Olivia Harker is a child unloved by her mother, Ida, who is mentally ill. However, her father, Tate, raises her and loves her a great deal while her mother is in a sanatorium. Tate also manages to run a grocery store and is a self taught veterinarian. Ida is released from the sanitorium and returns home to her family. She immediately makes it clear to Olivia that she is a disappointment to her. Ida frequently abuses Olivia. Olivia''s only source of friendship is the colored community within her town. She learns many things from them, including words of wisdom. Olivia has a child, Pauline, out of wedlock. Olivia and her father get into a horrible car accident that kills James Arnold. The accident leaves her terribly disfigured, though temporarily. Ida tells her that her father was killed in the crash. Despite these events, she gets married eventually. However, it is not to Pauline''s father, who is unknown. Olivia''s husband, Saul, builds a tarpaper shack for Ida. She has a relatively happy life despite her mother''s constant madness and disapproval of her for 12 years before her husband dies. Pauline follows her mother''s example by having a child, William, out of wedlock. When William is a baby, Pauline leaves to become a star in Hollywood. Olivia grows closer to William over the years to the point that he is her sole source of joy. Her ultimate priority is to keep him safe. In 1938, Olivia reminisces about the grocery store store and her father''s work as a veterinarian. She recalls how people paid with provisions because of the harsh economic times. The segregation present within the community also stands out for her. She realizes that''s it takes place even in her grocery store. There are separate days for whites and coloreds. One day, Pauline returns to take Wiliam. She wants to turn him into a child star so that he can support her. Olivia does not let Pauline take away William upon hearing her reasons. Olivia owns a hill in which the only silver-faced wolves in Kentucky exist . People normally hunted hunted on her land for food, which Olivia unsderstood and respected. Out of nowhere, somebody starts killing the wolves for sport, while chopping off their right ears. Olivia eventually figures out that Alton Phelps is doing this. He thinks that Olivia knows a great secret about him and his friends because her father discovered it many years ago. However, this secret is unknown to her. Alton Phelps even goes so far as to threaten Olivia and William. Olivia begins to investigate this secret and discovers that Alton and his friends are Cott''ners. They are described them as the rejects of the KKK. The Cott''ners have been killing off the younger generations of coloreds in the town for years. In the process of discovering this secret, Olivia discovers that her father is still alive and in prison for killing James Arnold. She discovers this around the time that the Cott''ners are hunting her down as well as her friends. Olivia goes to visit him in prison, while calling the Federal Marshall in the process. She then goes home and discovers some old books of her father''s that details where the victims of the Cott''ners are buried. Eventually, the Federal Marshall comes and saves them. Tate is released from prison in exchange for testifying against the Cott''ners.

Sweeping Up Glass

* Road of Skulls * A Gift from the Culture * Odd Attachment * Descendant * Cleaning Up * Piece * The State of the Art At 100 pages long, the title novella makes up the bulk of the book. The novella chronicles a Culture mission to Earth in the late Seventies, and also serves as a prequel of sorts to Use of Weapons by featuring one of that novel''s characters, Diziet Sma. Here, Sma argues for contact with Earth, to try to fix the mess the human species has made of it; another Culture citizen, Linter, goes native, choosing to renounce his Culture body enhancements so as to be more like the locals; and Li, who is a Star Trek fan, argues that the whole "incontestably neurotic and clinically insane species" should be eradicated with a micro black hole. The ship Arbitrary has ideas, and a sense of humour, of its own. ''Also while I''d been away, the ship had sent a request on a postcard to the BBC''s World Service, asking for ''Mr David Bowie''s "Space Oddity" for the good ship Arbitrary and all who sail in her.'' (This from a machine that could have swamped Earth''s entire electro-magnetic spectrum with whatever the hell it wanted from somewhere beyond Betelgeuse.) It didn''t get the request played. The ship thought this was hilarious.'' *Scratch (or: The Present and Future of Species HS (sic) Considered as The Contents of a Contemporary Popular Record (qv))

