Новинки Дамиен Бродерик

Every age has characteristic inventions that change the world. In the 19th century it was the steam engine and the train. For the 20th, electric and gasoline power, aircraft, nuclear weapons, even ventures into space. Today, the planet is awash with electronic business, chatter and virtual-reality entertainment so brilliant that the division between real and simulated is hard to discern. But one new idea from the 19th century has failed, so far, to enter reality―time travel, using machines to turn the time dimension into a two-way highway. Will it come true, as foreseen in science fiction? Might we expect visits to and from the future, sooner than from space? That is the Time Machine Hypothesis, examined here by futurist Damien Broderick, an award-winning writer and theorist of the genre of the future. Broderick homes in on the topic through the lens of science as well as fiction, exploring some fifty different time-travel scenarios and conundrums found in the science fiction literature and film.

Science fiction has often been considered the literature of futuristic technology: fantastic warfare among the stars or ruinous apocalypses on Earth. The last century, however, saw, through John W. Campbell, the introduction of "psience fiction," which explores such themes of mental powers as telepathy, precognition of the future, teleportation, etc.--and symbolic machines that react to such forces.
The author surveys this long-ignored literary shift through a series of influential novels and short stories published between the 1930s and the present. This discussion is framed by the sudden surge of interest in parapsychology and its absorption not only into the SF genre, but also into the real world through military experiments such as the Star Gate Program.

Science fiction explores the wonderful, baffling and wildly entertaining aspects of a universe unimaginably old and vast, and with a future even more immense. It reaches into that endless cosmos with the tools of rational investigation and storytelling. At the core of both science and science fiction is the engaged human mind--a consciousness that sees and feels and thinks and loves. But what is this mind, this aware and self-aware consciousness that seems unlike anything else we experience? What makes consciousness the Hard Problem of philosophy, still unsolved after millennia of probing? This book looks into the heart of this mystery - at the science and philosophy of consciousness and at many inspiring fictional examples - and finds strange, challenging answers.

The book's content and entertaining style will appeal equally to science fiction enthusiasts and scholars, including cognitive and neuroscientists, as well as philosophers of mind. It is a refreshing romp through the science and science fiction of consciousness.

Someday in the not??“too??“distant future, the greatest minds on Earth might be intelligent machines conventional or quantum logic programs running on immensely powerful and ever smaller computers. But can human minds bound by biology possibly keep up

Августу Зайбеку 20 лет, он совершенно обычный человек. Однажды, его двоюродная бабушка Тензи сообщает, что она находит трупы в ванне каждую субботнюю ночь, к утру, они всегда исчезают. Август воспринимает этот рассказ как фантазию пожилой леди, пока он сам не натыкается на труп, который впихнули ванную на втором этаже дома его тети. Даже это не беспокоило его, но когда кто-то выходит из зеркала ванной …

Августу Зайбеку 20 лет, он совершенно обычный человек. Однажды, его двоюродная бабушка Тензи сообщает, что она находит трупы в ванне каждую субботнюю ночь, к утру они всегда исчезают. Август воспринимает этот рассказ как фантазию пожилой леди, пока он сам не натыкается на труп, который впихнули в ванну на втором этаже дома его тети. Даже это не беспокоило его, но когда кто-то выходит из зеркала в ванной.... Август обнаруживает, что он - Игрок в Состязании Миров. Он открывает тайны космоса, в конечном счете, космос оказывается вычислением, учится выживать в сражении между Игроками и порочными К-машинами, встречает Хорошую Машину, которая убила всех в одном из миров, и воскрешает себя из мертвых.

Alf Dean Djanyagirnji è un antropologo che non ha affatto dimenticato la saggezza tribale dei suoi antenati. Insieme al nipote, un ragazzo autistico che tutti chiamano Mouse, esplora le zone selvagge dell'Australia centrale in cerca del mitico Serpente Arcobaleno, ovvero di quelli che egli ritiene i resti fossili di una creatura del Cretaceo. Dentro una caverna decorata con antiche pitture aborigene, Alf e il ragazzo scoprono però qualcosa di ben più inaspettato: un manufatto alieno, un portale luminoso che li trasporta istantaneamente a centinaia di chilometri di distanza, in un'altra caverna nel cuore del contimente australiano. Alf è stordito, mentre i processi mentali di Mouse accelerano e il ragazzo scopre nuovi inaspettati poteri.

