# books

timestamp: 2022-06-23 13:36:45.762634+00:00
pubdate: 2006-06-15 05:00:00+00:00
author_sort: Patmore, Chris
uuid: 10e24062-a507-483b-bb28-a814194c4aff
last_modified: 2022-10-15 15:39:34.923053+00:00
title:
How to Draw Fantasy Females: Create Sexy Cyberpunks, Seductive Supergirls, and Raunchy Action Heroines

sort:
How to Draw Fantasy Females: Create Sexy Cyberpunks, Seductive Supergirls, and Raunchy Action Heroines

path:
Chris Patmore/How to Draw Fantasy Females_ Create Sexy Cyberpunks, Seductive Supergirls, and Raunchy Action He (42)


# comments

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<div><p>Nicola Griffith, winner of the Tiptree Award and the Lambda Award for her widely acclaimed first novel Ammonite, now turns her attention closer to the present in Slow River, the dark and intensely involving story of a young woman's struggle for survival and independence on the gritty underside of a near-future Europe.<br>She awoke in an alley to the splash of rain. She was naked, a foot-long gash in her back was still bleeding, and her identity implant was gone. Lore Van de Oest was the daughter of one of the world's most powerful families...and now she was nobody. <br>Then out of the rain walked Spanner, an expert data pirate who took her in, cared for her wounds, and gave her the freedom to reinvent herself again and again. No one could find Lore if she didn't want to be found: not the police, not her family, and not the kidnappers who had left her in that alley to die. She had escaped...but she paid for her newfound freedom in crime, deception, and degradation--over and over again. <br>Lore had a choice: She could stay in the shadows, stay with Spanner...and risk losing herself forever. Or she could leave Spanner and find herself again by becoming someone else: stealing the identity implant of a dead woman, taking over her life, and inventing her future.<br>But to start again, Lore required Spanner's talents--Spanner, who needed her and hated her, and who always had a price. And even as Lore agreed to play Spanner's games one final time, she found that there was still the price of being a Van de Oest to be paid. Only by confronting her past, her family, and her own demons could Lore meld together who she had once been, who she had become, and the person she intended to be....<br>In Slow River, Nicola Griffith skillfully takes us deep into the mind and heart of her complex protagonist, where the past must be reconciled with the present if the future is ever to offer solid ground. Slow River poses a question we all hope never to need to answer: Who are you when you have nothing left? <br></p><p><em>From the Hardcover edition.</em></p><h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p><em>Slow River</em> won both the Nebula Award and the Lambda Literary Award for author Nicola Griffith. The book's near-future setting and devices place it firmly on the science fiction shelves, and the characters' matter-of-fact sexuality further label it as lesbian SF. But make no mistake, <em>Slow River</em> is no subgenre throwaway. Griffith's skill at weaving temporal threads through the plot bring protagonist Lore van de Oest to tragic life, and you will genuinely care about her in the end. </p><p>Born into a bioengineering family made wealthy by cleaning up after humanity, Lore leads a life of privilege and power. Riches don't bring happiness, though, and the van de Oest family hides its share of dark secrets. Lore is kidnapped, but escapes from her captors when she realizes her family isn't going to pay the ransom. Naked, alone, and wounded, she is saved by the brutally street-smart Spanner, who teaches Lore to survive by exploiting the Net (and human) weaknesses. To learn to trust, though, Lore must face her demons, one by one, until she can begin again.</p><p>Griffith's biotech-science details are accurate, and she fits them smoothly into the story in the manner of a cyberpunk master. This novel's real strength is its characters, though. The van de Oest family, Spanner, even characters who appear only briefly, are all distinct and consistent--not to mention very human. Lore herself seems so personal that Griffith's note about the story's disturbing aspects not being autobiographical was probably wise. <em>Slow River</em> is more than good enough to transcend genre and appeal to both queer SF readers and a more broad audience looking for an excellent character-driven SF story. <em>--Therese Littleton</em></p><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Set in a dystopian future, Griffith's second novel involves a woman's search for identity. <br>Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p></div>


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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Arranged loosely in order of publication, the 16 diverse selections in this decade-spanning anthology add up to a plausible snapshot of cyberpunk's short-form evolution. Kelly and Kessel (_Feeling Very Strange_) clearly describe cyberpunk counterculture in a cogent introduction, yet draw only one story from a nongenre source (Greg Egan's Yeyuka) and greatly undervalue the subgenre's ability, at its most popular, to reach beyond SF's core audience. While some entries (Charles Stross's Lobsters; Cory Doctorow's When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth) focus strongly on techno-geek culture, others apply high-tech ideas in more down-to-earth contexts (Mary Rosenblum's Search Engine; Paolo Bacigalupi's The Calorie Man). The critical matter is too scant for academic readers and too intrusive for genre fans; discussion of specific stories is extremely sparse, and excerpts from correspondence between Kessel and Bruce Sterling distract rather than enlighten. Readers seeking a thorough critical study should look elsewhere, but those looking for well-told stories will be satisfied. <em>(Nov.)</em> <br />Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>Review</h3><p>"Cyberpunk is dead. Long live post-cyberpunk!" —_Kirkus Reviews_</p><p>"[The] strange, cinematically atmospheric story, 'Thirteen Views of a Cardboard City,' fits perfectly in <em>Rewired</em>." —William Gibson, author, <em>Spook Country</em></p><p>"A short story collection filled with very good stories by very good science fiction writers offering very engaging ideas." —PopMatters</p><p>"Sixteen inspiring, mind-altering stories . . . and every story in the bunch is a knockout." —BoingBoing.net</p><p>"An excellent collection and a reminder that the short story is often the best venue for new ideas in the field." —SF Crowsnest.com</p><p>"Cyberpunk has grown past its rebel stage and is now not only capable of dazzling us with surfaces but also of speaking of the human condition." —_Tangent_</p><p>"Mind-altering . . . every story in the bunch is a knockout." —Monstrous.com</p>


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<h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p>Here is the novel that started it all, launching the <strong>cyberpunk</strong> generation, and the first novel to win the holy trinity of science fiction: <em>Neuromancer</em>, William Gibson introduced the world to cyberspace--and science fiction has never been the same. </p><p>Case was the hottest computer cowboy cruising the information superhighway--jacking his consciousness into cyberspace, soaring through tactile lattices of data and logic, rustling encoded secrets for anyone with the money to buy his skills. Then he double-crossed the wrong people, who caught up with him in a big way--and burned the talent out of his brain, micron by micron. Banished from cyberspace, trapped in the meat of his physical body, Case courted death in the high-tech underworld. Until a shadowy conspiracy offered him a second chance--and a cure--for a price.... </p><h3>From Library Journal</h3><p>Neuromancer is a fitting commemoration of the tenth anniversary of publication of Gibson's Nebula, Hugo, and Philip K. Dick Award-winning novel. The text is abridged, read by the author, and enhanced with music, sound effects, and other audio engineering. The plot contains sex, drugs, black market body parts, virtual reality, electronic relationships, pleasure palaces, murder, mayhem, cloned assassins, and intrigue in cyberspace, with nary a virtual nice guy in the mix. Wow! There's just enough time to take a deep breath between cassettes, as the listener is bombarded with strong language, tumultuous violence, and compelling imagery. Terrific stuff. Gibson's horrifying vision of our terrible headlong rush to nowhere is a must for science fiction and adult fiction collections.<br /><em>Cliff Glaviano, Bowling Green State Univ. Libs., Ohio</em><br />Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p>


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<div><h3>Review</h3><p>"<em>Moxyland</em> does lots of things, masterfully, that lots of sf never even guesses that it <em>could</em> be doing." - William Gibson, author of <em>Neuromancer</em><br></p><p>"The world Beukes has invented is both eerily familiar and creepily different." - <em>Cosmopolitan</em><br></p><p>"This fast-paced sci-fi trip has intriguing characters, big ideas, a new lexicon and... serves as a global warning." - <em>GQ</em><br></p><p>"You don't have to be an SF aficionado to love this novel that is fast, brimming with original ideas and deadly serious." - <em>Mail &amp; Guardian</em><br></p><p>"George Orwell's 1984 meets Bladerunner. Lauren Beukes breaks new literary ground with effortless hipness." --Margie Orford, author of *Like Clockwork<br></p><p>*"...full of unselfconscious spiky originality, the larval form of a new kind of SF munching its way out of the intestines of the wasp-paralysed caterpillar of cyberpunk." - Charles Stross <br></p><p>"A technicolor jazzy rollercoaster ride into a dazzling hell." - Andre Brink<br></p><p>"Beukes's stunningly original sci-fi thriller chills and thrills to the last breath" - <em>Heat Magazine, </em>South Africa (July 2008)<br></p><p>"Lauren Beukes bleeds her characters of color as effectively as the smear masks they wear for anonymity, not for simple provocation, but to warn of the self-replicating nature of segregation." - Brendan Byrne, *The Brooklyn Rail<br></p><p>"<em>[</em>Moxyland*] is recommended for what might very well be the emergence of a major new science-fiction author. -Alan Cranis, www.bookgasm.com<br></p><p>"After the first hundred pages, I would have to say that reading <em>Moxyland</em> is like riding backward very fast in a convertible." - J. Robert King </p><h3>Product Description</h3><p><strong>What's really going on? Who's really in charge? You have NO. F</strong><em>KING. IDEA.</em>*<br></p><p>A frighteningly persuasive, high-tech fable, this novel follows the lives of four narrators living in an alternative futuristic Cape Town, South Africa.  An art-school dropout, and AIDS baby, a tech-activist and an RPG-obsessed blogger live in a world where your online identity is at least as important as your physical one. Getting disconnected is a punishment worse than imprisonment, but someone's got to stand up to Government Inc. - whatever the cost.  Taking hedonistic trends in society to their ultimate conclusions, this tale paints anything but a forecasted utopia, satirically undermining the reified idea of progress as society's white knight.<br></p><p><strong>File Under:</strong> Science Fiction [ Digital Natives | Corporate Wars | Future | Teenage Riot ]<br></p><p><strong>E-book ISBN:</strong> 978-0-85766-005-3 </p></div>


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<h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p><strong>Book Description:</strong> Speculative science fiction at its finest, <em>MetaGame</em> by Sam Landstrom is a ‘future gamers’ field guide and a philosophical cyberpunk adventure. In this original and disturbingly irreverent prospective world, gaming is more than a diversion—and gamers are, literally, in it for life. The OverSoul, an enigmatic, unifying force, offers winners points that add up to currency. Reigning champs are given the gift of immortality—while losers are condemned to aging and death. D_Light is one of the best players in his Family and will do anything to win, even if it means committing murder. When he’s invited to a MetaGame—an exclusive, high-stakes competition—he jumps at the chance. But after the first quest, D_Light’s overly ambitious ways brand him a renegade. With a warped sense of freewill that is needed to prevail, D_Light must either kill someone he’s grown to love—or lose everything. </p><hr /><p><strong>Amazon Exclusive: A Q&amp;A with Sam Landstrom</strong> </p><p><strong>Question:</strong> <em>MetaGame</em> takes place in a futuristic world where biotech, nanotech, gaming, and "religion" merge to blur the lines between fantasy and reality. How did you dream up the story line? </p><p><strong>Sam Landstrom:</strong> Funny you should say "dream," because that’s literally how it started. One night I had a vivid dream in which I was a devil in a ghetto apartment complex and was being hunted by the police. The whole idea took off from there. Gradually, I built a world around that single scene. For months, I fleshed out the world in a private blog with over 60 posts with titles like "Fashion," "Economics," "Religion," "Lingo," "Work," etc. I continually worked to hook these together logically, keeping in mind that one aspect of this futuristic society would influence the others. Once I felt I had a reasonable world, I hung a plot outline on it (including my dream scene). As I wrote the book, the world continued to evolve; in fact, the present book has only a slight resemblance to those early blog posts I created two years ago.</p><p><strong>Question:</strong> You’ve previously worked in a lab programming robots to help sequence the human genome. Did this experience and background knowledge play a role in the story?</p><p><strong>Sam Landstrom:</strong> At a high level, yes. Back in the lab, before I got interested in software, I wanted to be a genetic engineer. I felt then, as I do now, that biotechnology will eventually become ubiquitous in our lives and so I wanted to help design that future. At the same time, I wondered what exactly that future would look like. To me, being able to engineer the living is an incredibly powerful technology that can do wonderful things for humanity, but, at the same time, elicits in me a primal dread... just the sort of stew I like for fiction! Obviously, I’m not the only one with such an outlook, since biotech is a sci-fi staple.</p><p>I don’t include lab techniques or techs from that job because they would be far obsolete in the future. Heck, they’re completely obsolete now, and it’s only been 10 years! Given this, the technology I wrote about is a wild extrapolation, an entertaining guess, really. About all I tried to convey in the book from my time at the lab, in a literal sense, was the genuine passion and intelligence I observed in those who work in this field.</p><p><strong>Question:</strong> What research did you do while writing <em>MetaGame</em>?</p><p><strong>Sam Landstrom:</strong> Most of the research I did was related to confirming that the future technologies presented in the book are even theoretically possible and how they might be implemented. For example, how can a machine read and write to a person’s mind? With difficulty, as it turns out! Luckily for my readers, I only used this research to color my descriptions and confine the scope of these future technologies, not to provide in-depth specifications. Thanks to this balance, I think <em>MetaGame</em> gets to stay in the hard sci-fi category while remaining, first and foremost, an entertaining book.</p><p><strong>Question:</strong> What authors or books have influenced your writing?</p><p><strong>Sam Landstrom:</strong> Lucky for me, the public school system forced me to read <em>1984</em>, <em>Brave New World</em>, and <em>Fahrenheit 451</em>. These books were more about sociology and philosophy than technology, and they taught me that sci-fi did not necessarily require aliens or spaceships.</p><p>In addition to these stand-alone books, I really enjoyed the Dune series by Frank Herbert because he built up a fully realized universe that included components of religion, politics, economics, and even ecology. Dune had a big influence on <em>MetaGame</em>.</p><p>I have heard from several readers that <em>MetaGame</em> shares elements with Neal Stephenson’s work. This might not be a coincidence since I read <em>The Diamond Age</em> and <em>Snow Crash</em> before writing <em>MetaGame</em>. Good stuff.</p><p><strong>Question:</strong> <em>MetaGame</em> fits solidly in the sci-fi/cyberpunk genre, but also weaves in philosophy and thriller writing. Have you considered trying your hand at other genres in the future?</p><p><strong>Sam Landstrom:</strong> Yes, in fact I’m writing a fantasy novel now. Magic, monsters, infinite dimensions, a high school kegger.. You get the idea--not hard sci-fi, but entertaining and, hopefully, a bit thought provoking.</p><p><strong>Question:</strong> Have you always wanted to write? What other careers have you pursued?</p><p><strong>Sam Landstrom:</strong> I’ve wanted to write off and on over the years. When I was really young (like 8-9 years old) I pumped out books; however, these quick reads emphasized pictures over writing. The art sported a lot of guns blazing, swords swinging, blood spraying, heads flying through the air, etc. I went to a hippie school that wasn’t big into formal education. I remember my older cousin reading one of my books, after which he told me, "You need to start a sentence with a capital letter and end with a period." First of all, I didn’t know what he was talking about and second, who cares? I didn’t understand why he wasn’t praising me for the awesome action scenes. I mean, you just didn’t see that kind of stuff in books I found in the library, much less at school! I like to think my writing has improved since those days, although my grammar could still use some work. Thank God for good editors.</p><p>As an adult, I’ve had many different career interests I considered pursuing, including underwater archaeology and neurology. When I started college, I actually went in with the intention of becoming a doctor, but quickly discovered I was more into the science of medicine than the actual application of it, hence the degree in molecular biology. Aside from working in software (my current career) and in biotech, I spent a lot of time on the water as a deck hand, first on a passenger ferry, and then on a small cruise ship in Alaska. I was really considering a life at sea. However, it turns out I was ill suited to the regimen of a sailor’s job. Captains were not impressed with what I thought were creative solutions to problems, nor with me setting my own priorities.</p><p><strong>Question:</strong> What's next for you?</p><p><strong>Sam Landstrom:</strong> I’m sort of writing three books at once--the fantasy novel I mentioned earlier, as well as a prequel and sequel to <em>MetaGame</em>. I’ve made the most progress on the fantasy, so that’s what I’ll likely finish first. On the side, I also started developing a smart-phone application that is a virtual boyfriend for young women. I hope to make him handsome and charming, even as he speaks in a computer-generated Stephen Hawking voice. I’ve heard you can get a long way with flattery, so I’m hoping a phone can successfully use the same strategy. I’m not sure when I’ll finish that, if ever. By the way, I’d make a virtual girlfriend too, but giving men what they want through a phone (or any media) is too easy.</p><hr /><h3>Product Description</h3><p>Life is a game, literally. Winners earn immortality, while losers are condemned to aging and death. D_Light, a gifted player, knows this all too well and he’s willing to do anything to win—even kill. It is no wonder then that when given the chance to enter a MetaGame—an exclusive, high-stakes, anything goes contest—he’s quick to jump at the opportunity. The MetaGame starts out well enough for D_Light, the first quest being to hunt down a dangerous fugitive, but through his own ambition, the tables turn and D_Light finds himself the renegade. Now, D_Light pits himself against his world to find the truth behind “The Game” and must decide between winning it and saving what’s left of his humanity. </p><p>This 122,000 word (~400 page) novel blends emerging political and cultural trends, such as gaming culture, globalization, and the ever-increasing hegemony of corporations, with technological trends, such as genetic engineering, artificial intelligence, and virtual reality. Emerging from this stew is an original world for you to explore through the point of view of its many "players". </p><p>Author's Note<br />I welcome any feedback you have! Here are a few options: <br />- Post a review<br />- Post a discussion thread on this page<br />- email me at snoutholder at yahoo.com </p>


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<h3>Review</h3><p>An unusual 'invasion' by intelligent smaller beings who are changing the structure and definition of 'humanity' are at the heart of Bear's classic story which has been newly reprinted in paper for new audiences. Blood Music is one of his finest works and its appearance in this new edition assures that new audiences will relish his talents. -- <em>Midwest Book Review</em></p><h3>Product Description</h3><p>In the tradition of the greatest cyberpunk novels, Blood Music explores the imminent destruction of mankind and the fear of mass destruction by technological advancements. Blood Music follows present-day events in which the fears concerning the nuclear annihilation of the world subsided after the Cold War and the fear of chemical warfare spilled over into the empty void of nuclear fear. An amazing breakthrough in genetic engineering made by Vergil Ulam is considered too dangerous for further research, but rather than destroy his work, he injects himself with his creation and walks out of his lab, unaware of just quite how his actions will change the world. Author Greg Bear's treatment of the traditional tale of scientific hubris is both suspenseful and a compelling portrait of a new intelligence emerging amongst us, irrevocably changing our world. </p>


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Now, with his most fascinating novel to date, Gibson looks into our very near future, bringing it into sharp and darkly comic focus. Welcome to NoCal and SoCal, 2005, the uneasy sister-states of Northern and Southern California, in a nation and society still divided along seismic fault lines of wealth and power...chasms seldom crossed except in fear, exploitation, or violence. The millennium has come and gone, leaving in its wake the ruins of our outworn modern era and the first chaotic suggestions of a new paradigm. In Tokyo a new city is growing from the rubble of Godzilla the Superquake. In San Francisco Mr. Yamazaki, a Japanese anthropology student, investigates the deeper meaning of an anarchic squatter community constructed around the disused Bay Bridge. Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, Berry Rydell just wants to make a living. Not the easiest thing for an ex-cop from Tennessee to do - now that the network has decided not to base that episode of Cops in Trouble on his brief but all too eventful career with the Knoxville P.D. Rydell signs on with IntenSecure Armed Response, driving a six-wheeled Hotspur Hussar... It's only a matter of time before he runs into Chevette Washington, a bicycle messenger who has just crashed the wrong party...and who is about to pick the pocket of another kind of courier - an employee of Costa Rica's Medellin-financed havens of illicit data. When IntenSecure sends Rydell to San Francisco to drive for Lucius Warbaby, a skip-tracer in the Virtual Reality maze of DatAmerica, Rydell and Chevette find themselves on a journey into the ecstasy and dread that mirror each other at the heart of the postmodern experience. A tour de force of relentless suspense, daringinsight, and graphic intensity Virtual Light is a provocative and unforgettable portrait of life on the edge of the twenty-first century.