The State of the Art

Myra and her husband Oswald return to their fictional hometown of Parthia, Illinois, to visit their relatives. Nellie and Aunt Lydia then leave to spend the Christmas holiday in New York City with them. They live on Madison Square. They dine with Ewan Gray, a friend who has an infatuation with another actress, Esther Sinclair. Oswald receives silver-buttons for his shirt from an old Western acquaintance, and asks Lydia to pretend she gave them to him to thwart his wife''s jealousy. Later Myra and Nellie go to the opera; in a loge they spot an erstwhile friend of Myra''s, which makes her sad. Later they take a hansom around a park and chance upon a rich acquaintance of Myra''s, which leads her to be scornful over her own poverty. They spend Christmas dinner with friends of the Henshawes - both artists and people of privilege. Later they spend New Year''s Eve with artists again. A few days later Nellie witnesses the Henshawes argue; the husband takes her out to lunch. Soon after, she and her aunt are to return to Illinois. On the train, they are joined by Myra, who has argued with her husband again and is going to visit a friend in Pittsburg for a change of scenery. Ten years later, Nellie moved into a shabby flat in a little town on the west coast, and bumps into the Henshawes. Myra is now bedridden and Oswald works full-time; their upstairs neighbours are atrociously noisy, regardless Myra''s illness. Nellie takes to visiting her at tea-time; she also takes her out by the sea. Myra expresses her regrets over her husband. (If she had not married him, her great-uncle would have bequeathed her his fortune. Instead, she eloped and he gave it away to the church.) Oswald takes to having lunch with a young woman Once, Nellie asks her why she is so harsh on her husband, and Myra dismisses her. Shortly after, her condition gets worse. She dismisses everyone and runs away; she is found dead by the seaside the following day. Her husband expresses no remorse about his wife; he loved her despite her difficult conduct. After her death he moves to Alaska and later Nellie hears about his death.

My Mortal Enemy

Pat is still sharing a flat with Bruce, the good-looking egotist, although she is no longer attracted to him. She decides to go back to university and obtains a place at Edinburgh, but still works part-time in Matthew''s art gallery. Her friend and neighbour Domenica, the anthropologist, tries to help Pat with her love life by making the acquaintance of a good-looking waiter, but when he takes her to a nudist picnic Pat realises he is not for her. Domenica develops an interest in pirates and makes plans to travel to the South China Sea for some field-work. Matthew is upset when his wealthy businessman father finds a girlfriend, and misjudges her motives. He confides in Big Lou at the cafe, who has learned that her long-lost lover is returning to Scotland and hopes to resume their relationship. Far from being a gold-digger, Matthew''s father''s girlfriend persuades him to give Matthew £4 million. Matthew still cherishes feelings for Pat, but they are not returned. Ramsey Dunbarton, the lawyer, writes his memoirs and reads them to his wife. Stuart and Irene Pollock continue to hothouse their five-year-old son Bertie, whom Irene regards as a child prodigy. He yearns to go to Watson''s school and play rugby, even securing a blazer and sneaking into lessons, but is sent to the Steiner School for gifted children instead. He remains in psychotherapy, and his mother is impressed and attracted by the therapist, Dr Fairbairn, who is troubled by guilt. Bertie and his father have an adventure, travelling to Glasgow on the train to recover their car, which Stuart has left there accidentally. They meet a gangster, Lard O''Connor, who takes a fancy to Bertie and helps them recover their car, but Bertie soon realises that although the registration number is the same, the car is not. Stuart realises how hard life is for Bertie because of his mother''s expectations, and begins to stand up for his son a little more. Irene insults Angus Lordie''s dog Cyril, who bites her. She announces that she is pregnant. Bruce loses his job after he is caught enjoying a romantic meal with his employer''s wife, and is rejected by his American girlfriend. He decides to become a wine merchant and almost persuades a rich friend into partnership, but is foiled by the friend''s girlfriend, to whom he is rude and dismissive. He fears that some Chateau Petrus he has bought cheaply may be bogus, but it is genuine and with the profit he makes on it at auction he moves to London and puts the flat at 44 Scotland Street up for sale.

