Book picks similar to
The Snouters: Form and Life of the Rhinogrades by Harald Stümpke
science-fiction
fiction
speculative-zoology
humor
Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions
Edwin A. Abbott - 1884
The work of English clergyman, educator and Shakespearean scholar Edwin A. Abbott (1838-1926), it describes the journeys of A. Square [sic – ed.], a mathematician and resident of the two-dimensional Flatland, where women-thin, straight lines-are the lowliest of shapes, and where men may have any number of sides, depending on their social status.Through strange occurrences that bring him into contact with a host of geometric forms, Square has adventures in Spaceland (three dimensions), Lineland (one dimension) and Pointland (no dimensions) and ultimately entertains thoughts of visiting a land of four dimensions—a revolutionary idea for which he is returned to his two-dimensional world. Charmingly illustrated by the author, Flatland is not only fascinating reading, it is still a first-rate fictional introduction to the concept of the multiple dimensions of space. "Instructive, entertaining, and stimulating to the imagination." — Mathematics Teacher.
The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead
Max Brooks - 2003
Fully illustrated and exhaustively comprehensive, this book covers everything you need to know, including how to understand zombie physiology and behavior, the most effective defense tactics and weaponry, ways to outfit your home for a long siege, and how to survive and adapt in any territory or terrain.Top 10 Lessons for Surviving a Zombie Attack 1. Organize before they rise! 2. They feel no fear, why should you?3. Use your head: cut off theirs.4. Blades don’t need reloading.5. Ideal protection = tight clothes, short hair.6. Get up the staircase, then destroy it. 7. Get out of the car, get onto the bike.8. Keep moving, keep low, keep quiet, keep alert!9. No place is safe, only safer. 10. The zombie may be gone, but the threat lives on. Don’t be carefree and foolish with your most precious asset—life. This book is your key to survival against the hordes of undead who may be stalking you right now without your even knowing it. The Zombie Survival Guide offers complete protection through trusted, proven tips for safeguarding yourself and your loved ones against the living dead. It is a book that can save your life.
The Rapture of the Nerds
Cory Doctorow - 2012
For the most part, they are happy with their lot, living in a preserve at the bottom of a gravity well. Those who are unhappy have emigrated, joining one or another of the swarming densethinker clades that fog the inner solar system with a dust of molecular machinery so thick that it obscures the sun.The splintery metaconsciousness of the solar-system has largely sworn off its pre-post-human cousins dirtside, but its minds sometimes wander...and when that happens, it casually spams Earth's networks with plans for cataclysmically disruptive technologies that emulsify whole industries, cultures, and spiritual systems. A sane species would ignore these get-evolved-quick schemes, but there's always someone who'll take a bite from the forbidden apple.So until the overminds bore of stirring Earth's anthill, there's Tech Jury Service: random humans, selected arbitrarily, charged with assessing dozens of new inventions and ruling on whether to let them loose. Young Huw, a technophobic, misanthropic Welshman, has been selected for the latest jury, a task he does his best to perform despite an itchy technovirus, the apathy of the proletariat, and a couple of truly awful moments on bathroom floors.
Schrodingers Caterpillar
Zane Stumpo - 2012
One morning he misses his bus when he stops to put a strange caterpillar in a matchbox. As the bus passes he’s shocked to spot himself inside. Like Schrödinger’s Cat in the famous quantum thought experiment, the caterpillar's spawned parallel possibilities. This comic novel explores Graham’s search for a better life among the various overlapping alternatives.Another clone, Grim Dupeint, is a loathsome international arms dealer. Graham infiltrates Grim’s corporation, then embezzles cash for charity. When a furious Grim realises, Graham must act fast. And right now he's acting like fish food.Graham launches upon a new lifestyle (and sex life) as he dons the designer suits of power. But sinister figures soon see through Graham’s clothing. Now Graham’s under attack from the corporation, the police, his ex-wife’s private detective, and an infuriatingly pompous water-colourist who Graham might have been if he’d gone to art college rather than business school. To survive (and steal the artist’s wonderful woman) Graham needs to find hidden resources. By definition Dopplegraham’s equally resourceful. Bugger...Schrödinger's Caterpillar - a stupid book for brainy people!