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<h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p><em>The Zenith Angle</em>, futurist Bruce Sterling's first novel since <em>Zeitgeist</em> (2000), tells the story of Derek "Van" Vandeveer. As <em>The Zenith Angle</em> opens, Van sits peacefully at his breakfast table, enjoying life as a new homeowner and happily married man, with a new son and a fortune in stock options. Then the morning news reports a jetliner has crashed in nearby Manhattan--colliding with the World Trade Center. Like many other Americans' lives, Van's will never be the same. He leaves his corporate job to work fighting terrorism for the U.S. government. He soon finds himself sequestered at a top-secret undisclosed location while his fortune vanishes, his former company sinks into a morass of lawsuits and arrests, and his wife and son move to the far side of the country. And as Van is transformed from cyber-whiz to spook, he finds himself changing in ways he would never have imagined.</p><p>A novel from Bruce Sterling is always cause for celebration, and <em>The Zenith Angle</em> is one of the finest contemporary novels and finest techno-thrillers of 2004. Sterling operates at the cutting edge of both technology and pop culture, and he possesses innumerable literary strengths. However, his strengths don't usually include deeply-penetrating character development, and that injures the believability of <em>The Zenith Angle</em>, which is the portrait of a man undergoing an enormous and shocking transformation. <em>--Cynthia Ward</em></p><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>The godfather of cyberpunk abandons SF in this satiric look at the high-tech security industry after 9/11. Dr. Derek Vandeveer gives up his high-paying job in private industry in order to try to help the government plug the nation's most serious computer security leaks. Unfortunately, he soon discovers that many of the worst problems are either too expensive to fix or impossible to deal with for political reasons. Vandeveer finds himself living in a slum in Washington, D.C., up to his ears in red tape and surrounded by a cast of would-be cyber warriors and failed dot-com entrepreneurs. Even worse, he's paying for the equipment he needs out of his own pocket. Worst of all, Vandeveer's wife Dottie, a world-class astronomer, is off on a mountaintop in Colorado. Meanwhile, something or someone is playing games with America's most sophisticated spy satellite and Vandeveer stakes his reputation on solving the mystery. Sterling (_Zeitgeist_) knows the world of cyber-security inside out, and he does a fine job of talking the talk without losing his readers. The Vandeveers have a convincingly believable geek marriage and their scenes together are particularly well done. Sterling has always been more comfortable with satire than action, however, and the shift near the end to techno-thriller mode isn't entirely successful. Still, this novel should please the author's fans, many of whom will be interested in the latest innovations in computer security. <br />Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p>


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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Starred Review. The VanderMeers (_Best American Fantasy_) ably demonstrate the sheer breadth of the New Weird fantasy subgenre in this powerful anthology of short fiction and critical essays. Highlights include strong fiction by authors such as M. John Harrison, Clive Barker, Kathe Koja and Michael Moorcock whose work pointed the way to such definitive New Weird tales as Jeffrey Ford's At Reparata and K.J. Bishop's The Art of Dying. Lingering somewhere between dark fantasy and supernatural horror, New Weird authors often seek to create unease rather than full-fledged terror. The subgenre's roots in the British New Wave of the 1960s and the Victorian Decadents can lend a self-consciously literary and experimental aura, as illustrated by the laboratory, where more mainstream fantasy and horror authors, including Sarah Monette and Conrad Williams, try their hands at creating New Weird stories. This extremely ambitious anthology will define the New Weird much as Bruce Sterling's landmark <em>Mirrorshades</em> anthology defined cyberpunk. <em>(Mar.)</em> <br />Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>From</h3><p>The title of this collection of stories, essays, and online discussion threads refers to a subgenre of modern horror that has roots in New Wave literature and the off-kilter fantasy spawned by Weird Tales. In contrast to the eerie nostalgia of Bradbury or the haunting supernaturalism of Lovecraft, the New Weird more often leans toward grotesque urban noir and cross-genre experimentation. The contributors here constitute a multitalented lineup ranging from such veterans as Clive Barker and Michael Moorcock to rising stars, such as Jay Lake and Alistair Rennie. Kathe Koje’s “The Neglected Garden” follows the transformation of a spurned lover who takes revenge by crucifying herself on her ex’s wire fence. China Miévelle, whose celebrated Perdido Street Station (2000) epitomizes the subcategory’s visceral blend of fantasy and realism, contributes a gritty tale about the veneration and inevitable capture of an outlaw cyborg. In the anthology’s final section, an experimental collaboration between seven authors embellishing a plot hatched by Paul DiFillipo exemplifies the New Weird’s propensity for pushing the boundaries of literary invention. --Carl Hays </p>


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<div><p>A book with its own nervous system, Slaughtermatic follows Dante Cubit through the streets of Beerlight as he hunts for a crime mentor, tangling with Chief Henry Blince and the hitman Brute Parker on the way. Real satire amid the bomb zombies, scary clowns and needle bars of the city. Gun karma navigated. Hassle with the locals, breaking our man in half. No escape from a trap that expands with you.   </p><p>Steve Aylett has been described as “utterly original” (SFX), “an unstoppable master of space and time ” (Asimov ’s), “ the most original voice in the literary scene” (Michael Moorcock) and “ the coolest writer alive today ” (Starburst).  </p><p>'Wickedly funny futuristic pulp thriller. As far from Agatha Christie as you can get.'<br>Mike Ripley, The Telegraph  </p><p>'not only conceptually brilliant and satirically walloping, but stylistically innovative ... either a boffo prose poem or a transcendent obscene phone call. You decide.'<br>Paul DiFilippo, Asimov's Science Fiction   </p><p>'a dizzying cyber-coaster of a novel ... Is this the future of fiction?'<br>The Guardian  </p><p>"Steve Aylett has made a career out of redefining the boundaries of science fiction -- and sanity." <br>Barnes &amp; Noble Spotlight Feature  </p><p>“a phenomenal talent” – Trashotron  </p><p>“The most original and most consciousness-altering living writer in the English language, not to mention one of the funniest.”<br>Alan Moore  </p><p>'This is sci-fi for non-geeks.'<br>The Face   </p><p>**</p></div>


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<h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p>The first of William Gibson's usually futuristic novels to be set in the present, <em>Pattern Recognition</em> is a masterful snapshot of modern consumer culture and hipster esoterica. Set in London, Tokyo, and Moscow, <em>Pattern Recognition</em> takes the reader on a tour of a global village inhabited by power-hungry marketeers, industrial saboteurs, high-end hackers, Russian mob bosses, Internet fan-boys, techno archeologists, washed-out spies, cultural documentarians, and our heroine Cayce Pollard--a soothsaying "cool hunter" with an allergy to brand names.</p><p>Pollard is among a cult-like group of Internet obsessives that strives to find meaning and patterns within a mysterious collection of video moments, merely called "the footage," let loose onto the Internet by an unknown source. Her hobby and work collide when a megalomaniac client hires her to track down whoever is behind the footage. Cayce's quest will take her in and out of harm's way in a high-stakes game that ultimately coincides with her desire to reconcile her father’s disappearance during the September 11 attacks in New York.</p><p>Although he forgoes his usual future-think tactics, this is very much a William Gibson novel, more so for fans who realize that Gibson's brilliance lies not in constructing new futures but in using astute observations of present-day cultural flotsam to create those futures. With <em>Pattern Recognition</em>, Gibson skips the extrapolation and focuses his acumen on our confusing contemporary world, using the precocious Pollard to personify and humanize the uncertain anxiety, optimistic hope, and downright fear many feel when looking to the future. The novel is filled with Gibson's lyric descriptions and astute observations of modern life, making it worth the read for both cool hunters and their prey. <em>--Jeremy Pugh</em></p><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Gibson, known as the "patron saint of cyberpunk lit," has made his reputation with futuristic tales. Though his new novel is set in the present, baroque descriptions of everyday articles and menacing anthropomorphic treatment of the Internet and sister technology give it a sci-fi feel. Cayce Pollard, a market researcher with razor-sharp intuition, makes big bucks by evaluating potential products and advertising campaigns. In London, she stays in the trendy digs of documentary filmmaker friend Damien (away on assignment), whom she e-mails frequently. When Cayce brusquely rejects the new logo of advertising mogul Hubertus Bigend, she earns his respect and a big check but makes an enemy of his graphic designer, vindictive Dorotea Benedetti. Hubertus later hires Cayce to ferret out the origin of a series of sensual film clips appearing guerrilla style on computers all over the world and attracting a growing cult following. Cayce treats this as a standard job until somebody breaks into Damien's flat and hacks into her computer. Suddenly every casual encounter carries undertones of danger. Her investigative trail takes her to Tokyo and Russia and through a rogue's gallery of iconoclastic Web-heads. Casting a further shadow is the memory of her father, Win, a security expert (probably CIA) missing and presumed dead in the World Trade Center disaster of exactly a year earlier. For complicated reasons even she doesn't understand, she connects her current dilemma with her father's tragedy and follows the trail with the fervor of a personal vendetta. Gibson's brisk, kinetic style and incisive observations should keep the reader entertained even when Cayce's quest begins to lose urgency. Gibson's best book since Mona Lisa Overdrive should satisfy his hardcore fans while winning plenty of new ones.<br />Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p>


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<span id="freeText18202553070253631011">In his acclaimed novels <em>Dr. Adder, The Glass Hammer,</em> and the <em>Blade Runner</em>
 books, K.W. Jeter masterfully re-created the grim and gritty world of 
Ridley Scott's classic science fiction film masterpiece.  Now Jeter 
returns with a startling and stylish new vision of the future as only he
 could imagine it, a dark and disturbing universe that can be described 
with one word...  <br><br>Welcome to the Pacific Rim, the new center of 
the civilized world.  As the rest of the planet sinks toward economic 
and social disaster, the cities on the coast have become a neon-lit, 
high-tech paradise.  Chief among them is Los Angeles, a sparkling 
metropolis attracting lost souls from across a shattered continent.  <br><br>But
 beneath the sleek surface lies a labyrinthine underground feeding on 
the darkest human desires.  Here the wealthy seek forbidden thrills 
through an anonymous on-line computer system that makes use of 
prowlers--masked simulations of human users programmed to delve into the
 most taboo of the hard-core sexual underworld and bring back exotic and
 erotic experiences to their safeguarded users.  For most people, the 
prowlers are a way to indulge in their wildest sexual fantasies.  But 
for others, they are something far more dangerous.<br><br>When a young 
executive of one of the world's most powerful corporations is found 
brutally slain, a retired ex-cop is called in to find his missing 
prowler.  The corporation believes the young man's prowler is still 
"alive" and they want it found, but they don't care to reveal why.<br><br>McNihil
 was an information cop forced into early retirement.  He knows he is 
walking straight into a trap, but he has no choice.  He must descend 
into the noir underground, his only companion a ruthless female 
operative named November who has a desperate agenda of her 
own.  Together they will uncover a web of evil far more extensive than 
McNihil ever imagined...a vast conspiracy that threatens to blur forever
 the line between the sane safety of the daylight world and the dark, 
dangerous world of noir.<br><br><em>Noir</em> is K.W. Jeter at his very 
best, a dazzling and inventive futuristic drama of mystery, menace, and 
sexual terror set in a society of glitter and sinister darkness in which
 no one can be trusted and everything is far worse than it seems.  <br></span>


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<p>“The ferociously talented Gibson delivers his signature mélange of technopop splendor and post-industrial squalor” (Time) in this New York Times bestseller that features his hero from Idoru... </p>
<p>Colin Laney, sensitive to patterns of information like no one else on earth, currently resides in a cardboard box in Tokyo. His body shakes with fever dreams, but his mind roams free as always, and he knows something is about to happen. Not in Tokyo; he will not see this thing himself. Something is about to happen in San Francisco. </p>
<p>The mists make it easy to hide, if hiding is what you want, and even at the best of times reality there seems to shift. A gray man moves elegantly through the mists, leaving bodies in his wake, so that a tide of absences alerts Laney to his presence. A boy named Silencio does not speak, but flies through webs of cyber-information in search of the one object that has seized his imagination. And Rei Toi, the Japanese Idoru, continues her study of all things human. She herself is not human, not quite, but she’s working on it. And in the mists of San Francisco, at this rare moment in history, who is to say what is or is not impossible...</p></div>


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<p>Take a flight of the imagination to near-future cyberpunk worlds, travel beyond the stars, and to divergent universes like and unlike our own. Travel to the enigmas of science and time…travel to the altered states of the mind.<br>Stories by upcoming and established cyberpunk/sci- fi authors, curated by Roy C Booth and Jorge Salgado-Reyes. </p>
<p>This anthology represents the very first publication of science fiction by Indie Authors Press.</p></div>


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<p>In this collection of essays, contributors consider the continuing cultural relevance of the cyberpunk genre into the new millennium. Cyberpunk is no longer an emergent phenomenon, but in our digital age of CGI-driven entertainment, the information economy, and globalized capital, we have never more been in need of a fiction capable of engaging with a world shaped by information technology. Contributors seek to move beyond the narrow strictures of cyberpunk as defined in the Eighties and contribute to an ongoing discussion of how to negotiate exchanges among information technologies, global capitalism, and human social existence. Essays offer a variety of perspectives on cyberpunk’s diversity and how this sub-genre remains relevant amidst its transformation from a print fiction genre into a more generalized set of cultural practices, tackling the question of what it is that cyberpunk narratives continue to offer us in those intersections of literary, cultural, theoretical, academic, and technocultural environments.</p></div>


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<p>Taking the fall for his younger brother, Richard Candle went from being a cyber cop to a condemned criminal. After four years of "UnMinding"—with his mind suppressed and his body enslaved—he's released to discover his brother has slipped back into the underworld of the V-Rat: the virtual reality addict. Meanwhile, Candle's harried by the murderous Grist, the head of the world's biggest multinational. But his real enemy is something else: a conscious program, the Multisemblant, a meld of copied personalities, the dark side of five powerful people, with its own brutal agenda. Human society is sinking ever deeper into a mire of escapism, but Richard Candle, looking for his missing brother, fights his way through the real world of underground stock markets, flying guns, the trash-walled labyrinth of Rooftown, and the fringe of the fringe.</p>
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<h2 id="editorialReviews_feature_div"><strong style="font-size: x-large">E</strong><strong style="font-size: x-large">ditorial Reviews </strong></h2>
<h3><strong style="font-size: large">From </strong><a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/?docId=1000027801"><strong style="font-size: large; color: #419cff">Booklist</strong></a> </h3>
<p>Shirley’s 25-year-old “lost novel” depicts a dystopia that is not entirely unrecognizable. Citizens are under constant surveillance, prisoners’ minds are disconnected during their sentences, a black wind spreads a toxic storm that wipes out whole populations, semblants (digital clones) take care of business while humans attend to other things, and virtual reality is the new crack, literally. Ex-cop Richard Candle is released from prison after four years of UnMinding he endured for taking a rap for his brother, a virtual-reality junkie who then fails to show up. Candle sets out tracking him down, only to be targeted by corrupt and powerful tech mogul Terrence Grist, whom Candle has dirt on. While seeking his brother, Candle works security for a gang in the underground stock market—the very people he went after as a cop. Meanwhile, Grist, trying to seize control of the Fortune 33, hacks a new kind of semblant. Unfortunately, this multisemblant has a mind of its own. Shirley’s cyberpunk pulp novel, fast-paced and violent, bristles with provocative new technologies. --Ben Segedin </p>
<h3><strong style="font-size: large">About the Author</strong> </h3>
<p>John Shirley is a winner of the Bram Stoker Award and the author of numerous novels, including City Come A-Walkin', Crawlers, Demons, The Other End, and A Splendid Chaos. He lives in San Francisco. </p></div>


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<p>“A breath of fresh air . . . the vision is deeply imagined, very complete and controlled . . . Gibson is truly brilliant.”—Washington Times magazine</p>
<p>From a true master of science fiction comes a collection of short stories that show how, no matter the length, Gibson is one of the greatest writers working today.</p>
<p>Known for his seminal science fiction novel Neuromancer, and for the acclaimed books Pattern Recognition, The Peripheral, and Agency, William Gibson is actually best when writing short fiction. Tautly written and suspenseful, Burning Chrome collects 10 short stories, including some written with Bruce Sterling, John Shirley, and Michael Swanwick, and with a preface from Bruce Sterling, now available for the first time in trade paperback. These brilliant, high-resolution stories show Gibson’s characters and intensely realized worlds at their absolute best, from the chip-enhanced couriers of “Johnny Mnemonic” to the street-tech melancholy of “Burning Chrome.”</p></div>


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<p>In his electrifying debut, The Mirrored Heavens, David J. Williams created a dark futuristic world grounded in the military rivalries, terror tactics, and political wrangling of our own time. Now he takes his masterful blend of military SF, espionage thriller, and dystopian cyberpunk one step further—to the edge of annihilation . . . . </p>
<p>Life as U.S. counterintelligence agent Claire Haskell once knew it is in tatters—her mission betrayed, her lover dead, and her memories of the past suspect. Worse, the defeat of the mysterious insurgent group known as Autumn Rain was not as complete as many believed. It is quickly becoming clear that the group’s ultimate goal is not simply to destroy the tenuous global alliances of the 22nd century—but to rule all of humanity. And they’re starting with the violent destruction of the Net and the assassination of the U.S. president. Now it’s up to Claire, with her ability to jack her brain into the systems of the enemy, to win this impossible war. </p>
<p>Battling ferociously across the Earth-Moon system, and navigating a complex world filled with both steadfast loyalists and ruthless traitors, Claire must be ready for the Rain’s next move. But the true enemy may already be one step ahead of her.</p></div>


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<p>Alongside William Gibson and Neal Stephenson, Bruce Sterling stands at the forefront of a select group of writers whose pitch-perfect grasp of the cultural and scientific zeitgeist endows their works of speculative near-future fiction with uncanny verisimilitude. To read a novel by Sterling is to receive a dispatch from a time traveler. Now, with The Caryatids, Sterling has written a stunning testament of faith in the power of human intellect, creativity, and spirit to overcome any obstacle–even the obstacles we carry inside ourselves. The world of 2060 is divided into three spheres of influence, each fighting with the others over the resources of fallen nations and an environment degraded almost to the point of no return. There is the Dispensation, centered in Los Angeles, where entertainment and capitalism have fused with the highest of high-tech. There is the Acquis, a Green-centered collective that uses invasive neurological technology to create a networked utopia. And there is China, the sole surviving nation-state, a dinosaur that has prospered only by pitilessly pruning its own population. Products of this monstrous world, the daughters of a monstrous mother, and–according to some–monsters themselves, are the Caryatids: the four surviving female clones of a mad Balkan genius and wanted war criminal now ensconced, safely beyond extradition, on an orbiting space station. Radmila is a Dispensation star determined to forget her past by building a glittering, impregnable future. Vera is an Acquis functionary dedicated to reclaiming their home, the Croatian island of Mljet, from catastrophic pollution. Sonja is a medical specialist in China renowned for selflessly risking herself to help others. And Biserka is a one-woman terrorist network. The four “sisters” are united only by their hatred for their “mother”–and for one another. When evidence surfaces of a coming environmental cataclysm, the Dispensation sends its greatest statesman–or salesman–John Montgomery Montalban, husband of Radmila, and lover of Vera and Sonja, to gather the Caryatids together in an audacious plan to save the world.</p></div>


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<p>A stylish, street smart, frighteningly probable parable of the future from the visionary, New York Times bestselling author of Neuromancer and Agency. A corporate mercenary wakes in a reconstructed body, a beautiful woman by his side. Then Hosaka Corporation reactivates him, for a mission more dangerous than the one he's recovering from: to get a defecting chief of R&amp;D--and the biochip he's perfected--out intact. But this proves to be of supreme interest to certain other parties--some of whom aren't remotely human...</p></div>


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<p>Before email, before the world wide web, before hackers, Before sexting, before always-on GPS, before titanium implants, before Alexa, Cortana, and Siri, before the computer in your pocket was more powerful than the one that sent astronauts to the moon, there was cyberpunk.And science fiction was never the same.Cyberpunk writers--serious, smart, and courageous in the face of change--exposed the naiveté of a society rushing headlong into technological unknowns. Technology could not save us, they argued, and it might in fact ruin us.Now, thirty years after The Movement party-crashed the scene, the cyberpunk reality has largely come to be.The future they imagined is here.With an introduction by Victoria Blake and stories by: William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, Jonathan Lethem, Kim Stanley Robinson, David Marusek, Benjamin Parzybok, Cat Rambo, Paul Tremblay, Pat Cadigan, Gwyneth Jones, Mark Teppo, Greg Bear, Lewis Shiner, Rudy Rucker, James Patrick Kelly, John Shirley, Daniel H. Wilson, Paul Di Filippo, and Cory Doctorow.Welcome to your cyberpunk world.</p></div>


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<p>Cyberpunk and Cyberculture explores the work of a wide range of writers- Acker, Cadigan, Rucker, Shierley, Sterling, Williams and, of course, Gibson - setting their work in the context of science fiction, other literary genres, genre cinema - from Metropolis to Terminator to The Matrix - and contemporary work on the culture of technology.</p></div>


