Blue Remembered Earth takes place in the 2160s, at a time when humanity has repaired Earth''s climate and extensively colonised the solar system. An omnipresent surveillance system (known as the "Mechanism") ensures that violent crime is almost unheard-of, and genetic engineering has vastly extended human lifespans. China, India and the nations of Africa are now the world''s leading technological powers, although they face competition from the United Aquatic Nations, a new underwater civilisation populated by water-breathing transhumans. Almost all humans possess neural computer interfaces known as "augs", which allow them to access online information, view augmented reality displays, translate speech in real-time and operate telepresence robots. Some individuals, wishing to escape the constant surveillance of Earth''s Mechanism, live in a bohemian, ungoverned "Descrutinized Zone" on the dark side of the Moon. The story focuses on Geoffrey and Sunday Akinya, a brother and sister who are members of a powerful African corporate family. Following the death of their influential grandmother Eunice, the siblings begin investigating a series of cryptic messages that Eunice left across the solar system over the previous century.

Blue Remembered Earth

Still I Rise begins with an introduction by Charles Johnson about black cartoonists and the subjects they dealt with. The book uses two elderly narrators, one male and one female, to take the reader through time. The female narrator has a bit of black nationalism, while the male narrator has a more balanced view of America in terms of race relations. The book beings to depict African American history starting in 1618. Around this time, in an effort to stem the rising cost of European indentured servants, Africans willing to indenture themselves were starting to be imported. These African servants did very well for themselves because they were more skilled than their European counterparts. The success of the African Americans sparked resentment in white indentured servants and free whites, who disliked the idea of a black man ordering around a white man. Due to their success, Africans started to buy out their contracts, which prompted owners to illegally lengthen African contracts to ban the buy-out problem. The action of the owners angered the African American servants, causing many of them to try and resort to the legal system or simply running away. However, neither of these options worked, and those who ran away had their contracts extended indefinitely. Running out of options, the black servants resorted to rebellion in the form of Bacon''s Rebellion in 1676. However, the rebellion was put down, and by 1677 slavery was official in all the colonies, with brutal overseers being hired to keep the slaves in line. Still I Rise continues through the history of slavery, outlining ways in which the slaves coped (or didn''t cope) with their lot, as well as the hard-won successes of free blacks such as Benjamin Banneker, who "built the first striking clock wholly of American-made parts.Rothschild, Aviva. The Comics Get Serious. 2001. 18 November 2008 http://www.rationalmagic.com/Comics/StillIRise.html From the beginning of the cartoon narrative, every major American black political movement, historical event, and organization is covered, as well as the achievements of African American inventors and businesspeople.

Still I Rise: A Cartoon History of African Americans

It is the year 12,090 A.D. The world has ended, ravaged in a firestorm of man''s wars and madness. But from the wreckage a few humans manage to survive. A few humans... and something else. Doris Lang knew what her fate was when the vampire lord Count Magnus Lee bit her. An agonizing transformation into one of the undead, to be stalked by her fellow villagers or cursed to become the bride of the unholy creature and face an eternity of torment, driven by the thirst for human blood. There was only one chance, and as she watched him ride in from the distance she knew there was hope. Salvation... from a vampire hunter named D. Magnus has his own problems; his beautiful daughter Larmica refuses to let a human into her family, and is all too willing to kill the bride before the wedding can take place. Enlisting the help of Garo, a werewolf retainer, she attempts to kill Doris, only to find D in her way. Greco Rohman, son of the chief, also wants Doris for himself. The same goes for the skilled figher Rei-Ginsei and his Fiend Corps. Both men are eager to eliminate D, as his skills and Doris'' favor makes them see him as a threat. Doris knows she isn''t the only one in trouble, her younger brother is perceived as her weakness, and there are more than one person out there willing to use him as leverage against her.