Espresso Tales

In 2115, existence of telepathy has been proven. The resulting media frenzy, panic, violence, and bloodshed lead to the creation of the Metasensory Regulation Authority, the precursor of the Psi Corps, largely due to the efforts of Lee Crawford, an Earth Alliance senator. Much effort is put into establishing the events that had triggered appearance of the telepaths. Crawford''s closest aid and successor, Kevin Vacit, continues the search and establishes an ambiguous relationships with the rogue telepaths who refuse to join the tightly regulated Corps. Kevin Vacit is a telepath prodigy who masks his abilities from the Corps and Crawford. Earth Gov has ruled that the director of PSI Corps can not be a telepath and Vacit is able to hide his ability from the PSI Corps tests. A relationship with his bodyguard leads to the birth of his daughter Fiona, who Vacit hides with the Telepath Underground. Fiona does not know who her father is and so she fights to bring down PSI Corps along with other Underground leaders. Fiona is captured by the PSI Corps and undergoes reeducation at the telepath concentration camp where she meets Stephen Walters. With the aid of Stephen she escapes the camp and rejoins the underground. Unknown to Fiona is the fact that Stephen is actually a PSI Corps special operative sent by her father (Vacit) to break her out of the camp. Fiona marries Matthew Dexter, a man she met while inside the telepath concentration camp and gives birth to a baby boy who she names Steven. During this period, Steven Walters defects to the Telepath Underground for real, cutting all remaining ties with Psi Corps. Vacit and Ms Alexander (his aide) travel to Venus investigating the reports of a ship found on the surface. Leaving their ship and venturing alone into the atmosphere of Venus, the pair encounter a Vorlon who tells them about the coming of the Shadows and why telepaths were created among the younger races. The Vorlon leaves a telepathic command in the mind of Ms Alexander for her or her descendant to come to the Vorlon homeworld when the time is right. Lyta Alexander, her granddaughter, carries this embedded command. On the return to Earth, Kevin changes his plans about assisting the underground after realising that the only way they can be ready for the Shadows is if the PSI Corps can control the evolution of telepaths on earth and to reproduce the best of the best who will be needed to defeat the coming of the Shadows. Vacit''s daughter Fiona and her husband Matthew are killed in a PSI Corps attack on their home base and their child is given to Stephen to look after. Stephen gives the child to a girl to look after while he goes back to assist Fiona and Mathew. After he realises that they have both been killed he returns to where he left the girl but she and the baby are gone. Baby Steven is picked up by PSI cops and adopted by the Corps. Little Stee is given a new name by his Grandfather, the now director of PSI Corps Kevin Vacit. The book ends with the reveal that the new name given to Stevie Dexter is Alfred Bester. ru:Тёмное происхождение: Рождение Пси-Корпуса

Babylon 5: Dark Genesis - The Birth of the Psi Corps

Emperor Cleon I wants to appoint Hari Seldon as the First Minister of the Galactic Empire. Powerful Trantor High Council member Betan Lamurk opposes the independent Seldon’s appointment. Seldon himself is reluctant to accept the position because of its time constraints pulling him away from the psychohistory project. The project is led by Seldon, Yugo Amaryl, and Seldon’s advanced humaniform robot-spouse Dors Venabili. Seldon needs to curry favor with the emperor, however, and advises Cleon I informally. For example, Seldon suggests a decree that erases terrorists'' names from records, denying them immortality, discouraging chaotic actions. Besides the psychohistorians, much of the novel''s action revolves around advanced sentient simulations (sims) of Joan of Arc and Voltaire. The sims have been recreated by Artifice Associates, a research company located in Trantor’s Dahl Sector. Artifice Associates programmers Marq and Sybil plan to use the Joan/ Voltaire sims for two money-making projects. First, Hari Seldon’s psychohistory project. Second, Trantor’s Junin-Sector “Preservers vs Skeptics Society” debate whether mechanical beings endowed with artificial intelligence should be built. And if so, whether they should receive full citizenship. The Preservers’ champion will be Joan, the Skeptics’ champion Voltaire. Hari Seldon and Dors Venabili flee Trantor, escaping High Council member Betan Lamurk’s forces. During their galactic odyssey, Hari and Dors experience virtual reality as chimpanzees on planet Panucopia. They also visit helter-skelter New Renaissance world Sark. Meanwhile, back on Trantor, sims Joan and Voltaire escape into Trantor’s Mesh (Internet). Joan and Voltaire interact with ancient aliens on the Mesh. These aliens fled Trantor''s physical space when terraforming robots arrived on Trantor more than 20,000 years ago. Via Joan and Voltaire, Hari allies with the mesh aliens. The aliens aid Seldon’s return to Trantor, and his defeat of High Council member Lamurk through tik-toks. The novel ends with Seldon accepting his position as Emperor Cleon’s First Minister.

Foundation''s Fear

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.