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<p>A (possibly upsetting) cyberpunk adventure comedy. You know how there's those girls that you know but don't really know? Marine's one of those girls. In a stroke of what some people would call amazing luck, a massive corporation stole something from her workshop while she was sleeping. Our protagonist, being the upstanding (and not shiftless, anti-social pervert) citizen that he is, offers to help. And so he does.</p></div>


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<p>This analysis of cyberpunk science fiction written between 1981 and 2003 positions women's cyberpunk in the larger cultural discussion of feminist issues. It traces the origins of the genre, reviews the critical reactions and outlines the ways in which women's cyberpunk advances points of view that are specifically feminist. Novels are examined within their cultural contexts; their content is compared to broader controversies within contemporary feminism, and their themes are revealed as reflections of feminist discourse around the turn of the 21st century. Chapters cover topics such as globalization, virtual reality, cyborg culture, environmentalism, religion, motherhood and queer rights. Interviews with feminist cyberpunk authors are provided, revealing both their motivations for writing and their experiences with fans. The study treats feminist cyberpunk as a unique vehicle for examining contemporary women's issues and analyzes feminist science fiction as a complex source of political ideas.</p></div>


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<p>Decades into our future, a stone's throw from the ancient city of Shanghai, a brilliant nanotechnologist named John Percival Hackworth has just broken therigorous moral code of his tribe, the powerful neoVictorians.  He's made an illicit copy of a state-of-the-art interactive device called A Young Ladys Illustrated Primer  Commissioned by an eccentric duke for his grandchild, stolen for Hackworth's own daughter, the Primer's purpose is to educate and raise a girl capable of thinking for herself.  It performs its function superbly.  Unfortunately for Hackworth, his smuggled copy has fallen into the wrong hands.Young Nell and her brother Harv are thetes--members of the poor, tribeless class.  Neglected by their mother, Harv looks after Nell.  When he and his gang waylay a certain neo-Victorian--John Percival Hackworth--  in the seamy streets of their neighborhood, Harv brings Nell something special: the Primer.Following the discovery of his crime, Hackworth begins an odyssey of his own.  Expelled from the neo-Victorian paradise, squeezed by agents of ProtocolEnforcement on one side and a Mandarin underworld crime lord on the other, he searches for an elusive figure known as the Alchemist.  His quest and Nell'swill ultimately lead them to another seeker whose fate is bound up with the Primer-- a woman who holds the key to a vast, subversive informationnetwork that is destined to decode and reprogram the future of humanity.Vividly imagined, stunningly prophetic, and epic in scope, The Diamond Age is a major novel from one of the most visionary writers of our time</p></div>


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<p>From Bruce Sterling, bestselling author of Heavy Weather and Holy Fire, comes this startling, disturbing, and darkly comic vision of the future of America.  It is the story of a once great nation coming apart at the seams while an unending spectacle of politics, science, sex, and corruption has everyone too busy to notice....<br><br>It's November 2044, an election year, and the state of the Union is a farce.  The federal government is broke, cities are privately owned, the military is shaking down citizens in the streets, and Wyoming is on fire.  The last place anyone expects to find an answer is the nation's capital.<br><br>Washington has become a circus and no one knows that better than Oscar Valparaiso.  A master political spin doctor, Oscar has been in the background for years, doing his best to put the proper spin on anything that comes up.  Now he wants to do something quite unusual in politics.  He wants to make a difference.  But Oscar has a skeleton in his closet: a grotesque and unspeakable scandal that haunts his personal life.<br><br>He has one unexpected ally: Dr. Greta Penninger.  She is a gifted neurologist at the bleeding edge of the neural revolution.  Together Oscar and Greta know the human mind inside and out.  And they are about to use that knowledge to spread a very powerful message: that it's a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.  It's an idea whose time has come...again.  And once again so have its enemies: every technofanatic, government goon, and reactionary laptop assassin in America.<br><br>Like all revolutionaries, Oscar and Greta might not survive to change the world, but they're determined to put a new spin on it.   </p></div>


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<p>Somebody should make a movie of this one. There’s a new form of entertainment in town - the Feelies. You are placed in a capsule, wired up with electronic stimulators and drugged to the eyeballs, the better to live out your virtual-reality dreams. Be the Marquis de Sade, Billy the Kid, Thongar the Planet-Waster, or even Jesus if that’s your kink. Pick your fantasy from a catalog or have one tailor-made. Naturally, the Corporations charge a fortune for this ultimate luxury, but on the TV gameshows the top prize of the moment is a free lifetime Feelie contract. All you have to do is humiliate yourself in public – again and again and again – to win. And, should you finally climb into that capsule, you’ll discover that the Corporations haven’t quite mastered the technology, and your dream becomes a living (and dying) nightmare. A vicious satire on mass entertainment, corporate greed and media manipulation, probably Farren’s best novel.</p></div>


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<p>The bestselling cyberpunk author “has produced by far the most stylish report from the computer outlaw culture since Steven Levy’s Hackers” (Publishers Weekly).   Bruce Sterling delves into the world of high-tech crime and punishment in one of the first books to explore the cyberspace breaches that threaten national security. From the crash of AT&amp;T’s long-distance switching system to corporate cyberattacks, he investigates government and law enforcement efforts to break the back of America’s electronic underground in the 1990s. In this modern classic, “Sterling makes the hackers—who live in the ether between terminals under noms de net such as VaxCat—as vivid as Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday. His book goes a long way towards explaining the emerging digital world and its ethos” (Publishers Weekly).  This edition features a new preface by the author that analyzes the sobering increase in computer crime over the twenty-five years since The Hacker Crackdown was first published.   “Offbeat and brilliant.” —Booklist   “Thoroughly researched, this account of the government’s crackdown on the nebulous but growing computer-underground provides a thoughtful report on the laws and rights being defined on the virtual frontier of cyberspace. . . . An enjoyable, informative, and (as the first mainstream treatment of the subject) potentially important book . . . Sterling is a fine and knowledgeable guide to this strange new world.” —Kirkus Reviews   “A well-balanced look at this new group of civil libertarians. Written with humor and intelligence, this book is highly recommended.” —Library Journal</p></div>


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<p>Graphic artists who open this scintillating tutorial discover the beauty secrets of cartoon bombshells, then learn how to give them active roles in stories. Step-by-step illustrations show female anatomy and proportion, ways to render poses and body shapes, and methods to exaggerate or simplify female shapes for special effects. Artists learn to create convincing drawings of seductive supergirls, action heroines, sexy cyberpunks, feisty Manga babes, and other types. Instruction includes methods for drawing facial features, head-turning hairstyles, and fantasy wardrobes with eye-popping metal bikinis and skin-tight jumpsuits. A historical overview of females in animation and comics covers styles from Betty Boop to Tank Girl. The author explains the importance of storytelling in art and discusses ways to develop story concepts before starting to draw. Chapters that follow focus on choosing art equipment (pencils, papers, brushes, inks, paints, and pixels), selecting appropriate drawing styles to match characters' personalities, rendering different feminine types, from goddess to the girl next door, and more.The book concludes with a brief survey of the business of commercial art, with advice on how and where to sell finished work, how to draw characters to order, and how artists can protect their rights. More than 200 flamboyant, full-color illustrations.</p></div>


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<p>“The best novel William Gibson has ever written about the world we’re entering daily. Neuromancer made Gibson famous; Idoru cements that fame.”—The Washington Post Book World21st century Tokyo, after the millennial quake. Neon rain. Light everywhere blowing under any door you might try to close. Where the New Buildings, the largest in the world, erect themselves unaided, their slow rippling movements like the contractions of a sea-creature...Colin Laney is here looking for work. He is an intuitive fisher for patterns of information, the “signature” an individual creates simply by going about the business of living. But Laney knows how to sift for the dangerous bits. Which makes him useful—to certain people.   Chia McKenzie is here on a rescue mission. She’s fourteen. Her idol is the singer Rez, of the band Lo/Rez. When the Seattle chapter of the Lo/Rez fan club decided that he might be in trouble in Tokyo, they sent Chia to check it out.   Rei Toei is the idoru—the beautiful, entirely virtual media star adored by all Japan. Rez has declared that he will marry her. This is the rumor that has brought Chia to Tokyo. True or not, the idoru and the powerful interests surrounding her are enough to put all their lives in danger...</p></div>


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<p>The Paragons of Queer Speculative Fiction series keeps alive books vital to gay imagination. India Carless, alias Trouble, managed to stay one step ahead of the feds until she retired from life as a hacker and settled down to run a small network for an artist's co-op. Now someone has stolen her pseudonym and begun to use it for criminal hacking. So Trouble returns. Once the fastest gun on the electronic frontier, she has been called out of retirement for one last fight. And it's a killer. Less than a hundred years from now, the forces of law and order crack down on the world of the internet. It is the closing of the frontier. The hip, noir adventurers who got by on wit, bravado, and drugs, who haunt the virtual worlds of the shadows of cyberspace are up against the edges of civilization. It's time to adapt or die.</p></div>


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<p>"Pattern Recognition is William Gibson's best book since he rewrote all the rules in Neuromancer."--Neil Gaiman, author of American Gods "One of the first authentic and vital novels of the 21st century."--The Washington Post Book World The accolades and acclaim are endless for William Gibson's coast-to-coast bestseller. Set in the post-9/11 present, Pattern Recognition is the story of one woman's never-ending search for the now... Cayce Pollard is a new kind of prophet--a world-renowned "coolhunter" who predicts the hottest trends. While in London to evaluate the redesign of a famous corporate logo, she's offered a different assignment: find the creator of the obscure, enigmatic video clips being uploaded to the internet--footage that is generating massive underground buzz worldwide. Still haunted by the memory of her missing father--a Cold War security guru who disappeared in downtown Manhattan on the morning of September 11, 2001--Cayce is soon traveling through parallel universes of marketing, globalization, and terror, heading always for the still point where the three converge. From London to Tokyo to Moscow, she follows the implications of a secret as disturbing--and compelling--as the twenty-first century promises to be...</p></div>


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<p style="font-weight: 600; font-size: large">Review</p>
<p>"A crackling cyberthriller. This is Tom Clancy interfacing Bruce Sterling. David Williams has hacked into the future."—Stephen Baxter, author of the Manifold series </p>
<p>"<strong>The Mirrored Heavens</strong> presents an action-jammed and audacious look at a terrifyingly plausible future. By comparison to Williams' future, the present mess surrounding the Iraq conflict seems almost benign. Highly recommended for politicians, not that most would wish to see where their actions could easily lead."—L. E. Modesitt, Jr. </p>
<p>“<strong>The Mirrored Heavens</strong> is a complex view of global politics in time of crisis. Williams understands that future wars will be fought as much on-line as off. It's also rousing adventure with breathless, non-stop action—Tom Clancy on speed. And you will NOT be able to guess the ending.”—Nancy Kress, author of the Probability trilogy </p>
<p>"Explodes out the gate like a sonic boom and never stops. Adrenaline bleeds from Williams' fingers with every word he hammers into the keyboard. The razors of <strong>The Mirrored Heavens</strong> would eat cyberpunk's old-guard hackers and cowboys as a light snack."—Peter Watts, author of <em>Blindsight</em> </p>
<p>“<strong>The Mirrored Heavens</strong> presents an action-jammed and audacious look at a terrifyingly plausible future. By comparison to Williams' future, the present mess surrounding the Iraq conflict seems almost benign. Highly recommended for politicians, not that most would wish to see where their actions could easily lead.”—L. E. Modesitt, Jr., bestselling author of the Saga of Recluse series, the Spellsong Cycle series, and the Corean Chronicles series </p>
<p>"<strong>The Mirrored Heavens</strong> is a 21st century <em>Neuromancer</em> set in a dark, dystopian future where nothing and no one can be trusted, the razors who rule cyberspace are predators and prey, and ordinary human life is cheap. It starts out at full throttle and accelerates all the way to the end." —Jack Campbell, author of _The Lost Fleet: Courageous </p>
<p>_“Calling to mind Clint Eastwood and Dirty Harry more than Humphrey Bogart and Philip Marlowe, <strong>The Mirrored Heavens'</strong> action is wild and relentless.... In a welcome respite from noir stereotyping, Williams' female protagonist is neither killed nor kidnapped. A subject, not an object, Claire Haskell moves and shakes her dystopic world.”—_Seattle Times_<br>_<br>_"Non-stop action propels the reader forward. Like William Styron's <em>Sophie's Choice</em>, characters face horrific decisions involving mass destruction of innocents and murder of close friends and allies.”—Sfrevu.com </p>
<p>“A powerful, rapid-fire sf adventure/intrigue story with echoes of cyberpunk.”—_Library Journal </p>
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<h3>Product Description</h3>
<p>In this thrilling debut, David J. Williams delivers a hard-hitting blend of military SF and dystopian cyberpunk, set in a futuristic landscape where hostilities rage from the Eastern and Western hemispheres to the outer ranges of space. </p>
<p>In the 22nd century, the first wonder of a brave new world is the Phoenix Space Elevator, designed to give mankind greater access to the frontier beyond Earth. Built by the U.S./Pan-Asian Coalition, the Elevator is also a grand symbol of superpower alliance following a second cold war. And it’s just been destroyed. </p>
<p>The South American insurgent group Autumn Rain claims responsibility for the attack, but with suspicions rampant, armies and espionage teams are mobilized across the globe and beyond. Enter Claire Haskell and Jason Marlowe, U.S. counterintelligence agents, and former lovers—though their memories may only be constructs implanted by their spymaster. Forced to set aside the enigma of their past, their agenda is to trust no one. For in a time of shifting loyalties, the enemy could be anyone—from a shadowy assassin working a questionable mission on the dark side of the moon, to a Euro data thief working under deep cover and wooed into a dangerous pact. </p>
<p>As the crisis mounts, and the search for Autumn Rain spans both Earth and Moon, the lives of all those involved will converge in one explosive finale—and a startling aftermath that will rewrite everything they’ve ever known—about their mission, their world, and themselves </p></div>


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<p>With their hard-edged, street-wise prose, they created frighteningly probable futures of high-tech societies and low-life hustlers. Fans and critics call their world cyberpunk. Here is the definitive "cyberpunk" short fiction collection.</p></div>


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<p>William Gibson, author of the extraordinary multiaward-winning novel Neuromancer, has written his most brilliant and thrilling work to date . . .The Mona Lisa Overdrive.  Enter Gibson's unique world—lyric and mechanical, sensual and violent, sobering and exciting—where multinational corporations and high tech outlaws vie for power, traveling into the computer-generated universe known as cyberspace.  Into this world comes Mona, a young girl with a murky past and an uncertain future whose life is on a collision course with internationally famous Sense/Net star Angie Mitchell.  Since childhood, Angie has been able to tap into cyberspace without a computer.  Now, from inside cyberspace, a kidnapping plot is masterminded by a phantom entity who has plans for Mona, Angie, and all humanity, plans that cannot be controlled . . . or even known.  And behind the intrigue lurks the shadowy Yazuka, the powerful Japanese underworld, whose leaders ruthlessly manipulate people and events to suit their own purposes . . . or so they think.</p></div>


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<p>The New York Times bestselling author of Neuromancer and Agency presents a fast-paced sci-fi thriller that takes a terrifying look into the future.SOON TO BE AN ORIGINAL SERIES ON PRIME VIDEOFlynne Fisher lives down a country road, in a rural America where jobs are scarce, unless you count illegal drug manufacture, which she’s trying to avoid. Her brother Burton lives on money from the Veterans Administration, for neurological damage suffered in the Marines’ elite Haptic Recon unit. Flynne earns what she can by assembling product at the local 3D printshop. She made more as a combat scout in an online game, playing for a rich man, but she’s had to let the shooter games go.Wilf Netherton lives in London, seventy-some years later, on the far side of decades of slow-motion apocalypse. Things are pretty good now, for the haves, and there aren’t many have-nots left. Wilf, a high-powered publicist and celebrity-minder, fancies himself a romantic misfit, in a society where reaching into the past is just another hobby. Burton’s been moonlighting online, secretly working security in some game prototype, a virtual world that looks vaguely like London, but a lot weirder. He’s got Flynne taking over shifts, promised her the game’s not a shooter. Still, the crime she witnesses there is plenty bad.Flynne and Wilf are about to meet one another. Her world will be altered utterly, irrevocably, and Wilf’s, for all its decadence and power, will learn that some of these third-world types from the past can be badass.</p></div>


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<p>“Egan is determined to make sense of everything – to understand the whole world as an intelligible, rational, material (and finally manipulable) realm – even if it means abandoning comfortable and comforting illusions. This is fundamental to the whole project of SF and it’s why Egan’s Best – and his Rest – is worth any number of looks. —Locus <br><br>What happens when your digital self overpowers your physical self?<br><br>A life in Permutation City is unlike any life to which you’re accustomed. You have Eternal Life, the power to live forever. Immortality is a real thing, just not the thing you’d expect.<br><br>Life is just electronic code. You have been digitized, scanned, and downloaded into a virtual reality program. A Copy of a Copy. For Paul Durham, he keeps making Copies of himself, but the issue is that his Copies keep changing their minds and shutting themselves down.<br><br>You also have Maria Deluca, who is nothing but an Autoverse addict. She spends every waking minute with the cellular automaton known as the Autoverse, a world that lives by the mathematical “laws of physics.”<br><br>Paul makes Maria an offer to design and drop a seed into the Autoverse that will allow her to indulge in her obsession. There is, however, one catch: you can no longer terminate, bail out, and remove yourself. You will never be your normal flesh-and-blood life again. The question then becomes: Is this what she really wants? Is this what we really want?<br><br>From the brilliant mind of Greg Egan, Permutation City, first published in 1994, comes a world of wonder that makes you ask if you are you, or is the Copy of you the real you?<br><br>Skyhorse Publishing, under our Night Shade and Talos imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of titles for readers interested in science fiction (space opera, time travel, hard SF, alien invasion, near-future dystopia), fantasy (grimdark, sword and sorcery, contemporary urban fantasy, steampunk, alternative history), and horror (zombies, vampires, and the occult and supernatural), and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller, a national bestseller, or a Hugo or Nebula award-winner, we are committed to publishing quality books from a diverse group of authors. </p>
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<p><strong style="font-size: large">About the Author</strong> </p>
<p>Greg Egan is a computer programmer, and the author of the acclaimed SF novels The Arrows of Time, Distress, Diaspora, Quarantine, Permutation City, and Teranesia. He has won the Hugo Award as well as the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. His short fiction has been published in a variety of places, including Interzone, Asimov’s, and Nature. He lives in Perth, Australia. </p></div>


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<p>In this companion, an international range of contributors examine the cultural formation of cyberpunk from micro-level analyses of example texts to macro-level debates of movements, providing readers with snapshots of cyberpunk culture and also cyberpunk as culture.With technology seamlessly integrated into our lives and our selves, and social systems veering towards globalization and corporatization, cyberpunk has become a ubiquitous cultural formation that dominates our twenty-first century techno-digital landscapes. The Routledge Companion to Cyberpunk Culture traces cyberpunk through its historical developments as a literary science fiction form to its spread into other media such as comics, film, television, and video games. Moreover, seeing cyberpunk as a general cultural practice, the Companion provides insights into photography, music, fashion, and activism. Cyberpunk, as the chapters presented here argue, is integrated with other critical theoretical tenets of our times, such as posthumanism, the Anthropocene, animality, and empire. And lastly, cyberpunk is a vehicle that lends itself to the rise of new futurisms, occupying a variety of positions in our regionally diverse reality and thus linking, as much as differentiating, our perspectives on a globalized technoscientific world. With original entries that engage cyberpunk's diverse 'angles' and its proliferation in our life worlds, this critical reference will be of significant interest to humanities students and scholars of media, cultural studies, literature, and beyond.</p></div>


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<p>A Science Fiction Book Club Selection "When John Brunner first told me of his intention to write this book, I was fascinated -- but I wondered whether he, or anyone, could bring it off. Bring it off he has -- with cool brilliance. A hero with transient personalities, animals with souls, think tanks and survival communities fuse to form a future so plausibly alive it has twitched at me ever since." -- Alvin Toffler Author of Future Shock He Was The Most Dangerous Fugitive Alive, But He Didn't Exist! Nickie Haflinger had lived a score of lifetimes...but technically he didn't exist. He was a fugitive from Tarnover, the high-powered government think tank that had educated him. First he had broken his identity code -- then he escaped. Now he had to find a way to restore sanity and personal freedom to the computerized masses and to save a world tottering on the brink of disaster. He didn't care how he did it...but the government did. That's when his Tarnover teachers got him back in their labs...and Nickie Haflinger was set up for a whole new education!</p></div>


