Random Kindness and Senseless Acts of Beauty

Author: Anne Herbert
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1613320264
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 43

Book Description
This modern allegory inspires taking joyful steps to end hatred and violence. In the playful style of twelfth-century Japanese picture scrolls, Mayumi Oda's art depicts humans as animals who lose their way when their leaders become confused and drawn to violence. It is up to each individual—the frog who plants a garden, the cat who supports an elderly neighbor—to create a better world through simple acts of kindness. This timeless parable for readers of all ages expands upon the idea that we can all become agents of goodness and beauty. Winner of the 2016 Independent Publishers Gold Medal.

Heathern

Author: Jack Womack
Publisher: Grove Press
ISBN: 9780802135636
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 230

Book Description
Heathern, the sequel to Ambient and Terraplane, has been praised by William Gibson as a "savage urban baroque informed by a penetrating humanity ... his best so far!" Tautly written and appallingly funny, Heathern is a dystopian tale of corporate combat and media warfare in the fading years of our century. Thatcher Dryden, former drug kingpin and now leader of the megacorporation Dryco, intends to supply a waiting world with the Messiah it so desperately seeks. But Lester Macaffrey, a schoolteacher found performing miracles among the human flotsam of the Lower East Side, proves no more controllable than any Messiah. While Thatcher's minions scheme to sell the world salvation with a Dryco label on it, Thatcher's own mistress is strangely drawn to Macaffrey -- and begins to be transformed into something new and strange ... something that might change the world.

Ambient

Author: Jack Womack
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
ISBN: 1555847560
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 274

Book Description
One man struggles to survive in a dystopian near-future New York City in this acclaimed novel that “performs feats of brilliance on so many levels” (Entertainment Weekly). In a decaying and violent near-future New York, the remnants of civic order are maintained with brute force by the conglomerate Dryco. But even Dryco is falling apart from the inside. Seamus O’Malley is bodyguard and confidant to Mister Dryden, the CEO, and an admirer of Dryden’s personal femme fatale, Avalon. But what begins as a simple case of unrequited love quickly becomes a desperate chance for survival as corporate intrigue, murderous family rivalries, and perverse subcultures take over O’Malley’s life. Drawing comparisons to the nightmarish vision of J. G. Ballard and the linguistic brilliance of Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange, Ambient marked the “wonderfully inventive” debut of Philip K. Dick Award–winning author Jack Womack (The New York Times Book Review). “Bleakly comic . . . A cynical tour de force through the meanest of streets. Ambient is less prophecy than documentary, demonstrating how the best science fiction is about as future-oriented as today’s Daily News.” —The Village Voice “[Womack] succeeds in balancing blistering social commentary with shrewd literary experimentation . . . Flecked with black humor, this is speculative fiction at its eerie best.” —Entertainment Weekly

Speaking Science Fiction

Author: Andy Sawyer
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 264

Book Description
This wide-ranging volume explores the various dialogues that flourish between different aspects of science fiction: academics and fans, writers and readers; ideological stances and national styles; different interpretations of the genre; and how language and 'voices' are used in constructing SF. Introduced by the acclaimed novelist Brian W. Aldiss, the essays range from studies of writers such as Robert A. Heinlein, who are considered as the 'heart' of the genre, to more contemporary writers such as Jack Womack and J. G. Ballard.

Let's Put the Future Behind Us

Author: Jack Womack
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
ISBN: 1555847609
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 319

Book Description
“A remarkable novel” of a post-Communist Russia filled with gangsters and oligarchs, and one man’s shady business deal that could land him in a world of trouble (The Boston Globe). Part speculative fiction, part satire, Let’s Put the Future Behind Us is a romp through 1990s Russia, as the closed society of the Soviet Union morphs into a modern capitalist free-for-all and Max Borodin finds himself, his wife, and his mistress in mortal danger—in “a world of petty bureaucrats, shameless opportunists, and full-blown mafiosi” (Entertainment Weekly). “An absurdist thriller narrated by one Max Borodin, an ex-Communist Party hack who has re-invented himself as a commercial operator with a cynical understanding of how to manipulate the strings of power. Cops are paid off with dollar bills, bureaucrats with phoney documents and racketeers with the consumer opiates of their choice. Max is always up for the main chance, and before long finds himself logged into a drug deal involving psychotic Georgian gangsters, corrupt local entrepreneurs, the investors in a leaky crematorium and a messianic fascist demagogue who wants to build a plastic dome over Russia to secure it against ‘Western sneak attacks.’ At the same time, he has to balance the demands of his irascible wife and voracious mistress while rescuing his gullible brother from the folly of building a ‘Sovietland’ theme park.” —Wired “The grimmest, funniest, and one of the most cannily on-target accounts yet about the helter-skelter fast lane of life in the New Russia.” —The Boston Globe

Terraplane

Author: Jack Womack
Publisher: Grove Press
ISBN: 9780802135629
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 240

Book Description
Terraplane, the second novel in Jack Womack's acclaimed Ambient series, is a vision of an alternate realiy-New York, 1939, as experienced by travelers from the twenty-first century. Retired general Luther Biggerstaff and his hit man Jake are on a covert mission to kidnap Soviet superscientist Alekhine for the multinational Dryco. But Alekhine has disappeared, leaving behind a device that catapaults them headlong into the past. And this 1939 is different-F.D.R has been assassinated; the Great Depression has cut even deeper; Churchill died in a street accident; and the world is at Hitler's mercy. The only hope Luther and Jake have of getting home again depends on an unlikely conjunction of the New York World's Fair, the blues of Robert Johnson, and the avant-garde physics of Nikola Tesla. Terraplane is a surreal and darkly comic journey into the twilight zone of history gone mad.

