The novel is set in the near future (at least at the time of writing, now actually in past time). The public image of the eponymous protagonist, Laurent Michaelmas, is that of a world-renowned newsman. In fact, Michaelmas controls world events just as much as he reports them. His means of influence is an immensely powerful self-aware artificial intelligence called Domino, which originated as a modest telephony appliance in Michaelmas'' youth. Over the years, Domino has evolved into a digital omnipresence that can penetrate and control any electronic or computerized equipment, most notably communication networks of all kinds. Domino was created by Michaelmas, and its existence is known only to him. Domino is also the confidante and intellectual sparring partner of Michelmas, compensating in part for the loss that Michaelmas suffered when his wife was killed in an accident many years ago. By the time of the novel, Laurent Michaelmas has successfully used his power to create and sustain world peace. One of his achievements is the success of UNAC (the fictitious United Nations Astronautics Commission). UNAC, organizing space travel as a joint international project is important to Michaelmas as a symbol of a more united world. When an astronaut believed to have been killed in a failed mission turns up miraculously saved, a threatening scenario starts to unfold. As the novel progresses, Michaelmas slowly learns that a possible extraterrestrial presence may be interfering with the new world he has worked so hard to create.

Michaelmas

In his foreword, Kautsky expressed his hope that the book would be ''a powerful weapon in the struggles of the present, in order to hasten the attainment of a better future''. He began his analysis by looking for evidence that ''the person of Jesus'' existed at all, using pagan and Christian sources. The next dozen chapters are then taken up with a materialist description of the ancient Roman society from which early Christianity sprang. Kautsky then went on to describe the history of the Jewish people, up to the point where Christianity began. Having set the scene, Kautsky described the beginnings of Christianity. The next five sections are called ''The Primitive Christian Community'', ''The Christian Idea of the Messiah'', ''Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians'', ''The History of Christ’s Passion'' and ''The Development of the Christian Community''. Kautsky contended that Christianity was born out of a group of Jewish proletarians in a decaying Roman empire, who sought to defeat the Romans through a violent insurrection.

Foundations of Christianity

CIA analyst Jack Ryan attends a diplomatic conference in Moscow as part of an American delegation to the Soviet Union. He learns that the CIA’s most highly-placed agent, codenamed "CARDINAL", is none other than Colonel Mikhail Semyonovich Filitov, the personal aide to the Soviet Minister of Defense and a national war hero. Filitov was recruited by GRU colonel and British agent Oleg Penkovskiy, and offered his services to the CIA after the deaths of his wife and two sons; the latter two were killed during their service in the Red Army. As a result, Filitov has been passing political, technical, and military intelligence to the CIA for the past thirty years. The U.S. discovers through "National Technical Means" that the Soviets were working on an ABM defense system based at Dushanbe in Tajikistan. Emilio Ortiz, a CIA liaison, is sent to aid Mujaheddin rebels in the region. One rebel leader, a man known only as "The Archer," is questioned after unwittingly witnessing a test of the Soviets'' ABM system. The Archer determines that the Soviet installation is a threat to him and his people, and tasks his group with attacking and pillaging the facility. In the end, the guerrillas destroy a large amount of Soviet equipment. However, the rebels suffer horrendous losses, including the death of The Archer. Ryan travels to New Mexico to meet with a young SDI researcher, Major Alan Gregory, whom he brings to Washington, D.C., to brief the president. Gregory lives with another scientist, Candi Long, who is working on adaptive optics for use in the development of laser weaponry. A lesbian KGB agent, Bea Taussig&mdash;who has unluckily fallen in love with Long&mdash;describes Gregory and his work to her KGB handler, Tanya Bisyarina. The KGB launches a plan to kidnap and debrief Gregory. Filitov is arrested after his work for the CIA is discovered. However, Ryan concocts a plan to both secure the return of Filitov and arrange the defection of the sitting KGB chairman, Nikolay Borissovich Gerasimov. Gerasimov is angling to take over as General Secretary in the wake of Filitov''s arrest, something Ryan is determined to prevent because of his unyielding anti-American ideology. Ryan schemes to go public with the prior capture of Soviet submarine Red October, banking on the political instability of the Soviet Politburo. He plans for Filitov and Gerasimov to be exfiltrated on the American delegation''s aircraft, while Gerasimov''s family is extracted from Estonia by John Clark onto the submarine USS Dallas. Meanwhile, in New Mexico, three KGB officers kidnap Gregory on Gerasimov''s orders and hold him in a shabby desert safe house, planning to send him to Moscow for debriefing. Their plans are foiled when the FBI sends in the Hostage Rescue Team to retrieve Gregory and return him to Long. Among those killed is Bisyarina. Ryan informs Gerasimov of the failed operation, forcing the enraged chairman to accept Ryan''s defection offer. The flipped Gerasimov fetches Filitov from his confinement. The three make their way to Sheremetyevo Airport, awaiting the departure of the American delegation. Unfortunately, two KGB officers, Klementi Vladimirovich Vatutin and Sergey Nikolayevch Golovko, become aware of their planned departure. As Gerasimov and Filitov escape, Ryan allows himself to be captured by Golovko, banking on his diplomatic status to protect him from harm. Golovko then escorts Ryan to the private dacha of General Secretary Narmonov, where the two men discuss the CIA''s interest in his political position and the CIA''s interference in their internal security. Ryan returns to the United States, where he and several others attend the funeral of Filitov, who had died of heart disease in the months following his CIA debriefing period. Filitov is buried at Camp David, within twenty miles of the Antietam battlefield. A Soviet military attaché attending the funeral questions why Filitov would be buried so close to American soldiers. Ryan, always working to keep the peace, explains to him, "One way or another, we all fight for what we believe in. Doesn''t that give us some common ground?"