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<p>The “brilliantly realized” (The New York Times Book Review) modern classic that coined the term “metaverse”—one of Time’s 100 best English-language novels and “a foundational text of the cyberpunk movement” (Wired)<br> <br>In reality, Hiro Protagonist delivers pizza for Uncle Enzo’s CosoNostra Pizza Inc., but in the Metaverse he’s a warrior prince. Plunging headlong into the enigma of a new computer virus that’s striking down hackers everywhere, he races along the neon-lit streets on a search-and-destroy mission for the shadowy virtual villain threatening to bring about infocalypse. Snow Crash is a mind-altering romp through a future America so bizarre, so outrageous . . . you’ll recognize it immediately. </p>
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<p><strong style="font-size: large">Review</strong> </p>
<p>“Stephenson has not stepped, he has vaulted onto the literary stage with this novel.”—Los Angeles Reader<br><br>“[Snow Crash is] a cross between Neuromancer and Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland. This is no mere hyperbole.”—The San Francisco Bay Guardian<br> <br>“Fast-forward free-style mall mythology for the twenty-first century.”—William Gibson<br> <br>“Brilliantly realized . . . Stephenson turns out to be an engaging guide to an onrushing tomorrow.”—The New York Times Book Review </p>
<h3><strong style="font-size: large">About the Author</strong> </h3>
<p>Neal Stephenson is the bestselling author of the novels Snow Crash, The Diamond Age, Cryptonomicon, Quicksilver, Anathem, Seveneves, Reamde, and Termination Shock, among others, as well as the nonfiction work, In the Beginning... Was the Command Line. He lives in Seattle, Washington. </p></div>


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<p>Engaging some of the most canonical and thought-provoking anime, manga, and science fiction films, Tokyo Cyberpunk offers insightful analysis of Japanese visual culture. Steven T. Brown draws new conclusions about the cultural flow of art, as well as important technological issues of the day.</p></div>


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<p>Stephen Baxter’s gripping page-turners are feats of bold speculation and big ideas that, for all their time-and-space-spanning grandeur, remain firmly rooted in scientific fact and cutting-edge theory. Now Baxter is back with the final volume in his monumental Destiny’s Children trilogy, a tour de force in which parallel stories unfold–and then meet as humanity stands poised on the brink of divine providence . . . or extinction.DESTINY’S CHILDRENTRANSCENDENTIt is the year 2047, and nuclear engineer Michael Poole is still in the throes of grief. His beloved wife, Morag, died seventeen years ago, along with their second child. Yet Michael is haunted by more than just the memory of Morag. On a beach in Miami, he sees his dead wife. But she vanishes as suddenly as she appears, leaving no clue as to her mysterious purpose.Alia was born on a starship, fifteen thousand light years from Earth, five hundred thousand years after the death of Michael Poole. Yet she knows him intimately. In this distant future, when humanity has diversified as a species and spread across the galaxy, every person is entrusted with the duty of Witnessing the life of one man, woman, or child from the past, recovered by means of a technology able to traverse time itself. Alia’s subject is Michael Poole.When his surviving, estranged son is injured, Michael tries to reconnect with him–and to stave off a looming catastrophe. Vast reservoirs of toxic gases lie buried beneath the poles, trapped in crystals of ice. Now that ice is melting. Once it goes, the poisons released will threaten all life on Earth. A bold solution is within reach, if only Michael can convince a doubting world. Yet as Morag’s ghostly visitations continue, Michael begins to doubt his own sanity.In the future, Alia is chosen to become a Transcendent, an undying member of the group mind that is shepherding humanity toward an evolutionary apotheosis. The Witnessings are an integral part of their design, for only by redeeming the pain of every human who has lived and died can true Transcendence be achieved. Yet Alia discovers a dark side to the Transcendents’ plans, a vein of madness that may lead to an unthinkable renunciation. Somehow, Michael Poole holds the fate of the future in his hands. Now, to save that future, Alia must undertake a desperate journey into the past. . . .</p></div>


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<p>There�s a message in your inbox. Then, a few moments later, your computer crashes. Leela Zahir, Bollywood actress and temperamental star, is being catapulted from the fringes of fame into a million inboxes. Arjun Mehta, computer geek, looks up from his screen to find that he does, after all, have a role to play in the world. Guy Swift, marketing executive with his own agency, a beautiful girlfriend and a handle on modern life, is losing his grip. In this age of instant worldwide communication, anything can happen and anything will� Hari Kunzru�s new novel is a heady mix of London, Bollywood and Silicon Valley. Taking in three continents and following the lives of Guy, Arjun and Leela as they make their way in the real world, Transmission is a brilliant and funny take on life at the click of a mouse.</p></div>


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<p>Among the vanguard of today's boldest writers, Michael Swanwick presents his world of plug-in personalities, colonized asteroids, and a daring fugitive named Rebel Elizabeth Mudlark, a high-tech criminal seeking refuge on Earth's orbiting settlements--where all human evils blossom in the vacuum of space.</p></div>


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<p>Hardwired, the acknowledged inspiration for the games Cyberpunk Red and Cyberpunk 2077, is now available in a deluxe edition for its thirtieth anniversary, with new content by the author. Earth lies prostrate beneath the lash of the Orbital powers, and Earth’s Balkanized nations have no choice but to let the Orbitals plunder their remaining wealth. Below the zone of Orbital control, buttonheads, panzerjocks, dirtgirls, and hustlers scramble for their ticket out of the gravity well.But now, if the criminal underworld and the guerrilla underground can join forces, there is a chance to shift the balance of power— in a war fought on the ground by hardwired commandos, in the air by high-flying deltajocks, and by genius hackers in the neural interface.As Roger Zelazny said, “Hardwired is a tough, sleek juggernaut of a story, punctuated by strobe light movements, coursing to the wail of jets and the twang of steel guitars— glittering, nasty, and noble— and told in a style perfectly suiting its content. It has all of my favorite things— blood, love, fire, hate and a high ideal or two. I wish I’d written this one.”The Thirtieth Anniversary Edition of this cyberpunk classic includes essays by the author devoted to the origin of the novel, the unexpected source of the term “panzerboy,” and an amused guide through some of the oddities of the first German edition.“Williams' use of language is as explosive and as techno-tinged as the world he describes. Reading the book is like taking a jet ride across a futuristic America, with acceleration forcing you back in your seat all the way.”Rockland Courier-Gazette“Cowboy is no Rambo; he is a thoughtful, intelligent hero. He and Sarah are two of the many good things about HARDWIRED. Another is the world they inhabit--- an incredibly detailed future of personality transfers, bizarre drugs, cybernetic implants, and complex political and economic power maneuvers . . . It is one of the best SF novels I have read in years; I heartily recommend it.”Fantasy Review“The story moves with the speed of a hovercraft, the climax has all the action and excitement of Star Wars and the ending has a delightful twist.”Providence Sunday Journal“Hardwired is his best book to date...as the parallel plotlines of a hotshot contraband flyer and a sleek bodyguard/assassin develop and gradually intersect, the book takes on a life of its own.”Locus</p></div>


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<p>WELCOME TO NIGHT CITY!Explore an extensive examination of the rich lore of Cyberpunk 2077. This intricately assembled tome contains everything you need to know about the history, characters, and world of the long-awaited RPG from CD Projekt Red the creators of The Witcher video game series.This deluxe edition includes: An exclusive Night City map cover. A slipcase featuring Night City graffiti. Temporary Tattoos: show your alignment with any of Night City's varied, colorful gangs. Johnny Silverhand Poster: a memorial to the gone-but-not-forgotten superstar, Johnny Silverhand.Vehicle Postcards: Four postcards that each showcase a vehicle from one of Night City's diverse and unique lifestyles.An insightful, captivatingly designed, full-color hardcover that transports readers to the futuristic megalopolis of Night City--the epicenter of the vibrant new action-RPG from CD PROJECT RED.Step into a dark future where violence, oppression, and cyberware implants aren't just common--they're necessary tools to get ahead. Explore the various districts, gangs, and history of Night City. Learn all there is to know about the technology of tomorrow and research the cybernetics, weapons, and vehicles of Cyberpunk 2077.</p></div>


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<div><p>SKYNET MEETS THE MATRIX in two novels from <em>New York Times </em>best-selling author, and legendary science fiction storyteller, James Hogan.  Contains <em>Two Faces of Tomorrow </em>and <em>Real Time Interrupt.</em> </p><p><em>Skynet</em> and <em>The </em><em>Matrix </em>have got nothing on James Hogan in this great two-novel collection. </p><p><em>Two Faces of Tomorrow</em><br> Midway through the 21st century, a proposed major software upgrade–an artificial intelligence–will give the world communications system an unprecedented degree of independent decision-making. Now to fully assess the system, a new space-station habitat is deployed with an A.I. named Spartacus. The idea is that if Spartacus gets out of hand, the system can be shut down and the station destroyed–unless, that is, Spartacus decides to take matters into its own hands and take the fight to Earth. </p><p><em>Realtime Interrupt</em><br>Joe Corrigan awakens in a hospital to find that his life no longer exists. As director of the supersecret Oz Project, his job was to create a computerized environment virtually indistinguishable from reality. Oz failed. Now Joe, left alone to pick up the pieces of his shattered life, Joe finds himself in an unfamiliar world–a world where nothing is quite as it should be. Now Joe must discover a terrible truth about his new world–and figure out how to get out alive! </p><p><strong>About James P. Hogan:<br></strong>“Readers who like their science hard will find this one a diamond.” – <em>Publishers Weekly</em> on James P. Hogan’s <em>Mission to Minerva</em> </p><p>“…cutting edge scientific approach…truly fascinating and highly enjoyable…”– <em>Starlog</em> </p><p>“Stimulating and provocative.” – <em>Kirkus</em> on James P. Hogan’s ground-breaking <em>Cradle of Saturn</em> </p><p>“Pure science fiction…Arthur C. Clarke, move over.” – Isaac Asimov</p><p>**</p></div>


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<p>“A razor-smart sci-fi corporate noir nightmare. Dare to Know is what happens when Willy Loman sees through the Matrix. A heartbreaking, time-bending, galactic mindbender delivered in the mordantly funny clip of a doomed antihero.”—Daniel Kraus, co-author of The Shape of Water </p>
<p>This mind-bending and emotional speculative thriller is set in a world where the exact moment of your death can be predicted—for a price. </p>
<p>Our narrator is the most talented salesperson at Dare to Know, an enigmatic company that has developed the technology to predict anyone’s death down to the second. Divorced, estranged from his sons, and broke, he's driven to violate the cardinal rule of the business by forecasting his own death day. The problem: his prediction says he died twenty-three minutes ago. </p>
<p>The only person who can confirm its accuracy is Julia, the woman he loved and lost during his rise up the ranks of Dare to Know. As he travels across the country to see her, he’s forced to confront his past, the choices he's made, and the terrifying truth about the company he works for. </p>
<p>Wildly ambitious and highly immersive, this thought-provoking thriller explores the destructive power of knowledge and collapses the boundaries between reality, myth, and conspiracy as it races toward its shocking conclusion.</p></div>


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<p>The incredibly realistic story of one family's struggle to survive the destruction of New York in a massive terror attack. Million-copy bestseller now in development for film by 20th Century Fox. </p>
<p>"I couldn't put it down...shows how dangerous our transition to an interconnected infrastructure has become." Karic Allega, Joint Military Cyber Command, US NAVY </p>
<p>NEW YORK GOES DARK IN THE DEAD OF WINTER... </p>
<p>A TERRIFYING MYSTERY BEGINS... </p>
<p>BUT WHO IS THE ENEMY? AND WILL THEY STRIKE AGAIN? </p>
<p>Mike Mitchell is an average New Yorker struggling just to keep his family together when a string of disasters shreds the bustling megacity around them. </p>
<p>The Internet and communication networks go down...a deadly epidemic rages across the country...then a monster snowstorm cuts New York off from the world. </p>
<p>Days go by without contact to the outside world. Then weeks. Murder and vigilante justice replace law and order. Millions fight to survive. </p>
<p>In the chaos, conspiracy theories rage about a foreign cyberattack. Was it the North Koreans? The Russians? The Chinese? Might it be the first shockwave of a global shift in power? But even these questions become unimportant as Mike and his family struggle for survival in the wintry tomb of a doomed New York. </p>
<p>FROM THE BACK COVER </p>
<p>Matthew Mather is a leading cybersecurity expert who presented in Washington to the FBI and CIA, warning of the impending danger of possible cyberattacks like the one that "hobbled Atlanta" in March of 2018 as reported by The New York Times. </p>
<p>Translated in twenty three countries, CyberStorm is a worldwide bestseller, a new apocalyptic disaster classic in the spirit of On the Beach, Alas Babylon, One Second After, and Lucifer's Hammer that will appeal to fans of Tom Clancy and Brad Thor. </p>
<p>Award-winner of the GoodReads Choice Awards in 2013, millions of readers voted CyberStorm into the Top 20 of its category on Goodreads. It has ranked as the number one bestseller in Amazon's technothrillers, conspiracy, military, post-apocalyptic, terrorism, and science fiction categories.</p></div>


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<p>WINNER OF THE NEBULA AWARD </p>
<p>After a global pandemic makes public gatherings illegal and concerts impossible, except for those willing to break the law for the love of music—and for one chance at human connection. </p>
<p>In the Before, when the government didn't prohibit large public gatherings, Luce Cannon was on top of the world. One of her songs had just taken off and she was on her way to becoming a star. Now, in the After, terror attacks and deadly viruses have led the government to ban concerts, and Luce's connection to the world--her music, her purpose—is closed off forever. She does what she has to do: she performs in illegal concerts to a small but passionate community, always evading the law. </p>
<p>Rosemary Laws barely remembers the Before times. She spends her days in Hoodspace, helping customers order all of their goods online for drone delivery—no physical contact with humans needed. By lucky chance, she finds a new job and a new calling: discover amazing musicians and bring their concerts to everyone via virtual reality. The only catch is that she'll have to do something she's never done before and go out in public. Find the illegal concerts and bring musicians into the limelight they deserve. But when she sees how the world could actually be, that won’t be enough.</p></div>


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<p>From the author of CyberStorm comes an an adrenaline-fueled mystery with a noir/tech edge that takes readers to a new edge of the cyber world. </p>
<p>A GLOBAL CORPORATION HIDES A DARK SECRET… <br>A TERRIFYING NEW ADVANCE IN TECHNOLOGY… <br>WILL BE REVEALED. </p>
<p>Follow one man’s journey through a shadowy underworld that threatens the security of humanity. </p>
<p>In a world where corporations have the same rights as human beings…<br>Profit is everything and psychopathic executives call the shots…<br>Anything is possible. </p>
<p>Jake O'Connell leaves a life of crime and swears he'll never return, but his new life as a stock broker in New York is ripped away when his childhood friend Sean Womack is murdered. </p>
<p>Thousands of miles away in Hong Kong, scientist Jin Huang finds a list of wealthy dead people in a massive banking conspiracy. Problem is, some of the people don't stay dead. As Jin begins her investigation, she's petrified to discover her own name on the growing list of dead-but-alive. </p>
<p>On the run, Jake O'Connell and Jin Huang race across continents to uncover a dark secret spreading like a cancer into the world. Why was Sean killed, and how is the list of wealthy dead connected? Are some of them really coming back to life? But all this becomes irrelevant when Jake's family is attacked... </p>
<p>About the Author </p>
<p>Translated into 18 languages, published in 23 countries, with multiple TV and movie contracts including 20th Century Fox developing his second novel, CyberStorm, for a major film release, Matthew Mather's books are worldwide bestsellers. He began his career at the McGill Center for Intelligent Machines researching artificial intelligence before starting high-tech ventures in everything from computational nanotechnology to electronic health records to weather prediction systems. He now works as a full-time author of speculative fiction. </p>
<p>Darknet has ranked as a top best seller in Amazon’s techno thriller, conspiracy, and science fiction categories, and if you enjoy A.G. Riddle, Hugh Howey, and Michael Crichton, then you'll love this new thriller based in the world of bitcoin and cryptocurrency the New York Times called "the inspiration for Utopian dreams".</p></div>


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<p>When a very few have everything worth living for, those beneath the shine will stop at nothing to burn it all down.</p>
<p>In a future United States where those who control technology control the wealth, seventeen-year-old Marguerite’s viral video propels a populist candidate to presidential victory on a platform of “tech for all.” But as the mouthpiece of the new leader determined to break the elite stronghold, Marguerite finds herself on the opposite side of the divide in a new high school full of technocrat teens.</p>
<p>When the enigmatic Percy, with his flamboyant fashion sense, sharp wit, and tragic past, takes an interest in her, she is suspicious. But with everyone against her, she needs an ally. Percy is drawn to Marguerite’s passion for the cause, but the legacy of his murdered scientist parents prevents him from letting her get too close.</p>
<p>Soon terrorists strike the capital and technocrat leaders begin turning up dead, and the two must work together to protect both their families and the country. With everyone literally plugged into technology, total domination will take only a flip of the switch. In order to preserve their freedom and the future Marguerite envisions, she and Percy may be forced to pay the ultimate price.</p></div>


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<p>It begins in Toronto, in the years after the smart drug revolution. Any high school student with a chemjet and internet connection can download recipes and print drugs, or invent them. A seventeen-year-old street girl finds God through a new brain-altering drug called Numinous, used as a sacrament by a new Church that preys on the underclass. But she is arrested and put into detention, and without the drug, commits suicide.</p>
<p>Lyda Rose, another patient in that detention facility, has a dark secret: she was one of the original scientists who developed the drug. With the help of an ex-government agent and an imaginary, drug-induced doctor, Lyda sets out to find the other three survivors of the five who made the Numinous in a quest to set things right.</p>
<p>A mind-bending and violent chase across Canada and the US, Daryl Gregory's Afterparty is a last chance to save civilization, or die trying.</p></div>


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<p>“Along with the almost satirical rendering of the world, the lovely writing, and engaging plot, the characters of George and Pandora are brilliant.” ―Booklist</p>
<p>Pandora Lynch lives in Alaska with her single dad, an online therapist for Silicon Valley’s brightest and squirreliest. Homeschooled by computer and a self-taught hacker, Pandora is about to enter high school to learn how to be normal. That’s the plan at least.</p>
<p>NorCal runaway George Jedson is a hacker too―one who leaves the systems he attacks working better than before. After being scooped up by a social media giant, will George go legit―or pull off the biggest hack ever? Not even his therapist knows for sure, but maybe the headshrinker’s daughter…</p>
<p>After meeting in cyberspace, the two young hackers combine their passions to conceive a brainchild named BUZZ. Can this baby AI learn to behave, or will it be like its parents and think outside the box?</p>
<p>With a hilarious and deeply empathetic narrative voice, this elegiac and unapologetically irreverent novel is both humorous and tragic without ever taking itself too seriously.</p></div>


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<p>David Brin, Hugo award-winning author of The Uplift War, presents Chasing Shadows, a collection of short stories and essays by other science fiction luminaries. As we debate Internet privacy, revenge porn, the NSA, and Edward Snowden, cameras get smaller, faster, and more numerous. Has Orwell's Big Brother finally come to pass? Or have we become a global society of thousands of Little Brothers―watching, judging, and reporting on one another? </p>
<p>Partnering with the Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination, and inspired by Brin's nonfiction book The Transparent Society, noted author and futurist David Brin and scholar Stephen Potts have compiled essays and short stories from writers such as Robert J. Sawyer, James Morrow, William Gibson, Damon Knight, Jack McDevitt, and many others to examine the benefits and pitfalls of technologic transparency in all its permutations.</p></div>


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<p>A breakthrough in human cloning becomes one woman’s waking nightmare in a mind-bending thriller by the Wall Street Journal bestselling author of the Gibson Vaughn series.</p>
<p>In the near future, advances in medicine and quantum computing make human cloning a reality. For the wealthy, cheating death is the ultimate luxury. To anticloning militants, it’s an abomination against nature. For young Constance “Con” D’Arcy, who was gifted her own clone by her late aunt, it’s terrifying.</p>
<p>After a routine monthly upload of her consciousness—stored for that inevitable transition—something goes wrong. When Con wakes up in the clinic, it’s eighteen months later. Her recent memories are missing. Her original, she’s told, is dead. If that’s true, what does that make her?</p>
<p>The secrets of Con’s disorienting new life are buried deep. So are those of how and why she died. To uncover the truth, Con is retracing the last days she can recall, crossing paths with a detective who’s just as curious. On the run, she needs someone she can trust. Because only one thing has become clear: Con is being marked for murder—all over again.</p></div>


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<p>S. L. Huang's Critical Point is a breakout SF thriller for fans of John Scalzi and Greg Rucka.Math-genius mercenary Cas Russell has stopped a shadow organization from brainwashing the world and discovered her past was deliberately erased and her superhuman abilities deliberately created. And that's just the start: when a demolitions expert targets Cas and her friends, and the hidden conspiracy behind Cas's past starts to reappear, the past, present, and future collide in a race to save one of her dearest friends.At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.</p></div>


