The Rapture of the Nerds

The Rapture of the Nerds PDF Author: Cory Doctorow
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0765329107
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
From the two defining personalities of post-cyberpunk SF, a brilliant collaboration to rival 1987's The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling

The Rapture of the Nerds

The Rapture of the Nerds PDF Author: Cory Doctorow
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0765329107
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
From the two defining personalities of post-cyberpunk SF, a brilliant collaboration to rival 1987's The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling

The Rapture of the Nerds

The Rapture of the Nerds PDF Author: Cory Doctorow
Publisher: Tor Books
ISBN: 9781250196446
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
A brilliant collaboartion from Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross, two defining personalities of post-cyberpunk SF—now repackaged with a new cover! Welcome to the fractured future, at the dusk of the twenty-first century. Earth has a population of roughly a billion hominids. For the most part, they are happy with their lot, living in a preserve at the bottom of a gravity well. Those who are unhappy have emigrated, joining one or another of the swarming densethinker clades that fog the inner solar system with a dust of molecular machinery so thick that it obscures the sun. The splintery metaconsciousness of the solar-system has largely sworn off its pre-post-human cousins dirtside, but its minds sometimes wander...and when that happens, it casually spams Earth's networks with plans for cataclysmically disruptive technologies that emulsify whole industries, cultures, and spiritual systems. A sane species would ignore these get-evolved-quick schemes, but there's always someone who'll take a bite from the forbidden apple. So until the overminds bore of stirring Earth's anthill, there's Tech Jury Service: random humans, selected arbitrarily, charged with assessing dozens of new inventions and ruling on whether to let them loose. Young Huw, a technophobic, misanthropic Welshman, has been selected for the latest jury, a task he does his best to perform despite an itchy technovirus, the apathy of the proletariat, and a couple of truly awful moments on bathroom floors.

Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town

Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town PDF Author: Cory Doctorow
Publisher: Tor Books
ISBN: 1250196469
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
The repackaged trade paperback of Cory Doctorow's miraculous novel of family history, Internet connectivity, and magical secrets—now with a new cover! Alan is a middle-aged entrepeneur who moves to a bohemian neighborhood of Toronto. Living next door is a young woman who reveals to him that she has wings—which grow back after each attempt to cut them off. Alan understands. He himself has a secret or two. His father is a mountain, his mother is a washing machine, and among his brothers are sets of Russian nesting dolls. Now two of the three dolls are on his doorstep, starving, because their innermost member has vanished. It appears that Davey, another brother who Alan and his siblings killed years ago, may have returned, bent on revenge. Under the circumstances it seems only reasonable for Alan to join a scheme to blanket Toronto with free wireless Internet, spearheaded by a brilliant technopunk who builds miracles from scavenged parts. But Alan's past won't leave him alone—and Davey isn't the only one gunning for him and his friends. Whipsawing between the preposterous, the amazing, and the deeply felt, Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town is unlike any novel you have ever read.

Pirate Cinema

Pirate Cinema PDF Author: Cory Doctorow
Publisher: Tor Teen
ISBN: 1429943181
Category : Young Adult Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
From the New York Times bestselling author of Little Brother, Cory Doctorow, comes Pirate Cinema, a new tale of a brilliant hacker runaway who finds himself standing up to tyranny. Trent McCauley is sixteen, brilliant, and obsessed with one thing: making movies on his computer by reassembling footage from popular films he downloads from the net. In the dystopian near-future Britain where Trent is growing up, this is more illegal than ever; the punishment for being caught three times is that your entire household's access to the internet is cut off for a year, with no appeal. Trent's too clever for that too happen. Except it does, and it nearly destroys his family. Shamed and shattered, Trent runs away to London, where he slowly learns the ways of staying alive on the streets. This brings him in touch with a demimonde of artists and activists who are trying to fight a new bill that will criminalize even more harmless internet creativity, making felons of millions of British citizens at a stroke. Things look bad. Parliament is in power of a few wealthy media conglomerates. But the powers-that-be haven't entirely reckoned with the power of a gripping movie to change people's minds.... At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Homeland

Homeland PDF Author: Cory Doctorow
Publisher: Tor Teen
ISBN: 1466805870
Category : Young Adult Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 398

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Book Description
In Cory Doctorow's wildly successful Little Brother, young Marcus Yallow was arbitrarily detained and brutalized by the government in the wake of a terrorist attack on San Francisco—an experience that led him to become a leader of the whole movement of technologically clued-in teenagers, fighting back against the tyrannical security state. A few years later, California's economy collapses, but Marcus's hacktivist past lands him a job as webmaster for a crusading politician who promises reform. Soon his former nemesis Masha emerges from the political underground to gift him with a thumbdrive containing a Wikileaks-style cable-dump of hard evidence of corporate and governmental perfidy. It's incendiary stuff—and if Masha goes missing, Marcus is supposed to release it to the world. Then Marcus sees Masha being kidnapped by the same government agents who detained and tortured Marcus years earlier. Marcus can leak the archive Masha gave him—but he can't admit to being the leaker, because that will cost his employer the election. He's surrounded by friends who remember what he did a few years ago and regard him as a hacker hero. He can't even attend a demonstration without being dragged onstage and handed a mike. He's not at all sure that just dumping the archive onto the Internet, before he's gone through its millions of words, is the right thing to do. Meanwhile, people are beginning to shadow him, people who look like they're used to inflicting pain until they get the answers they want. Fast-moving, passionate, and as current as next week, Homeland is every bit the equal of Little Brother—a paean to activism, to courage, to the drive to make the world a better place. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