The Cardinal of the Kremlin

“Obsessed” by Ted Dekker tells a story of Stephen Friedman, successful Realtor, a Jewish immigrant and an orphan who had tried to find out who his parents were for a long time and at last gave up. An unexpected letter from a friend and a newspaper article offer help: Stephen discovers that his mother was Rachel Spritzer, a woman who had been through the nightmare of World War II concentration camps, and recently died. Stephen also learns that she was quite wealthy and had some property, including a priceless historical artifact – a stone of David, one of the five stones believed to be used by David to defeat the giant Goliath. Also, it may be that she knew where the other four stones are. Stephen becomes obsessed with the idea to find the remaining stones. He heads to his mother''s old house, where he believes the clues are hidden. However, the house is bought by someone else, snatched right out of Stephen''s hands. The new owner is Roth Braun, a German, the son of Gerhard Braun who was the Nazi Commandant of the concentration camp, Torùn. Roth Braun knows about the stones and about Stephen plans. And he also has plans of his own. The story goes on as Stephen makes one desperate attempt to get into his mother''s house after another. Braun''s thugs do their best to keep him away. Another storyline takes us back in time to the WWII camp, telling about two pregnant women, Ruth and Martha (Stephen''s mother) and their struggles with the ruthless commandant who kills on a whim and plays games with the prisoners by giving and taking away their hope. There is some mystery here, and, although the two storylines seem unconnected, they eventually come together.

Obsessed

The novel is set in Florida in the near future. China and the United States are sending competing first missions to Mars, although it is clear the Chinese will arrive first. The book''s protagonist is Manny Garcia, a teenager who is fascinated by space flight. He, along with his girlfriend Kelly, his best friend Dak, and Dak''s girlfriend Alicia, are partying on the beach one night and almost run over a man who has passed out from drinking. The man is Travis Broussard, a former astronaut who was forced to retire in disgrace. Travis lives with his cousin Jubal, who is mentally deficient in some ways, but is also a scientific genius. Jubal has invented a device called the "squeezer", a spherical impenetrable silver force field that can be formed or have its size changed with no cost of energy. Travis and the teenagers realize the device could have numerous practical uses as well as being a dangerous weapon. They decide to use the squeezers to power a spaceship and plan to arrive at Mars ahead of the slower traveling American and Chinese missions already in transit, and to be available should Jubal''s prediction of problems with the American drive prove true. They succeed in building the Red Thunder out of used railroad tank cars on schedule, and near their shoestring budget of $1 million dollars and take off. The four teenagers form the crew with Travis as pilot. They arrive at Mars a day ahead of the Chinese mission. They learn from the Chinese that the American mission was stranded by an accident (their VASIMR drive exploded). Red Thunder is able to locate and rescue the surviving crew members during their return to Earth. When they arrive back on Earth, they are heroes. They use the publicity of their trip to ensure that no nation or individual controls the squeezer technology, and help form a separate non-political organization to control and disseminate the new technology. With this new technology, people are able to eliminate waste dumps and pollution, and begin a new era of space travel throughout the solar system and beyond.