Toward the End of Time

The novel is orchestrated into four parts named after the four main characters: “İhsan,” “Nuran,” “Suad,” and “Mümtaz”. At a young age, after his parents die during the Allied occupations of Ottoman territories after WWI, Mümtaz, goes to live with his much older cousin İhsan, an intellectual and history teacher at Galatasaray, the famous French lyceum in Istanbul. Their relationship is one of mentor and student. İhsan is a role model who has now fallen seriously ill, upsetting the spirit of the entire family. Parallel to the relationship between Mümtaz and İhsan is the love affair between Mümtaz and Nuran, the women who has recently left him. Mümtaz is devastated by İhsan’s sickness, by the fact that Nuran has recently made up with her ex-husband, and by the impending second world war. The fourth major character, and the darkest of them, is Suad, an admirer of Nuran who ultimately commits suicide in Mümtaz’s apartment, destroying Mümtaz’s relationship with Nuran. Psychologically, socially, nationally, and internationally, the developments in the novel are always pregnant with permanent change and uncertainty. Both the vital importance and the fragility of these relationships are highlighted through lyrical passages of modernist and symbolist prose. The influence of writers such as James Joyce, Marcel Proust, and Fyodor Dostoyevsky can be felt in the prose. Part I (“İhsan”) and Part IV (“Mümtaz”) frame the novel and represent a tense and melancholy twenty-four hour period culminating in the announcement that World War II has begun in Europe. Part II (“Nuran”) and Part III (“Suad”) narrate the events of the preceding year. Part II delves into the halcyon relationship between Mümtaz and his beloved Nuran through the intertwining of aspects of Ottoman Turkish classical music, folk songs, theater, and the natural beauty of the Bosphorus – a body of water separating Europe and Asia. Part III is brooding in tone as it relates the dampening and growing sorrow surrounding this idyllic romance, through the complications presented by Suad. Part IV takes up the themes of the East/West “problematic” and problems of identity, focusing on the realization by those in Mümtaz’s circle that he is on the verge of mental and emotional collapse. A Mind at Peace is a novel about its opposite, tension and anxiety, and the challenges posed by war and self-destruction to relationships and aesthetics; all the while, Tanpınar contemplates the mystery, irony, and persistence of the observing eye and hybrid consciousness. Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar is an author of modernist transfigurations. Revelations of the Turkish soul on the threshold of political and cultural change inflect his prose, and mark his language and aesthetics. A Mind at Peace, among other things, is the Turkish national anti-epic. It is a bildungsroman that doesn’t lead to maturity and the wisdom of experience, but to a spectrum of vulnerabilities from psychic instability to sacrifices of identity and history. Tanpınar represents the modernism of countries like Turkey that have experienced concentrated periods of reform and revolution, or even, countries with a history of colonization. His narrative point-of-view moves between a more traditional narrator and the poetic voice of an aesthete. His prose, in style and structure, is thereby a faithful narrative representation of the fraught cultural transition from the Ottoman Empire to the mid-century Turkish Republic. In A Mind at Peace, Tanpınar writes through a number of themes and tropes including the divided self, the melodic makam, the Ottoman legacy, the Sufi theme, material culture (objects and memory), and the unrequited mystic romance (of lover and beloved). Entering a vast symbolist world (of light and illumination, season and clime, lover and beloved, alchemy and transfiguration, Istanbul and the Bosphorus, etc.), the reader is never made to forget that he is accessing a world through the perspective of a voyeur, a flâneur, an ironist, a tourist of one’s native city, an aesthete, and one who has learned to see life from the outside through a self-Orientalizing gaze. Tanpınar treats language as an object around which memory coalesces. For lest it be forgotten, Tanpınar’s Turkish audience alone represents a readership estranged from its own immediate cultural heritage and history.

A Mind at Peace

The novel is set in the 10th century. The Caliph of Baghdad Al-Muqtadir (Arabic: المقتدر بالله) sends his ambassador, Ahmad ibn Fadlan (Arabic احمد بن فضلان), to the king of the Volga Bulgars. He never arrives but is instead captured by a group of Vikings. This group is sent on a hero''s quest to the north. Ahmad ibn Fadlan is taken along, as the thirteenth member of their group, to bring good luck. There they battle with the ''mist-monsters'', or ''wendol'', a relict group of Neanderthals who go to battle wearing bear skins like the berserkers found in the original Beowulf story. Eaters of the Dead is narrated as a scientific commentary on an old manuscript. The narrator describes how the story told is a composite of extant commentaries and translations of the works of the original story teller. There are several references during the narration to a possible change or mistranslation of the original story by later copiers. The story is told by several different voices: the editor/narrator, the translators of the script and the original author, ibn Fadlan, as well as his descriptions of stories told by others. A sense of authenticity is supported by occasional explanatory footnotes with references to a mixture of factual and fictitious sources.

