Passage

Passage PDF Author: Connie Willis
Publisher: Bantam
ISBN: 0307573729
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 802

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Book Description
One of those rare, unforgettable novels that are as chilling as they are insightful, as thought-provoking as they are terrifying, award-winning author Connie Willis's Passage is an astonishing blend of relentless suspense and cutting-edge science unlike anything you've ever read before. It is the electrifying story of a psychologist who has devoted her life to tracking death. But when she volunteers for a research project that simulates the near-death experience, she will either solve life's greatest mystery -- or fall victim to its greatest terror. At Mercy General Hospital, Dr. Joanna Lander will soon be paged -- not to save a life, but to interview a patient just back from the dead. A psychologist specializing in near-death experiences, Joanna has spent two years recording the experiences of those who have been declared clinically dead and lived to tell about it. It's research on the fringes of ordinary science, but Joanna is about to get a boost from an unexpected quarter. A new doctor has arrived at Mercy General, one with the power to give Joanna the chance to get as close to death as anyone can. A brilliant young neurologist, Dr. Richard Wright has come up with a way to manufacture the near-death experience using a psychoactive drug. Dr. Wright is convinced that the NDE is a survival mechanism and that if only doctors understood how it worked, they could someday delay the dying process, or maybe even reverse it. He can use the expertise of a psychologist of Joanna Lander's standing to lend credibility to his study. But he soon needs Joanna for more than just her reputation. When his key volunteer suddenly drops out of the study, Joanna finds herself offering to become Richard's next subject. After all, who better than she, a trained psychologist, to document the experience? Her first NDE is as fascinating as she imagined it would be -- so astounding that she knows she must go back, if only to find out why this place is so hauntingly familiar. But each time Joanna goes under, her sense of dread begins to grow, because part of her already knows why the experience is so familiar, and why she has every reason to be afraid.... And just when you think you know where she is going, Willis throws in the biggest surprise of all -- a shattering scenario that will keep you feverishly reading until the final climactic page is turned.

Passage

Passage PDF Author: Connie Willis
Publisher: Bantam
ISBN: 0307573729
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 802

Get Book Here

Book Description
One of those rare, unforgettable novels that are as chilling as they are insightful, as thought-provoking as they are terrifying, award-winning author Connie Willis's Passage is an astonishing blend of relentless suspense and cutting-edge science unlike anything you've ever read before. It is the electrifying story of a psychologist who has devoted her life to tracking death. But when she volunteers for a research project that simulates the near-death experience, she will either solve life's greatest mystery -- or fall victim to its greatest terror. At Mercy General Hospital, Dr. Joanna Lander will soon be paged -- not to save a life, but to interview a patient just back from the dead. A psychologist specializing in near-death experiences, Joanna has spent two years recording the experiences of those who have been declared clinically dead and lived to tell about it. It's research on the fringes of ordinary science, but Joanna is about to get a boost from an unexpected quarter. A new doctor has arrived at Mercy General, one with the power to give Joanna the chance to get as close to death as anyone can. A brilliant young neurologist, Dr. Richard Wright has come up with a way to manufacture the near-death experience using a psychoactive drug. Dr. Wright is convinced that the NDE is a survival mechanism and that if only doctors understood how it worked, they could someday delay the dying process, or maybe even reverse it. He can use the expertise of a psychologist of Joanna Lander's standing to lend credibility to his study. But he soon needs Joanna for more than just her reputation. When his key volunteer suddenly drops out of the study, Joanna finds herself offering to become Richard's next subject. After all, who better than she, a trained psychologist, to document the experience? Her first NDE is as fascinating as she imagined it would be -- so astounding that she knows she must go back, if only to find out why this place is so hauntingly familiar. But each time Joanna goes under, her sense of dread begins to grow, because part of her already knows why the experience is so familiar, and why she has every reason to be afraid.... And just when you think you know where she is going, Willis throws in the biggest surprise of all -- a shattering scenario that will keep you feverishly reading until the final climactic page is turned.