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<p>In a future London, Concentr8 is a prescription drug intended to help kids with ADD. Soon every troubled teen is on it. It makes sense, doesn't it? Keep the undesirable elements in line. Keep people like us safe from people like them. What's good for society is good for everyone. Troy, Femi, Lee, Karen and Blaze have been taking Concentr8 as long as they can remember. They're not exactly a gang, but Blaze is their leader, and Troy has always been his quiet, watchful sidekick – the only one Blaze really trusts. They're not looking for trouble, but one hot summer day, when riots break out across the city, they find it.What makes five kids pick a man seemingly at random – a nobody, he works in the housing department, doesn't even have a good phone – hold a knife to his side, take him to a warehouse and chain him to a radiator? They've got a hostage, but don't really know what they want, or why they've done it. And across the course of five tense days, with a journalist, a floppy-haired mayor, a police negotiator, and the sinister face of the pharmaceutical industry, they – and we – begin to understand why ...This is a book about what how we label children. It's about how kids get lost and failed by the system. It's about how politicians manipulate them. Gripping and controversial reading for fans of Malorie Blackman and Patrick Ness.</p></div>


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<p>In <em>Deus Ex: Human Revolution</em>, you play Adam Jensen, a security specialist, handpicked to oversee the defense of one of America’s most experimental biotechnology firms. But when a black ops team uses a plan you designed to break in and kill the scientists you were hired to protect, everything you thought you knew about your job changes. At a time when scientific advancements are routinely turning athletes, soldiers and spies into super-enhanced beings, someone is working very hard to ensure mankind’s evolution follows a particular path, and you need to discover why - the decisions you take and the choices you make, will be the only things that can change it.</p>
<p>Featured in more than 50 “Best of 2011” videogame list Machinima.com- 95/100 “absolutely fantastic”, Eurogamer.net- 9/10 "When you finish, you just want to play it again", Xbox World Magazine- 9.4/10 “It's a great shooter, a great stealth game, a great RPG”, Edge-online.com– 9/10 “Remarkable and unique”, Official Xbox Magazine- “Deliriously addictive”, IGN.com- 9/10,1UP.com- A.</p>
<ul><li>Developer(s): Eidos-Montréal[a]</li>
<li>Publisher(s): Square Enix Europe</li>
<li>Director(s): Jean-François Dugas</li>
<li>Producer(s): David Anfossi</li>
<li>Designer(s): François Lapikas, Antoine Thisdale, Pierre-Francis Lafleur</li>
<li>Programmer(s): Simon Hamelin, Julien Bouvrais</li>
<li>Artist(s): Jonathan Jacques-Belletête</li>
<li>Writer(s): Mary DeMarle</li>
<li>Composer(s): Michael McCann</li>
<li>Series: Deus Ex</li>
<li>Genre(s)	Action role-playing, immersive sim, first-person shooter, stealth</li>
<li>Mode(s)	Single-player</li></ul></div>


