Nigel Hightower cannot sleep in a world built upon dreams. The machine has shunned Mr. Hightower, refusing to give him digital manifestations of his dreams. So Mr. Hightower finds solace in crafting replicas of the lost world's wildlife for the children too young for the computer, until a series of updates threatens Mr. Hightower's audience so that none remain to call him “replicant maker.”The world has retreated into the limitless landscapes the computer constructs out of zeros and ones. Every citizen of the machine realizes his or her dreams. Everyone is content. No one lacks for any kind of wealth or pleasure. Everyone except for Nigel Hightower. For the machine has shunned Mr. Hightower by replacing his dream with nightmare. Like a child, Mr. Hightower cannot thrive in the virtual landscape. And so he creates mechanical creatures to stir the imagination of the children, who like himself, find no solace in an electronic world. Now even the children threaten to leave Mr. Hightower as updates tempt their younger minds. Mr. Hightower promises to resist the machine with a final, incredible creation. Views: 612
The rural community of Owensville has grown old. The glass factory that once gave that town heart has been shuttered for decades. Yet the residents still hope that Mr. Turner will rise from his bed to bring life and industry back to their sleepy streets. Each morning those residents gather at the foot of Mr. Turner's crumbled wall and pray that man's bones provide answers they desperately need.Following the death of her father, Lauren Freeman decides to pay an overdue visit to Owensville, the town of her family’s origins. She travels to the estate of her grandfather, Roscoe Turner, a man who built and managed the great glass factory that long ago provided purpose and means for the families who settled in that rural town. Lauren is shocked to discover that one of the walls to her grandfather’s home has collapsed, and that Grandpa Roscoe’s body sleeps in a bed exposed to wind, sun and rain. Yet cousin Maximillian holds up a hand and tells Lauren that calling for help can no longer do any good, and Lauren must learn what forces Max to keep a family skeleton in the daylight Views: 608
Ben Cane has outlived the world, and so he waits for his ailing grandchild to deliver his execution in the center of that room surrounded by glass walls. Every bone in his body throbs with arthritis. His guts burn after so many rounds of chemotherapy and radiation. And mercy is the last thing Ben desires at the end of the world.Mallory Cane resists the urge to cry as the projectors knit glory all around her. She knows that all of the worlds the vision chamber shows her have long gone extinct. None of the laughing hyenas remain. No more elephants shrill. The eagles no longer soar. Not a single domesticated dog or cat remain to nuzzle with Mallory when her illness brings suffering. She understands that the vision chamber offers only illusion and heartbreak, and yet her father forces her to look upon the color that glowed before the world was wasted. He tells Mallory that she must be made strong, and that she must remember all that has been lost. He tells Mallory that she must prepare herself to punish that generation that did nothing as the world faded to gray. Views: 607
In a searing novel of love and loyalty, guilt and honor, the acclaimed author of the #1 New York Times bestseller The Horse Whisperer gives his millions of readers another hero…
His name is Connor Ford and he falls like an angel of mercy from the sky, braving the flames to save the woman he loves but knows he cannot have. For Julia Bishop is the partner of his best friend and fellow “smoke jumper,” Ed Tully. Julia loves them both–until a fiery tragedy on Montana’s Snake Mountain forces her to choose between them, and burns a brand on all their hearts.
