prose; non-fiction; fiction Views: 62
A short story collection in the Man-At-Arms and Maiden-At-Arms universe.A tale about a high born family and their retainers struggling against the curse of vampirsm after the Dark Wanderer crossed their paths. Views: 62
Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things Fall Apart ; the center cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. —W. B. Yeats, "The Second Coming" Views: 61
SUMMARY:The Pulitzer Prize-winning, bestselling novel from one of Americaa??s greatest contemporary writers, repackaged as part of the Perennial fiction promotion. Larry Cooka??s farm is the largest in Zebulon County, Iowa, and a tribute to his hard work and single-mindedness. Proud and possessive, his sudden decision to retire and hand over the farm to his three daughters, is disarmingly uncharacteristic. Ginny and Rose, the two eldest, are startled yet eager to accept, but Caroline, the youngest daughter, has misgivings. Immediately, her father cuts her out. In a??A Thousand Acresa??, Jane Smiley transposes the a??King Leara?? story to the modern day, and in so doing at once illuminates Shakespearea??s original and subtly transforms it. This astonishing novel won both of Americaa??s highest literary awards, the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Criticsa?? Circle Award. Views: 61
Life under the thumb of the Spark Lords — the League's Earthly representatives — is dull but comfortable for Philemon Abu Dhubhai and the other teachers at a third-rate private school for second-rate rich kids. But all that changes when a female student is found murdered by an unknown alien organism, and her boyfriend, the prime suspect, goes missing. Suddenly an unofficial homicide investigation has snared Philemon and five other "misfits" — plus one of the planet's most powerful criminals, the mother of the murdered girl — trapping them all in a web of terrifying conspiracy that could involve the Spark Lords… and even the League of Peoples itself. For all is perilously not what it seems, on Earth and in the heavens. But then again, neither are Phil and his compatriots… Views: 61
FromComputer scientist turned wandering swords-man Aristide travels the accidental spaces in the artificial universes of a postsingularity existence in which memory backups are standard and a matrioshka cluster of computers runs the worlds’ workings. On Midgarth, where he has been traversing a desert full of common spiders and ants, he discovers a group of priests involved in a plot that could take down all civilization because of one man’s existential crisis. Williams takes on the artificial-world topos with great style and characterization, enlivening it with spectacular philosophical conversations between Bitsy, avatar of one of the matrioshka brains, and Aristide. Between the implications of living in a world in which death is a minor inconvenience but the loss of time can change relationships forever, and the implications of the theory upon which the yarn’s impending doom depends (a take on the nested multiple universe concept) and the ways in which different experiences can change a person, even starting from exactly the same baseline, Implied Spaces is a thoughtful work of world building and an engaging mystery. --Regina Schroeder Product DescriptionFrom Walter Jon Williams, the celebrated and influential author of Hardwired, Voice of the Whirlwind, and Angel Station comes Implied Spaces, a new novel of post-singularity action, pyrotechnics, and intrigue. Aristide, a semi-retired computer scientist turned swordsman, a scholar of the implied spaces, seeking meaning amid the accidents of architecture in a universe where reality itself has been sculpted and designed by superhuman machine intelligence. While exploring the pre-technological world Midgarth, one of four dozen pocket universes created within a series of vast, orbital matrioshka computer arrays, Aristide uncovers a fiendish plot threatening to set off a nightmare scenario, perhaps even bringing about the ultimate Existential Crisis: the end of civilization itself! Traveling the pocket universes with his wormhole-edged sword Tecmessa in hand and talking cat Bitsy, avatar of the planet-sized computer Endora, at his side, Aristide must find a way to save the multiverse from subversion, sabotage, and certain destruction.
Views: 61