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<h3>Amazon.com Review</h3>
<p>Among the seminal texts of the 20th century, Nineteen Eighty-Four is a rare work that grows more haunting as its futuristic purgatory becomes more real. Published in 1949, the book offers political satirist George Orwell's nightmare vision of a totalitarian, bureaucratic world and one poor stiff's attempt to find individuality. The brilliance of the novel is Orwell's prescience of modern life--the ubiquity of television, the distortion of the language--and his ability to construct such a thorough version of hell. Required reading for students since it was published, it ranks among the most terrifying novels ever written.</p>
<h3>Product Description</h3>
<p>"If you want to a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever." </p>
<p>Orwell's classic vision of a totalitarian dystopia. Winston Smith yearns for truth and decency but faces a terrifying regime.</p>
<h3>Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.</h3>
<p>ONE</p>
<p>It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. Winston Smith, his chin nuzzled into his breast in an effort to escape the vile wind, slipped quickly through the glass doors of Victory Mansions, though not quickly enough to prevent a swirl of gritty dust from entering along with him.</p>
<p>The hallway smelt of boiled cabbage and old rag mats. At one end of it a colored poster, too large for indoor display, had been tacked to the wall. It depicted simply an enormous face, more than a meter wide: the face of a man of about forty-five, with a heavy black mustache and ruggedly handsome features. Winston made for the stairs. It was no use trying the lift. Even at the best of times it was seldom working, and at present the electric current was cut off during daylight hours. It was part of the economy drive in preparation for Hate Week. The flat was seven flights up, and Winston, who was thirty-nine, and had a varicose ulcer above his right ankle, went slowly, resting several times on the way. On each landing, opposite the lift shaft, the poster with the enormous face gazed from the wall. It was one of those pictures which are so contrived that the eyes follow you about when you move. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption beneath it ran.</p>
<p>Inside the flat a fruity voice was reading out a list of figures which had something to do with the production of pig iron. The voice came from an oblong metal plaque like a dulled mirror which formed part of the surface of the right-hand wall. Winston turned a switch and the voice sank somewhat, though the words were still distinguishable. The instrument (the telescreen, it was called) could be dimmed, but there was no way of shutting it off completely. He moved over to the window: a smallish, frail figure, the meagerness of his body merely emphasized by the blue overalls which were the uni- form of the Party. His hair was very fair, his face naturally sanguine, his skin roughened by coarse soap and blunt razor blades and the cold of the winter that had just ended.</p>
<p>Outside, even through the shut window pane, the world looked cold. Down in the street little eddies of wind were whirling dust and torn paper into spirals, and though the sun was shining and the sky a harsh blue, there seemed to be no color in anything except the posters that were plastered every- where. The black-mustachio’d face gazed down from every commanding corner. There was one on the house front immediately opposite. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption said, while the dark eyes looked deep into Winston’s own. Down at street level another poster, torn at one corner, flapped fitfully in the wind, alternately covering and uncovering the single word INGSOC. In the far distance a helicopter skimmed down between the roofs, hovered for an instant like a blue-bottle, and darted away again with a curving flight. It was the Police Patrol, snooping into people’s windows. The patrols did not matter, however. Only the Thought Police mattered.</p>
<p>Behind Winston’s back the voice from the telescreen was still babbling away about pig iron and the overfulfillment of the Ninth Three-Year Plan. The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it; moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live— did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.</p>
<p>Winston kept his back turned to the telescreen. It was safer; though, as he well knew, even a back can be revealing. A kilometer away the Ministry of Truth, his place of work, towered vast and white above the grimy landscape. This, he thought with a sort of vague distaste—this was London, chief city of Airstrip One, itself the third most populous of the provinces of Oceania. He tried to squeeze out some childhood memory that should tell him whether London had always been quite like this. Were there always these vistas of rotting nineteenth- century houses, their sides shored up with balks of timber, their windows patched with cardboard and their roofs with corrugated iron, their crazy garden walls sagging in all directions? And the bombed sites where the plaster dust swirled in the air and the willow herb straggled over the heaps of rubble; and the places where the bombs had cleared a larger path and there had sprung up sordid colonies of wooden dwellings like chicken houses? But it was no use, he could not remember: nothing remained of his childhood except a series of bright-lit tableaux, occurring against no background and mostly unintelligible.</p>
<p>The Ministry of Truth—Minitrue, in Newspeak*—was startlingly different from any other object in sight. It was an enormous pyramidal structure of glittering white concrete, soaring up, terrace after terrace, three hundred meters into the air. From where Winston stood it was just possible to read, picked out on its white face in elegant lettering, the three slogans of the Party:</p>
<p>WAR IS PEACE FREEDOM IS SLAVERY</p>
<p>IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.</p>
<p>The Ministry of Truth contained, it was said, three thousand rooms above ground level, and corresponding ramifications below. Scattered about London there were just three other buildings of similar appearance and size. So completely did they dwarf the surrounding architecture that from the roof of Victory Mansions you could see all four of them simultaneously. They were the homes of the four Ministries between which the entire apparatus of government was divided: the Ministry of Truth, which concerned itself with news, entertainment, education, and the fine arts; the Ministry of Peace, which concerned itself with war; the Ministry of Love, which maintained law and order; and the Ministry of Plenty, which was responsible for economic affairs. Their names, in Newspeak: Minitrue, Minipax, Miniluv, and Miniplenty.</p>
<p>The Ministry of Love was the really frightening one. There were no windows in it at all. Winston had never been inside the Ministry of Love, nor within half a kilometer of it. It was a place impossible to enter except on official business, and then only by penetrating through a maze of barbed-wire entanglements, steel doors, and hidden machine-gun nests. Even the streets leading up to its outer barriers were roamed by gorilla-faced guards in black uniforms, armed with jointed truncheons.</p>
<p>Winston turned round abruptly. He had set his features into the expression of quiet optimism which it was advisable to wear when facing the telescreen. He crossed the room into the tiny kitchen. By leaving the Ministry at this time of day he had sacrificed his lunch in the canteen, and he was aware that there was no food in the kitchen except a hunk of dark-colored bread which had got to be saved for tomorrow’s breakfast. He took down from the shelf a bottle of colorless liquid with a plain white label marked VICTORY GIN. It gave off a sickly, oily smell, as of Chinese rice-spirit. Winston poured out nearly a teacupful, nerved himself for a shock, and gulped it down like a dose of medicine.</p>
<p>Instantly his face turned scarlet and the water ran out of his eyes. The stuff was like nitric acid, and moreover, in swallow- ing it one had the sensation of being hit on the back of the head with a rubber club. The next moment, however, the burning in his belly died down and the world began to look more cheerful. He took a cigarette from a crumpled packet marked VICTORY CIGARETTES and incautiously held it upright, where- upon the tobacco fell out onto the floor. With the next he was more successful. He went back to the living room and sat down at a small table that stood to the left of the telescreen. From the table drawer he took out a penholder, a bottle of ink, and a thick, quarto-sized blank book with a red back and a marbled cover.</p>
<p>For some reason the telescreen in the living room was in an unusual position. Instead of being placed, as was normal, in the end wall, where it could command the whole room, it was in the longer wall, opposite the window. To one side of it there was a shallow alcove in which Winston was now sitting and which, when the flats were built, had probably been intended to hold bookshelves. By sitting in the alcove, and keeping well back, Winston was able to remain outside the range of the telescreen, so far as sight went. He could be heard, of course, but so long as he stayed in his present position he could not be seen. It was partly the unusual geography of the room that had suggested to him the thing that he was now about to do.</p>
<p>But it had also been suggested by the book that he had just taken out of the drawer. It was a peculiarly beautiful book. Its smooth creamy paper, a little yellowed by age, was of a kind that had not been manufactured for at least forty years past. He could guess, however, that the book was much older than that. He had seen it lying in the window of a frowsy little junk shop in a slummy quarter of the town (just what quarter he did not now remember) and had been stricken immediately by an overwhelming desire to possess it. Party members were sup- posed not to go into ordinary shops (“dealing on the free mar- ket,” it was called), but the rule was not strictly kept, because there were various things such as shoelaces and razor blades which it was impossible to get hold of in any other way. He had given a quick glance up and down the street and then had slipped inside and bought the book for two dollars fifty. At the time he was not conscious of wanting it for any particular pur- pose. He had carried it guiltily home in his brief case. Even with nothing written in it, it was a compromising possession. The thing that he was about to do was to open a diary. This was not illegal (nothing was illegal, since there were no longer any laws), but if detected it was reasonably certain that it would be punished by death, or at least by twenty-five years in a forced-labor camp. Winston fitted a nib into the penholder and sucked it to get the grease off. The pen was an archaic in- strument, seldom used even for signatures, and he had pro- cured one, furtively and with some difficulty, simply because of a feeling that the beautiful creamy paper deserved to be written on with a real nib instead of being scratched with an ink pencil. Actually he was not used to writing by hand. Apart from very short notes, it was usual to dictate everything into the speakwrite, which was of course impossible for his present purpose. He dipped the pen into the ink and then faltered for just a second. A tremor had gone through his bowels. To mark the paper was the decisive act. In small clumsy letters he wrote:</p>
<p>April 4th, 1984.</p>
<p>He sat back. A sense of complete helplessness had de- scended upon him. To begin with, he did not know with any certainty that this was 1984. It must be round about that date, since he was fairly sure that his age was thirty-nine, and he believed that he had been born in 1944 or 1945; but it was never possible nowadays to pin down any date within a year or two.</p>
<p>For whom, it suddenly occurred to him to wonder, was he writing this diary? For the future, for the unborn. His mind hovered for a moment round the doubtful date on the page, and then fetched up with a bump against the Newspeak word doublethink. For the first time the magnitude of what he had undertaken came home to him. How could you communicate with the future? It was of its nature impossible. Either the future would resemble the present, in which case it would not listen to him, or it would be different from it, and his predicament would be meaningless.</p>
<p>For some time he sat gazing stupidly at the paper. The telescreen had changed over to strident military music. It was curious that he seemed not merely to have lost the power of expressing himself, but even to have forgotten what it was that he had originally intended to say. For weeks past he had been making ready for this moment, and it had never crossed his mind that anything would be needed except courage. The actual writing would be easy. All he had to do was to transfer to paper the interminable restless monologue that had been run- ning inside his head, literally for years. At this moment, how- ever, even the monologue had dried up. Moreover, his varicose ulcer had begun itching unbearably. He dared not scratch it, because if he did so it always became inflamed. The seconds were ticking by. He was conscious of nothing except the blankness of the page in front of him, the itching of the skin above his ankle, the blaring of the music, and a slight booziness caused by the gin.</p>
<p>Suddenly he began writing in sheer panic, only imperfectly aware of what he was setting down. His small but childish handwriting straggled up and down the page, shedding first its capital letters and finally even its full stops:</p>
<p>April 4th, 1984. Last night to the flicks. All war films. One very good one of a ship full of refugees being bombed somewhere in the Mediterranean. Audience much amused by shots of a great huge fat man trying to swim away with a helicopter after him. first you saw him wallowing along in the water like a porpoise, then you saw him through the helicopters gunsights, then he was full of holes and the sea round him turned pink and he sank as suddenly as though the holes had let in the water. audience shouting with laughter when he sank. then you saw a lifeboat full of children with a helicop- ter hovering over it. there was a middleaged woman might have been a jewess sitting up in the bow with a little boy about three years old in her arms. little boy screaming with fright and hiding his head between her breasts as if he was trying to burrow right into her and the woman putting her arms around him and comfort- ing him although she was blue with fright herself. all the time covering him up as much as possible as if she thought her arms could keep the bullets off him. then the helicopter planted a 20 kilo bomb in among them terrific flash and the boat went all to matchwood. then there was a wonderful shot of a childs arm going up up up right up into the air a helicopter with a camera in its nose must have followed it up and there was a lot of ap- plause from the party seats but a woman down in the prole part of the house suddenly started kicking up a fuss and shouting they didnt oughter of showed it not in front of the kids they didnt it aint right not in front of kids it aint until the police turned her turned her out i dont suppose anything happened to her nobody cares what the proles say typical prole reaction they never—</p>
<p>Winston stopped writing, partly because he was suffering from cramp. He did not know what had made him pour out this stream of rubbish. But the curious thing was that while he was doing so a totally different memory had clarified itself in his mind, to the point where he almost felt equal to writing it down. It was, he now realized, because of this other incident that he had suddenly decided to come home and begin the diary today.</p>
<p>It had happened that morning at the Ministry, if anything so nebulous could be said to happen.</p>
<p>It was nearly eleven hundred, and in the Records Department, where Winston worked, they were dragging the chairs out of the cubicles and grouping them in the center of the hall, opposite the big telescreen, in preparation for the Two Minutes Hate. Winston was just taking his place in one of the mid- dle rows when two people whom he knew by sight, but had never spoken to, came unexpectedly into the room. One of them was a girl whom he often passed in the corridors. He did not know her name, but he knew that she worked in the Fiction Department. Presumably—since he had sometimes seen her with oily hands and carrying a spanner—she had some mechanical job on one of the novel-writing machines. She was a bold-looking girl of about twenty-seven, with thick dark hair, a freckled face, and swift, athletic movements. A narrow scarlet sash, emblem of the Junior Anti-Sex League, was wound several times around the waist of her overalls, just tightly enough to bring out the shapeliness of her hips. Win- ston had disliked her from the very first moment of seeing her. He knew the reason. It was because of the atmosphere of hockey fields and cold baths and community hikes and general clean-mindedness which she managed to carry about with her. He disliked nearly all women, and especially the young and pretty ones. It was always the women, and above all the young ones, who were the most bigoted adherents of the Party, the swallowers of slogans, the amateur spies and nosers-out of unorthodoxy. But this particular girl gave him the impression of being more dangerous than most. Once when they passed in the corridor she had given him a quick sidelong glance which seemed to pierce right into him and for a moment had filled him with black terror. The idea had even crossed his mind that she might be an agent of the Thought Police. That, it was true, was very unlikely. Still, he continued to feel a peculiar uneasiness, which had fear mixed up in it as well as hostility, whenever she was anywhere near him.</p>
<p>The other person was a man named O’Brien, a member of the Inner Party and holder of some post so important and remote that Winston had only a dim idea of its nature. A mo- mentary hush passed over the group of people round the chairs as they saw the black overalls of an Inner Party member approaching. O’Brien was a large, burly man with a thick neck and a coarse, humorous, brutal face. In spite of his for- midable appearance he had a certain charm of manner. He had a trick of resettling his spectacles on his nose which was curiously disarming—in some indefinable way, curiously civi- lized. It was a gesture which, if anyone had still thought in such terms, might have recalled an eighteenth-century noble- man offering his snuffbox. Winston had seen O’Brien perhaps a dozen times in almost as many years. He felt deeply drawn to him, and not solely because he was intrigued by the con- trast between O’Brien’s urbane manner and his prizefighter’s physique. Much more it was because of a secretly held belief—or perhaps not even a belief, merely a hope—that O’Brien’s political orthodoxy was not perfect. Something in his face suggested it irresistibly. And again, perhaps it was not even unorthodoxy that was written in his face, but simply intelligence. But at any rate he had the appearance of being a person that you could talk to, if somehow you could cheat the telescreen and get him alone. Winston had never made the smallest effort to verify this guess; indeed, there was no way of doing so. At this moment O’Brien glanced at his wrist- watch, saw that it was nearly eleven hundred, and evidently decided to stay in the Records Department until the Two Min- utes Hate was over. He took a chair in the same row as Win- ston, a couple of places away. A small, sandy-haired woman who worked in the next cubicle to Winston was between them. The girl with dark hair was sitting immediately behind.</p>
<p>The next moment a hideous, grinding screech, as of some monstrous machine running without oil, burst from the big telescreen at the end of the room. It was a noise that set one’s teeth on edge and bristled the hair at the back of one’s neck. The Hate had started.</p>
<p>As usual, the face of Emmanuel Goldstein, the Enemy of the People, had flashed onto the screen. There were hisses here and there among the audience. The little sandy-haired woman gave a squeak of mingled fear and disgust. Goldstein was the renegade and backslider who once, long ago (how long ago, nobody quite remembered), had been one of the leading figures of the Party, almost on a level with Big Brother himself, and then had engaged in counterrevolutionary activities, had been condemned to death, and had mysteri- ously escaped and disappeared. The program of the Two Minutes Hate varied from day to day, but there was none in which Goldstein was not the principal figure. He was the pri- mal traitor, the earliest defiler of the Party’s purity. All subse- quent crimes against the Party, all treacheries, acts of sabotage, heresies, deviations, sprang directly out of his teaching. Somewhere or other he was still alive and hatching his conspiracies: perhaps somewhere beyond the sea, under the protection of his foreign paymasters; perhaps even—so it was occasionally rumored—in some hiding place in Oceania itself.</p>
<p>Winston’s diaphragm was constricted. He could never see the face of Goldstein without a painful mixture of emotions. It was a lean Jewish face, with a great fuzzy aureole of white hair and a small goatee beard—a clever face, and yet some- how inherently despicable, with a kind of senile silliness in the long thin nose near the end of which a pair of spectacles was perched. It resembled the face of a sheep, and the voice, too, had a sheeplike quality. Goldstein was delivering his usual venomous attack upon the doctrines of the Party—an at- tack so exaggerated and perverse that a child should have been able to see through it, and yet just plausible enough to fill one with an alarmed feeling that other people, less level- headed than oneself, might be taken in by it. He was abusing Big Brother, he was denouncing the dictatorship of the Party, he was demanding the immediate conclusion of peace with Eurasia, he was advocating freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom of thought, he was cry- ing hysterically that the Revolution had been betrayed—and all this in rapid polysyllabic speech which was a sort of par- ody of the habitual style of the orators of the Party, and even contained Newspeak words: more Newspeak words, indeed, than any Party member would normally use in real life. And all the while, lest one should be in any doubt as to the reality which Goldstein’s specious claptrap covered, behind his head on the telescreen there marched the endless columns of the Eurasian army—row after row of solid-looking men with ex- pressionless Asiatic faces, who swam up to the surface of the screen and vanished, to be replaced by others exactly similar. The dull, rhythmic tramp of the soldiers’ boots formed the background to Goldstein’s bleating voice.</p>
<p>Before the Hate had proceeded for thirty seconds, uncontrollable exclamations of rage were breaking out from half the people in the room. The self-satisfied sheeplike face on the screen, and the terrifying power of the Eurasian army behind it, were too much to be borne; besides, the sight or even the thought of Goldstein produced fear and anger automatically. He was an object of hatred more constant than either Eurasia or Eastasia, since when Oceania was at war with one of these powers it was generally at peace with the other. But what was strange was that although Goldstein was hated and despised by everybody, although every day, and a thousand times a day, on platforms, on the telescreen, in newspapers, in books, his the- ories were refuted, smashed, ridiculed, held up to the general gaze for the pitiful rubbish that they were—in spite of all this, his influence never seemed to grow less. Always there were fresh dupes waiting to be seduced by him. A day never passed when spies and saboteurs acting under his directions were not unmasked by the Thought Police. He was the commander of a vast shadowy army, an underground network of conspirators dedicated to the overthrow of the State. The Brotherhood, its name was supposed to be. There were also whispered stories of a terrible book, a compendium of all the heresies, of which Goldstein was the author and which circulated clandestinely here and there. It was a book without a title. People referred to it, if at all, simply as the book. But one knew of such things only through vague rumors. Neither the Brotherhood nor the book was a subject that any ordinary Party member would mention if there was a way of avoiding it.</p>
<p>In its second minute the Hate rose to a frenzy. People were leaping up and down in their places and shouting at the tops of their voices in an effort to drown the maddening bleating voice that came from the screen. The little sandy-haired woman had turned bright pink, and her mouth was opening and shutting like that of a landed fish. Even O’Brien’s heavy face was flushed. He was sitting very straight in his chair, his powerful chest swelling and quivering as though he were standing up to the assault of a wave. The dark-haired girl be- hind Winston had begun crying out “Swine! Swine! Swine!” and suddenly she picked up a heavy Newspeak dictionary and flung it at the screen. It struck Goldstein’s nose and bounced off; the voice continued inexorably. In a lucid moment Win- ston found that he was shouting with the others and kicking his heel violently against the rung of his chair. The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but that it was impossible to avoid joining in. Within thirty seconds any pretense was always unnec- essary. A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one’s will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic. And yet the rage that one felt was an abstract, undirected emotion which could be switched from one object to another like the flame of a blowlamp. Thus, at one moment Winston’s hatred was not turned against Gold- stein at all, but, on the contrary, against Big Brother, the Party, and the Thought Police; and at such moments his heart went out to the lonely, derided heretic on the screen, sole guardian of truth and sanity in a world of lies. And yet the very next instant he was at one with the people about him, and all that was said of Goldstein seemed to him to be true. At those moments his secret loathing of Big Brother changed into adoration, and Big Brother seemed to tower up, an invincible, fearless pro- tector, standing like a rock against the hordes of Asia, and Goldstein, in spite of his isolation, his helplessness, and the doubt that hung about his very existence, seemed like some sinister enchanter, capable by the mere power of his voice of wrecking the structure of civilization.</p>
<p>It was even possible, at moments, to switch one’s hatred this way or that by a voluntary act. Suddenly, by the sort of violent effort with which one wrenches one’s head away from the pillow in a nightmare, Winston succeeded in transferring his hatred from the face on the screen to the dark-haired girl behind him. Vivid, beautiful hallucinations flashed through his mind. He would flog her to death with a rubber truncheon. He would tie her naked to a stake and shoot her full of arrows like Saint Sebastian. He would ravish her and cut her throat at the mo- ment of climax. Better than before, moreover, he realized why it was that he hated her. He hated her because she was young and pretty and sexless, because he wanted to go to bed with her and would never do so, because round her sweet supple waist, which seemed to ask you to encircle it with your arm, there was only the odious scarlet sash, aggressive symbol of chastity.</p>
<p>The Hate rose to its climax. The voice of Goldstein had become an actual sheep’s bleat, and for an instant the face changed into that of a sheep. Then the sheep-face melted into the figure of a Eurasian soldier who seemed to be advancing, huge and terrible, his submachine gun roaring and seeming to spring out of the surface of the screen, so that some of the people in the front row actually flinched backwards in their seats. But in the same moment, drawing a deep sigh of relief from everybody, the hostile figure melted into the face of Big Brother, black-haired, black-mustachio’d, full of power and mysterious calm, and so vast that it almost filled up the screen. Nobody heard what Big Brother was saying. It was merely a few words of encouragement, the sort of words that are uttered in the din of battle, not distinguishable individually but restoring confidence by the fact of being spoken. Then the face of Big Brother faded away again, and instead the three slogans of the Party stood out in bold capitals:</p>
<p>WAR IS PEACE FREEDOM IS SLAVERY</p>
<p>IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.</p>
<p>But the face of Big Brother seemed to persist for several seconds on the screen, as though the impact that it had made on everyone’s eyeballs were too vivid to wear off immediately. The little sandy-haired woman had flung herself forward over the back of the chair in front of her. With a tremulous murmur that sounded like “My Savior!” she extended her arms toward the screen. Then she buried her face in her hands. It was ap- parent that she was uttering a prayer.</p>
<p>At this moment the entire group of people broke into a deep, slow, rhythmical chant of “B-B! . . . B-B! . . . B-B!” over and over again, very slowly, with a long pause between the first “B” and the second—a heavy, murmurous sound, some- how curiously savage, in the background of which one seemed to hear the stamp of naked feet and the throbbing of tom-toms. For perhaps as much as thirty seconds they kept it up. It was a refrain that was often heard in moments of over- whelming emotion. Partly it was a sort of hymn to the wisdom and majesty of Big Brother, but still more it was an act of self- hypnosis, a deliberate drowning of consciousness by means of rhythmic noise. Winston’s entrails seemed to grow cold. In the</p>
<p>Two Minutes Hate he could not help sharing in the general delirium, but this subhuman chanting of “B-B! . . . B-B!” al- ways filled him with horror. Of course he chanted with the rest: it was impossible to do otherwise. To dissemble your feelings, to control your face, to do what everyone else was doing, was an instinctive reaction. But there was a space of a couple of seconds during which the expression in his eyes might conceivably have betrayed him. And it was exactly at this moment that the significant thing happened—if, indeed, it did happen.</p>
<p>Momentarily he caught O’Brien’s eye. O’Brien had stood up. He had taken off his spectacles and was in the act of re- settling them on his nose with his characteristic gesture. But there was a fraction of a second when their eyes met, and for as long as it took to happen Winston knew—yes, he knew!— that O’Brien was thinking the same thing as himself. An un- mistakable message had passed. It was as though their two minds had opened and the thoughts were flowing from one into the other through their eyes. “I am with you,” O’Brien seemed to be saying to him. “I know precisely what you are feeling. I know all about your contempt, your hatred, your disgust. But don’t worry, I am on your side!” And then the flash of intelligence was gone, and O’Brien’s face was as in- scrutable as everybody else’s.</p>
<p>That was all, and he was already uncertain whether it had happened. Such incidents never had any sequel. All that they did was to keep alive in him the belief, or hope, that others be- sides himself were the enemies of the Party. Perhaps the rumors of vast underground conspiracies were true after all—perhaps the Brotherhood really existed! It was impossible, in spite of the endless arrests and confessions and execu- tions, to be sure that the Brotherhood was not simply a myth. Some days he believed in it, some days not. There was no evidence, only fleeting glimpses that might mean anything or nothing: snatches of overheard conversation, faint scribbles on lavatory walls—once, even, when two strangers met, a small movement of the hands which had looked as though it might be a signal of recognition. It was all guesswork: very likely he had imagined everything. He had gone back to his cubicle without looking at O’Brien again. The idea of follow- ing up their momentary contact hardly crossed his mind. It would have been inconceivably dangerous even if he had known how to set about doing it. For a second, two seconds, they had exchanged an equivocal glance, and that was the end of the story. But even that was a memorable event, in the locked loneliness in which one had to live.</p>
<p>Winston roused himself and sat up straighter. He let out a belch. The gin was rising from his stomach.</p>
<p>His eyes refocused on the page. He discovered that while he sat helplessly musing he had also been writing, as though by automatic action. And it was no longer the same cramped aw k- ward handwriting as before. His pen had slid voluptuously over the smooth paper, printing in large neat capitals—</p>
<p>DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER</p>
<p>over and over again, filling half a page.</p>
<p>He could not help feeling a twinge of panic. It was absurd, since the writing of those particular words was not more dan- gerous than the initial act of opening the diary; but for a mo- ment he was tempted to tear out the spoiled pages and abandon the enterprise altogether.</p>
<p>But he did not do so, however, because he knew that it was useless. Whether he wrote DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER, or whether he refrained from writing it, made no difference. Whether he went on with the diary, or whether he did not go on with it, made no difference. The Thought Police would get him just the same. He had committed—would still have committed, even if he had never set pen to paper—the essential crime that contained all others in itself. Thoughtcrime, they called it. Thoughtcrime was not a thing that could be concealed forever. You might dodge successfully for a while, even for years, but sooner or later they were bound to get you.</p>
<p>It was always at night—the arrests invariably happened at night. The sudden jerk out of sleep, the rough hand shaking your shoulder, the lights glaring in your eyes, the ring of hard faces round the bed. In the vast majority of cases there was no trial, no report of the arrest. People simply disappeared, always during the night. Your name was removed from the reg- isters, every record of everything you had ever done was wiped out, your one-time existence was denied and then forgotten. You were abolished, annihilated: vaporized was the usual word.</p>
<p>For a moment he was seized by a kind of hysteria. He began writing in a hurried untidy scrawl:</p>
<p>theyll shoot me i dont care theyll shoot me in the back of the neck i dont care down with big brother they al- ways shoot you in the back of the neck i dont care down with big brother—</p>
<p>He sat back in his chair, slightly ashamed of himself, and laid down his pen. The next moment he started violently. There was a knocking at his door.</p>
<p>Already! He sat as still as a mouse, in the futile hope that whoever it was might go away after a single attempt. But no, the knocking was repeated. The worst thing of all would be to delay. His heart was thumping like a drum, but his face, from long habit, was probably expressionless. He got up and moved heavily toward the door.</p>
<p>II</p>
<p>As he put his hand to the doorknob Winston saw that he had left the diary open on the table. DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER was written all over it, in letters almost big enough to be legible across the room. It was an inconceivably stupid thing to have done. But, he realized, even in his panic he had not wanted to smudge the creamy paper by shutting the book while the ink was wet.</p>
<p>He drew in his breath and opened the door. Instantly a warm wave of relief flowed through him. A colorless, crushed-looking woman, with wispy hair and a lined face, was standing outside.</p>
<p>“Oh, comrade,” she began in a dreary, whining sort of voice, “I thought I heard you come in. Do you think you could come across and have a look at our kitchen sink? It’s got blocked up and—”</p>
<p>It was Mrs. Parsons, the wife of a neighbor on the same floor. (“Mrs.” was a word somewhat discountenanced by the Party—you were supposed to call everyone “comrade”—but with some women one used it instinctively.) She was a woman of about thirty, but looking much older. One had the impression that there was dust in the creases of her face. Winston followed her down the passage. These amateur repair jobs were an almost daily irritation. Victory Mansions were old flats, built in 1930 or thereabouts, and were falling to pieces. The plaster flaked constantly from ceilings and walls, the pipes burst in every hard frost, the roof leaked whenever there was snow, the heating system was usually running at half steam when it was not closed down altogether from motives of economy. Repairs, except what you could do for yourself, had to be sanctioned by remote committees which were liable to hold up even the mending of a window pane for two years.</p>
<p>“Of course it’s only because Tom isn’t home,” said Mrs. Parsons vaguely.</p>
<p>The Parsonses’s flat was bigger than Winston’s, and dingy in a different way. Everything had a battered, trampled-on look, as though the place had just been visited by some large violent animal. Games impedimenta—hockey sticks, boxing gloves, a burst football, a pair of sweaty shorts turned inside out—lay all over the floor, and on the table there was a litter of dirty dishes and dog-eared exercise books. On the walls were scarlet banners of the Youth League and the Spies, and a full-sized poster of Big Brother. There was the usual boiled- cabbage smell, common to the whole building, but it was shot through by a sharper reek of sweat, which—one knew this at the first sniff, though it was hard to say how—was the sweat of some person not present at the moment. In another room someone with a comb and a piece of toilet paper was trying to keep tune with the military music which was still issuing from the telescreen.</p>
<p>“It’s the children,” said Mrs. Parsons, casting a half- apprehensive glance at the door. “They haven’t been out today. And of course—”</p>
<p>She had a habit of breaking off her sentences in the middle. The kitchen sink was full nearly to the brim with filthy gr e e n- ish water which smelt worse than ever of cabbage. Winston knelt down and examined the angle-joint of the pipe. He hated using his hands, and he hated bending down, which was always liable to start him coughing. Mrs. Parsons looked on helplessly. “Of course if Tom was home he’d put it right in a moment,” she said. “He loves anything like that. He’s ever so good with his hands, Tom is.”</p>
<p>Parsons was Winston’s fellow employee at the Ministry of Truth. He was a fattish but active man of paralyzing stupidity, a mass of imbecile enthusiasms—one of those completely un- questioning, devoted drudges on whom, more even than on the Thought Police, the stability of the Party depended. At thirty-five he had just been unwillingly evicted from the Youth League, and before graduating into the Youth League he had managed to stay on in the Spies for a year beyond the statutory age. At the Ministry he was employed in some subordinate post for which intelligence was not required, but on the other hand he was a leading figure on the Sports Committee and all the other committees engaged in organizing community hikes, spontaneous demonstrations, saving campaigns, and voluntary activities generally. He would inform you with quiet pride, between whiffs of his pipe, that he had put in an appearance at the Community Center every evening for the past four years. An overpowering smell of sweat, a sort of unconscious testimony to the strenuousness of his life, followed him about wherever he went, and even remained behind him after he had gone.</p>
<p>“Have you got a spanner?” said Winston, fiddling with the nut on the angle-joint.</p>
<p>“A spanner,” said Mrs. Parsons, immediately becoming invertebrate. “I don’t know, I’m sure. Perhaps the children—”</p>
<p>There was a trampling of boots and another blast on the comb as the children charged into the living room. Mrs. Par- sons brought the spanner. Winston let out the water and dis- gustedly removed the clot of human hair that had blocked up the pipe. He cleaned his fingers as best he could in the cold water from the tap and went back into the other room.</p>
<p>“Up with your hands!” yelled a savage voice.</p>
<p>A handsome, tough-looking boy of nine had popped up from behind the table and was menacing him with a toy auto- matic pistol, while his small sister, about two years younger, made the same gesture with a fragment of wood. Both of them were dressed in the blue shorts, gray shirts, and red necker- chiefs which were the uniform of the Spies. Winston raised his hands above his head, but with an uneasy feeling, so vicious was the boy’s demeanor, that it was not altogether a game.</p>
<p>“You’re a traitor!” yelled the boy. “You’re a thought-criminal! You’re a Eurasian spy! I’ll shoot you, I’ll vaporize you, I’ll send you to the salt mines!”</p>
<p>Suddenly they were both leaping around him, shouting “Traitor!” and “Thought-criminal!”, the little girl imitating her brother in every movement. It was somehow slightly frightening, like the gamboling of tiger cubs which will soon grow up into man-eaters. There was a sort of calculating ferocity in the boy’s eye, a quite evident desire to hit or kick Winston and a consciousness of being very nearly big enough to do so. It was a good job it was not a real pistol he was holding, Winston thought.</p>
<p>Mrs. Parsons’s eyes flitted nervously from Winston to the children, and back again. In the better light of the living room he noticed with interest that there actually was dust in the creases of her face.</p>
<p>“They do get so noisy,” she said. “They’re disappointed because they couldn’t go to see the hanging, that’s what it is. I’m too busy to take them, and Tom won’t be back from work in time.”</p>
<p>“Why can’t we go and see the hanging?” roared the boy in his huge voice.</p>
<p>“Want to see the hanging! Want to see the hanging!” chanted the little girl, still capering round.</p>
<p>Some Eurasian prisoners, guilty of war crimes, were to be hanged in the Park that evening, Winston remembered. This happened about once a month, and was a popular spectacle. Children always clamored to be taken to see it. He took his leave of Mrs. Parsons and made for the door. But he had not gone six steps down the passage when something hit the back of his neck an agonizingly painful blow. It was as though a red-hot wire had been jabbed into him. He spun round just in time to see Mrs. Parsons dragging her son back into the door- way while the boy pocketed a catapult.</p>
<p>“Goldstein!” bellowed the boy as the door closed on him. But what most struck Winston was the look of helpless fright on the woman’s grayish face.</p>
<p>Back in the flat he stepped quickly past the telescreen and sat down at the table again, still rubbing his neck. The music from the telescreen had stopped. Instead, a clipped military voice was reading out, with a sort of brutal relish, a description of the armaments of the new Floating Fortress which had just been anchored between Iceland and the Faroe Islands.</p>
<p>With those children, he thought, that wretched woman must lead a life of terror. Another year, two years, and they would be watching her night and day for symptoms of unorthodoxy. Nearly all children nowadays were horrible. What was worst of all was that by means of such organizations as the Spies they were systematically turned into ungovernable little sav- ages, and yet this produced in them no tendency whatever to rebel against the discipline of the Party. On the contrary, they adored the Party and everything connected with it. The songs, the processions, the banners, the hiking, the drilling with dummy rifles, the yelling of slogans, the worship of Big Brother—it was all a sort of glorious game to them. All their ferocity was turned outwards, against the enemies of the State, against foreigners, traitors, saboteurs, thought-criminals. It was almost normal for people over thirty to be frightened of their own children. And with good reason, for hardly a week passed in which the Times did not carry a paragraph describ- ing how some eavesdropping little sneak—“child hero” was the phrase generally used—had overheard some compromis- ing remark and denounced his parents to the Thought Police. The sting of the catapult bullet had worn off. He picked up his pen half-heartedly, wondering whether he could find something more to write in the diary. Suddenly he began thinking of O’Brien again.</p>
<p>Years ago—how long was it? Seven years it must be—he had dreamed that he was walking through a pitch-dark room. And someone sitting to one side of him had said as he passed: “We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness.” It was said very quietly, almost casually—a statement, not a com- mand. He had walked on without pausing. What was curious was that at the time, in the dream, the words had not made much impression on him. It was only later and by degrees that they had seemed to take on significance. He could not now re- member whether it was before or after having the dream that he had seen O’Brien for the first time; nor could he remember when he had first identified the voice as O’Brien’s. But at any rate the identification existed. It was O’Brien who had spoken to him out of the dark.</p>
<p>Winston had never been able to feel sure—even after this morning’s flash of the eyes it was still impossible to be sure— whether O’Brien was a friend or an enemy. Nor did it even seem to matter greatly. There was a link of understanding be- tween them more important than affection or partisanship. “We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness,” he had said. Winston did not know what it meant, only that in some way or another it would come true.</p>
<p>The voice from the telescreen paused. A trumpet call, clear and beautiful, floated into the stagnant air. The voice continued raspingly:</p>
<p>“Attention! Your attention, please! A newsflash has this mo- ment arrived from the Malabar front. Our forces in South India have won a glorious victory. I am authorized to say that the action we are now reporting may well bring the war within measurable distance of its end. Here is the newsflash—”</p>
<p>Bad news coming, thought Winston. And sure enough, following on a gory description of the annihilation of a Eurasian army, with stupendous figures of killed and prisoners, came the announcement that, as from next week, the chocolate ration would be reduced from thirty grams to twenty.</p>
<p>Winston belched again. The gin was wearing off, leaving a deflated feeling. The telescreen—perhaps to celebrate the victory, perhaps to drown the memory of the lost chocolate—crashed into “Oceania, ’tis for thee.” You were supposed to stand to at- tention. However, in his present position he was invisible.</p>
<p>“Oceania, ’tis for thee” gave way to lighter music. Winston walked over to the window, keeping his back to the telescreen. The day was still cold and clear. Somewhere far away a rocket bomb exploded with a dull, reverberating roar. About twenty or thirty of them a week were falling on London at present.</p>
<p>Down in the street the wind flapped the torn poster to and fro, and the word INGSOC fitfully appeared and vanished. Ing- soc. The sacred principles of Ingsoc. Newspeak, doublethink, the mutability of the past. He felt as though he were wandering in the forests of the sea bottom, lost in a monstrous world where he himself was the monster. He was alone. The past was dead, the future was unimaginable. What certainty had he that a single human creature now living was on his side? And what way of knowing that the dominion of the Party would not endure forever? Like an answer, the three slogans on the white face of the Ministry of Truth came back at him:</p>
<p>WAR IS PEACE FREEDOM IS SLAVERY</p>
<p>IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.</p>
<p>He took a twenty-five-cent piece out of his pocket. There, too, in tiny clear lettering, the same slogans were inscribed, and on the other face of the coin the head of Big Brother. Even from the coin the eyes pursued you. On coins, on stamps, on the covers of books, on banners, on posters, and on the wrapping of a cigarette packet—everywhere. Always the eyes watching you and the voice enveloping you. Asleep or awake, working or eating, indoors or out of doors, in the bath or in bed—no escape. Nothing was your own except the few cubic centime- ters inside your skull.</p>
<p>The sun had shifted round, and the myriad windows of the Ministry of Truth, with the light no longer shining on them, looked grim as the loopholes of a fortress. His heart quailed before the enormous pyramidal shape. It was too strong, it could not be stormed. A thousand rocket bombs would not batter it down. He wondered again for whom he was writing the diary. For the future, for the past—for an age that might be imaginary. And in front of him there lay not death but annihilation. The diary would be reduced to ashes and himself to vapor. Only the Thought Police would read what he had written, before they wiped it out of existence and out of memory. How could you make appeal to the future when not a trace of you, not even an anonymous word scribbled on a piece of paper, could physically survive?</p>
<p>The telescreen struck fourteen. He must leave in ten minutes. He had to be back at work by fourteen-thirty.</p>
<p>Curiously, the chiming of the hour seemed to have put new heart into him. He was a lonely ghost uttering a truth that nobody would ever hear. But so long as he uttered it, in some ob- scure way the continuity was not broken. It was not by making yourself heard but by staying sane that you carried on the human heritage. He went back to the table, dipped his pen, and wrote:</p>
<p>To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free, when men are different from one another and do not live alone—to a time when truth exists and what is done cannot be undone:</p>
<p>From the age of uniformity, from the age of solitude, from the age of Big Brother, from the age of double- think—greetings!</p>
<p>He was already dead, he reflected. It seemed to him that it was only now, when he had begun to be able to formulate his thoughts, that he had taken the decisive step. The consequences of every act are included in the act itself. He wrote:</p>
<p>Thoughtcrime does not entail death: thoughtcrime IS death.</p>
<p>Now that he had recognized himself as a dead man it be- came important to stay alive as long as possible. Two fingers of his right hand were inkstained. It was exactly the kind of detail that might betray you. Some nosing zealot in the Ministry (a woman, probably; someone like the little sandy-haired woman or the dark-haired girl from the Fiction Department) might start wondering why he had been writing during the lunch interval, why he had used an old-fashioned pen, what he had been writing—and then drop a hint in the appropriate quarter. He went to the bathroom and carefully scrubbed the ink away with the gritty dark-brown soap which rasped your skin like sandpaper and was therefore well adapted for this purpose.</p>
<p>He put the diary away in the drawer. It was quite useless to think of hiding it, but he could at least make sure whether or not its existence had been discovered. A hair laid across the page-ends was too obvious. With the tip of his finger he picked up an identifiable grain of whitish dust and deposited it on the corner of the cover, where it was bound to be shaken off if the book was moved. </p>
<p>*Newspeak was the official language of Oceania. For an account of its structure and etymology, see Appendix.</p>
<h3>Review</h3>
<p>Yet before one has finished reading the nearly bemused first page, it is evident that this is fiction of another order, and presently one makes the distinctly unpleasant discovery that it is not to be satire at all. --The New York Times Book Review</p>
<h3>From AudioFile</h3>
<p>Orwell's classic continues to deliver its horrible vision of totalitarian society. Once considered futuristic, it now conjures fear because of how closely it fits the reality of contemporary times. West's precise pronunciation and strong, intense voice provide the narration and all individual parts. The three major characters are individualized through vocal emphasis, tone and interpretation of each character's personality. West simultaneously weaves the spell of Big Brother while subtly emphasizing the complex emotional and intellectual annihilation of each of the characters. Starting with a detached approach, West intensifies emotions and ends with a finish that leaves the plot firmly embedded in the listener's mind. P.A.J. An AUDIOFILE Earphones Award winner. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine</p>
<h3>From the Back Cover</h3>
<p>While the totalitarianism that provoked George Orwell into writing 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' seems to be passing into oblivion, his harrowing, cautionary tale of a man trapped in a political nightmare has had the opposite fate, and its relevance and power to disturb our complacency seem to grow decade by decade.</p>
<h3>From the Publisher</h3>
<p>7 1.5-hour cassettes</p>
<h3>Review</h3>
<p>Novel by George Orwell, published in 1949 as a warning about the menaces of totalitarianism. The novel is set in an imaginary future world that is dominated by three perpetually warring totalitarian police states. The book's hero, Winston Smith, is a minor party functionary in one of these states. His longing for truth and decency leads him to secretly rebel against the government. Smith has a love affair with a like-minded woman, but they are both arrested by the Thought Police. The ensuing imprisonment, torture, and reeducation of Smith are intended not merely to break him physically or make him submit but to root out his independent mental existence and his spiritual dignity. Orwell's warning of the dangers of totalitarianism made a deep impression on his contemporaries and upon subsequent readers, and the book's title and many of its coinages, such as NEWSPEAK, became bywords for modern political abuses. -- The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature</p>
<h3>Book Description</h3>
<p>Descripción aterradora de la vida bajo la vigilancia constante del "Gran Hermano".</p>
<h3>About the Author</h3>
<p>Eric Arthur Blair (1903-1950), better known by his pen-name, George Orwell, was born in India, where his father worked for the Civil Service. An author and journalist, Orwell was one of the most prominent and influential figures in twentieth-century literature. His unique political allegory Animal Farm was published in 1945, and it was this novel, together with the dystopia of Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), which brought him world-wide fame. His novels and non-fiction include Burmese Days, Down and Out in Paris and London, The Road to Wigan Pier and Homage to Catalonia.</p>
<h3>Review</h3>
<p>His final masterpiece. Enthralling and indispensible for understanding modern history Timothy Garton Ash Right up there among my favourite books ... I read it again and again Margaret Atwood More relevant to today than almost any other book that you can think of Jo Brand One of the most shocking novels of the twentieth century Margaret Drabble The book of the twentieth century Ben Pimlott</p></div>