Vampire Hunter D Volume 1

Pinker argues that modern science has challenged three "linked dogmas" that constitute the dominant view of human nature in intellectual life: * the blank slate (the mind has no innate traits) &mdash; empiricism * the noble savage (people are born good and corrupted by society) &mdash; romanticism * the ghost in the machine (each of us has a soul that makes choices free from biology) &mdash; mind/body dualism Much of the book is dedicated to examining fears of the social and political consequences of his view of human nature: * "the fear of inequality" * "the fear of imperfectibility" * "the fear of determinism" * "the fear of nihilism" Pinker claims these fears are non sequiturs, and that the blank slate view of human nature would actually be a greater threat if it were true. For example, he argues that political equality does not require sameness, but policies that treat people as individuals with rights; that moral progress doesn''t require the human mind to be naturally free of selfish motives, only that it has other motives to counteract them; that responsibility doesn''t require behavior to be uncaused, only that it respond to praise and blame; and that meaning in life doesn''t require that the process that shaped the brain must have a purpose, only that the brain itself must have purposes. He also argues that grounding moral values in claims about a blank slate opens them to the possibility of being overturned by future empirical discoveries. He further argues that a blank slate is in fact inconsistent with opposition to many social evils since a blank slate could be conditioned to enjoy servitude and degradation. Evolutionary and genetic inequality arguments do not necessarily support right-wing policies. Pinker writes that if everyone was equal regarding abilities it can be argued that it is only necessary to give everyone equal opportunity. On the other hand, if some people have less innate ability through no fault of their own, then this can be taken as support for redistribution policies to those with less innate ability. Further, laissez-faire economics is built upon an assumption of a rational actor, while evolutionary psychology suggests that people have many different goals and behaviors that do not fit the rational actor theory. Raising living standards, also for the poor, is often used as an argument that inequality need not be reduced, while evolutionary psychology may suggest that low status itself, apart from material considerations, is highly psychologically stressful and may cause dangerous and desperate behaviors, supporting a society reducing inequalities. Finally, evolutionary explanations may also help the left create policies with greater public support, suggesting that people''s sense of fairness (caused by mechanisms such as reciprocal altruism) rather than greed is a primary cause of opposition to welfare, if there is not a distinction in the proposals between what is perceived as the deserving and the undeserving poor. Pinker also gives several examples of harm done by the belief in a blank slate of human nature: * totalitarian social engineering. If the human mind is a blank slate completely formed by the environment, then ruthlessly and totally controlling every aspect of the environment will create perfect minds. * Inappropriate or excessive blame on and guilt for parents since if their children do not turn out well this is assumed to be entirely environmentally caused and in particular due to the behavior of the parents. * release of dangerous psychopaths who quickly commit new crimes. * construction of massive and dreary tenement complexes since housing and environmental preferences are assumed to be culturally caused and superficial. * persecution and even mass murder of the successful who are assumed to have gained this unfairly. This includes not only individuals but entire successful groups who are assumed to have become successful unfairly and by exploitation of other groups. Examples include kulaks in the Soviet Union; teachers and "rich" peasants in the Cultural Revolution; and city dwellers and intellectuals under the Khmer Rouge.

The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature

In the book Chatwin develops his thesis about the primordial nature of Aboriginal song. The writing does not shy away from the actual condition of life for present day indigenous Australians, it does not present the songlines as a new-age fad but from an appreciation of the art and culture of the people for whom they are the keystone of the Real. While the book''s first half chronicles the main character''s travels through Outback Australia and his various encounters, the second half is dedicated to his musings on the nature of man as nomad and city builder. The basic idea that Chatwin posits is that language started as song, and the aboriginal Dreamtime sings the land into existence. A key concept of aboriginal culture is that the aboriginals and the land are one. By singing the land, the land itself exists; you see the tree, the rock, the path, the land. What are we if not defined by our environment? And in one of the harshest environments on Earth one of our oldest civilizations became literally as one with the country. This central concept then branches out from Aboriginal culture, as Chatwin combines evidence gained there with preconceived ideas on the early evolution of man, and argues that on the African Savannah we were a migratory species, moving solely on foot, hunted by a dominant brute predator in the form of a big cat: hence the spreading of "songlines" across the globe, eventually reaching Australia (Chatwin notes their trajectory generally moves from north-east to south-west) where they are now preserved in the world''s oldest living culture.

