Exhalation

Author: Ted Chiang
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 110194790X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 311

Book Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR • Nine stunningly original, provocative, and poignant stories—two published for the very first time—all from the mind of the incomparable author of Stories of Your Life and Others Tackling some of humanity’s oldest questions along with new quandaries only he could imagine, these stories will change the way you think, feel, and see the world. They are Ted Chiang at his best: profound, sympathetic, revelatory. Ted Chiang tackles some of humanity’s oldest questions along with new quandaries only he could imagine. In “The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate,” a portal through time forces a fabric seller in ancient Baghdad to grapple with past mistakes and second chances. In “Exhalation,” an alien scientist makes a shocking discovery with ramifications that are literally universal. In “Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom,” the ability to glimpse into alternate universes necessitates a radically new examination of the concepts of choice and free will.

Orange World and Other Stories

Author: Karen Russell
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0525656146
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 288

Book Description
From the Pulitzer Finalist and universally beloved author of the New York Times best sellers Swamplandia! and Vampires in the Lemon Grove, a stunning new collection of short fiction that showcases Karen Russell’s extraordinary, irresistible gifts of language and imagination. Karen Russell’s comedic genius and mesmerizing talent for creating outlandish predicaments that uncannily mirror our inner in lives is on full display in these eight exuberant, arrestingly vivid, unforgettable stories. In“Bog Girl”, a revelatory story about first love, a young man falls in love with a two thousand year old girl that he’s extracted from a mass of peat in a Northern European bog. In “The Prospectors,” two opportunistic young women fleeing the depression strike out for new territory, and find themselves fighting for their lives. In the brilliant, hilarious title story, a new mother desperate to ensure her infant’s safety strikes a diabolical deal, agreeing to breastfeed the devil in exchange for his protection. The landscape in which these stories unfold is a feral, slippery, purgatorial space, bracketed by the void—yet within it Russell captures the exquisite beauty and tenderness of ordinary life. Orange World is a miracle of storytelling from a true modern master.

The Lifecycle of Software Objects

Author: Ted Chiang
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781596063174
Category : Artificial intelligence
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
What's the best way to create artificial intelligence? In 1950, Alan Turing wrote, "Many people think that a very abstract activity, like the playing of chess, would be best. It can also be maintained that it is best to provide the machine with the best sense organs that money can buy, and then teach it to understand and speak English. This process could follow the normal teaching of a child. Things would be pointed out and named, etc. Again I do not know what the right answer is, but I think both approaches should be tried." The first approach has been tried many times in both science fiction and reality. In this new novella, at over 30,000 words, his longest work to date, Ted Chiang offers a detailed imagining of how the second approach might work within the contemporary landscape of startup companies, massively-multiplayer online gaming, and open-source software. It's a story of two people and the artificial intelligences they helped create, following them for more than a decade as they deal with the upgrades and obsolescence that are inevitable in the world of software. At the same time, it's an examination of the difference between processing power and intelligence, and of what it means to have a real relationship with an artificial entity.

Stories of Your Life and Others

Author: Ted Chiang
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN: 1931520895
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 298

Book Description
From the author of Exhalation, an award-winning short story collection that blends "absorbing storytelling with meditations on the universe, being, time and space ... raises questions about the nature of reality and what it is to be human" (The New York Times). Stories of Your Life and Others delivers dual delights of the very, very strange and the heartbreakingly familiar, often presenting characters who must confront sudden change—the inevitable rise of automatons or the appearance of aliens—with some sense of normalcy. With sharp intelligence and humor, Chiang examines what it means to be alive in a world marked by uncertainty, but also by beauty and wonder. An award-winning collection from one of today's most lauded writers, Stories of Your Life and Others is a contemporary classic. Includes “Story of Your Life”—the basis for the major motion picture Arrival

The Knights of the Limits

Author: Barrington J. Bayley
Publisher: Gateway
ISBN: 0575102195
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 182

Book Description
Nine brilliant stories of infinite space and alien consciousness, suffused with a sense of wonder . . . The Exploration of Space The Bees of Knowledge Exit from City Me and my Antronoscope All the King's Men An Overload Mutation Planet The Problem of Morley's Emission The Cabinet of Oliver Naylor

The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate

Author: Ted Chiang
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 72

Book Description
This curious time-travel novella is a gracefully told lesson about accepting fate-or, as better suits this medieval Arabian setting, the will of Allah. A Baghdad merchant discovers an alchemical device that can send a traveler back in time 20 years. Despite the alchemist's warning that "what is made cannot be unmade," and three illustrative tales about others' attempts to alter the past, the merchant is determined to return to an earlier time to save his long-dead wife

