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. This book 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. Oh, and if that is not enough, there's even some romance!

    It's a stunning trip through the trenches of a technological war fought with product demos, press releases, and sales pitches.Natch is a master of bio/logics, the programming of the human body. He's clawed and scraped his way to the top of the bio/logics market using little more than his wits. Now his sudden notoriety has brought him to the attention of Margaret Surina, the owner of a mysterious new technology called MultiReal. Only by enlisting Natch's devious mind can Margaret keep MultiReal out of the hands of High Executive Len Borda and his ruthless armies.To fend off the intricate net of enemies closing in around him, Natch and his apprentices must accomplish the impossible. They must understand this strange new technology, run through the product development cycle, and prepare MultiReal for release to the public—all in three days.Meanwhile, hanging over everything is the specter of the infoquake, a lethal burst of energy that's disrupting the bio/logic networks and threatening to send the world crashing back into the Dark Ages.With Infoquake, David Louis Edelman has created a fully detailed world that's both as imaginative as Dune and as real as today's Wall Street Journal.

    It's a wise and wacky look at our recent past seen through a fun-house mirror...it's a satire on our violent, inexplicable, wonderful world...and it's a mind trip inward to expose our deepest hopes and fears.The missing plutonium a terrorist group turns into nuclear devices, the Mad Fishmonger, the future America called Unistat, our hero Benny "Eggs" Benedict, and the Invisible Hand are real but beyond the Black Hole, out of space, out of time—in the universe next door.

    Dick award-winner, Rudy Rucker, reads like a ripped-from-Reddit romp of white hat hacking, artificial intelligence. run amok, and an unstoppable electronic 'bugs.'From a two-time winner of the Philip K. Dick award, and one of the founding fathers of cyberpunk comes a novel about a very modern nightmare: the most destructive computer virus ever has been traced to your machine. Computer programmer Jerzy Rugby spends his days blissfully hacking away in cyberspace - aiding the GoMotion Corporation in its noble quest to create intelligent robots. Then an electronic ant gets into the machinery ... then more ants .... then millions and millions of the nasty viral pests appear out of nowhere to wreak havoc throughout the Net. And suddenly Jerzy Rugby is Public Enemy Number One, wanted for sabotage, computer crime, and treason - a patsy who must now get to the bottom of the virtual insectile plague. "Rudy Rucker warms the cockles of my heart ... I think of him as the Scarlet Pimpernel of science fiction." - Philip Jose Farmer

    Instead of giving you the most broadly popular result, Google now tries to predict what you are most likely to click on. According to MoveOn.org board president Eli Pariser, Google's change in policy is symptomatic of the most significant shift to take place on the Web in recent years - the rise of personalization. In this groundbreaking investigation of the new hidden Web, Pariser uncovers how this growing trend threatens to control how we consume and share information as a society-and reveals what we can do about it.Though the phenomenon has gone largely undetected until now, personalized filters are sweeping the Web, creating individual universes of information for each of us. Facebook - the primary news source for an increasing number of Americans - prioritizes the links it believes will appeal to you so that if you are a liberal, you can expect to see only progressive links. Even an old-media bastion like "The Washington Post" devotes the top of its home page to a news feed with the links your Facebook friends are sharing. Behind the scenes a burgeoning industry of data companies is tracking your personal information to sell to advertisers, from your political leanings to the color you painted your living room to the hiking boots you just browsed on Zappos.In a personalized world, we will increasingly be typed and fed only news that is pleasant, familiar, and confirms our beliefs - and because these filters are invisible, we won't know what is being hidden from us. Our past interests will determine what we are exposed to in the future, leaving less room for the unexpected encounters that spark creativity, innovation, and the democratic exchange of ideas.While we all worry that the Internet is eroding privacy or shrinking our attention spans, Pariser uncovers a more pernicious and far-reaching trend on the Internet and shows how we can - and must - change course. With vivid detail and remarkable scope, The Filter Bubble reveals how personalization undermines the Internet's original purpose as an open platform for the spread of ideas and could leave us all in an isolated, echoing world.

    . . a solid, rollicking, fast paced, easy to read story." -- TheMartianSite.com". . . an original, deftly written, and thoroughly entertaining novel of action and adventure which can be enthusiastically recommended . . ." -- Midwest Book Review"Adventurous science fiction that takes you back to the days of Robert A. Heinlein . . ." -- firebringer.blogspot.comProduct DescriptionIn 'Resurrection of Liberty' Daniel Foster discovers a family secret that is so shocking, it will affect the future of the entire galaxy. While on an innocent road trip with his two best friends, his grandfather’s old car, almost having a mind of its own, whisks the trio out of the confines of their home planet to a cloaked starship that has remained hidden behind the moon for over fifty years. In trying to return home the three friends plunge deeper into space ultimately meeting the race that had sent his grandfather to Earth on a critical mission a generation before. Yet, to their dismay, they learn that by awakening the old ship they have hastened the peril of their own home. Now, far away from his family, Daniel must accept his destiny and dig deep inside himself to muster the confidence needed to rally his new alien friends to help save Earth—and ultimately the galaxy.From the Publisher- Perfect for all those who love action and adventure - Great for Young Adults An epic science fiction adventure for the 21st century 'Resurrection of Liberty' is written in the best tradition of the classics while still being fun, friendly, and accessible to those new to genre. Young adult friendly and packed with enough action and adventure to spare 'Resurrection of Liberty' is a remarkably entertaining read for anyone who enjoys high drama, sympathetic characters, and a look into a world where courage is the key to survival and the future is just around the corner

    The Planet Savers, the first Darkover novel, introduces the reader to the now legendary world of Cottman IV. The Winds of Darkover, also an early novel in the series, reveals the awesome and terrifying powers of the infamous Sharra Matrix.