The Sheriff of Yrnameer
Michael Rubens - 2009
His sidekick just stole his girlfriend. The galaxy's most hideous and feared bounty hunter wants to lay eggs in his brain. And the luxury space yacht Cole just hijacked turns out of be filled with interstellar do-gooders, one especially loathsome stowaway, and a cargo of freeze-dried orphans.Reluctantly compelled to deliver these defenseless, fluidless children to safety, Cole gathers a misfit crew for a desperate journey to the far reaches of the galaxy. Their destination: the mysterious world of Yrnameer, the very last of the your-name-heres—planets without corporate sponsors. But little does Cole know that this legendary utopia is home to a murderous band of outlaws bent on destroying the planet's tiny, peaceful community.Follow Cole's adventures through a delightfully absurd science-fiction universe, where the artificial intelligence is stupid, dust motes carry branding messages, and middle-management zombies have overrun a corporate training satellite. In the spirit of Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett, The Sheriff of Yrnameer is sci-fi comedy at its best—mordant, raucously funny, and a thrilling page-turner.
Free Science Fiction Books On Kindle: Linked List of over 350 Free SciFi Classic Stories And Early Fantasy Novels
Morris Rosenthal - 2011
To download free eBooks directly, you must use Kindle Fire. Amazon has changed their other Kindle reader software (PaperWhite, eInk and Touch) so those users must use this eBook in Amazon's downloadable Cloud Reader (read.amazon.com) on a PC or laptop to select and send the free classics to their Kindle. iPad users must use the Cloud Reader from "Manage Your Kindle" to use the download links, see "From The Author" below. Amazon Prime members are welcome to use their free monthly borrow to get this list and download hundreds of the free classics for future reading.This linked list of over 350 free science fiction stories and novels in Amazon's permanent collection was recently updated with hundreds of works from famous science fiction writers who wrote in the 1950's and 1960's and apparently forgot to extend their copyright protection. For the more recent authors SciFi fans will be familiar with, I just list the links (arranged by author) that will take you to their titles in the Kindle store for free download. For the earlier writers, I usually include a one or two line summary of their books.I thought I read all the classic SciFi twenty years ago, but I found a couple dozen authors I'd never heard of while researching Amazon's free collection. Most of the titles in this linked list of the free classic science fiction on Amazon were written before the "Golden Age" of science fiction, but influenced the authors who came later. I've included several early utopia/dystopia books, a popular subject in the late Victorian period. A few supernatural titles are included when the author also wrote other types of books. I didn't include fairy tales, and I made judgment calls on skipping science fiction/fantasy that was written for children and young adults, or just included a few samples from those authors.This list of free science fiction eBooks on Amazon works best on Kindle WiFi devices, and Fire. The newest 3G and 4G Kindle Paperwhite and Touch readers will only allow you to use the clickable links for free Amazon eBooks when you are using them on a WiFi network. Clicking the linked titles will bring you directly to the product page for the free eBook in the Kindle store, where you can sign into your Amazon account (required the first time only) and download the eBook immediately. (source: Amazon)
Agatha H and the Airship City
Phil Foglio - 2011
It has been eighteen years since the Heterodyne Boys, benevolent adventurers and inventors, disappeared under mysterious circumstances. Today, Europe is ruled by the Sparks, dynasties of mad scientists ruling over—and terrorizing—the hapless population with their bizarre inventions and unchecked power, while the downtrodden dream of the Hetrodynes’ return.At Transylvania Polygnostic University, a pretty, young student named Agatha Clay seems to have nothing but bad luck. Incapable of building anything that actually works, but dedicated to her studies, Agatha seems destined for a lackluster career as a minor lab assistant. But when the University is overthrown by the ruthless tyrant Baron Klaus Wulfenbach, Agatha finds herself a prisoner aboard his massive airship Castle Wulfenbach—and it begins to look like she might carry a spark of Mad Science after all.From Phil and Kaja Foglio, creators of the Hugo, Eagle, and Eisner Award-nominated webcomic Girl Genius, comes Agatha H and the Airship City, a gaslamp fantasy filled to bursting with Adventure! Romance! and Mad Science!
