Many thousands of readers consider Philip K. Dick the greatest science fiction mind on any planet. Since his untimely death in 1982, interest in Dick's works has continued to mount and his reputation has been further enhanced by a growing body of critical attention. The Philip K. Dick Award is now given annually to a distinguished work of science fiction, and the Philip K. Dick Society is devoted to the study and promulgation of his works.
This collection includes all of the writer's earliest short and medium-length fiction (including some previously unpublished stories) covering the years 1954-1964. These fascinating stories include Service Call, Stand By, The Days of Perky Pat, and many others.
Contents:
Autofac --
Service call --
Captive market --
The mold of Yancy --
The minority report --
Recall mechanism --
The unreconstructed M --
Explorers we --
War game --
If there were no Benny Cemoli --
Novelty act --
Waterspider --
What the dead men say --
Orpheus with clay feet --
The days of Perky Pat --
Stand-by --
What'll we do with Ragland Park? --
Oh, to be a Blobel! -- Views: 868
A young girl from rural Mississippi is introduced to the world of espionage and her career that stretched from the 80s to present day involved many of the people you recognized from the news. The retired agent is targeted for assignation. Preview: My neighbor's small dog saved my life today.My neighbor's small dog saved my life today. He came running up to me as I exited my apartment in New Orleans and started that infernal yapping and wanting to be petted. Just as I leaned over to scratch his head, I heard the ricochet of a bullet off the old river brick wall behind me. My reflexes were still up to par as I turned my motion into a full drop and roll. I continued rolling until I was behind the car parked on my side of the street. Sliding my Taurus PT111 out of my purse, I listened for footsteps headed in my direction. That wonderful dog was the only one in view and it was a couple of minutes before I heard a car door slam and a squeal of tires as the gunman left the area. Playing the scene back in my mind as I lay on the pavement, I realized that there had not been the sound of a shot. "Suppressor" sprang into my head and this meant that this was no street shooting involving a "drive by" or mugger. I had been "Uncovered". Views: 867
Selected as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, Off to the Side is the tale of one of America's most beloved writers. Jim Harrison traces his upbringing in Michigan amid the austerities of the Depression and the Second World War, and the seemingly greater austerities of his starchy Swedish forebears. He chronicles his coming-of-age, from a boy drunk with books to a young man making his way among fellow writers he deeply admires -- including Peter Matthiessen, Robert Lowell, W.H. Auden, Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams, and Allen Ginsberg. Harrison discusses forthrightly the life-changing experience of becoming a father, and the minor cognitive dissonance that ensued when this boy from the "heartland" somehow ended up a highly paid Hollywood screenwriter. He gives free rein to his "seven obsessions" -- alcohol, food, stripping, hunting and fishing (and the dogs who have accompanied him in both), religion, the road, and our place in the natural world -- which he elucidates with earthy wisdom and an elegant sense of connectedness. Off to the Side is a work of great beauty and importance, a triumphant achievement that captures the writing life and brings all of us clues for living. Views: 865
Dr. Eric Sweetscent has problems. His planet is enmeshed in an unwinnable war. His wife is lethally addicted to a drug that whips its users helplessly back and forth across time -- and is hell-bent on making Eric suffer along with her. And Sweetscent's newest patient is not only the most important man on the embattled planet Earth but quite possibly the sickest. For Secretary Gino Molinari has turned his mortal illness into an instrument of political policy -- and Eric cannot tell if his job is to make the Male better or to keep him poised just this side of death.
Now Wait for Last fear bursts through the envelope between the impossible and the inevitable. Even as ushers us into a future that looks uncannily like the present, it makes the normal seem terrifyingly provisional -- and compels anyone who reads it to wonder if he really knows what time it is.
