The Star Diaries

The Star Diaries PDF Author: Stanisław Lem
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 9780749304720
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 275

Get Book Here

Book Description
@Ijon Tichy, Lem's Candide of the Cosmos, encounters bizarre civilizations and creatures in space that serve to satirize science, the rational mind, theology, and other icons of human pride. Line drawings by the Author. Translated by Michael Kandel. A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book@@

The Star Diaries

The Star Diaries PDF Author: Stanisław Lem
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 9780749304720
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 275

Get Book Here

Book Description
@Ijon Tichy, Lem's Candide of the Cosmos, encounters bizarre civilizations and creatures in space that serve to satirize science, the rational mind, theology, and other icons of human pride. Line drawings by the Author. Translated by Michael Kandel. A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book@@

Stanislaw Lem's The Seventh Voyage

Stanislaw Lem's The Seventh Voyage PDF Author: Stanislaw Lem
Publisher: Graphix
ISBN: 9780545004626
Category : JUVENILE FICTION
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
World renowned sci-fi writer and Caldecott Honor artist team up for a zany sci-fi tall tale about an astronaut caught in a time loop in space who must confront past and future versions of himself!

Curse of the Arctic Star

Curse of the Arctic Star PDF Author: Carolyn Keene
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1416990720
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 208

Get Book Here

Book Description
Nancy and her friends Bess and George tour the dangerous waters off the coast of Alaska on a posh new ship's maiden voyage, a journey that is overshadowed by a series of deaths and near-misses that reveal the work of a saboteur.

The Truth and Other Stories

The Truth and Other Stories PDF Author: Stanislaw Lem
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262366657
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 341

Get Book Here

Book Description
Twelve stories by science fiction master Stanisław Lem, nine of them never before published in English. Of these twelve short stories by science fiction master Stanisław Lem, only three have previously appeared in English, making this the first "new" book of fiction by Lem since the late 1980s. The stories display the full range of Lem's intense curiosity about scientific ideas as well as his sardonic approach to human nature, presenting as multifarious a collection of mad scientists as any reader could wish for. Many of these stories feature artificial intelligences or artificial life forms, long a Lem preoccupation; some feature quite insane theories of cosmology or evolution. All are thought provoking and scathingly funny. Written from 1956 to 1993, the stories are arranged in chronological order. In the title story, "The Truth," a scientist in an insane asylum theorizes that the sun is alive; "The Journal" appears to be an account by an omnipotent being describing the creation of infinite universes--until, in a classic Lem twist, it turns out to be no such thing; in "An Enigma," beings debate whether offspring can be created without advanced degrees and design templates. Other stories feature a computer that can predict the future by 137 seconds, matter-destroying spores, a hunt in which the prey is a robot, and an electronic brain eager to go on the lam. These stories are peak Lem, exploring ideas and themes that resonate throughout his writing.

Peace on Earth

Peace on Earth PDF Author: Stanislaw Lem
Publisher: HMH
ISBN: 0547995121
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 243

Get Book Here

Book Description
Robot armies, an arms race in space, and a brain at war with itself add up to “a futuristic version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” (The Boston Phoenix). Anxious to avoid a war that would destroy the entire planet, the major powers of Earth have come to an ingenious compromise. Each country sends a force of adaptable, self-programming robots to the surface of the moon to play out the conflict there and, hopefully, reach a mutually agreeable stalemate. But when the robots stop responding, it is up to Ijon Tichy to travel to the lunar war zone and discover what went wrong. Tichy finds what he needs to know, but falls victim to an attack that severs the left and right sides of his brain: one of which knows nothing about the status of the moon, the other of which isn’t telling. Now Tichy finds himself at the center of a new sort of war of attrition, with each world power clamoring for his knowledge and each half of his stubborn brain clamoring for control. Wry and action-packed in equal measure, Stanislaw Lem’s absurd, insightful sendup of the Cold War is required reading for any fan of science fiction. Here, “humor and a breathless pace create a delightful and thought-provoking read” (Publishers Weekly).

Mortal Engines

Mortal Engines PDF Author: Stanisław Lem
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 9780156621618
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 256

Get Book Here

Book Description
Publisher description: Translated from the original Polish text, and with an introduction by Michael Kandel. These fourteen science fiction stories reveal Stainslaw Lem's fascination with artificial intelligence and demonstrate just how surprisingly human sentient machines can be. The first eleven stories, a cycle called "Fables for Robots," are set in a cosmos inhabited exclusively by machines. Revolving around an assortment of electroknights and cyberkings, the stories combine the timeless quality of fairy tales and parables with a twist that is unmistakably Lem.