In the mid-1960s, British science fiction and fantasy were convulsed by the «New Wave.» This movement emerged from the SF magazines edited by John Carnell. Such brilliant NEW WORLDS and SCIENCE FANTASY writers as J. G. Ballard, Brian W. Aldiss, John Brunner, and Michael Moorcock heralded the rise of this new kind of fantastic fiction. John Boston and Damien Broderick's concluding volume of their critical trilogy examines the history and development of these important magazines–and the fiction that they championed. By the end of this period (1964), Carnell had set the stage for that major development in UK science fiction–the new wave adventures of the transformed NEW WORLDS, under the editorship of Moorcock–and had himself shifted gear into the next mode of SF publishing as editor of the paperback anthology series, New Writings in SF. Boston and Broderick's series will become the definitive critical histories of these important British magazines. Complete with indices of names and titles cited.

In the year 4004 AD, the entire universe of habitable worlds has been filled with human beings, thanks to an ancient teleport network and unlimited growth. Humans live on more than a hundred quadrillion terraformed planets, all woven into a bureaucratic and restrictive Empire. VALENCIES tracks a frustrated group of libertarian anarchists on the marginal planet Victoria. Kael, son of three gay doctors, and Theri, daughter of a man and woman bound by maniacal doctrinal tenets, are a young couple in a cosmos of complacent immortals. Ben and Anla the clone rage and passionately make up in a cycle of dominance and submission as old as history or…

Building New Worlds is a history of a pivotal decades-long episode in the birth and growth of today's science fiction. Enthralling and amusing, it's written with affection and wit. This is no dry, modishly theorized academic analysis. Nor is it a rah-rah celebration of the «Good Old Days.» Here is a candid and astute reader's response to a magazine that, by today's standards, was often comically bad–but was also immensely important in its time, and improved, like the Little Engine (or maybe Starship) That Could. New Worlds is best remembered today as the fountainhead of the New Wave of audacious experimental SF in the second half of the 1960s, under editor Michael Moorcock. But these first pioneering issues, from 1946-59, were edited by the magazine’s founder, John «Ted» Carnell (1912-72). Carnell was a pillar of the old-style UK SF establishment, but gamely supportive of innovators–most famously, of the brilliant J. G. Ballard, Brian W. Aldiss, and John Brunner, whose early work he nurtured. The story of how New Worlds got started, survived, and got better is essential to the history of the genres of the fantastic in the UK–and indeed, the world. And huge fun to read. Watch for the companion volumes, New Worlds: Before the New Wave, and Strange Highways, dealing with New World's companion magazine, Science Fantasy.

Science Fantasy blends science fiction AND fantasy, so it tends to be bolder and more highly colored than pure science fiction. In the middle of the last century, the British magazine SCIENCE FANTASY created its own distinctive strains of fantasy narrative, most famously by such writers as Brian W. Aldiss, J. G. Ballard, John Brunner, Michael Moorcock, and Thomas Burnett Swann, among others. This book looks closely at the whole trajectory of that lost magazine, from its birth in 1950 through 1967, when it was briefly called (SF) Impulse. John Boston provides a brilliantly insightful and often every funny account of the rise, evolution, and final fall of SCIENCE FANTASY, its writers, and its quirky editors. Boston is joined by writer and critic Damien Broderick, adding his own waspish and nostalgic comments. This volume, the first of three dealing with the history and development of the major British SF magazines, is a compelling night journey into the past, where the future took a turn down paths not often explored. It's a trip not to be missed.

In his Foreword, Rich Horton says: «First rate stories…»Time Considered as a Series of Thermite Burns in No Particular Order" is a clever and very funny time travel romp; «The Beancounter's Cat» is set in a far future with Clarkean science sufficiently advanced to appear magical; «Walls of Flesh, Bars of Bone» (with Barbara Lamar) is another look at the mystery of human destiny; «Under the Moons of Venus» is a remarkable, evocative homage to one of SF's greats." Well-known editor Gardner Dozois has said of «The Beancounter's Cat» that it «…starts out reading like fantasy, and gradually turns into very far-future SF.» Also included is an original tale with Paul Di Filippo, «Luminous Fish,» taking Mike Moorcock's famous character Jerry Cornelius for a spin in the 21st century! Nine scintillating science fiction stories by a major writer in the field.

