoint over a shark tank. It’s a virtuoso treat, and I for one can hardly wait for Salvation Lost.”—Paul Di Filippo, Locus “Peter F. Hamilton is known as one of the world’s greatest sci-fi writers for a reason. . . . Salvation is well worth the effort and a great introduction to some good old-fashioned space opera.”—Fantasy Book Review

Download or read book Quicksilver written by Neal Stephenson and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-10-13 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Quicksilver is the story of Daniel Waterhouse, fearless thinker and conflicted Puritan, pursuing knowledge in the company of the greatest minds of Baroque-era Europe, in a chaotic world where reason wars with the bloody ambitions of the mighty, and where catastrophe, natural or otherwise, can alter the political landscape overnight. It is a chronicle of the breathtaking exploits of "Half-Cocked Jack" Shaftoe -- London street urchin turned swashbuckling adventurer and legendary King of the Vagabonds -- risking life and limb for fortune and love while slowly maddening from the pox. And it is the tale of Eliza, rescued by Jack from a Turkish harem to become spy, confidante, and pawn of royals in order to reinvent Europe through the newborn power of finance. A gloriously rich, entertaining, and endlessly inventive novel that brings a remarkable age and its momentous events to vivid life, Quicksilver is an extraordinary achievement from one of the most original and important literary talents of our time. And it's just the beginning ...