The Richard Burton Diaries

The Richard Burton Diaries PDF Author: Richard Burton
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300192312
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 626

Get Book Here

Book Description
The irresistible, candid diaries of Richard Burton, published in their entirety “Just great fun, and written out of an engaging, often comical bewilderment: How did a poor Welshman become not only a star, but a player on the world stage that was Elizabeth Taylor’s fame?”—Hilton Als, NewYorker.com “Of real interest is that Burton was almost as good a writer as an actor, read as many as three books a day, haunted bookstores in every city he set foot in, bought countless books on every conceivable subject and evaluated them rather shrewdly. . . . Apt writing abounds.”—John Simon, New York Times Book Review Irresistibly magnetic on stage, mesmerizing in movies, seven times an Academy Award nominee, Richard Burton rose from humble beginnings in Wales to become Hollywood's most highly paid actor and one of England's most admired Shakespearean performers. His epic romance with Elizabeth Taylor, his legendary drinking and story-telling, his dazzling purchases (enormous diamonds, a jet, homes on several continents), and his enormous talent kept him constantly in the public eye. Yet the man behind the celebrity façade carried a surprising burden of insecurity and struggled with the peculiar challenges of a life lived largely in the spotlight. This volume publishes Burton's extensive personal diaries in their entirety for the first time. His writings encompass many years—from 1939, when he was still a teenager, to 1983, the year before his death—and they reveal him in his most private moments, pondering his triumphs and demons, his loves and his heartbreaks. The diary entries appear in their original sequence, with annotations to clarify people, places, books, and events Burton mentions. From these hand-written pages emerges a multi-dimensional man, no mere flashy celebrity. While Burton touched shoulders with shining lights—among them Olivia de Havilland, John Gielgud, Claire Bloom, Laurence Olivier, John Huston, Dylan Thomas, and Edward Albee—he also played the real-life roles of supportive family man, father, husband, and highly intelligent observer. His diaries offer a rare and fresh perspective on his own life and career, and on the glamorous decades of the mid-twentieth century.

The Los Angeles Diaries

The Los Angeles Diaries PDF Author: James Brown
Publisher: Catapult
ISBN: 1582438730
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 224

Get Book Here

Book Description
Plagued by the suicides of both his siblings, and heir to alcohol and drug abuse, divorce, and economic ruin, James Brown lived a life clouded by addiction, broken promises, and despair. In The Los Angeles Diaries, he reveals his struggle for survival, mining his past to present the inspiring story of his redemption. Beautifully written and limned with dark humor, these twelve deeply confessional, interconnected chapters address personal failure, heartbreak, the trials of writing for Hollywood, and the life–shattering events that finally convinced Brown that he must "change or die." In "Snapshot," Brown is five years old and recalls the night his mother "sets fire to an apartment building down the street." In "Daisy," Brown purchases a Vietnamese potbellied pig for his wife to atone for his sins, only to find the pig's bulk growing in direct proportion to the tensions in his marriage. Harrowing and brutally honest, The Los Angeles Diaries is the chronicle of a man on a collision course with life, who ultimately finds the strength and courage to conquer his demons and believe once more.

The Star Creek Papers

The Star Creek Papers PDF Author: Horace Mann Bond
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820340235
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 203

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Star Creek Papers is the never-before-published account of the complex realities of race relations in the rural South in the 1930s. When Horace and Julia Bond moved to Louisiana in 1934, they entered a world where the legacy of slavery was miscegenation, lingering paternalism, and deadly racism. The Bonds were a young, well-educated and idealistic African American couple working for the Rosenwald Fund, a trust established by a northern philanthropist to build schools in rural areas. They were part of the "Explorer Project" sent to investigate the progress of the school in the Star Creek district of Washington Parish. Their report, which decried the teachers' lack of experience, the poor quality of the coursework, and the students' chronic absenteeism, was based on their private journal, "The Star Creek Diary," a shrewdly observed, sharply etched, and affectionate portrait of a rural black community. Horace Bond was moved to write a second document, "Forty Acres and a Mule," a history of a black farming family, after Jerome Wilson was lynched in 1935. The Wilsons were thrifty landowners whom Bond knew and respected; he intended to turn their story into a book, but the chronicle remained unfinished at his death. These important primary documents were rediscovered by civil rights scholar Adam Fairclough, who edited them with Julia Bond's support.

The Maddie Diaries

The Maddie Diaries PDF Author: Maddie Ziegler
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1501150669
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 240

Get Book Here

Book Description
THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Teen dance prodigy, breakout Dance Moms star, and judge on So You Think You Can Dance: The Next Generation presents her uplifting coming-of-age memoir about following her dreams and working hard to achieve success in both the dance world and in life. Maddie Ziegler had hoped to become a star—she just didn’t know how soon that day would come. At just eight years old, she was cast on Lifetime’s hit reality show Dance Moms and quickly won the hearts of fans everywhere with her natural talent and determination. Soon, she was catching eyes all over—including those of pop superstar Sia, who handpicked her to star in the incredibly popular music video “Chandelier.” The rest, as they say, was history. In this inspirational memoir, Maddie explains the hard work she put into her rise to stardom and how she keeps her balance along the way—starring in music videos, going on tour, and becoming an actress in The Book of Henry with Naomi Watts and Jacob Tremblay. She also answers her fans’ burning questions with wise advice she’s learned on her journey. With honesty, charm, and humor, Maddie offers her unique perspective on making her way in the world as a young teenager, reflecting on the lessons she’s learned—and preparing for the exciting road ahead.