Download or read book Selected Essays on Enchantress from the Stars and More written by Sylvia Engdahl and published by Sylvia Engdahl. This book was released on 2024-05-22 with total page 109 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The lead essay in this cellection by the author of Newbery honor book Enchantress from the Stars deals with issues that she wants readers of the novel to be aware of. Too often misinterpretations arise when the story is thought to be an allegory about relations between different cultures of our own world, when it is literally about possible relations between different "human" species of other worlds that have evolved for vastly different lengths of time. The two situations are not comparable, and assuming that they are leads some readers to think the book endorses a view of cultural relations that was rejected by anthropologists long ago. Though much in the story does apply to relationships between individual people of our world, as far as culture is concerned its aim is to counter the all-too-common science fiction view of extraterrestrial aliens either as hostile or as benevolent beings who will step in to solve Earth's problems. Whether or not there really are any aliens, how young people think of them affects how rhey feel about the future of humankind. The rest of the essays in this book are about the author's other Young Adult novels and about subjects relevant to them such as the importance of space exploration and the reality of psi powers. They have been selected from her collections Reflections on Enchantress from the Stars and Other Essays, the Future of Being Human and Other Essays, and From This Green Earth: Essays on Looking Outward, two of which are available only as ebooks. Because of their length these collections cannot be issued as paperbacks at reasonable prices, so this short sampler has been produced for the benefit of readers who have a strong preference for print books and/or audioboox. The following essays are included. Reflections on Enchantress from the Stars Perspective on the Future: The Quest of Space Age Young People Faith as the Focus of Children of the Star Update on the Critical Stage: The Far Side of Evil's Relevance Today A Response to Some Reactions to Journey Between Worlds Breaking Out from Earth's Shell The Role of Psi in Human Affairs The Roots of Disbelief in Human Mind Powers Transhumanism Is a Dead End The Worship of Medical Authority Why I Don‟t Read Much Science Fiction

Download or read book Enchantress from the Stars written by Sylvia Engdahl and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2018-04-10 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rediscover this beloved Newbery Honor-winning classic, Featuring a brand-new cover and a foreword by Lois Lowry! Elana, a member of an interstellar civilization on a mission to a medieval planet, becomes the key to a dangerous plan to turn back an invasion. How can she help the Andrecians, who still believe in magic and superstition, without revealing her own alien powers? At the same time, Georyn, the son of an Andrecian woodcutter, knows only that there is a dragon in the enchanted forest, and he must defeat it. He sees Elana as the Enchantress from the Stars who has come to test him, to prove he is worthy. One of the few science fiction books to win a Newbery Honor, this novel continues to enthrall readers of all ages. Critical acclaim for Enchantress from the Stars: A Newbery Honor Book A Junior Library Guild selection An ALA Notable pick Winner of the Phoenix Award Finalist for the Book Sense Book of the Year Award

Download or read book Reflections on Enchantress from the Stars and Other Essays written by Sylvia Engdahl and published by Sylvia Engdahl. This book was released on 2019-10-31 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Here are the author's collected essays about her Newbery Honor book Enchantress from the Stars and other Young Adult and adult science fiction novels, plus two autobiographical essays. Her comments on Enchantress deal with issues she would like all its readers to be aware of. This is one of three books of essays that replace Reflections on the Future: Collected Essays, which has grown too long and covers too many topics. Most of the essays included appeared there, so if you already have that book you don't need this one. The other two replacement books, including a number of new essays, are focused on space and on the human mind.