The Songlines

The story begins when a 14th-century English army is abducted by aliens of the Galactic Federation to serve as mercenaries on planets where only low-tech weaponry is legal. The aliens are bound by a Galactic Federation law that states that advanced weapons can not be used on primitive worlds. Another Guild had previously abducted a legion from the Roman Empire and used it to obtain victory in many confrontations and therefore increase its commercial empire. Therefore other aliens were inspired to try the same tactics and came to Earth to find their own army to fight for them. As the plot progresses, the English army continues to fight for the aliens, until the Baron in charge of the English is approached by a dragon-like alien under the heel of the Guild Aliens. The dragon-like creature tells the Baron the story of the Federation. The Galactic Federation was originally started over one hundred fifty thousand years ago by 3 races, with membership of the council requiring development of a form of faster-than-light (FTL) drive. Over the course of their long history, the Federation strayed from its values. It now has 22 races on the council (of which only 1 is an original founder) and when it discovers new races it invades them so it can freeze their technological development and force them to become a protectorate. The dragon-like creature is from one of these worlds, saying that the Federation came during his world''s nuclear age. The creature says that all the other races are different than humanity because of the rate at which it develops. This is shown when the Guild Alien makes a comment about how humanity would have developed gunpowder in 1000 years from the time he took the English from the 14th century, instead of the 200 years it actually took. The dragon-creature and the Baron eventually succeed in a mutiny and take over the ship, but they decide that they can not go back to Earth because the Federation would find them too fast. The story then moves forward to the 22nd century, on Earth, now under the single Solar government, where humanity has become capable of building vast ships in space and has developed an FTL drive. However the Federation considers their fast development a threat to its stability and has dispatched a fleet to wipe humanity from the universe. As the massive Federation battleships are about to destroy the comparably tiny human ships, even bigger spaceships appear and destroy the Federation ships easily. The rescuers of Earth are the Avalon Empire, the civilisation founded by the English who have grown in numbers and, using the technology found on the captured Guild ship, have advanced far beyond the Federation. For centuries they have prepared and lay in hiding so could return at the moment of Earth''s greatest need (just like the sword Excalibur in the legend of King Arthur, which gives rise to the title of the book). The English reveal themselves to Earth and offer an alliance to take on the Federation, but the fight will be far from easy. The Federation has over fifteen hundred worlds, with an average population of 11 billion on each world, while humanity only has the Avalon empire, who has grown to live across 20 some worlds, and Earth. But with the technical superiority of the Avalon empire and a carefully planned series of rebellions on ''protected'' worlds in the Federation humanity at least stands a chance.

The Excalibur Alternative

The novel is told from the perspective of twelve-year-old T.S. Spivet, a mapmaking enthusiast living on a ranch near Divide, Montana, a small village near Butte, Montana, practically on the continental divide. T.S.''s mother, whom he he consistently refers to as "Dr. Clair," is an entomologist preoccupied - or so it seems - with the search for a possibly nonexistent species of insect, the "tiger monk beetle". His father, an equally emotionally detached rancher with no understanding for the world of scientific investigation, solely judges - or so it seems - T.S. for his nonexistent cowboy abilities. T.S.''s younger brother, Layton, who followed his father''s cowboy lifestyle and interests, was killed in a joint brotherly experiment that involved the scientific investigation of gun shooting. His elder sister, Gracie, is in her teenage years, prone to "awful girl pop" and violent mood swings. T.S.''s love for scientific research leads to a friendship with his mother''s partner, who unbeknownst to the Spivets has sent several of T.S.''s works into various magazines and societies. One day, T.S. receives a call from a man at the Smithsonian Institution who, believing T.S. to be an adult scientist, informs him that he has won the prestigious Baird Award and is invited to give a talk at the Institution''s ceremonies. Without telling his family, T.S. decides to run away from home to attend the event, which he will travel to by freighthopping. Hiding himself in a Winnebago that is being shipped, T.S. settles down for a lengthy journey, imagining the Winnebago to be a conversational companion along the way. The middle section of the novel consists largely of text from one of his mother''s notebooks, which he took with him on impulse. In a surprise departure from Dr. Claire''s scientific fixations, the notebook is a semi-fictional account of a Spivet ancestor who was herself a great researcher and cartographer. This reveals a side to his mother T.S. had not been aware of, and a mystery begins to form as he rides the rails.