Connie Willis’s Science Fiction

Connie Willis’s Science Fiction PDF Author: Carissa Turner Smith
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000728455
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
In spite of Connie Willis’s numerous science fiction awards and her groundbreaking history as a woman in the field, there is a surprising dearth of critical publication surrounding her work. Taking Doomsday Book as its cue, this collection argues that Connie Willis’s most famous novel, along with the rest of her oeuvre, performs science fiction’s task of cognitive estrangement by highlighting our human inability to read the times correctly—and yet also affirming the ethical imperative to attempt to truly observe and record our temporal location. Willis’s fiction emphasizes that doomsdays happen every day, and they risk being forgotten by some, even as their trauma repeats for others. However, disasters also have the potential to upend accepted knowledge and transform the social order for the better, and this collection considers the ways that Willis pairs comic and tragic modes to reflect these uncertainties.

Bellwether

Bellwether PDF Author: Connie Willis
Publisher: Spectra
ISBN: 0307571947
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
Connie Willis has won more Hugo and Nebula awards than any other science fiction author. Now, with her trademark wit and inventiveness, she explores the intimate relationship between science, pop culture, and the arcane secrets of the heart. Sandra Foster studies fads—from Barbie dolls to the grunge look—how they start and what they mean. Bennett O'Reilly is a chaos theorist studying monkey group behavior. They both work for the HiTek corporation, strangers until a misdelivered package brings them together. It's a moment of synchronicity—if not serendipity—which leads them into a chaotic system of their own, complete with a million-dollar research grant, caffé latte, tattoos, and a series of unlucky coincidences that leaves Bennett monkeyless, fundless, and nearly jobless. Sandra intercedes with a flock of sheep and an idea for a joint project. (After all, what better animal to study both chaos theory and the herd mentality that so often characterizes human behavior?) But scientific discovery is rarely straightforward and never simple, and Sandra and Bennett have to endure a series of setbacks, heartbreaks, dead ends, and disasters before they find their ultimate answer. . . . Praise for Bellwether “One of science fiction's best writers.”—The Denver Post “Connie Willis deploys the apparatus of science fiction to illuminate character and relationships, and her writing is fresh, subtle, and deeply moving.”—The New York Times Book Review “Keen social satire touched with genuine humanity . . . Connie Willis's fiction is one of the most intelligent delights of our genre.”—Locus “A sheer pleasure to read . . . Sprightly, intelligent fun.”—Publishers Weekly

Bring the Jubilee

Bring the Jubilee PDF Author: Ward Moore
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
Bring the Jubilee, by Ward Moore, is a 1953 novel of alternate history. The point of divergence occurs when the Confederate States of America wins the Battle of Gettysburg and subsequently declares victory in the American Civil War. Includes an introduction by John Betancourt. "An important original work... richly and realistically imagined." —Galaxy Science Fiction.

Blackout

Blackout PDF Author: Connie Willis
Publisher: Spectra
ISBN: 0345519833
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 514

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Book Description
Oxford in 2060 is a chaotic place, with scores of time-traveling historians being sent into the past. Michael Davies is prepping to go to Pearl Harbor. Merope Ward is coping with a bunch of bratty 1940 evacuees and trying to talk her thesis adviser into letting her go to VE-Day. Polly Churchill’s next assignment will be as a shopgirl in the middle of London’s Blitz. But now the time-travel lab is suddenly canceling assignments and switching around everyone’s schedules. And when Michael, Merope, and Polly finally get to World War II, things just get worse. For there they face air raids, blackouts, and dive-bombing Stukas—to say nothing of a growing feeling that not only their assignments but the war and history itself are spiraling out of control. Because suddenly the once-reliable mechanisms of time travel are showing significant glitches, and our heroes are beginning to question their most firmly held belief: that no historian can possibly change the past.

Recognising Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples in the Constitution

Recognising Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples in the Constitution PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Constitutional history
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
"Current multiparty support has created a historic opportunity to recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the first peoples of Australia, to affirm their full and equal citizenship, and to remove the last vestiges of racial discrimination from the Constitution. The Expert Panel was tasked to report to the Government on possible options for constitutional change to give effect to Indigenous constitutional recognition, including advice as to the level of support from Indigenous people and the broader community for these options. This executive summary sets out the Panel's conclusions and recommendations" [taken from executive summary]; report contains draft Bill for an Act to alter the Constitution to recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and their cultures, languages and heritage, to replace racially discriminatory provisions and to include a prohibition of racial discrimination. "The Act may be cited as the Constitution alteration (Recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples) 2013."