From the Trade Paperback edition. Views: 865
In this dramatic first-person narrative, Greg Mortenson picks up where Three Cups of Tea left off in 2003, recounting his relentless, ongoing efforts to establish schools for girls in Afghanistan; his extensive work in Azad Kashmir and Pakistan after a massive earthquake hit the region in 2005; and the unique ways he has built relationships with Islamic clerics, militia commanders, and tribal leaders even as he was dodging shootouts with feuding Afghan warlords and surviving an eight-day armed abduction by the Taliban. He shares for the first time his broader vision to promote peace through education and literacy, as well as touching on military matters, Islam, and women - all woven together with the many rich personal stories of the people who have been involved in this remarkable two-decade humanitarian effort.
**Amazon.com Review
From Viking: "Greg Mortenson’s work as a humanitarian in Afghanistan and Pakistan has provided tens of thousands of children with an education. 60 Minutes is a serious news organization and in the wake of their report, Viking plans to carefully review the materials with the author."
From Booklist
Starred Review Mortenson’s best-seller, Three Cups of Tea (2009), introduced his commitment to peace through education and became a book-club phenomenon. He now continues the story of how the Central Asia Institute (CAI) built schools in northern Afghanistan. Descriptions of the harsh geography and more than one near-death experience impress readers as new faces join Mortenson’s loyal “Dirty Dozen” as they carefully plot a course of school-building through the Badakshan province and Wakhan corridor. Mortenson also shares his friendships with U.S. military personnel, including Admiral Mike Mullen, and the warm reception his work has found among the officer corps. The careful line CAI threads between former mujahideen commanders, ex-Taliban and village elders, and the American soldiers stationed in their midst is poetic in its political complexity and compassionate consideration. Using schools not bombs to promote peace is a goal that even the most hard-hearted can admire, but to blandly call this book inspiring would be dismissive of all the hard work that has gone into the mission in Afghanistan as well as the efforts to fund it. Mortenson writes of nothing less than saving the future, and his adventure is light years beyond most attempts. Mortenson did not reach the summit of K2, but oh, the heights he has achieved. --Colleen Mondor Views: 861
Antic Hay is one of Aldous Huxley's earlier novels, and like them is primarily a novel of ideas involving conversations that disclose viewpoints rather than establish characters; its polemical theme unfolds against the backdrop of London's post-war nihilistic Bohemia. This is Huxley at his biting, brilliant best, a novel, loud with derisive laughter, which satirically scoffs at all conventional morality and at stuffy people everywhere, a novel that's always charged with excitement. Views: 860
A man's path to redemption is one that sorts out true friends from fake ones. As Brian ponders his life and the one constant companion he has had through thick and thin, his friend's life hangs in the balance. Absolution and catharsis comes at a cost as Brian discovers.Cheryl Rainesford takes a ghostly train ride in the middle of the night. Amy discovers extra storage space where there was none before. If you could get away with murder, would you actually commit the crime? How well do you really know the people you work with?Creepy tales and poems that will have you leaving on the light at night. Caution: don't read it alone! Views: 860
In a house under renovation, a plumber uncovers a cellar no one knew about, and makes a rather grisly discovery — a decapitated chicken, animal bones, and cauldrons containing beads, feathers, and other relics of religious ceremonies. In the center of the shrine is the skull of a teenage girl. Meanwhile, on a nearby lakeshore, the headless body of a teenage boy is found by a man walking his dog.
Led by a preacher turned politician, citizen vigilantes blame devil worshippers and Wiccans and begin a witch hunt, intent on seeking revenge. Forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan — “five-five, feisty, and forty-plus” — is called in to investigate, and a complex and gripping tale unfolds in this deadly mix of voodoo, Santería, and devil worship. Views: 860
In an article published at Internova, Ahmed A. Khan had tried to define a new sub-genre of speculative fiction: Islamic SF. This book showcases that essay and five of Ahmed's stories that illustrate the criteria of Islamic SF. These stories, in their earlier incarnations, have earned modest success and have been reprinted and translated several times.Samurai Shark has a license plate stuck in his teeth and it's pissing him off. The pain makes him go on an epic rant that will make even the toughest dizen of the deep cower in fear. Watch out world, Samurai Shark is comin' to bite you in the butt! Views: 860
The Skull in the Photograph was Labelled *Neanderthal Man...*
He is too excitable and too pushy. His wife drinks too much. He may be a man of principle, but Leo Runcible of Runcible Realty is an outsider in Carquinez, Marin County. When he gets into an argument with his neighbour Walt Dombrosio, the resulting ramifications follow a bizarre logic of cause and effect to lead in entirely unexpected directions...