Red Thunder

Will has surprisingly come into a large amount of money, around $80,000. His photograph screwing in a lightbulb has been made a silhouette and is being used as a picture for the company''s lightbulb boxes. He is uncomfortable having this money, as he feels he did nothing to earn it, and is left with a sense of guilt and purposelessness. Shortly after receiving the sum, Will and Hand''s mutual childhood friend, Jack, was involved in a car accident. The pair had delusional ambitions to use the money to save his life, but to no avail. After Jack''s death, Will and Hand are asked to help go through Jack''s possessions in a storage facility, where Hand decides to wander around and leaves Will. During Hand''s absence, Will is brutally beaten by three men. Will and Hand agree that it is best not to go to the hospital, in case the attackers attempt to track them. As a result of his confusion due to a conglomerate of issues such as the large sum of money, Jack''s death, and the beating, and other personal issues, Will and Hand plan to travel around the world visiting obscure countries and giving away all the money, bit by bit, to people who they arbitrarily decide are most deserving. According to Hand, they gave to people for the benefit of both parties, as a sacrament with the purpose of restoring a faith in humanity. The two come up with many creative ways of distributing the unwanted money. One plan involves taping money to a donkey in a graph paper pouch that reads "HERE I AM ROCK YOU LIKE A HURRICANE", and another creating a treasure map for Estonian children. While on the journey the two friends do many wild and spontaneous things including practicing rolling over cars and jumping from tree to tree while twenty feet in the air. However without a solid set of criteria, or a definitive direction in their plan, this proves surprisingly difficult, and they experience much awkward confusion and moral uncertainty. They often fear being robbed and killed. Will becomes unstable and begins to lose his composure. The plot is both a log of the journey, but more so a look into the mind of the narrator, Will. A pseudo-sequel entitled ''"The Only Meaning of the Oil-Wet Water" follows Hand and the minor character Pilar in Central America. This short story is featured in the collection How We Are Hungry: Stories.

You Shall Know Our Velocity

Blood and Guts in High School is the story of Janey Smith, a ten-year-old American girl living in Mérida, Mexico, who departs to the U.S.A. to live on her own. She has an incestuous sexual relationship with her father, whom she treats as “boyfriend, brother, sister, money, amusement, and father." They live together in Mexico until another woman begins to interest Janey’s father. Janey realizes he hates her because she limits him and he wants to have his own life. Her father agrees to let her go and puts her into a school in New York City. For a period of time her father sends her money, but later she begins to work at a bakery and is appalled by the customers. She has many sexual partners. She ends up pregnant twice and has two abortions. She seems to be addicted to sex and does not care whom she sleeps with. In New York City she joins a gang, the Scorpions. One day the gang crashes a car while running from the police and Janey is the only one who survives. Afterwards she begins to live in the New York slums. Two thieves break into her apartment, kidnap her, and sell her into prostitution. She becomes the property of a Persian slave trader who keeps her locked up, trying to turn her out as a prostitute. We see Janey’s dreams and visions, and read her journal entries and poems. Shortly before the kidnapper is to release her to become a prostitute for him, she discovers she has cancer. The slave trader lets her go and she illegally goes to Tangiers. There she meets Jean Genet, the talented, iconic French writer, and they develop a relationship. Janey and Genet travel through North Africa and stop in Alexandria. Genet treats Janey badly, but the worse he treats her the more she loves him. He decides to leave her. Janey gets arrested for stealing Genet’s property. Shortly afterwards he joins her in prison. A rebellion breaks out and they are both thrown out of Alexandria. They travel together for some time. Then Genet gives Janey some money and leaves. Soon after they part company, Janey dies.