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<p>Cassandra Kresnov--a highly advanced hunter-killer android--returns to face down a rogue government's plot to eliminate free will. Commander Cassandra Kresnov has her hands full. She must lead an assault against the Federation world of Pyeongwha, where a terrible sociological phenomenon has unleashed hell against the civilian population. Then she faces the threat from a portion of League space known as New Torah, in which a ruthless regime of surviving corporations are building new synthetic soldiers but taking the technology in alarming directions. On the Torahn world of Pantala, Sandy encounters betrayal, crisis, and conspiracy on a scale previously unimaginable. Most challenging of all, she also meets three young street kids who stir emotions in her she didn't think she was capable of. Can the Federation's most lethal killer afford unexpected sentiment? What will be the cost if she is forced to choose between them and her mission, not only to her cause, but to her soul?</p></div>


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<p>Hope for the future in the hands of an enemy from the past . . . </p>
<p>Cassandra Kresnov must find the answers that could free her people—or doom her family. </p>
<p>A quarter of a million people die in the destruction of the moon Cresta. The League civil war is accelerating out of control, but projections indicate that as their technologically induced sociological dysfunction continues, all of humanity may face a similar fate. In the aftermath of Cresta's destruction, Sandy Kresnov discovers the alien Talee operative Cai in Tanusha, there to learn just how far the technologically-induced insanity has gone. The Talee have seen this before, and they are terrified of anything threatening a recurrence. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, Sandy's old nemesis Renaldo Takewashi, the self-proclaimed “father” of synthetic intelligence, comes to the Federation seeking asylum. Talewashi may even have a cure—previously unknown Talee technology implanted into a human child subject—Sandy's little boy, Kiril. But it is exactly this technology that the Talee fear, and they will exterminate anyone caught using it. </p>
<p>Now, Sandy must fight to save her family from a terrible new threat, but doing so may plunge humanity into another destructive war between humans, or worse, against the massively-advanced Talee. And what final secret are the Talee protecting about the origins of synthetic humans like Sandy that could either liberate Sandy’s fellow synthetics from bondage or spell disaster for all humanity?</p></div>


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<p>In a futuristic Middle East, plug-ins can turn anyone into a killer in this “wry and black and savage” Nebula and Hugo award finalist (George R. R. Martin).   Set in a high-tech near future featuring an ascendant Muslim world and divided Western superpowers, this cult classic takes us into a world with mind- or mood-altering drugs for any purpose, brains enhanced by electronic hardware with plug-in memory additions and modules offering the wearer new personalities, and bodies shaped to perfection by surgery. Marid Audran, an unmodified and fairly honest street hustler, lives in a decadent Arab ghetto, the Budayeen, and holds on tight to his cherished independence.   Then, against his best instincts, he becomes involved in a series of inexplicable murders. Some seem like routine assassinations, carried out with an old-fashioned handgun by a man wearing a plug-in James Bond persona; others, involving whores, feature prolonged torture and horrible mutilations. Soon the problem comes to the attention of Budayeen godfather Friedlander Bey—who makes Audran an offer he can’t refuse.   Nominated for the Nebula and Hugo awards, the highest honors in the genre, When Gravity Fails, which introduced the cyberpunk Budayeen Cycle, is a pioneering work the Denver Post called “superior science fiction” and Harlan Ellison described as “crazy as a spider on ice skates . . . plain old terrific.”</p></div>


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<p>Marîd Audran has risen from hustling on the streets of the decadent Budayeen ghetto to being the right-hand man of one of the Maghreb's most feared men. As an enforcer for the powerful Friedlander Bey, Marîd is just beginning to enjoy his newfound wealth and privilege, when he and Bey are betrayed by a rival and accused of murder. </p>
<p>Sentenced to exile and abandoned to die in the vast Arabian desert, Marîd and Bey must somehow survive the searing sands and make their way back to the now-hostile Budayeen—and, then, take their vengeance. </p>
<p>By turns thrilling and philosophical, The Exile Kiss is the culmination of one of the great works of modern SF.</p></div>


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<p>The Hugo Award–winning author returns to the futuristic, high-tech Middle East setting of When Gravity Falls in this “major science fiction epic” (Locus). In a world filled with so many puppets, strings tend to get tangled. In this follow-up to the groundbreaking cyberpunk novel When Gravity Fails, the Budayeen is still a very dangerous place, a high-tech Arabian ghetto where power and murder go hand in hand. Marid Audran used to be a low-level street hustler, relying on his wits and independence. Now he’s a cop planted in the force by Friedlander Bey, the powerful “godfather” of the Budayeen. Marid is supposed to simply be Bey’s envoy into the police, but as a series of grisly murders piles up—children, prostitutes, a fellow officer—he is drawn deeper and deeper into the city’s chaos. Would Marid give up all his newfound money and power to get out of this mess? Absolutely. If only he could. But answers are never that easy and choices are never completely one’s own in the Budayeen.</p></div>


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<p>Fully restored edition of Anthony Burgess' original text of A Clockwork Orange, with a glossary of the teen slang 'Nadsat', explanatory notes, pages from the original typescript, interviews, articles and reviewsEdited by Andrew Biswell With a Foreword by Martin Amis'It is a horrorshow story ...'Fifteen-year-old Alex likes lashings of ultraviolence. He and his gang of friends rob, kill and rape their way through a nightmarish future, until the State puts a stop to his riotous excesses. But what will his re-education mean?A dystopian horror, a black comedy, an exploration of choice, A Clockwork Orange is also a work of exuberant invention which created a new language for its characters. This critical edition restores the text of the novel as Anthony Burgess originally wrote it, and includes a glossary of the teen slang 'Nadsat', explanatory notes, pages from the original typescript, interviews, articles and reviews, shedding light on the enduring fascination of the novel's 'sweet and juicy criminality'.Anthony Burgess was born in Manchester in 1917 and educated at Xaverian College and Manchester University. He spent six years in the British Army before becoming a schoolmaster and colonial education officer in Malaya and Brunei. After the success of his Malayan Trilogy, he became a full-time writer in 1959. His books have been published all over the world, and they include The Complete Enderby, Nothing Like the Sun, Napoleon Symphony, Tremor of Intent, Earthly Powers and A Dead Man in Deptford. Anthony Burgess died in London in 1993.Andrew Biswell is the Professor of Modern Literature at Manchester Metropolitan University and the Director of the International Anthony Burgess Foundation. His publications include a biography, The Real Life of Anthony Burgess, which won the Portico Prize in 2006. He is currently editing the letters and short stories of Anthony Burgess.</p></div>


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<p id="reviewTextContainer3433759065"><em>C</em><em>ornelius Quartet</em> - By my modest judgement, one of the classics of late 20th century literature. Turning to each of the four: <br><br>THE FINAL PROGRAMME - VOLUME 1<br><em>The Final Programme</em> surely ranks among the top ten New Wave SF novels from the 60s. However, it must be noted, this Michael Moorcock genre-bender does not fit into any clearly defined category, science fiction or otherwise.<br><br><em>The Final Programme</em> starts off as fast-paced action thriller and then shifts gears to set the world record for most philosophic reflections and cool images in a novel of 250-pages.<br><br>The novel's main dude is twenty-seven-year-old hip, wealthy Londoner Jerry Cornelius driving his Duesenberg luxury sedan, sporting the latest mod fashion and packing a deadly needle-gun (among the SF elements). Yes, yes, yet another of the author's Eternal Champions with the initials JC.<br><br>But what Jerry doesn't possess is his inheritance - precious microfilms to unlock the secrets of the universe. Jerry's drug-experimenting brother, diabolical Frank won that honor since Jerry's father discovered Jerry having sex with sister Catherine. That's right - incest. Any doubts we're reading a 60s novel pushing sexual boundaries?<br><br>Oh, how Jerry would love to get his hands on that precious microfilm. As does a Miss Brunner and a number of her metaphysically inclined, eccentric friends. And to add fuel to his brotherly revenge, Jerry plans to rescue dear sister Catherine currently held captive by dastardly Frank.<br><br>Ah, revenge! Jerry heads up an attack against Frank and Frank's small army of German mercenaries walled up in a Le Cobusier-style château along the coast of Normandy, a fortress their father constructed many years prior to the Second World War. Thus, the first portion of the novel is full throttle action thriller.<br><br>But fear not, the mighty Moorcock goes on to hurl so much at a reader beyond a mere James Bond adventure. As a way of sharing a tasty taste, here are some scrumptious <em>Final Programme</em> yummies:<br><br>Supreme Statement<br>Is the Final Programme of <em>The Final Programme</em> the ultimate equation for the ultimate computer program? I wouldn't want to spoil by even hinting at what this could mean. But I'll give you one hint: keep your eye on Miss Brunner.<br><br>Playful Parody<br>Michael Moorcock absolutely refused to be pigeonholed by any label or genre. Recall that stock Western phrase, "Throw down your gun and come out with your hands up." Well, the author plays off the cowboy command when he has Jerry tell Frank, "Throw in your needle and come in with your veins clear."<br><br>A careful reader will detect Michael Moorcock repeatedly poking fun at Golden Age pulp science fiction with its Buck Rogers rocket ships, good guys vs. bad guys and hideous Martians chasing scantly clad busty beauties.<br><br>Pop Culture<br>Jerry reads the comics, eats Mars bars, listens to The Who and The Beatles (natch,) plays pinball but still has the mental acumen to publish a paper on unified-field theory. Even during an exchange of ideas on cosmology there's the constant blare (real or imagined) of guitars and drums. Turning the pages of <em>The Final Programme</em>, you can almost hear the thumping beat of The Who's Tommy, Pinball Wizard switching back and forth with the Fab Four's Come Together, Let it Be and Strawberry Fields Forever.<br><br>Crash<br>"Instead there was a photo covering the whole side: a mass car smash with mangled corpses everywhere. Jerry supposed that the picture sold sheets." One of Michael Moorcock's preoccupations: the struggle of order vs. chaos. It's no coincidence <em>The Cornelius Quartet</em> published within the same time frame as J. G. Ballard's <em>Crash</em>. Slick modern automobiles as symbol for both life-giving freedom and death-dealing tragedy - order vs. chaos coming to a dealer near you.<br><br>Vampires<br>Jerry muses, "He found that he didn't need to eat much, because he could live off other people's energy just as well." An ongoing theme in the novel: the transfer of energy from one person to another, one object to another, in the context of Hindu cosmology, physics, astrology, vampires, you name it.<br><br>Seriousness Kills<br>The last thing our British author wants is for one to read his <em>Cornelius Quartet</em> without a sense of humor. Seasoned throughout this first volume are quotable laugh lines, such as, "He would certainly kill Frank when they raided the house. Frank's final needle would come from Jerry's gun. It would give him his final kick - the one he kept looking for." James Bond meets another great JC - John Cleese.<br><br>Miss Brunner, Ally or Adversary?<br>Miss Brunner might be more than she appears to be. Jerry senses this when he says, "Miss Brunner, if I hadn't been through my theological phase, I'd be identifying you as first suspect for Mephistopheles" To which, Miss Brunner replies, "I haven't got my pointed beard. Not with me."<br><br>Ha! Beware, Jerry. As Arthur Schopenhauer was fond of repeating, "Whoever expects to see devils go through the world with horns and fools with jingling bells will always be their prey or plaything."<br><br>However, Jerry is wise enough to recognize that he can't fit Miss Brunner in with Homo Sapiens. When Miss Brunner, dear lady, hears Jerry voice these words, she acknowledges that she doesn't fit in easily anywhere.<br><br>Oh, my goodness. What is Miss Brunner admitting? Is this a foreshadowing of things to come? A question to keep in mind since Miss Brunner makes her appearance in each novel within the tetralogy.<br><br>Psychedlia<br>Prime 60s weapon employed by brother Frank in his role as prototypical Ian Fleming bad guy: LSD gas. Hang in, Jerry! You must steel yourself to overcome the mind-bending effects:<br><br>"His brain and body exploded in a torrent of mingled ecstasy and pain. Regret. Guilt. Relief. Waves of pale light flickered. He fell down a never-ending slope of obsidian rock surrounded by clouds of green, purple, yellow, black. . . . Another wave flowed up his spine. No-mind, no-body, no-where. Dying waves of light danced out of his eyes and away through the dark world. Everything was dying. Cells, sinews, nerves, synapses - all crumbling. Tears of light, fading, fading. Brilliant rockets streaking into the sky and exploding all together and sending their multicoloured globes of light - balls on an Xmas tree - x-mass - drifting slowly. Black mist swirled across a bleak, horizoness nightscape."<br><br>Hollow Earth Theory<br>Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote of a prehistoric world 500 miles below the earth's surface, a secret world lit by a constant noonday inner sun. Jerry toys with Hollow Earth Theory along with Hindu cosmic cycles (Kali Yuga most prominent), relativity, physics, neuroscience, mathematics, Nietzsche's eternal return, the list goes on.<br><br>A CURE FOR CANCER - VOLUME 2<br>Psychedelic blowout. We're in London during the apocalypse and it's Ian Fleming-style international thriller meets Hieronymus Bosch Garden of Earthly Delights. <br><br>Eternal Champion, Dell Comic Superhero, Demon of Death, you get to choose. This New Wave SF/Magical Surrealist yarn features a souped up version of Jerry Cornelius sporting jet-black ebony skin, silky milk-white hair, earthshaking vibragun (much more deadly than his simple needle-gun) and Rolls-Royce Phantom VI convertible capable of turning into a submarine or sprouting wings to fly like a jet fighter. Take that, James Bond!<br><br>Black Knight Jerry. Oh, the Places You'll Go!<br><br>The Marvelous Moorcock lays out enough linear narrative to move in action adventure mode coupled with enough strangeness to qualify as experimental. To give a glimpse of what a reader will glean, gander at this batch of bullets:<br><br>Apocalyptic London<br>Here comes the napalm, courtesy of the American military. But all is not lost - "North Kensington, the largest densely populated part of the Royal Borough, the most delicious slum in Europe. It is almost teatime." Hey, if you're a member of the British aristocracy, you can play tourist and take a tour of your city's largest slum, watching poor people writhe in agony, suffering on a grand scale. What fun!<br><br>The Organization<br>Jerry Cornelius' first loyalty is to the organization but, our chic, fashion plate death dealer admits he works exclusively on a strict commission basis. Jerry, baby, you're in a line of work quite different than 007 in service of the British crown. And what is the organization? - too top secret for easy definition.<br><br>Bishop Beesley<br>This fat, slovenly churchman, forever munching on a fistful of chocolates, proves the prime nemesis for Mr. Cornelius. The Bishop makes numerous declarations, claiming he's all for equilibrium, after all, he knows what's good for people. Ha! Our British author slides in a slice of political satire (or sarcasm). Beware any leader acting sadistically, inflicting pain for "someone's own good."<br><br>The Multiverse<br>Luscious Karen von Krupp, one of the tale's big players, asks Jerry which life he likes, to which Jerry replies, "Oh, all of them really." Jerry has a sense the universe extends thousands of times beyond what we can see, a cornucopia of worlds with diverse laws, where space is different, time is different, atoms are different and even gravity may be different.<br><br>Merciless Mercenaries<br>Jerry travels to New York but then the plot thickens: along with dozen of middle class older folk, he's herded on a bus to Pennsylvania, the destination having an eerie resemblance to a Nazi concentration camp. "The camp governor wore a uniform cut from fine, black needlecord and his cap was at just the right angle above his mirror sunglasses which were as black and as bright as his highly polished jackboots." All this is caused by "present emergency conditions laid down by our president" as a piece of social experimentation. This section of the novel gives one the shudders - echoes of the current day private Blackwater military.<br><br>Buffalo Nose<br>Jerry makes his way to the American frontier, out by South Dakota where he smokes the peace pipe with the Sioux and other Indian tribes (what we nowadays term Native Americans). Jerry takes on the name of Buffalo Nose and it isn't long before he and the tribes conduct raids on a number of local towns. But then he's off, flying to Las Vegas for his next adventure.<br><br>Comic Book Superhero on the Scene<br>"Jerry let his hog fall and shielded his eyes to peer upward.<br>There in the shadows of the sixth-storey balcony stood a figure which, as he watched, came and leaned over the rail. the figure was dressed in a long, dirty raincoat buttoned in the neck.<br>It could only be Flash Gordon."<br><br>Chic Brand Names<br>Knockout young blonde Mitzi wears Miss Cardin cologne that will take a man's breath away. Mitzi always wears Guerlain's Gremoble lipstick and a turquoise and gold pin and armlets by Cadoro. It might be the apocalypse but one thing remains - top of the line products keep those special sexy men and women in top sexy form.<br><br>Chapter Headings<br><em>A Cure for Cancer</em> features 79 short chapters with hip chapter headings, as in "Sing to me, darling, in our castle of agony" and "The erotic ghosts of Viet Nam" and "The old Hollywood spirit never dies." Back in the '60s, cool was king.<br><br>Epigraphs<br>Michael Moorcock tosses in clips from current day news, each section of the novel carries an epigraph, subjects ranging from a money back guarantee on how you can impress your friends as you maneuver a polaris nuclear sub to the discovery of echos from the Big Bang. My personal favorites: "Along with the Smothers Brothers and Rowan and Martin, Mort Sahl is part of that radical fringe who try to tear down American decency and democracy." and "Newly and/or unexpectedly imposed tyranny can make people commit suicide."<br><br>Beauty Amid Chaos<br>Sure the cancer in the book's title can signify the cancer eating away at Western Civilization but there remains the beauty of a garden, after all Hieronymus Bosch's triptych <em>Garden of Earthy Delights</em> contains scenes of birds and fountains in their full splendor. "Entering the quiet streets of the great village, with its trim grass verges and shady trees, Jerry was filled with a sense of peace that he rarely experienced in rural settlements. Perhaps the size of the empty buildings helped, for most of them were over eighty feet high, arranged around a series of pleasant squares with central fountains splashing a variety of coloured, sparkling water or with freeform sculptures set in flower gardens."<br><br>THE ENGLISH ASSASSIN - VOLUME 3<br>A humdinger strutting with <em>Blade Runner</em> cool, steaming with <em>I, Claudius</em> heat, thumping with <em>Barefoot in the Head</em> mind drums.<br><br>Grab a copy. Settle in. Open the book to Shot One and prepare to skyrocket into a futuristic, hip, alternate history-style 1960s London turned psychedelic land of Ob-La-Di.<br><br>What does the British author's version of chaos look like here? For starters, unlike the vast majority of book series - <em>The Raj Quartet</em> and <em>Lord of the Rings</em> come immediately to mind - with <em>The Cornelius Quartet</em>, nothing is lost if one reads the cycle of four novels out of order. <br><br>Kablooey! The sound of Michael Magic Mushroom Moorcock exploding any reader's expectations. Oops. Did I really say 'order' back there? Another kablooey! Blown to shimmering, 60s smithereens.<br><br>Of course, one of the prime ways to establish order in a novel is plot, following a story's characters through a recognizable arch of action from beginning to end. If you're one of those readers requiring plot as a necessary ingredient for your novel reading pleasure, I'm afraid <em>The English Assassin</em> will simply not cut it. With his William S. Burroughs-style nonlinear quick shifts and Donald Barthelme-like insertions (news bulletins, alternate apocalypses, reminiscences), Michael Moorcock is way too swingin' 60s experimental to settle for stiff, button-down boundaries.<br><br>THE CONDITION OF MUZAK - VOLUME 4<br>The culminating volume, a grand finale where, to use a trio of clichés, mighty Moorcock pulls out all stops, leaves nothing on the table, roars at full throttle. We have novel as combination <em>Clockwork Orange</em>, <em>Goldfinger</em>, Monty Python sketch and <em>Yellow Submarine</em> animated film - after all, parts of Jerry Cornelius include Alex, James Bond, John Cleese and Mr. Nowhere Man.<br><br><em>Quartet Cornelius</em> - literary blowout x 4. </p></div>