The Singularity Is Near

The Singularity Is Near PDF Author: Ray Kurzweil
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101218886
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 672

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Book Description
“Startling in scope and bravado.” —Janet Maslin, The New York Times “Artfully envisions a breathtakingly better world.” —Los Angeles Times “Elaborate, smart and persuasive.” —The Boston Globe “A pleasure to read.” —The Wall Street Journal One of CBS News’s Best Fall Books of 2005 • Among St Louis Post-Dispatch’s Best Nonfiction Books of 2005 • One of Amazon.com’s Best Science Books of 2005 A radical and optimistic view of the future course of human development from the bestselling author of How to Create a Mind and The Singularity is Nearer who Bill Gates calls “the best person I know at predicting the future of artificial intelligence” For over three decades, Ray Kurzweil has been one of the most respected and provocative advocates of the role of technology in our future. In his classic The Age of Spiritual Machines, he argued that computers would soon rival the full range of human intelligence at its best. Now he examines the next step in this inexorable evolutionary process: the union of human and machine, in which the knowledge and skills embedded in our brains will be combined with the vastly greater capacity, speed, and knowledge-sharing ability of our creations.

Rapture

Rapture PDF Author: Nick Nurse
Publisher: Little, Brown
ISBN: 0316540161
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 207

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Book Description
Nick Nurse distills the wisdom, insight, and experiences that helped him lead the Toronto Raptors to the NBA championship in his first year as head coach. Foreword by Phil Jackson. NBA fans had modest expectations for rookie coach Nick Nurse and his Toronto Raptors. But what those naysayers didn't realize was that Nurse had spent the past thirty years proving himself at every level of the game, from youth programs and college ball to the NBA D League and Britain's struggling pro circuit. While few coaches have taken such a circuitous path to pro basketball's promised land, the journey-which began at Kuemper Catholic high school in Carroll, Iowa-forged a coach who proved to be as unshakable as he is personable. On the road, he is known to bring his guitar and keyboard for late-night jazz and blues sessions. In the locker room, he's steadfast and even-keeled regardless of the score. On the court, he pulls out old-school tactics with astounding success. A rookie in name but a veteran in attitude, Nurse is seemingly above the chaos of the game and, with only two seasons on his résumé, has already established himself as one of the NBA's most admired head coaches. Now, in this revealing new book-equal parts personal memoir, leadership mani­festo, and philosophical meditation-Nurse tells his own story. Given unprecedented access inside the Raptors' locker room, readers get an intimate study of not only the team culture he has built, but also of a rookie coach's unique dynamic with the star players-such as Kawhi Leonard, Kyle Low­ry, and Pascal Siakam-who helped trail­blaze the 2019 championship run. As much for readers of Ray Dalio as for fans of John Wooden and Pat Summitt, Rapture promis­es to be a necessary read for anyone looking to forge their own path to success.

Fall; or, Dodge in Hell

Fall; or, Dodge in Hell PDF Author: Neal Stephenson
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062458736
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 896

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Book Description
New York Times Bestseller A New York Times Notable Book The #1 New York Times bestselling author of Seveneves, Anathem, Reamde, and Cryptonomicon returns with a wildly inventive and entertaining science fiction thriller—Paradise Lost by way of Philip K. Dick—that unfolds in the near future, in parallel worlds. In his youth, Richard “Dodge” Forthrast founded Corporation 9592, a gaming company that made him a multibillionaire. Now in his middle years, Dodge appreciates his comfortable, unencumbered life, managing his myriad business interests, and spending time with his beloved niece Zula and her young daughter, Sophia. One beautiful autumn day, while he undergoes a routine medical procedure, something goes irrevocably wrong. Dodge is pronounced brain dead and put on life support, leaving his stunned family and close friends with difficult decisions. Long ago, when a much younger Dodge drew up his will, he directed that his body be given to a cryonics company now owned by enigmatic tech entrepreneur Elmo Shepherd. Legally bound to follow the directive despite their misgivings, Dodge’s family has his brain scanned and its data structures uploaded and stored in the cloud, until it can eventually be revived. In the coming years, technology allows Dodge’s brain to be turned back on. It is an achievement that is nothing less than the disruption of death itself. An eternal afterlife—the Bitworld—is created, in which humans continue to exist as digital souls. But this brave new immortal world is not the Utopia it might first seem . . . Fall, or Dodge in Hell is pure, unadulterated fun: a grand drama of analog and digital, man and machine, angels and demons, gods and followers, the finite and the eternal. In this exhilarating epic, Neal Stephenson raises profound existential questions and touches on the revolutionary breakthroughs that are transforming our future. Combining the technological, philosophical, and spiritual in one grand myth, he delivers a mind-blowing speculative literary saga for the modern age.

Eastern Standard Tribe

Eastern Standard Tribe PDF Author: Cory Doctorow
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 9780765310453
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
Now in softcover, the second novel from one of the hottest writers in modern SF

Digital Rapture

Digital Rapture PDF Author: James Patrick Kelly
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781616960704
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 431

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Book Description
A selection of fiction and nonfiction traces the path of the Singularity, an era when advances in technology will totally transform human reality, and features stories and essays by H. G. Wells, Elizabeth Bear, Ray Kurzweil, Justina Robson, Cory Doctorow and many more. Original.