Download or read book From This Green Earth Essays on Looking Outward written by Sylvia Engdahl and published by Sylvia Engdahl. This book was released on 2024-05-03 with total page 101 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sylvia Engdahl became fascinated by the idea of space travel in 1946, and has believed since the early 1950s that expansion of our species to other worlds is vital to the preservation of Earth and the future survival of humankind. Many of the essays in this book express her conviction that we should not be discouraged by the public's reluctance to support space activity, since all past human progress has been brought about by visionaries who did not have the backing of their contemporaries. The shock of realizing during the moon landings that contact with the vast and perhaps peril-fraught universe is no longer mere fiction dampened the enthusiasm of the majority, but this was a natural reaction comparable seventeenth century people's resistance to the idea that Earth is not, as formerly thought, safely enclosed within crystal spheres that hold up the celestial bodies. It will pass, and we need have no doubt that generations who come after us will venture forth from this green Earth and find their way to the stars. The following essays are included. The Once and Future Dream (new) Thoughts on the 50th Anniversary of the First Moon Landing Breaking Out from Earth's Shell Why Does the History of Outlook Toward Space Matter? Confronting the Universe in the Twenty-First Century Space and Human Survival The Only Sensible Way to Deal with Climate Change Update on the Critical Stage: The Far Side of Evil’s Relevance Today Space Colonization, Faith, and Pascal’s Wager Why There Will Never Be an Interplanetary War Humankind's Future in the Cosmos

Download or read book Defender of the Flame written by Sylvia Engdahl and published by Sylvia Engdahl. This book was released on 2013-04-15 with total page 454 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Starship pilot Terry Radnor is elated to be among those chosen to defend the secret colony Maclairn against enemies who pose a threat to the spread of paranormal human mind powers. He commits himself wholly to the goal of that world, not guessing how far his effort to protect it will take him from everything else he cares about--his promising career as a Fleet officer, contact with people who share his newly-discovered psi capability, his wife and unborn child. Torn away against his will after learning a secret too deep for its disclosure to be risked, he is forced into exile from all that has previously mattered to him, and must build a perilous new life far from Maclairn, grounded without hope of fulfilling his earlier pledge. Yet a mysterious and extraordinary destiny has been predicted for Terry, and against all odds fate puts him in place to confront the colony’s greatest peril.

Download or read book The Future of Being Human and Other Essays written by Sylvia Engdahl and published by Sylvia Engdahl. This book was released on 2020-01-28 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What will humans be like in the future? According to science fiction author Sylvia Engdahl, they will be no different from what they're like now. There will be many innovations in technology and ways of daily life, but people are people, wherever and whenever they happen to live, and that's not going to change. In this book Engdahl departs from the theme of space colonization on which her past essays (available in her book From This Green Earth) have focused, and discusses such topics as artificial intelligence, "paranormal" psi powers, healthcare policy, and the coming loss of personal privacy. Her controversial views on these subjects will inspire thought about what the future is likely to bring.

Download or read book The Far Side of Evil written by Sylvia Engdahl and published by Sylvia Engdahl. This book was released on 2003-03-01 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On completion of her training as an agent of the interstellar federation's Anthropological Service, Elana is sent to a world whose people may soon destroy their civilization. Since not enough is understood about the situation to justify any interference with their evolution, the Service has no power to act; its agents must go as helpless observers, posing as natives, in the hope of gaining knowledge that may help to save other worlds. This passive role proves intolerable to the young, inexperienced agent assigned to the same city as Elana, a city under totalitarian rule. After falling in love with a local girl who has become Elana's closest friend, he identifies too completely with the natives and unwittingly endangers the entire world by a well-meant but ill-advised attempt to intervene. Forced to assume responsibility for undoing the damage, Elana finds that only she—at great cost—can prevent an immediate war of annihilation. Although this novel has the same heroine as the author's Newbery Honor book Enchantress from the Stars, it is not a sequel but a completely separate—and very different—story not intended for readers below high school age, which is also enjoyed by adults. The two books are in no way dependent on each other and can be read in either order.

Download or read book This Star Shall Abide written by Sylvia Engdahl and published by . This book was released on 2016-06-29 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Noren knew that his world was not as it should be--it was wrong that only the Scholars, and their representatives the Technicians, could use metal tools and Machines. It was wrong that only they had access to the mysterious City, which he had always longed to enter. Above all, it was wrong for the Scholars to have sole power over the distribution of knowledge. The High Law imposed these restrictions and many others, though the Prophecy promised that someday knowledge and Machines would be available to everyone. Noren was a heretic. He defied the High Law and had no faith in the Prophecy's fulfillment. But was defiance enough, or could some way be found to make it come true? This classic science fiction novel is enjoyed by readers age 12 and up as well as by older teens and adults who go on to read the other two books in the Children of the Star trilogy. Originally published in hardcover by Atheneum in the US and by Gollancz in the UK under the title Heritage of the Star, it was the winner of a Christopher Award given for "affirmation of the highest values of the human spirit.".