The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet

The Unquiet Earth is a novel written from the perspective of multiple narrators. The three main narrators are Dillon, Rachel, and Jackie who are all family. Dillon is Rachel''s younger cousin, and Jackie is most likely their child. The story begins prior to the birth of Jackie and is narrated by Dillon and Rachel, children living on their family land, the Homeplace. From the beginning, Dillon makes claims that he loves Rachel partially because she is the only one who has memories of his father. They both narrate parts of their childhood and the beginning of the novel mainly depicts how their relationship grows and how their love for one another begins. They are first cousins - therefore, their mothers are sisters. The first instance in which their love is really shown is when Rachel falls into a river and Dillon is forcibly restrained by his mother from diving in to save her because of her fear of losing him as well. He is forced to watch Rachel suffer and nearly be swept away by the current, but luckily she was dragged out by the mule she was riding. They rush her home, and Dillon watches through a window as his mother helps a cold and naked Rachel recover. The story continues as they grow older and continue to fight for love. Rachel ends up leaving the Homeplace to attend a nursing school, where she spends several subsequent years. Dillon then, in what everyone believes is out of anger of Rachel leaving him, enlists in the British army to fight against Hitler. Upon Rachel''s graduation from nursing school, she and her friend Tommie Justice enlist as nurses in the war as well. Rachel returns to find out that the Homeplace is no longer their land as Dillon had forewarned her many times. They are reunited at the number thirteen mine in Justice County where the remainder of the story takes place. Rachel continues working there as a county nurse, and Dillon works for the mine while avidly fighting for the union against the American Coal Company and Arthur Lee, who owns it. Arthur Lee is already an acquaintance of Rachel''s because he dated her friend Tommie previously and introduced her to his friend Tony. Rachel and Dillon continue to fight and disagree about their love for one another. Rachel is scared that they would be deemed illegitimate by society and tries to deny her love for her cousin. This offends and angers Dillon, who is against the social norms and wishes to love Rachel even if society believes it is the wrong thing to do. He wants to marry Rachel, but it is illegal to marry a first cousin. When the trouble with the coal company gets worse, Dillon asks that Rachel leave her job for the county, and help him in the fight against the coal companies as the other wives were doing. However, Dillon and Rachel were raised differently, and the words of her dying mother echoed in her head. She was raised by her mother to believe that men want a prim and proper lady, certainly not one who has sex before marriage. It would be wrong for kin to sleep with kin, and even more wrong for two first cousins to marry one another. Standing strong in these beliefs, Rachel ends up marrying Tony, an Italian man that Tommie and Arthur Lee set her up with. She has trouble having kids with Tony and continues to stay close to Dillon. Eventually, she gives into the fact that she loves Dillon and they make love in the secluded area of Trace Mountain where they conceive their daughter, Jackie. However, throughout the rest of the novel this escape to the mountain is kept quiet and Jackie believes until the very end that Tony is her father. After Rachel and Tony finally divorce due to an unhappy marriage and his escapes to the bar, Tony gets remarried and has trouble again having babies. Rachel fears that this will cause him suspicion of Jackie being his and that he will try to take her away. Dillon''s prior paranoia is justified at the end of the novel. The book closes with the breaking of the dawn above the towns, and eventually shows once again that the mining company''s guarantee of safety was untrue. Jackie is left alone after the deaths of Tom and Dillon in the flood and moves away. The story closes with Jackie wanting to forget the place she called home. The book does a good job of creating a scene of mountain utopia that was slowly eroded away by the mining to an area that was undesirable and almost uninhabitable.