R. Doubting Thomas Perdue, tough Aussie former P.I. and jailbird, is in trouble, and it can only get worse. Tom's *Feng shui* consultancy implodes when some bastard drives a Mack truck through his heritage office. Fatal things keep happening to his phones. And who's been blabbing about his racehorse-doping past? The love of his life has made a ten-year vow of celibacy to the Virgin Mary. Tom's Goth daughter's girlfriend's obese sister has vanished, extremely foul play suspected. Meanwhile, an unusual racing camel named Nile Fever has become an animal of interest to the Australian Federal Police, and Tom is up to his neck in the middle of the mess. I'm Dying Here is a darkly comic crime caper that leaves no taboo, or cell phone, unviolated. «This is a comic, crazy, original crime novel. You won't find another one like it this year, or, more likely, ever.» Bill Crider. «What it reminds me of, powerfully, is a Donald Westlake comic novel about Dormunder. If you did smart, funny caper novels, I suspect you'll like this one as much as I do.» Todd Mason. «Think anything Joseph Wambaugh, and then make it much more funny, and you start to get an idea of how much fun this is to read.» Amazon five-star review.

Jenny Kane loves weird science–but it's gone way, WAY out of control. Her mother's moved out, her dad's still moping around, and she's not sure how to cope any longer. And she keeps getting these weird phone calls from a scientist named Rod who's…where?…when?–another time zone? Another time altogether? Another reality? But that'd be crazy, wouldn't it? She also has the strangest feeling that she's done all this before. Who's this odd boy she just crashed into–this Tristan? How does she even know his name–or the fact that he can perform parlor-type «magic» tricks? Hilarious, exciting, touching, ZONES is a classic adventure of time travel: a great SF adventure that grabs you with its opening lines–and then never lets you go!

immortality, longevity, science fiction, robin cook, michael crichton

Poor Jack Wong is a clueless cadet at the Unified Space Academy when his pod is stranded on a planet of disgusting aliens. All he wants to do, other than escape, is to fulfill his proud duty to advance Earth Culture's Primary Heuristic: «Wherever possible, find the weak spot in an alien civilization and interfere as much as possible for the benefit of humanity.» It's the Human's Burden! But everything comes unstuck, made worse by his irritating Machiavellian AI. And that's just the start of Jack's troubles in space and time....

In Damien Broderick’s haunting tale, “The Meek,” the survivors of humanity’s drive toward racial suicide must pay an awful price for their continued survival. John Glasby’s “Innsmouth Bane” tells how the alien entity Dagon first came to nineteenth-century America. In “Helen’s Last Will,” James C. Glass shows us that death may not always be “the end.” Charles Allen Gramlich’s “I Can Spend You” is a futuristic western which puts prospecting in a whole new light! &t;br/&t; “The Voice of the Dolphin in Air,” by Howard V. Hendrix, is a poignant tale of life and death on Mars and the LaGrange space stations. In Philip E. High’s “This World Is Ours,” David Hacket is given the task of revitalizing a declining city (and world), and finds himself facing an alien invasion. James B. Johnson’s “The Last American” is fighting to preserve the memory of the old U.S. of A.—in a last stand at the Alamo! In “Small World: A Small Story,” by Michael Kurland, Vanspeepe invents a new transportation device, hoping to change the world—and he does! &t;br/&t; “The Channel Exemption: A Sime~Gen Story,” by Jacqueline Lichtenberg, focuses on the tensions between Sime and Gen when a mixed party of humans is stranded on an alien planet. Gary Lovisi’s tale, “My Guardian,” tells how mankind is finally able to put an end to wars and mass killings. “Black Mist,” by Richard A. Lupoff, is a stunning mystery set at a Japanese research station on the Martian moon, Phobos. Don Webb, in his fascinating tale, “The Five Biographies of General Gerrhan,” demonstrates how easy it is for the professional writer to (mis)interpret, deliberately or otherwise, the story of a space hero. &t;br/&t; Twelve great reads by a dozen great writers!