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<p>Savvy in the ways of the streets, Dirk Montgomery investigates the increasing number of deaths linked to the hallucinogenic drug 2XS and is ill-prepared for the foul and alien force that is about to take him by surprise. Original.</p></div>


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<p>Mixing classic noir sensibilities with a searing futuristic vision of an age when death is nearly meaningless, Richard K. Morgan returns to his saga of betrayal, mystery, and revenge, as Takeshi Kovacs, in one fatal moment, joins forces with a mysterious woman who may have the power to shatter Harlan’s World forever. Once a gang member, then a marine, then a galaxy-hopping Envoy trained to wreak slaughter and suppression across the stars, a bleeding, wounded Kovacs was chilling out in a New Hokkaido bar when some so-called holy men descended on a slim beauty with tangled, hyperwired hair. An act of quixotic chivalry later and Kovacs was in deep: mixed up with a woman with two names, many powers, and one explosive history. In a world where the real and virtual are one and the same and the dead can come back to life, the damsel in distress may be none other than the infamous Quellcrist Falconer, the vaporized symbol of a freedom now gone from Harlan’s World. Kovacs can deal with the madness of AI. He can do his part in a battle against biomachines gone wild, search for a three-centuries-old missing weapons system, and live with a blood feud with the yakuza, and even with the betrayal of people he once trusted. But when his relationship with “the” Falconer brings him an enemy specially designed to destroy him, he knows it’s time to be afraid. After all, the guy sent to kill him is himself: but younger, stronger, and straight out of hell. Wild, provocative, and riveting, Woken Furies is a full-bore science fiction spectacular of the highest order—from one of the most original and spellbinding storytellers at work today.</p></div>


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<p>#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Now a major motion picture directed by Steven Spielberg. “Enchanting . . . Willy Wonka meets The Matrix.”—USA Today • “As one adventure leads expertly to the next, time simply evaporates.”—Entertainment Weekly A world at stake. A quest for the ultimate prize. Are you ready? In the year 2045, reality is an ugly place. The only time Wade Watts really feels alive is when he’s jacked into the OASIS, a vast virtual world where most of humanity spends their days. When the eccentric creator of the OASIS dies, he leaves behind a series of fiendish puzzles, based on his obsession with the pop culture of decades past. Whoever is first to solve them will inherit his vast fortune—and control of the OASIS itself.  Then Wade cracks the first clue. Suddenly he’s beset by rivals who’ll kill to take this prize. The race is on—and the only way to survive is to win. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Entertainment Weekly • San Francisco Chronicle • Village Voice • Chicago Sun-Times • iO9 • The AV Club “Delightful . . . the grown-up’s Harry Potter.”—HuffPost “An addictive read . . . part intergalactic scavenger hunt, part romance, and all heart.”—CNN “A most excellent ride . . . Cline stuffs his novel with a cornucopia of pop culture, as if to wink to the reader.”—Boston Globe “Ridiculously fun and large-hearted . . . Cline is that rare writer who can translate his own dorky enthusiasms into prose that’s both hilarious and compassionate.”—NPR “[A] fantastic page-turner . . . starts out like a simple bit of fun and winds up feeling like a rich and plausible picture of future friendships in a world not too distant from our own.”—iO9</p></div>


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<p>In the twenty-fifth century, humankind has spread throughout the galaxy, monitored by the watchful eye of the U.N. While divisions in race, religion, and class still exist, advances in technology have redefined life itself. Now, assuming one can afford the expensive procedure, a person’s consciousness can be stored in a cortical stack at the base of the brain and easily downloaded into a new body (or “sleeve”) making death nothing more than a minor blip on a screen. Ex-U.N. envoy Takeshi Kovacs has been killed before, but his last death was particularly painful. Dispatched one hundred eighty light-years from home, re-sleeved into a body in Bay City (formerly San Francisco, now with a rusted, dilapidated Golden Gate Bridge), Kovacs is thrown into the dark heart of a shady, far-reaching conspiracy that is vicious even by the standards of a society that treats “existence” as something that can be bought and sold. For Kovacs, the shell that blew a hole in his chest was only the beginning. . . . From the Trade Paperback edition.</p></div>


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    "kind": "field",
    "label": "au_map",
    "name": null,
    "rec_index": 18,
    "search_terms": [],
    "table": null
  },
  "author_sort": {
    "column": null,
    "datatype": "text",
    "display": {},
    "is_category": false,
    "is_csp": false,
    "is_custom": false,
    "is_editable": true,
    "is_multiple": {},
    "kind": "field",
    "label": "author_sort",
    "name": "Author sort",
    "rec_index": 12,
    "search_terms": [
      "author_sort"
    ],
    "table": null
  },
  "authors": {
    "category_sort": "sort",
    "column": "name",
    "datatype": "text",
    "display": {},
    "is_category": true,
    "is_csp": false,
    "is_custom": false,
    "is_editable": true,
    "is_multiple": {
      "cache_to_list": ",",
      "list_to_ui": " & ",
      "ui_to_list": "&"
    },
    "kind": "field",
    "label": "authors",
    "link_column": "author",
    "name": "Authors",
    "rec_index": 2,
    "search_terms": [
      "authors",
      "author"
    ],
    "table": "authors"
  },
  "comments": {
    "column": null,
    "datatype": "text",
    "display": {},
    "is_category": false,
    "is_csp": false,
    "is_custom": false,
    "is_editable": true,
    "is_multiple": {},
    "kind": "field",
    "label": "comments",
    "name": "Comments",
    "rec_index": 7,
    "search_terms": [
      "comments",
      "comment"
    ],
    "table": null
  },
  "cover": {
    "column": null,
    "datatype": "int",
    "display": {},
    "is_category": false,
    "is_csp": false,
    "is_custom": false,
    "is_editable": true,
    "is_multiple": {},
    "kind": "field",
    "label": "cover",
    "name": "Cover",
    "rec_index": 17,
    "search_terms": [
      "cover"
    ],
    "table": null
  },
  "formats": {
    "column": null,
    "datatype": "text",
    "display": {},
    "is_category": true,
    "is_csp": false,
    "is_custom": false,
    "is_editable": true,
    "is_multiple": {
      "cache_to_list": ",",
      "list_to_ui": ", ",
      "ui_to_list": ","
    },
    "kind": "field",
    "label": "formats",
    "name": "Formats",
    "rec_index": 13,
    "search_terms": [
      "formats",
      "format"
    ],
    "table": null
  },
  "id": {
    "column": null,
    "datatype": "int",
    "display": {},
    "is_category": false,
    "is_csp": false,
    "is_custom": false,
    "is_editable": true,
    "is_multiple": {},
    "kind": "field",
    "label": "id",
    "name": null,
    "rec_index": 0,
    "search_terms": [
      "id"
    ],
    "table": null
  },
  "identifiers": {
    "column": null,
    "datatype": "text",
    "display": {},
    "is_category": true,
    "is_csp": true,
    "is_custom": false,
    "is_editable": true,
    "is_multiple": {
      "cache_to_list": ",",
      "list_to_ui": ", ",
      "ui_to_list": ","
    },
    "kind": "field",
    "label": "identifiers",
    "name": "Identifiers",
    "rec_index": 20,
    "search_terms": [
      "identifiers",
      "identifier",
      "isbn"
    ],
    "table": null
  },
  "languages": {
    "category_sort": "lang_code",
    "column": "lang_code",
    "datatype": "text",
    "display": {},
    "is_category": true,
    "is_csp": false,
    "is_custom": false,
    "is_editable": true,
    "is_multiple": {
      "cache_to_list": ",",
      "list_to_ui": ", ",
      "ui_to_list": ","
    },
    "kind": "field",
    "label": "languages",
    "link_column": "lang_code",
    "name": "Languages",
    "rec_index": 21,
    "search_terms": [
      "languages",
      "language"
    ],
    "table": "languages"
  },
  "last_modified": {
    "column": null,
    "datatype": "datetime",
    "display": {
      "date_format": "dd MMM yyyy"
    },
    "is_category": false,
    "is_csp": false,
    "is_custom": false,
    "is_editable": true,
    "is_multiple": {},
    "kind": "field",
    "label": "last_modified",
    "name": "Modified",
    "rec_index": 19,
    "search_terms": [
      "last_modified"
    ],
    "table": null
  },
  "marked": {
    "column": null,
    "datatype": "text",
    "display": {},
    "is_category": false,
    "is_csp": false,
    "is_custom": false,
    "is_editable": true,
    "is_multiple": {},
    "kind": "field",
    "label": "marked",
    "name": null,
    "rec_index": 23,
    "search_terms": [
      "marked"
    ],
    "table": null
  },
  "news": {
    "category_sort": "name",
    "column": "name",
    "datatype": null,
    "display": {},
    "is_category": true,
    "is_csp": false,
    "is_custom": false,
    "is_editable": true,
    "is_multiple": {},
    "kind": "category",
    "label": "news",
    "name": "News",
    "search_terms": [],
    "table": "news"
  },
  "ondevice": {
    "column": null,
    "datatype": "text",
    "display": {},
    "is_category": false,
    "is_csp": false,
    "is_custom": false,
    "is_editable": true,
    "is_multiple": {},
    "kind": "field",
    "label": "ondevice",
    "name": "On device",
    "rec_index": 22,
    "search_terms": [
      "ondevice"
    ],
    "table": null
  },
  "path": {
    "column": null,
    "datatype": "text",
    "display": {},
    "is_category": false,
    "is_csp": false,
    "is_custom": false,
    "is_editable": true,
    "is_multiple": {},
    "kind": "field",
    "label": "path",
    "name": "Path",
    "rec_index": 14,
    "search_terms": [],
    "table": null
  },
  "pubdate": {
    "column": null,
    "datatype": "datetime",
    "display": {
      "date_format": "MMM yyyy"
    },
    "is_category": false,
    "is_csp": false,
    "is_custom": false,
    "is_editable": true,
    "is_multiple": {},
    "kind": "field",
    "label": "pubdate",
    "name": "Published",
    "rec_index": 15,
    "search_terms": [
      "pubdate"
    ],
    "table": null
  },
  "publisher": {
    "category_sort": "name",
    "column": "name",
    "datatype": "text",
    "display": {},
    "is_category": true,
    "is_csp": false,
    "is_custom": false,
    "is_editable": true,
    "is_multiple": {},
    "kind": "field",
    "label": "publisher",
    "link_column": "publisher",
    "name": "Publisher",
    "rec_index": 9,
    "search_terms": [
      "publisher"
    ],
    "table": "publishers"
  },
  "rating": {
    "category_sort": "rating",
    "column": "rating",
    "datatype": "rating",
    "display": {},
    "is_category": true,
    "is_csp": false,
    "is_custom": false,
    "is_editable": true,
    "is_multiple": {},
    "kind": "field",
    "label": "rating",
    "link_column": "rating",
    "name": "Rating",
    "rec_index": 5,
    "search_terms": [
      "rating"
    ],
    "table": "ratings"
  },
  "series": {
    "category_sort": "(title_sort(name))",
    "column": "name",
    "datatype": "series",
    "display": {},
    "is_category": true,
    "is_csp": false,
    "is_custom": false,
    "is_editable": true,
    "is_multiple": {},
    "kind": "field",
    "label": "series",
    "link_column": "series",
    "name": "Series",
    "rec_index": 8,
    "search_terms": [
      "series"
    ],
    "table": "series"
  },
  "series_index": {
    "column": null,
    "datatype": "float",
    "display": {},
    "is_category": false,
    "is_csp": false,
    "is_custom": false,
    "is_editable": true,
    "is_multiple": {},
    "kind": "field",
    "label": "series_index",
    "name": null,
    "rec_index": 10,
    "search_terms": [
      "series_index"
    ],
    "table": null
  },
  "series_sort": {
    "column": null,
    "datatype": "text",
    "display": {},
    "is_category": false,
    "is_csp": false,
    "is_custom": false,
    "is_editable": true,
    "is_multiple": {},
    "kind": "field",
    "label": "series_sort",
    "name": "Series sort",
    "rec_index": 24,
    "search_terms": [
      "series_sort"
    ],
    "table": null
  },
  "size": {
    "column": null,
    "datatype": "float",
    "display": {},
    "is_category": false,
    "is_csp": false,
    "is_custom": false,
    "is_editable": true,
    "is_multiple": {},
    "kind": "field",
    "label": "size",
    "name": "Size",
    "rec_index": 4,
    "search_terms": [
      "size"
    ],
    "table": null
  },
  "sort": {
    "column": null,
    "datatype": "text",
    "display": {},
    "is_category": false,
    "is_csp": false,
    "is_custom": false,
    "is_editable": true,
    "is_multiple": {},
    "kind": "field",
    "label": "sort",
    "name": "Title sort",
    "rec_index": 11,
    "search_terms": [
      "title_sort"
    ],
    "table": null
  },
  "tags": {
    "category_sort": "name",
    "column": "name",
    "datatype": "text",
    "display": {},
    "is_category": true,
    "is_csp": false,
    "is_custom": false,
    "is_editable": true,
    "is_multiple": {
      "cache_to_list": ",",
      "list_to_ui": ", ",
      "ui_to_list": ","
    },
    "kind": "field",
    "label": "tags",
    "link_column": "tag",
    "name": "Tags",
    "rec_index": 6,
    "search_terms": [
      "tags",
      "tag"
    ],
    "table": "tags"
  },
  "timestamp": {
    "column": null,
    "datatype": "datetime",
    "display": {
      "date_format": "dd MMM yyyy"
    },
    "is_category": false,
    "is_csp": false,
    "is_custom": false,
    "is_editable": true,
    "is_multiple": {},
    "kind": "field",
    "label": "timestamp",
    "name": "Date",
    "rec_index": 3,
    "search_terms": [
      "date"
    ],
    "table": null
  },
  "title": {
    "column": null,
    "datatype": "text",
    "display": {},
    "is_category": false,
    "is_csp": false,
    "is_custom": false,
    "is_editable": true,
    "is_multiple": {},
    "kind": "field",
    "label": "title",
    "name": "Title",
    "rec_index": 1,
    "search_terms": [
      "title"
    ],
    "table": null
  },
  "uuid": {
    "column": null,
    "datatype": "text",
    "display": {},
    "is_category": false,
    "is_csp": false,
    "is_custom": false,
    "is_editable": true,
    "is_multiple": {},
    "kind": "field",
    "label": "uuid",
    "name": null,
    "rec_index": 16,
    "search_terms": [
      "uuid"
    ],
    "table": null
  }
}


key: gui_view_history
val:
[
  [
    2,
    "Virtual Light"
  ],
  [
    21,
    "The Complete Peanuts - 1973-1974 v12 (2015) (Digital) (Kileko-Empire)"
  ],
  [
    15,
    "MySQL for Python"
  ],
  [
    19,
    "The Complete Peanuts Vol. 6 (Charles Schulz) (z-lib.org)"
  ],
  [
    4,
    "An Omnipresence in Wired"
  ]
]


key: tag_browser_category_order
val:
[
  "authors",
  "languages",
  "series",
  "formats",
  "publisher",
  "rating",
  "news",
  "tags",
  "identifiers"
]