Breath

Author: James Nestor
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0735213631
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 306

Book Description
A New York Times Bestseller A Washington Post Notable Nonfiction Book of 2020 Named a Best Book of 2020 by NPR “A fascinating scientific, cultural, spiritual and evolutionary history of the way humans breathe—and how we’ve all been doing it wrong for a long, long time.” —Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Big Magic and Eat Pray Love No matter what you eat, how much you exercise, how skinny or young or wise you are, none of it matters if you’re not breathing properly. There is nothing more essential to our health and well-being than breathing: take air in, let it out, repeat twenty-five thousand times a day. Yet, as a species, humans have lost the ability to breathe correctly, with grave consequences. Journalist James Nestor travels the world to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it. The answers aren’t found in pulmonology labs, as we might expect, but in the muddy digs of ancient burial sites, secret Soviet facilities, New Jersey choir schools, and the smoggy streets of São Paulo. Nestor tracks down men and women exploring the hidden science behind ancient breathing practices like Pranayama, Sudarshan Kriya, and Tummo and teams up with pulmonary tinkerers to scientifically test long-held beliefs about how we breathe. Modern research is showing us that making even slight adjustments to the way we inhale and exhale can jump-start athletic performance; rejuvenate internal organs; halt snoring, asthma, and autoimmune disease; and even straighten scoliotic spines. None of this should be possible, and yet it is. Drawing on thousands of years of medical texts and recent cutting-edge studies in pulmonology, psychology, biochemistry, and human physiology, Breath turns the conventional wisdom of what we thought we knew about our most basic biological function on its head. You will never breathe the same again.

Tower of Babylon

Author: Ted Chiang
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 1101974427
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 43

Book Description
A Vintage Shorts “Short Story Month” Selection Together with a crew of other miners and cart-pullers, Hillalum is recruited to climb the Tower of Babylon and unearth what lies beyond the vault of heaven. During his journey, Hillalum discovers entire civilizations of tower-dwellers on the tower—there are those who live inside the mists of clouds, those who raise their vegetables above the sun, and those who have spent their lives under the oppressive weight of an endless, white stratum at the top of the universe. “Tower of Babylon” is a rare gem—a winner of the prestigious Nebula award, the first story Ted Chiang ever published, and the brilliant opening piece to Chiang’s much-lauded first collection, Stories of Your Life and Others, which is soon to be a major motion picture starring Amy Adams. An ebook short.

The Devil You Know

Author: K. J. Parker
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 0765384477
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 101

Book Description
The greatest philosopher of all time is offering to sell his soul to the Devil. All he wants is twenty more years to complete his life’s work. After that, he really doesn’t care. But the assistant demon assigned to the case has his suspicions, because the philosopher is Saloninus–the greatest philosopher, yes, but also the greatest liar, trickster and cheat the world has yet known; the sort of man even the Father of Lies can’t trust. He’s almost certainly up to something; but what? "Parker generates a fair degree of suspense... an accomplished performance." -- Gary K. Wolfe (for Locus Magazine) At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Purposeful Breathing

Author: Greg Smith
Publisher: Exisle Publishing
ISBN: 1775594564
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 214

Book Description
Use your breath to enhance your day-to-day life. From reducing stress to boosting performance, Purposeful Breathing has got you covered! Purposeful Breathing is a practical, user-friendly guide to simple breathing skills that can rapidly reduce states you don’t want (such as stress and anxiety) and increase states you do want (such as feeling stronger, performing better or relaxing). The breath is a remarkably powerful mind-body connection. Anxiety, anger, deep calm or steady concentration each have their own patterns of breathing and we move between different styles of breathing every day without usually realizing it. If we can recognize these styles of breathing, we can also consciously change them and this in turn produces change in the emotional state. People usually think of thoughts, feelings and physical states as different things, but if we think of moving between different ‘modes’ — survival mode, calm modes, anxious states — then it is easy to see that ways of thinking, feeling, perceiving and breathing are all interlinked. The breath can then be used as the key to change these modes. For anyone suffering from anxiety, feeling calmer can happen in a breath or two. For anyone wanting to boost performance, the right breathing skills will help them to get into ‘the zone’ of peak performance. Purposeful Breathing also teaches breathing skills for longer term health and healing, all of which are informed by new discoveries from psychology and neuroscience.