In the wake of the fire, Connor embarks on a harrowing journey to the edge of human experience, traveling the world’s worst wars and disasters to take photographs that find him fame but never happiness. Reckless of a life he no longer wants, again and again he dares death to take him, until another fateful day on another continent, he must walk through fire once more… Views: 602
Dr. Zito lives only with his creations, Ernie and Oliver. In Ernie, the doctor has created a universal donor, a clone ready to give Dr. Zito any part should one of the doctor's organs fail. In Oliver, the doctor has created a robotic surgeon, ready to harvest from Ernie any flesh the doctor may need. Only, the doctor never anticipated the friendship that forms between his clone and robot.Ernie lives knowing that his death could fall at any moment. Ernie's mortality is linked to Dr. Zito's health. Only a clone, Ernie can voice no objection when the obese doctor partakes of another bourbon after another rich meal. Ernie has no right to encourage the doctor to seek even a little exercise to help strengthen Dr. Zito's failing heart. Ernie is only a clone, only a commodity, only a closet of organs and parts maintained in the best of health to be ready to save Dr. Zito from the health emergency arriving perhaps next year, next month, or next week. Ernie rebels against the purpose endowed by his creator, however, when he makes a new friend in the world of his online adventure game. Ernie suddenly cares for his tomorrows. Only Ernie must convince the robotic surgeon and guardian named Oliver that a clone deserves an opportunity to at least meet the face behind a game's avatar if a clone does not deserve a future of his own. Views: 595
Naomi guides her spacecraft through the stars in search of the starfly world. Humanity wants revenge for the invasion those aliens launched upon the Earth. It is a daunting quest for Naomi, for there are so many stars to explore. Yet she sacrifices her years and floats through the nothing to chase the tiny hope she might find a way to deliver vengeance to those aliens who sing a song of chimes.Shimmering creatures called the starfly create magnificent relics in honor of their golden spires of crystal. The spires provide that alien race with a common home, a location anchored amid the infinite planes where the starfly can gather to share ideas and love. The starfly fail to notice until it's too late how the pull of those spires tears at their wings, and the time comes when the starfly must throw themselves into the stars in a desperate search for a new world they might call home.Humanity tosses its bravest space captains into the stars to search out the home world of the alien creatures who draped the Earth in a net of crystal and brought the armies of man to their knees. Humanity has no way of knowing what star the starfly planet might orbit. Humanity has no way of knowing if the starfly, in truth, originate from any planet at all. Yet the thirst for revenge is too great, and however small the chances may be of ever taking the war to starfly, humanity tosses itself into the stars.And both races are surprised to discover how dreams bond them together. Views: 593
PART I THE CUBHOOD OF WAHB [Illustration:] I. He was born over a score of years ago, away up in the wildest part of the wild West, on the head of the Little Piney, above where the Palette Ranch is now. His Mother was just an ordinary Silvertip, living the quiet life that all Bears prefer, minding her own business and doing her duty by her family, asking no favors of any one excepting to let her alone. It was July before she took her remarkable family down the Little Piney to the Graybull, and showed them what strawberries were, and where to find them. Notwithstanding their Mother\'s deep conviction, the cubs were not remarkably big or bright; yet they were a remarkable family, for there were four of them, and it is not often a Grizzly Mother can boast of more than two. [Illustration] The woolly-coated little creatures were having a fine time, and reveled in the lovely mountain summer and the abundance of good things. Their Mother turned over each log and flat stone they came to, and the moment it was lifted they all rushed under it like a lot of little pigs to lick up the ants and grubs there hidden. It never once occurred to them that Mammy\'s strength might fail sometime, and let the great rock drop just as they got under it; nor would any one have thought so that might have chanced to see that huge arm and that shoulder sliding about under the great yellow robe she wore. No, no; that arm could never fail. The little ones were quite right. So they hustled and tumbled one another at each fresh log in their haste to be first, and squealed little squeals, and growled little growls, as if each was a pig, a pup, and a kitten all rolled into one. They were well acquainted with the common little brown ants that harbor under logs in the uplands, but now they came for the first time on one of the hills of the great, fat, luscious Wood-ant, and they all crowded around to lick up those that ran out. But they soon found that they were licking up more cactus-prickles and sand than ants, till their Mother said in Grizzly, "Let me show you how." She knocked off the top of the hill, then laid her great paw flat on it for a few moments, and as the angry ants swarmed on to it she licked them up with one lick, and got a good rich mouthful to crunch, without a grain of sand or a cactus-stinger in it. The cubs soon learned. Each put up both his little brown paws, so that there was a ring of paws all around the ant-hill, and there they sat, like children playing \'hands,\' and each licked first the right and then the left paw, or one cuffed his brother\'s ears for licking a paw that was not his own, till the ant-hill was cleared out and they were ready for a change. Ants are sour food and made the Bears thirsty, so the old one led down to the river. After they had drunk as much as they wanted, and dabbled their feet, they walked down the bank to a pool, where the old one\'s keen eye caught sight of a number of Buffalo-fish basking on the bottom. The water was very low, mere pebbly rapids between these deep holes, so Mammy said to the little ones: "Now you all sit there on the bank and learn something new." [Illustration: ] First she went to the lower end of the pool and stirred up a cloud of mud which hung in the still water, and sent a long tail floating like a curtain over the rapids just below.... Views: 574