Download or read book Stewards of the Flame written by Sylvia Engdahl and published by Sylvia Engdahl. This book was released on 2009-08-24 with total page 500 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When starship captain Jesse Sanders is detained by a dictatorial medical regime on the colony planet Undine, he is plunged into a life involving ordeals and joys unlike anything he has ever imagined.

Download or read book Journey Between Worlds written by Sylvia Engdahl and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2007 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Eighteen-year-old Melinda Ashley never wanted to go to Mars. she had her life all planned out—marry Ross and become a teacher. But when her estranged father convinces her to take an interplanetary vacation, she finds herself tempted to leave behind her comfortable existence on earth. Mars isn’t at all what she expected, and when she meets Alex Preston, a second-generation Martian colonist, she finds herself on a surprising new path. “An absorbing tale of a young woman finding her own greater context, and discovering that the pioneering spirit legacy of her ancestors is yet alive and well.”—Scifidimensions.com

Download or read book The Enchantress of Florence written by Salman Rushdie and published by Knopf Canada. This book was released on 2009-02-24 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A tall, yellow-haired young European traveller calling himself “Mogor dell’Amore,” the Mughal of Love, arrives at the court of the real Grand Mughal, the Emperor Akbar, with a tale to tell that begins to obsess the whole imperial capital. The stranger claims to be the child of a lost Mughal princess, the youngest sister of Akbar’s grandfather Babar: Qara Köz, ‘Lady Black Eyes’, a great beauty believed to possess powers of enchantment and sorcery, who is taken captive first by an Uzbeg warlord, then by the Shah of Persia, and finally becomes the lover of a certain Argalia, a Florentine soldier of fortune, commander of the armies of the Ottoman Sultan. When Argalia returns home with his Mughal mistress the city is mesmerised by her presence, and much trouble ensues. The Enchantress of Florence is a love story and a mystery – the story of a woman attempting to command her own destiny in a man’s world. It brings together two cities that barely know each other – the hedonistic Mughal capital, in which the brilliant emperor wrestles daily with questions of belief, desire and the treachery of sons, and the equally sensual Florentine world of powerful courtesans, humanist philosophy and inhuman torture, where Argalia’s boyhood friend ‘il Machia’ – Niccolò Machiavelli – is learning, the hard way, about the true brutality of power. These two worlds, so far apart, turn out to be uncannily alike, and the enchantments of women hold sway over them both. But is Mogor’s story true? And if so, then what happened to the lost princess? And if he’s a liar, must he die?

Download or read book Medea written by James J. Clauss and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 1997-01-12 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The figure of Medea has inspired artists in all fields throughout the centuries. This work examines the major representations of Medea in myth, art, and ancient and contemporary literature, as well as the philosophical, psychological and cultural questions these portrayals raise.

Download or read book Heritage of the Star written by Sylvia Louise Engdahl and published by Victor Gollancz. This book was released on 1973-01-01 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When he rebels against the tyranny of his planet's ruling Scholars, a boy is labelled a heretic and sent to them for punishment. He is, however, given the opportunity to learn far more than he ever dreamed of.

Download or read book Transformations of Circe written by Judith Yarnall and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 1994 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beginning with a detailed study of Homer's balance of negative and positive elements in the Circe-Odysseus myth, Judith Yarnall employs text and illustrations to demonstrate how Homer's Circe is connected with age-old traditions of goddess worship. She then examines how the image of a one-sided "witch," who first appeared in the commentary of Homer's allegorical interpreters, proved remarkably persistent, influencing Virgil and Ovid. Yarnall concludes with a discussion of work by Margaret Atwood and Eudora Welty in which the enchantress at last speaks in her own voice: that of a woman isolated by, but unashamed of, her power.