    Captain Bateson, a man from the 23rd century now living in the 24th, sees what no one else can see: that the Klingon Empire is building its forces and preparing to strike against the Federation. Seizing his one chance, Bateson takes the "U.S.S. Enterprise" on a mission to counter the Klingon threat, only to be thwarted by his enemy, a Klingon who has nursed a grudge against Bateson for decades. Standing in the way of Bateson's scheme and the Klingons' plan is Captain Jean-Luc Picard who, faced with the toughest decision of his career, must choose whether to take back command of the "U.S.S Enterprise" or let the torch pass to yet another next generation!

    Infrastructure engineers use a software version of this “chaos monkey” to test online services’ robustness—their ability to survive random failure and correct mistakes before they actually occur. Tech entrepreneurs are society’s chaos monkeys, disruptors testing and transforming every aspect of our lives, from transportation (Uber) and lodging (AirBnB) to television (Netflix) and dating (Tinder). One of Silicon Valley’s most audacious chaos monkeys is Antonio García Martínez.After stints on Wall Street and as CEO of his own startup, García Martínez joined Facebook’s nascent advertising team, turning its users’ data into profit for COO Sheryl Sandberg and chairman and CEO Mark “Zuck” Zuckerberg. Forced out in the wake of an internal product war over the future of the company’s monetization strategy, García Martínez eventually landed at rival Twitter. He also fathered two children with a woman he barely knew, committed lewd acts and brewed illegal beer on the Facebook campus (accidentally flooding Zuckerberg's desk), lived on a sailboat, raced sport cars on the 101, and enthusiastically pursued the life of an overpaid Silicon Valley wastrel.Now, this gleeful contrarian unravels the chaotic evolution of social media and online marketing and reveals how it is invading our lives and shaping our future. Weighing in on everything from startups and credit derivatives to Big Brother and data tracking, social media monetization and digital “privacy,” García Martínez shares his scathing observations and outrageous antics, taking us on a humorous, subversive tour of the fascinatingly insular tech industry. Chaos Monkeys lays bare the hijinks, trade secrets, and power plays of the visionaries, grunts, sociopaths, opportunists, accidental tourists, and money cowboys who are revolutionizing our world. The question is, will we survive?

    But is it for the better? Amid a chorus of doomsayers, Clive Thompson delivers a resounding "yes." The Internet age has produced a radical new style of human intelligence, worthy of both celebration and analysis. We learn more and retain it longer, write and think with global audiences, and even gain an ESP-like awareness of the world around us. Modern technology is making us smarter, better connected, and often deeper—both as individuals and as a society. In Smarter Than You Think Thompson shows that every technological innovation—from the written word to the printing press to the telegraph—has provoked the very same anxieties that plague us today. We panic that life will never be the same, that our attentions are eroding, that culture is being trivialized. But as in the past, we adapt—learning to use the new and retaining what’s good of the old. Thompson introduces us to a cast of extraordinary characters who augment their minds in inventive ways. There's the seventy-six-year old millionaire who digitally records his every waking moment—giving him instant recall of the events and ideas of his life, even going back decades. There's a group of courageous Chinese students who mounted an online movement that shut down a $1.6 billion toxic copper plant. There are experts and there are amateurs, including a global set of gamers who took a puzzle that had baffled HIV scientists for a decade—and solved it collaboratively in only one month. Smarter Than You Think isn't just about pioneers. It's about everyday users of technology and how our digital tools—from Google to Twitter to Facebook and smartphones—are giving us new ways to learn, talk, and share our ideas. Thompson harnesses the latest discoveries in social science to explore how digital technology taps into our long-standing habits of mind—pushing them in powerful new directions. Our thinking will continue to evolve as newer tools enter our lives. Smarter Than You Think embraces and extols this transformation, presenting an exciting vision of the present and the future.

    . . . The impossible has spawned the unthinkable. A military experiment in the year 2021 has thrust an American-led multinational armada back to 1942, right into the middle of the U.S. naval task force speeding toward Midway Atoll—and what was to be the most spectacular U.S. triumph of the entire war. Thousands died in the chaos, but the ripples had only begun. For these veterans of Pearl Harbor—led by Admirals Nimitz, Halsey, and Spruance—have never seen a helicopter, or a satellite link, or a nuclear weapon. And they’ve never encountered an African American colonel or a British naval commander who was a woman and half-Pakistani. While they embrace the armada’s awesome firepower, they may find the twenty-first century sailors themselves far from acceptable.Initial jubilation at news the Allies would win the war is quickly doused by the chilling realization that the time travelers themselves—by their very presence—have rendered history null and void. Celebration turns to dread when the possibility arises that other elements of the twenty-first century task force may have also made the trip—and might now be aiding Yamamoto and the Japanese.What happens next is anybody’s guess—and everybody’s nightmare. . . .From the Trade Paperback edition.