Assassins have no fun...at least that is how Jake Monday feels. Sure, it pays well and has tons of great benefits like beautiful women, fast cars and expensive clothes. But, when you hate your job, how can you enjoy its perks? Jake finds that although he excels at killing, he finds no joy in it. He takes an assignment that changes his life forever. The world may never be the same.Assassins have no fun...at least that is how Jake Monday feels. Sure, it pays well and has tons of great benefits like beautiful women, fast cars and expensive clothes. But, when you hate your job, how can you enjoy its perks?Jake finds that although he excels at killing, he finds no joy in it. His employer continues to push him to his limits, forcing Jake to re-evaluate his career choice.A chance meeting with a woman aboard a flight to Los Angeles leaves Jake questioning more than his occupation. She leaves him with a strange gift and a feeling that they are somehow connected.Before Jake can unravel the mysterious woman, he takes an assignment that changes his life forever. The stakes are legendary, the danger acute, and the world may never be the same. Views: 572
Bryce Munson resents the dreams of the automata. The robotic writers have monopolized the publishing industry, and their dull paperbacks lull the reading public to sleep while the world falls to ruin. A frustrated Bryce becomes a keeper of the machines, and through the robots he distributes the words he hopes will change the world. He fails to understand how his story might set his city to flame.Bryce Munson lives a miserable life. The generic paperbacks of the automata offer him no pleasure. Unable to find enjoyment in the neat categories of robotic fiction sold in the bookstations, Bryce scribbles his own stories, but there seems to be no one left in his wasting world who is interested in reading words that are not produced by the publishing world's machines.Yet a new hope visits Bryce after his desperate effort to destroy a writing robot with a little gun fails to spark the rebellion he desires. A beautiful and dark woman teaches Bryce how to become a keeper of the automata, and how his life might find the purpose it requires in the intricate work involved in maintaining the writing machines. As a keeper, Bryce finds a fellowship of writers. And in short time, he shares a love with the woman who offered him meaning within a repair shop.Too much of Bryce, however, still worries for the world. Too much of his pride still resents how his words must be subservient to those imagined within artificial intelligences. Thus Bryce forms a plan to finally spark the rebellion he hopes will save his world, and he puts everything on the line to topple the automata. Views: 568
Do you remember happiness ? I do,just - so why is sadness dogging my tracks ? I know how wrong I've been,but I just want to take off out of here.Oniria CityThe Alfa had appeared in the Oniria City after a long time. His absence turned the city in a dark place where passersby passed were no able to perceive, that today bears his real name, was where the Alpha was born.Oniria again become to be the promised city for the abstract concept that some call God, and others just simply want to mention like the promised city, where in the first hung a sign said: "Someone who valued itself always takes time to read, but have to be willing to bow to the ignorance." Views: 555
Sheriff Conrad looks upon the deflated oddity discovered behind a compound of mobile homes and fears the bombs connected to that fallen and decayed balloon will force his community to reappear on the road map. He convenes his neighbors, and the villagers decide the best plan in coping with the bombs' dangers is restoring that balloon so their village might simply return the oddity to the wind.An enemy vanquished over fifty years ago crafted the balloon bomb from streamers and paper. The weapon’s creators simply set the balloon adrift in the wind before praying fortune delivered destruction to their enemy’s homeland. Rural villagers decades later find one such balloon entangled in the swamp bordering their community. The bombs fastened to the balloon threaten peril, but no one wishes to contact the outside world for help, and thus remind the larger world of their aging community hoping to be forgotten. With new paper and paint, with new stitches and hydrogen, that rural community brings the balloon bomb back to life, never stopping their work to wonder if it might be best to let one weapon of a lost age simply fade into ruin. Views: 554
With prose that is every bit as raw, intense and bitingly honest as the world it depicts, Barry Hines's A Kestrel for a Knave contains a new afterword by the author in Penguin Modern Classics.
Life is tough and cheerless for Billy Casper, a troubled teenager growing up in the small Yorkshire mining town of Barnsley. Treated as a failure at school, and unhappy at home, Billy discovers a new passion in life when he finds Kes, a kestrel hawk. Billy identifies with her silent strength and she inspires in him the trust and love that nothing else can, discovering through her the passion missing from his life. Barry Hines's acclaimed novel continues to reach new generations of teenagers and adults with its powerful story of survival in a tough, joyless world.
Ken Loach's renowned film adaptation, Kes, has achieved cult status and in his new afterword Barry Hines discusses his work to adapt the novel into a screenplay, and reappraises the legacy of a book that has become a popular classic.
Barry Hines (b. 1939) was born in the mining village of Hoyland Common, near Barnsley, South Yorkshire. Leaving Ecclesfield Grammar School without any qualifications, Hines worked as an apprentice mining surveyor for the National Coal Board before entering Loughborough Training College to study Physical Education. Working as a teacher in Hoyland Common, he wrote novels in the school library after work, later turning to writing full-time.
If you enjoyed A Kestrel for a Knave, you might like The Call of the Wild, White Fang, and Other Stories by Jack London, published in Penguin Classics. Views: 545