The Unquiet Earth

High above a troubled China, where animals battle machines for control, floats an intricate web of hot air balloons – the Sky Village. When twelve-year-old Mei Long''s mother is kidnapped, her father sends Mei to live in the sky, surrounded by strangers, amid a growing threat. Half a world away, thirteen-year-old Rom Saint-Pierre struggles to survive in beast-controlled Las Vegas. When his young sister is stolen away by a pair of demonic creatures, Rom has no choice but to follow them into a shadowy underground world. He becomes enmeshed in gladiator-style arena fighting, in which battles between mechanical-beast demons entertain a chaotic community of gamblers. Mei and Rom have never met, but they share connected journals, books that mysteriously allow them to communicate. The journals also reveal that each of them carries the strange and terrifying Kaimira gene, entwining beast and mek qualities in their very DNA. In this intricately plotted novel, the first in a five-book series, Mei and Rom must overcome those forces that seek to destroy them, and find the courage to balance the powers that clash within. It is their only hope for survival, and for saving the ones they love.

The Sky Village

The story takes place in a suburb of Chicago called Summit during the 1910s. Two hit men, Max and Al, walk into Henry''s lunch-room, which is run by George, and order something off the menu that is not available and have to settle for pork and eggs. Al goes into the kitchen and ties up Nick Adams, a recurring character in Hemingway''s stories, and Sam the black cook. Max and George soon have a conversation, which reveals that the two men are there to kill Ole Anderson, a Swedish boxer, for a "friend". Anderson never shows, so the two men leave. George sends Nick to Hirsch''s boarding house, run by Mrs. Bell, to warn Anderson about the two men. Nick finds Anderson lying in his bed with all of his clothes on. He tells Anderson what has happened. Anderson does not react, except to tell Nick not to do anything, as there is nothing that can be done. Nick leaves, goes back to the lunch-room, and informs George about Ole Anderson''s reaction. When George no longer seems concerned, Nick decides to leave town.

The Killers

"Jimi Hendrix died the year that ship that brought us from Manila docked in San Francisco..." So begins The Gangster of Love, with the arrival of Rocky Rivera, her brother Voltaire and their mother Milagros at San Francisco. Barely just teenagers upon their arrival, the years pass as Rocky and Voltaire begin growing up, finishing school and discovering San Francisco of the 1970s while their mother brings money into the house through several ways from flirtations with several different men, including Zeke, their landlord to the beginning of her catering business, Lumpia X-Press. Rocky has grown into a quiet young woman more comfortable with listening to music and writing in her journals (of which she has several, kept under her mattress) than socializing. One night, Voltaire brings home Elvis Chang, a Chinese-American guitarist, with whom Rocky falls in love and moves in with one week later. Wondering around San Francisco, Rocky meets Keiko Van Heller, an artist who becomes Rocky''s friend for life. Soon, Rocky, Elvis and Keiko decide to move to New York City. The journey begins with a side trip to Los Angeles however, where they encounter Sly and Marlon, Rocky''s uncle. Eventually, they make it to New York City where the band grows and through the years they gain more experience in matters of fame, sex, drugs, and life in general, while Rocky''s family on the West Coast remains a constant presence over the phone. Rocky''s failed pregnancy (she miscarries) acts as the beginning of the end for Rocky and Elvis, a situation exacerbated when Keiko sleeps Elvis. Rocky then moves on to Jake, a Cuban-American sound engineer with whom she has a baby: Venus Rivera Montano. At this time on the West Coast, Voltaire has returned to the Philippines after several stints in the hospital while Milagros, her sister and her brother-in-law have decided to pay New York City a visit, in time for Imelda Marcos''s hearing. Soon after however, Milagros''s health begins deteriorating and Rocky spends months commuting between her family in New York and at her mother''s bedside in San Francisco. When her mother dies, Rocky decides to take a trip to the motherland where she is reunited with her family, including her brother, her sister and her dying father. The plot is cyclical: the story begins with Rocky and her family leaving Manila and arriving in San Francisco, the narration interspersed with various memories of her life in the Philippines. Upon moving to New York City, Rocky reminisces about her life in San Francisco throughout her daily life. Her recollections increase until she returns to San Francisco to take care of her mother. Her decision to go back to the Philippines is made once in San Francisco, a rather natural choice considering her mother''s recent death and the fact that her long-suffering father was finally dying. The Gangster of Love refers to the name of the band formed by several characters in the novel, including Rocky. The name was inspired by a dream Rocky had after taking acid: "A choir of fat, menacing angels wearing yellow satin robes sang this song by Johnny Guitar Watson called "Gangster of Love."" While written in English, Hagedorn includes some Tagalog (Filipino words), particularly in the dialogue and goes so far as to use the Filipino as a distinctive characteristic that sets the more Filipino characters apart from the Filipino-Americans. Though Rocky acts as the first-person narrator for most of the novel, Hagedorn, writes certain portions omniscient narration, once in a while giving the points of view of other characters without the use of first person narration. There are moments in which she even uses the mention of a certain character to introduce said-character''s own narration, for instance, when Rocky and Elvis visit her uncle in Los Angeles: “Marlon studied Elvis Chang – his niece''s lover, boyfriend, whatever. Tall and maybe a little too skinny, but pretty enough with that gold hoop in his ear. Elvis Chang, Marlon thought to himself, amused. Elvis Chang in the home of Marlon Rivera. Fucking ridiculous.” Ever the avant-garde, Hagedorn explores the use of poetry, music and playwriting throughout the novel. Once in a while, she makes use of poetry to depict the life, the surroundings of her characters, for example, a description of a ride on the B Train and playwriting; there are two dream-like scenes featuring Rocky, Elvis and Jimi Hendrix.