    A world that exists in the shadows of our own. A conflict we will never see. One woman stands between those determined to control history and those who will risk their lives for freedom.A world that exists in the shadows of our own.A conflict we will never see.One woman stands between those determined to control history and those who will risk their lives for freedom.Maya is hiding in plain sight in London. The twenty-six-year-old has abandoned the dangerous obligations pressed upon her by her father, and chosen instead to live a normal life. But Maya comes from a long line of people who call themselves Harlequins—a fierce group of warriors willing to sacrifice their lives to protect a select few known as Travelers.Gabriel and Michael Corrigan are brothers living in Los Angeles. Since childhood, the young men have been shaped by stories that their late father was a Traveler, one of a small band of prophets who have vastly influenced the course of history. Travelers are able to attain pure enlightenment, and have for centuries ushered change into the world. Gabriel and Michael, who may have inherited their father's gifts, have always protected themselves by living “off the Grid”—that is, invisible to the real-life surveillance networks that monitor people in our modern society.Summoned by her ailing father, Maya is told of the existence of the brothers. The Corrigans are in severe danger, stalked by powerful men known as the Tabula—ruthless mercenaries who have hunted Travelers for generations. This group is determined to inflict order on the world by controlling it, and they view Travelers as an intolerable threat. As Maya races to California to protect the brothers, she is reluctantly pulled back into the cold and solitary Harlequin existence. A colossal battle looms—one that will reveal not only the identities of Gabriel and Michael Corrigan but also a secret history of our time.Moving from the back alleys of Prague to the heart of Los Angeles, from the high deserts of Arizona to a guarded research facility in New York, The Traveler explores a parallel world that exists alongside our own. John Twelve Hawks' stunningly suspenseful debut is an international publishing sensation that marks the arrival of a major new talent.

    100,000 years ago, the galaxy was populated by a great variety of beings. But one species--eons beyond all others in both technology and knowledge--achieved dominance. They ruled in peace but met opposition with quick and brutal effectiveness. They were the Forerunners, the keepers of the Mantle, the next stage of life in the Universe's Living Time. And then they vanished. This is their story. Bornstellar Makes Eternal Lasting is a young rebellious Forerunner. He is a Manipular, untried, yet to become part of the adult Forerunner society, where vast knowledge and duty waits. He comes from a family of Builders, the Forerunners' highest and most politically powerful rate. It is the Builders who create the grand technology that facilitates Forerunner dominance over the known universe. It is the Builders who believe they must shoulder the greatest burden of the Mantle, as shepherds and guardians of all life. Bornstellar is marked to become a great Builder just like his father. But this Manipular has other plans. He is obsessed with lost treasures of the past. His reckless passion to seek out the marvelous artifacts left behind by the Precursors, long-vanished superbeings of unknowable power and intent, forces his father's hand. Bornstellar is sent to live among the Miners, where he must come to terms with where his duty truly lies. But powerful forces are at play. Forerunner society is at a major crux. Past threats are once again proving relentless. Dire solutions, machines and strategies never before contemplated, are being called up, and fissures in Forerunner power are leading to chaos. On a Lifeworker's experimental planet, Bornstellar's rebellious course crosses the paths of two humans, and the long lifeline of a great military leader, thus forever changing Bornstellar's destiny ...and the fate of the entire galaxy.

    AI and robotics have realized science fiction’s dreams, but have also taken millions of jobs and left many citizens fearful that the future is leaving them behind. After narrowly averting a bombing at Washington’s Union Station, FBI Special Agent Lara Keegan receives a new assignment: to field test the first police robot. In the wake of a series of shocking catastrophes, the two find themselves investigating a conspiracy whose mastermind is using cutting-edge tech to rip the nation apart. To stop this new breed of terrorist, Keegan’s only hope is to forge a new kind of partnership. With every tech, trend, and scene drawn from the real world, Burn-In blends a technothriller’s excitement with nonfiction’s insight to illuminate the darkest corners of our chilling tomorrow.

    In the years since, Q has returned again and again to harass Picard and his crew. Sometimes dangerous, sometimes merely obnoxious, Q has always been mysterious and seemingly all-powerful. But this time, when Q appears, he comes to Picard for help. Apparently another member of the Q continuum has tapped into an awesome power source that makes this being more powerful than the combined might of the entire Q continuum. This renegade Q is named Trelane -- also known as the Squire of Gothos, who Captain Kirk and his crew first encountered over one hundred years ago. Q explains that, armed with this incredible power, Trelane has become unspeakably dangerous. Now Picard must get involved in an awesome struggle between super beings. And this time the stakes are not just Picard's ship, or the galaxy, or even the universe -- this time the stakes are all of creation...