Days of Cain

Days of Cain PDF Author: J. R. Dunn
Publisher: Baen Publishing Enterprises
ISBN: 1618249274
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 343

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Book Description
Arguably the best time travel tale dealing with the Holocaust every written, in our humble opinion. A rebellious group of time travelers attempt to prevent one of the greatest atrocities humanity ever deviseAuschwitz. Monitor and ace enforcement operative Gaspar James is sent to stop them. Gaspar knows that the horror must be allowed to run its course in order to preserve the integrity of the time line. At least that's what he has told himself throughout his service to the Moiety, the group charged with overseeing the continuity of time. But even Gaspar has his doubts¾and millions of lives hang in the balance. At the publisher's request, this title is sold without DRM (Digital Rights Management). "[Dunn's fiction contains] . . . action scenes ranking with the best in military SF."¾Publishers Weekly "Genuinely harrowing and impassioned, with wonderful characters and an unforgettable theme."¾Kirkus

The Corner That Held Them

The Corner That Held Them PDF Author: Sylvia Townsend Warner
Publisher: New York Review of Books
ISBN: 1681373882
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 425

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Book Description
A unique novel about life in a 14th-century convent by one of England's most original authors. Sylvia Townsend Warner’s The Corner That Held Them is a historical novel like no other, one that immerses the reader in the dailiness of history, rather than history as the given sequence of events that, in time, it comes to seem. Time ebbs and flows and characters come and go in this novel, set in the era of the Black Death, about a Benedictine convent of no great note. The nuns do their chores, and seek to maintain and improve the fabric of their house and chapel, and struggle with each other and with themselves. The book that emerges is a picture of a world run by women but also a story—stirring, disturbing, witty, utterly entrancing—of a community. What is the life of a community and how does it support, or constrain, a real humanity? How do we live through it and it through us? These are among the deep questions that lie behind this rare triumph of the novelist’s art.

Lifelode

Lifelode PDF Author: Jo Walton
Publisher: Jo Walton
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
Lifelode is the Mythopoeic Award Winning novel from Hugo, Nebula and World Fantasy Award winning author Jo Walton. It was published in hardcover in 2009 by NESFA Press and is now available for the first time as an ebook. At its heart, Lifelode is the story of a comfortable manor house family. The four adults of the household are happily polygamous, each fulfilling their ‘lifelode’ or life’s purpose: Ferrand is the lord of the manor, his sweetmate Taveth runs the household, his wife Chayra makes ceramics, and Taveth’s husband Ranal works the farm. Their children are a joyful bunch, running around in the sunshine days of the harvest and wondering what their own lifelodes will be. Their lives changed with the arrival of two visitors to Applekirk: Jankin the scholar and Hanethe, Ferrand’s great grandmother and the former lord of the manor, who has been living for many generations in the East, a place where the gods walk and yeya (magic) is so powerful that those who wield it are not quite human.

Fire Watch

Fire Watch PDF Author: Connie Willis
Publisher: Spectra
ISBN: 0307573427
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
Winner of six Nebula and five Hugo awards, Connie Willis is one of the most acclaimed and imaginative authors of our time. Her startling and powerful works have redefined the boundaries of contemporary science fiction. Here in one volume are twelve of her greatest stories, including double award-winner "Fire Watch," set in the universe of Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog, in which a time-traveling student learns one of history's hardest lessons. In "A Letter from the Clearys," a routine message from distant friends shatters the fragile world of a beleaguered family. In "The Sidon in the Mirror," a mutant with the unconscious urge to become other people finds himself becoming both killer and victim. Disturbing, revealing, and provocative, this remarkable collection of short fiction brings together some of the best work of an incomparable writer whose ability to amaze, confound, and enlighten never fails.