The Gangster of Love

Danny Hogan, a truck driver disaffected with his job at Torgus Trucking, meets beautiful Velma Reed in a seedy Los Angeles bar where she has been working as the bartender''s shill, enticing lonely men to buy drinks. Danny doesn''t recognize Velma, but the two of them attended the same high school in a distant city, where they were only casually acquainted. Danny was expelled from high school after being caught using loaded dice in an after-school craps game. A short time later, and unbeknownst to Danny, Velma became pregnant and also left school and their home town. Now, a dozen years later, Velma recognizes Danny and renews their acquaintance. Appealing to his greed and his masculinity, she convinces him to use his skills with crooked dice in a confidence game to help her separate convention-goers from their money. At first reluctant because of a beating he received in the Army after being caught using altered dice, Danny eventually agrees, hoping to amass enough money to start his own trucking company. He soon comes to realize that Velma, too, has a loftier purpose in mind—buying a motel in Las Vegas that she can operate, in order to become "legit" and no longer feel ashamed of the way she earns money to support her young son, whom she has placed in a boarding school. The bulk of the novel''s action surrounds Velma''s artful pickup of likely suckers at conventions, mostly in California cities, and Danny''s subsequent fleecing of them in craps games. Their adventures bring them into contact with a number of ordinary and extraordinary characters, including a gay con artist toward whom Danny displays a disdain that was probably more politically correct in 1957 than it seems now. Various close calls ensue, and Danny loses some of his enthusiasm for the con. He tells Velma he wants to quit, but she convinces him to run the con with her one last time. Along the way, and unbeknownst to Danny, Velma and another male friend, Joe Lovelli, have committed blackmail. Velma has twice enticed men to her hotel room, where Joe waited in a closet with a camera. Using infrared film, Joe snapped photographs of the men in compromising positions with Velma. The blackmailers then extorted—or attempted to extort—hush-up money from their victims. Danny remains unaware of Velma and Joe''s sideline until near the end of the book, when Velma''s second blackmail victim, a mob-related big shot, propels the novel to its climax in a fatal car chase. After struggling with a conflict between conscience and ambition, Danny mails the bulk of his dishonest gambling earnings to Velma''s young son, keeping only enough to buy a good used truck so that he and Jill Conner—the pretty, young, former office manager at Torgus Trucking—can start their own trucking firm.

Over 8000 Takeaways For Your Brain!

Read - Listen - Learn

Blue Remembered Earth

By Alastair Reynolds

Still I Rise: A Cartoon History of African Americans

No Author Listed

Vampire Hunter D Volume 1

By Hideyuki Kikuchi

The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature

By Steven Pinker

The Songlines

By Bruce Chatwin

The Excalibur Alternative

By David Weber

The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet

No Author Listed

The Unquiet Earth

By Denise Giardina

The Sky Village

No Author Listed

The Killers

By Ernest Hemingway

The Gangster of Love

No Author Listed

The Dice Spelled Murder

By Ralph Salaway