The Man Whose Teeth Were All Exactly Alike is a dazzling novel by a writer famous for his power to surprise and delight.
The greatest American novelist of the second half of the 20th century - Norman Spinrad
One of the most original practitioners writing any kind of fiction, Philip K. Dick made most of the European avant-garde seem navel-gazers in a cul-de-sac. - Sunday Times
Front cover illustration by Neil Breedon. Views: 859
Fleeing to Australia to escape the repressive life of British-controlled Ireland, Tim Shea is alarmed by his new home's equally stifling social order and its inclination towards prejudice. By the author of Schindler's List. Views: 858
For many years Sierra Leone and Liberia have been too dangerous to travel through, bedevilled by a uniquely brutal form of violence from which sprang many of Africa's cruellest contemporary icons - child soldiers, prisoner mutilation, blood diamonds. With their wars officially over, Tim Butcher sets out on a journey across both countries, trekking for 350 miles through remote rainforest and malarial swamps. Just as he followed H M Stanley through the Congo - a journey described in his bestseller Blood River - this time he pursues a trail blazed by Graham Greene in 1935 and immortalised in the travel classic Journey Without Maps. Greene took 26 bearers, a case of scotch, and hammocks in which he and his cousin Barbara were carried. Tim walks every blistering inch to gain an extraordinary ground-level view of a troubled and overlooked region.
As a journalist in Africa, Tim came to know both countries well although the wars made trips to the jungle hinterland far too risky. This is where he now heads, exploring how rebel groups thrived in the bush for so long and whether the devil of war has truly been chased away. He encounters other 'devils', masked figures guarding the spiritual secrets of jungle communities. Some are no more threatening than schoolmasters but others are much more sinister, relying on ritual cannibalism as a source of their magical power. Tim encounters these devils on an epic journey that demands courage, doggedness and good fortune.
Chasing the Devil is a dramatic travel book touching on one of the most fraught parts of the globe at a unique moment in its history. Weaving history and anthropology with personal narrative - as well as new discoveries about Greene - it is as exciting as it is enlightening. Views: 857
Poppy Z. Brite brinca com a história dos Beatles: o resultado é ´Plastico Jesus´, uma mistura de dinamite e rock. Uma história fantástica, dramática e tocante. Chocante para os puristas, ela alimenta a imaginação dos demais. Com ilustrações da própria autora, ´Plastic Jesus´ nos faz mergulhar por algumas horas em um mundo bizarro e estranhamente doce. Views: 854
The thrilling story of an ill-fated expedition to the South Pole
by the bestselling and award-winning author of Schindler's List.
In the waning years of the Edwardian era, a group of English gentleman- adventurers led by Sir Eugene Stewart launched an expedition to reach the South Pole. More than sixty years later, Anthony Piers, the official artist of the New British South Polar Expedition, finally unveils the sobering
conditions of their perilous journey: raging wind, bitter cold, fierce hunger, absolute darkness-and murder.
The first two decades of the twentieth century were known as the "heroic era" of Antarctic exploration. In 1911, Roald Amundsen reached the South Pole. Weeks later, doomed British explorer Robert Falcon Scott arrived-and then perished in a blizzard. And in 1914, Ernest Shackleton embarked on his infamous voyage to Antarctica. Set during this epic period of adventure and discovery, Victim of the Aurora re-creates a thrilling time in an unforgiving place and is a brilliantly plotted tale of psychological suspense. Views: 854
In Eat the cookie...Buy the shoes, well known authorand speaker Joyce Meyer brings the issue of balance in our lives to the forefront. Not diminishing the importance of discipline, she lets us know that every once in a while it's okay to get off our structured regimen and enjoy a cookie, buy that pair of shoes you've been eyeballing, or even both! Views: 851