Download or read book Shalimar the Clown written by Salman Rushdie and published by Vintage Canada. This book was released on 2009-02-24 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shalimar the Clown is a masterpiece from one of our greatest writers, a dazzling novel that brings together the fiercest passions of the heart and the gravest conflicts of our time into an astonishingly powerful, all-encompassing story. Max Ophuls’ memorable life ends violently in Los Angeles in 1993 when he is murdered by his Muslim driver Noman Sher Noman, also known as Shalimar the Clown. At first the crime seems to be politically motivated—Ophuls was previously ambassador to India, and later US counterterrorism chief—but it is much more. Ophuls is a giant, an architect of the modern world: a Resistance hero and best-selling author, brilliant economist and clandestine US intelligence official. But it is as Ambassador to India that the seeds of his demise are planted, thanks to another of his great roles—irresistible lover. Visiting the Kashmiri village of Pachigam, Ophuls lures an impossibly beautiful dancer, the ambitious (and willing) Boonyi Kaul, away from her husband, and installs her as his mistress in Delhi. But their affair cannot be kept secret, and when Boonyi returns home, disgraced and obese, it seems that all she has waiting for her is the inevitable revenge of her husband: Noman Sher Noman, Shalimar the Clown. He was an acrobat and tightrope walker in their village’s traditional theatrical troupe; but soon Shalimar is trained as a militant in Kashmir’s increasingly brutal insurrection, and eventually becomes a terrorist with a global remit and a deeply personal mission of vengeance. In this stunningly rich book everything is connected, and everyone is a part of everyone else. A powerful love story, intensely political and historically informed, Shalimar the Clown is also profoundly human, an involving story of people’s lives, desires and crises, as well as—in typical Rushdie fashion—a magical tale where the dead speak and the future can be foreseen.

Download or read book Journey Between Worlds written by Sylvia Engdahl and published by Sylvia Engdahl. This book was released on 2006-03-01 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Melinda Ashley has a plan for her life, and a trip to Mars isn't part of it. When she receives a spaceliner ticket as a high school graduation gift from her dad, she is dismayed, but reluctantly agrees to go with him--in part because she's infuriated by her fiance's high-handed declaration that she can't. Her outlook begins to change when she meets Alex Preston, a second-generation Martian colonist who is going home after college on Earth. Alex believes settling Mars is important. He's looking forward to the role he expects to play in the colony's future. Melinda finds this hard to understand, yet she is more and more drawn to him and, while on Mars, to his family. Torn between what she has always wanted and upsetting new feelings, she wonders if she can ever again be content. It takes tragedy and a terrifying experience on the Martian moon Phobos to make her aware of what really matters to her.

Download or read book Snow White Blood Red written by Ellen Datlow and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2019-01-01 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fairy tales retold—with a twist—from “some of our best storytellers” including Neil Gaiman, Gahan Wilson, Tanith Lee, and others (The Washington Post). In this “no holds barred . . . nightmarish . . . provocative” collection, bestselling and award-winning fantasy masters put a dark, disturbing, and erotic spin on your favorite bedtime stories—and give you something entirely new to trouble your dreams (The New York Times Book Review). A boy is haunted through adulthood by a soul-eating creature that lies forever in wait under Neil Gaiman’s “Troll Bridge”; a melancholy amphibian shares his most private fantasies with a therapist in Gahan Wilson’s “The Frog Prince”; in Tanith Lee’s “Snow-Drop,” a lonely artist invites seven circus performers into her home to satisfy an obsession; in Steve Rasnic Tem’s “Little Poucet,” a band of lost brothers find refuge and terror with a hungry family in the woods; and Wendy Wheeler delves into the deviant psyche of the predatory male in “Little Red.” Also featuring Nancy Kress, Charles de Lint, Melanie Tem, Patricia A. McKillip, Jack Dann, and others, all paying a revisit to our favorite fairy tales in ways you’ve never dared to imagine.