Elvissey

Author: Jack Womack
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
ISBN: 1555847579
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 416

Book Description
A young Elvis Presley is kidnapped into the future to be the new messiah in this “jarringly potent” novel from the author of Ambient (William Gibson). Winner of the Philip K. Dick Award At once a biting satire and a taut sci-fi thriller, Elvissey is the story of Isabel and John, a troubled couple who are sent through a “window” from the year 2033 to a strangely altered 1954. They are on a desperate mission to kidnap a young Elvis Presley and bring him back to the present day to serve the powerful conglomerate Dryco as a ready-made cult leader. But when Elvis proves to be a reluctant messiah, things do not work out quite as planned. With his distinctive prose, Womack has combined “serious sociological extrapolation, high and low comedy, pulp adventure, pop iconography” and more in this highly original novel (Omni). “Nazi flying saucers over an alternate 1950s Memphis, your basic cross-time godhead abduction of Elvis Presley, and what must surely be one of the flat-out weirdest Fisher King inversions yet perpetrated in American literature. Achingly sad, downright alarmingly funny, and just about as serious as any of us can presently afford to be.” —William Gibson, author of Neuromancer “Jack Womack is another of the heirs of cyberpunk, one of science fiction’s most interesting new writers” —Los Angeles Times “Womack’s book is different in tone and content from anything you may have read.” —Financial Times “Womack astounds and entertains. . . . Though the plot suggests the ridiculous, this is, in fact, a deep, often theological, reflection on love, betrayal and commercially inspired nihilism.” —Publishers Weekly

Sam Gunn Jr.

Author: Ben Bova
Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
ISBN: 1094000914
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 344

Book Description
The final completed novel by Ben Bova Intergalactic explorer, venture capitalist, and Casanova Sam Gunn may be gone, but his legacy lives on in his son, Sam Gunn Jr. In his first-ever adventure, Sam Gunn Jr. sets off to fulfill his father’s left-behind mission of interplanetary enterprising. He soon learns his father’s shoes are tough to fill, but he is up for the task. Junior takes a journey through the stars, falling in love with beautiful women and leaving his unique mark everywhere he ventures. Soon, however, this trip through the universe takes a dangerous turn when Junior lands on Saturn and learns about a recent scientific discovery that will change everything, possibly forever. Will he be able to save the universe and live up to his father’s name? Take an unforgettable ride through space in master sci-fi author Ben Bova’s exciting novel!

Chameleo

Author: Robert Guffey
Publisher: OR Books
ISBN: 1939293707
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 185

Book Description
A mesmerizing mix of Charles Bukowski, Hunter S. Thompson, and Philip K. Dick, Chameleo is a true account of what happened in a seedy Southern California town when an enthusiastic and unrepentant heroin addict named Dion Fuller sheltered a U.S. Marine who’d stolen night vision goggles and perhaps a few top secret files from a nearby military base. Dion found himself arrested (under the ostensible auspices of The Patriot Act) for conspiring with international terrorists to smuggle Top Secret military equipment out of Camp Pendleton. The fact that Dion had absolutely nothing to do with international terrorists, smuggling, Top Secret military equipment, or Camp Pendleton didn’t seem to bother the military. He was released from jail after a six-day-long Abu-Ghraib-style interrogation. Subsequently, he believed himself under intense government scrutiny — and, he suspected, the subject of bizarre experimentation involving “cloaking”— electro-optical camouflage so extreme it renders observers practically invisible from a distance of some meters — by the Department of Homeland Security. Hallucination? Perhaps — except Robert Guffey, an English teacher and Dion’s friend, tracked down and interviewed one of the scientists behind the project codenamed “Chameleo,” experimental technology which appears to have been stolen by the U.S. Department of Defense and deployed on American soil. More shocking still, Guffey discovered that the DoD has been experimenting with its newest technologies on a number of American citizens. A condensed version of this story was the cover feature of Fortean Times Magazine (September 2013).

Infinite Detail

Author: Tim Maughan
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 0374718601
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 239

Book Description
A LOCUS AWARD FINALIST FOR BEST FIRST NOVEL! The Guardian's Pick for Best Science Fiction Book of the Year! A timely and uncanny portrait of a world in the wake of fake news, diminished privacy, and a total shutdown of the Internet BEFORE: In Bristol’s center lies the Croft, a digital no-man’s-land cut off from the surveillance, Big Data dependence, and corporate-sponsored, globally hegemonic aspirations that have overrun the rest of the world. Ten years in, it’s become a center of creative counterculture. But it’s fraying at the edges, radicalizing from inside. How will it fare when its chief architect, Rushdi Mannan, takes off to meet his boyfriend in New York City—now the apotheosis of the new techno-utopian global metropolis? AFTER: An act of anonymous cyberterrorism has permanently switched off the Internet. Global trade, travel, and communication have collapsed. The luxuries that characterized modern life are scarce. In the Croft, Mary—who has visions of people presumed dead—is sought out by grieving families seeking connections to lost ones. But does Mary have a gift or is she just hustling to stay alive? Like Grids, who runs the Croft’s black market like personal turf. Or like Tyrone, who hoards music (culled from cassettes, the only medium to survive the crash) and tattered sneakers like treasure. The world of Infinite Detail is a small step shy of our own: utterly dependent on technology, constantly brokering autonomy and privacy for comfort and convenience. With Infinite Detail, Tim Maughan makes the hitherto-unimaginable come true: the End of the Internet, the End of the World as We Know It.