Blood and Guts in High School

A small, passenger plane is hijacked by its co-pilot over a mountain range in South America causing a crash landing in which the hijacker dies. Unbenknownst to the pilot and other passengers, among their number is Senor Aguilla, the former president of the country, and his niece, who were returning to the country under a pseudonym. Aguilla had been deposed by a military coup, and now a communist faction wants him dead since they fear he will be a problem for a communist takeover of the country. The hi-jacker′s associates soon arrive at the isolated area, but are separated from Aguilla and the other survivors of the crash by a gorge. There is a damaged bridge between the two sides, which the villains are prevented from crossing by the passengers. As the plot unfolds, the majority of the passengers remain nearby to maintain the stand-off while two set off to cross the mountain range to reach divisions of the country''s air force loyal to Aguilla and bring help. The ‘citadel′ at which the siege is maintained becomes increasingly threatened as reinforcements for the villains arrive with prefabricated materials to repair the bridge and storm the position with vehicles. A medieval historian and an engineer manufacture a variety of weapons to prolong the siege as the novel reaches its gripping climax. ja:高い砦

High Citadel

Paul Carpenter is the protagonist of the book. The book is summarized in the next book in the series Earth, Air, Fire, and Custard where Paul tells his uncle about what happened to him. So Paul told him all about it: how he''d got a job as a junior clerk with a firm called J. W. Wells & Co in the City, without knowing what it was they actually did; how it''d come as rather a shock to him when he found out that they were one of the top six firms of family and commercial magicians in the UK, specialising in the entertainment and media, mining and mineral resources, construction, dispute resolution, applied sorcery and pest-control sectors; how he''d almost immediately tried to resign, and how he''d found out a little while later that the reason why they wouldn''t let him was that his parents had financed their early retirement to Florida by selling him to the partners of JWW, who wanted him because the knack of doing magic ran in his family to such an extent that it was inevitable that he''d have it too; how he''d briefly found true love with Sophie, the other junior clerk, shortly before she was abducted by Contessa Judy di Castel Bianco, the firm''s entertainments and PR partner and hereditary Queen of the Fey, who permanently erased Sophie''s feelings for Paul from her mind; how he''d learned scrying for mineral deposits from Mr Tanner, who was half-goblin on his mother''s side, and heroism and dragonslaying from Ricky Wurmtoter, the pest-control partner, and a bit of applied sorcery from the younger Mr Wells (before the elder Mr Wells turned him into a photocopier); and how he''d just started learning spatio-temporal displacement theory with Theodorus Van Spee, former professor of classical witchcraft at the University of Leiden and inventor of the portable folding parking-space; oh, and how he''d died, twice (only the second time was an accident) and been put on deposit for a while in the firm''s account at the Bank of the Dead.

In Your Dreams

The time is the early 1980s. A highly-placed agent in East Germany codenamed "Brahms Four" wants to come to the West. Brahms Four is one of Britain''s most reliable, most valuable agents behind the Iron Curtain, and that he should be urgently demanding safe passage to the West sends a ripple of panic through the SIS. Bernard Samson, a former field agent, and now working behind a London desk, is tasked to undertake the crucial rescue. After all, it was Brahms Four who had once, nearly twenty years ago, saved his life. But even before Samson sets out on his mission, he is confronted with undeniable evidence that there is a traitor among his colleagues — a traitor planted by the KGB. Clearly, it is someone close to the top, close to Samson himself. It could be Dicky Cruyer, his incompetent supervisor - whom Samson despises. It could be the American Bret Rensselaer, who has built his entire career around the work of Brahms Four — and who is spending an inordinate amount of time with Samson''s wife, Fiona (also an intelligence officer). It could be Frank Harrington, the ''rezident'' - or head of the Berlin field unit. In fact, it could be any member of the senior staff at London Central — even the Director-General himself. Bernard travels to East Berlin to assist the escape of Brahms Four, and decides at the last moment to send Brahms Four out in his place. His suspicions of treachery prove well-founded when he is captured and subsequently confronted by his wife, who had defected and betrayed the operation.