Eaters of the Dead

Sumitha meets Seb, who is in a band called Paper Turkey. Although they both like each other, they do not officially date. Sumitha dances to Paper Turkey''s music in Stomping Ground, but her father sees it and forbids her to see Seb again. Sumitha lies to her father in order to go to a music festival where Paper Turkey are playing in a competition, but the band is drunk and do not win. Sumitha''s father wants to arrange a marriage for her, and his friend Sajjed comes to visit, along with his son Asim and wife Chhobi. Asim objects to having an arranged marriage, which gains him Sumitha''s admiration. Laura wants to break up with Jon because she has met Simon Stagg, but she does not know how to tell him. On New Year''s Ever, she leaves her celebrations with Jon to see Simon, upsetting Jon who still loves her. Laura is hurt and upset to learn that Simon is gay, and she eventually gets back together with Jon. Chelsea has difficulty writing a sociology essay about unemployment, but after her mother is fired she writes an excellent essay and decides to study harder in the future. Bex returns to Leehampton, because her brother, Ricky, is a victim of violence at school. Chelsea helps him. Jemma is angry, because her dad wants to move to Scotland. She also argues with her father because he objects to her starring in a commercial. Jemma attends casting anyway, but walks out after she realises that the commercial suggests that only slim people are valuable. Jon''s dad wants to move to Cornwall, because he is tired of his work. Jon argues with him, and then feel guilty after his father has a heart attack, even though it happened while his father was jogging.

Does Anyone Ever Listen?

The protagonist is Major Dan Ridgeway, the leader of a USMC Rapid Assault Team, or RAT squad. Ridgeway carries a heavy personal burden from a "damned if you do, damned if you don''t" decision that won him official acclaim early in his military career. Ridgeway''s squad is deployed to a distant planet where workers at a lucrative and strategically critical mining operation have seceded and aligned with an opposing government. The key to reclaiming the facility intact lies in a surgical strike against a deep-underground reactor that powers the ground-based defense systems. Employing an unorthodox means of infiltrating the outer defenses, the RAT squad''s powered armor allows them to carve a straight line to the reactor and affix explosives to its hull. Their egress is impeded by stiff resistance and as time runs out, Ridgeway opts for a last-ditch means of survival in the face of the reactor''s imminent detonation. The avenue of escape leaves the Marines stranded in an even deeper series of frozen caverns below the reactor level. Searching for a means of escape and a safe environment to deal with injuries, they discover two things: that one member of the opposing military force, a lowly truck driver, has inadvertently fallen along with the Marines, and of far greater impact that an immense starship pitched on her side kilometers below the planet''s surface. Despite the immediately obvious mystery, Ridgeway maintains a firm "not our job to solve mysteries" focus and views the ship only as a means to address his team''s survival. Viewing the driver as a potential source of information, they bring him along and enter the ship to grapple with extracting the means to repair, refit and escape. After considerable effort and several life-threatening encounters created entirely by the hazardous environment, the Marines restore limited power within the ship and in so doing begin to unravel pieces of her history and a remarkable technology that saves the life of the driver, Jenner, and Darcy, a member of Ridgeway''s team. But it quickly becomes obvious that more than just the power has re-awakened on the ship. While pursuing a means of reaching the surface, the Marines are with increasing frequency and intensity engaged in ways that stress them to the breaking point. Discovering evidence of what appears to be a horrific atrocity against the ship''s original crew, the weight of Ridgeway''s longstanding internal burden and the need to save his team come into alignment on a path that cuts directly through the alien species. What remains is a series of blistering firefights, personal sacrifices and displays of both loyalty and frailty that lead to the book''s ultimate conclusion. The book challenges traditional definitions of humanity and the way we perceive one another.