Berlin Game

In The Emigrants Sebald''s narrator recounts his involvement with and the life stories of four different characters, all of whom are German emigrants (to England and the United States). As with most of Sebald''s work, the text includes many black and white, unlabeled photographs and strays sharply from general formats of plot and narrative. Dr. Henry Selwyn is the estranged husband of Sebald''s landlady, who fought in the First World War and has a propensity for gardening and tending to animals. He confides in Sebald about his family''s immigration to England from Lithuania, and suspects that it is this secretive, alien past that helped dissolve his relationship with his wife. He commits suicide. Paul Bereyter was the narrator''s childhood teacher in a town referenced in the text only as "S". A quarter Jewish, he found employment difficult in the period leading up to the Second World War, although he eventually served in the Wehrmacht. Teaching in the small school after the war, Bereyter found a passion for his students while living a lonely, quiet life. In later years, his eyesight began to fail and he moved to France, where he met and spent much time with Mme Landau, from whom the narrator obtains most of his information about Bereyter. The narrator''s great uncle, Ambros Adelwarth, was the travelling companion of an affluent young aviator gifted with much luck at gambling and a wayward attitude towards life. In his youth, he accompanied this man across Europe, and into Turkey and Asia Minor, before his companion fell ill and was sent to a mental institution. Afterwards, Adelwarth was the butler of the young man''s family, living on Long Island until their death. As a young man in Manchester the narrator befriends an expatriate German-Jewish painter, Max Aurach. Years later the artist gives the narrator his mother''s history of her idyllic life as a girl in a Bavarian village. It was written as she and her husband awaited deportation to the East and death. This section is written as a gradual discovery on the narrator''s part of the effects of the Holocaust on Aurach and his family.

The Emigrants

Set in New England, like many of his novels, Toward the End of Time portrays a world in which the Chinese and the Americans have attacked one another with nuclear weapons. The aftermath is shown through retired investment advisor Ben Turnbull''s journal. Though the dollar and the central government are gone, life in Boston and the surrounding areas goes on thanks to FedEx and other less reputable entrepreneurs. The book is divided into five parts: i. The Deer ii. The Dollhouse iii. The Deal iv. The Deaths v. The Dahlia. i. The Deer Ben expresses his uneasiness about his second wife, Gloria''s, obsession with killing the deer who is ravaging her picture-perfect garden. Clearly unhappy with Gloria, Ben begins an affair with a prostitute named Deirdre. ii. The Dollhouse Ben believes he has slid into an alternate universe when Gloria disappears and Deirdre takes her place. Ben has the vague impression he may have shot and killed Gloria. Spin and Phil, young thugs who collect protection money from Ben, clash with Deirdre, who takes a more and more authoritative role in the house. iii. The Deal Deirdre leaves Ben for Phil, and Gloria returns. Ben is relieved that he did not shoot Gloria, and admits that the house and garden flourish under her influence. Spin is killed by a group of younger children who set up house in the woods behind Ben''s house and supplant Spin and Phil in the collection business. Ben helps them establish local legitimacy in exchange for commissions on their earnings and sexual favors from their young female companion, Doreen. iv. The Deaths Ben discovers he has prostate cancer. During his long hospital stay, Gloria hires FedEx &mdash; for whom Phil is now working &mdash; to get rid of the residents of the makeshift house. Metallobioforms designed to clear away large tracts of land for human exploitation are used to raze the house. Ben sees evidence that they also devoured and killed the young people. He is left as impotent to protest Gloria''s cruelty as he was left physically impotent by the prostate surgery. v. The Dahlia Gloria''s hired deer hunter shoots and kills the young doe who has been nibbling their garden. Ben cannot participate in Gloria''s triumph or the deer hunter''s communion with nature. Ben regains some control of his bladder, but this is not enough to erase the impression that he has become a ghost wandering around in his own house.

Over 8000 Takeaways For Your Brain!

Read - Listen - Learn

Michaelmas

By Algis Budrys

Foundations of Christianity

By Karl Kautsky

The Cardinal of the Kremlin

By Tom Clancy

Obsessed

By Ted Dekker

Red Thunder

By John Varley

You Shall Know Our Velocity

By Dave Eggers

Blood and Guts in High School

By Kathy Acker

High Citadel

By Desmond Bagley

In Your Dreams

No Author Listed

Berlin Game

By Len Deighton

The Emigrants

By W. G. Sebald

Toward the End of Time

By John Updike