Dominant Species

The book begins from the point of view of The Mysterious Stranger, also known as X, the renegade Ethical who has been contacting people in the valley and enlisting their aid. He had posed as the engineer Barry Thorne on the airship Parseval where he had murdered Milton Firebrass and several others, all of whom were fellow Ethicals. He is now posing as a Mayan named Ah Qaaq and is traveling in the company of the Chinese poet Li Po. Through his internal reverie he reveals some of his secrets. His identity had been discovered by Monat Grrautut, who was the director of the Riverworld project. Monat had recalled him to the Dark Tower to be judged. However, he used a remote command to kill all the inhabitants of the tower and stopped the resurrections so that agents in the valley could not return to the tower. Stuck in the valley like the others he began to make his way upriver, hoping to catch a ride on one of the riverboats. His reverie ends on one of the most traumatic days on the Riverworld. On that day the left bank grailstones fail to fire. They had done so once before, when the meteorite which Sam Clemens discovered, broke the circuit which powered them. That time the damage had been repaired by the Ethicals. But this time they are all either dead or stuck in the valley. One day after the grailstones fail the inhabitants of the left bank invade the right en masse, half of humanity dies in the conflict. At the same time Richard Burton and his friends have joined the crew of King John''s ship the Rex Grandissimus. They participate in the defense of the boat after the grailstones fail and Burton, masquerading as a Dark Age British warrior, eventually becomes King John''s security chief. One day Tom Mix, Jack London, and Peter Jairus Frigate apply to join the crew. Burton, recognizing Frigate, attacks him. Realizing his mistake Burton eventually becomes friendly with Frigate and becomes an ally of Mix and London. The false Frigate has disappeared, but his travelling companion, Monat Grrautut, has boarded Sam Clemens'' ship. Shortly after boarding, Monat is murdered by the renegade Ethical. Eventually the two riverboats reach Virolando, a wide lake which is the last inhabited stretch before the headwaters. It is also home to the pacifist Church of the Second Chance, where Hermann Göring has become a priest. King John and Clemens finally get to square off. Initially they begin with an aerial dog fight. When the planes are destroyed the two great riverboats attack each other. In the ensuing conflict both riverboats are sunk, most of the crews die, and the two captains are killed. King John is killed by Clemens and Clemens dies of a heart attack after being pulled from the water by his mortal enemy Erik Bloodaxe. Clemens dies before he notices that Bloodaxe has become an adherent of the Church of the Second Chance, and seeks no revenge against Clemens. Among the survivors are Burton, Frigate, Alice, Kaz, Joe Miller, Li Po, Ah Qaaq, and Nur ed Din. They are joined by the American piano player Tom Turpin, the English novelist Aphra Behn, a man claiming to be Gilgamesh, and the French soldier Jean Marcelin, Baron de Marbot. They take one of the ship''s launches, the only craft to survive the fight, and proceed upriver. They scale the waterfall at the end of the river and make their way, after much difficulty, to the polar sea. When they arrive at the tower they unmask Ah Qaaq as the renegade Ethical and take him prisoner. He explains his identity as Loga, son of King Priam of Troy. Like all children who died before age five, he was resurrected centuries ago and raised by the alien Ethicals to be one of their agents. He reveals also the purpose of the Riverworld. It is meant as a grand moral test, to allow humanity to progress to the point where they can achieve enlightenment. When the project is brought to a close the souls of those who have not achieved enlightenment will be set loose to wander the universe aimlessly. Loga became obsessed with sparing his earthly family this fate and worked to sabotage the project. He was the one who awakened Burton prematurely, recruited Clemens and the others, and he used satellites to direct the meteorite to land near Clemens. While this is all being revealed they discover that there is a problem with the computer which runs the tower. A part malfunctioned, and since no one was around to repair it the problem has reached a critical point. If nothing is done the computer will die, releasing all the stored wathans, or souls, of the people who died on the Riverworld. Without the wathans these people can never be brought back to life. In addition, Monat has locked out other users from accessing the computer. Göring, who had followed the group to the tower, attempts to fix the computer, but is killed by security measures put in place by Monat. Alice then devises a way to get around this programming, and deactivate the security. Loga then is able to repair the computer.

Over 8000 Takeaways For Your Brain!

Read - Listen - Learn

Sweeping Up Glass

No Author Listed

The State of the Art

By Iain Banks

My Mortal Enemy

By Willa Cather

Espresso Tales

By Alexander McCall Smith

Babylon 5: Dark Genesis - The Birth of the Psi Corps

By Gregory Keyes

Foundation's Fear

By Gregory Benford

Toward the End of Time

By John Updike

A Mind at Peace

By Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar

Eaters of the Dead

By Michael Crichton

Does Anyone Ever Listen?

No Author Listed

Dominant Species

By Michael E. Marks

The Magic Labyrinth

By Philip José Farmer