The Good Wife Guide: 19 Rules for Keeping a Happy Husband (Gift for Husbands and Wives, Adult Humor, Vintage Humor, Funny Book)
Ladies' Homemaker Monthly - 2007
When he returns home from his demanding job, a man rightfully deserves a bit of pampering. A happy smile, a warm kiss, and a pair of cozy slippers are just the start. Here are all the secrets for helping him feel comfortable and content: - Advice on cooking from scratch - The lowdown on why a clean home makes hubby feel better - Valuable hints on making yourself more attractive to him The Good Wife is a great and humorous gift for brides-to-be or happily married wives, for Valentine’s Day, and bridal showers and bachelorette parties.
God's Debris: A Thought Experiment
Scott Adams - 2001
Adams describes God's Debris as a thought experiment wrapped in a story. It's designed to make your brain spin around inside your skull. Imagine that you meet a very old man who you eventually realize knows literally everything. Imagine that he explains for you the great mysteries of life: quantum physics, evolution, God, gravity, light psychic phenomenon, and probability in a way so simple, so novel, and so compelling that it all fits together and makes perfect sense. What does it feel like to suddenly understand everything? You may not find the final answer to the big question, but God's Debris might provide the most compelling vision of reality you will ever read. The thought experiment is this: Try to figure out what's wrong with the old man's explanation of reality. Share the book with your smart friends, then discuss it later while enjoying a beverage.
National Lampoon's Doon
Ellis Weiner - 1984
. . to harvest the wild pools of beer that grow only on Doon, take control of the native pretzel population, and turn the plucky little orb into the lounge-planet of the universe!And only one man, the slender-shouldered Pall, can stop the galaxy-wide web of intrigue that is fermenting on the savage, sugar-swept landscape of Doon.
Galactic Pot-Healer
Philip K. Dick - 1969
Fernwright is a pot-healer - a repairer of ceramics - in a drably utilitarian future where such skills have little value. And the Glimmung? The Glimmung is a being that looks something like a gyroscope, something like a teenaged girl, and something like the contents of an ocean. What's more, it may be divine. And, like certain gods of old Earth, it has a bad temper.What could an omnipresent and seemingly omnipotent entity want with a humble pot-healer? Or with the dozens of other odd creatures it has lured to Plowman's Planet? And if the Glimmung is a god, are its ends positive or malign? Combining quixotic adventure, spine-chilling horror, and deliriously paranoid theology, Galactic Pot-Healer is a uniquely Dickian voyage to alternate worlds of the imagination.
The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster
Bobby Henderson - 2006
According to church founder Bobby Henderson, the universe and all life within it were created by a mystical and divine being: the Flying Spaghetti Monster. What drives the FSM's devout followers, a.k.a. Pastafarians? Some say it's the assuring touch from the FSM's "noodly appendage." Then there are those who love the worship service, which is conducted in pirate talk and attended by congregants in dashing buccaneer garb. Still others are drawn to the Church's flimsy moral standards, religious holidays every Friday, or the fact that Pastafarian heaven is way cooler: Does your heaven have a Stripper Factory and a Beer Volcano? Intelligent Design has finally met its match—and it has nothing to do with apes or the Olive Garden of Eden.Within these pages, Bobby Henderson outlines the true facts—dispelling such malicious myths as evolution ("only a theory"), science ("only a lot of theories"), and whether we're really descended from apes (fact: Humans share 95 percent of their DNA with chimpanzees, but they share 99.9 percent with pirates!)See what impressively credentialed top scientists have to say:"If Intelligent Design is taught in schools, equal time should be given to the FSM theory and the non-FSM theory."—Professor Douglas Shaw, Ph.D."Do not be hypocritical. Allow equal time for other alternative 'theories' like FSMism, which is by far the tastier choice."—J. Simon, Ph.D."In my scientific opinion, when comparing the two theories, FSM theory seems to be more valid than classic ID theory."—Afshin Beheshti, Ph.D.
Callahan's Crosstime Saloon
Spider Robinson - 1977
Pull up a chair, grab a glass of your favorite, and listen to the stories spun by time travelers, cybernetic aliens, telepaths...and a bunch of regular folks on a mission to save the world, one customer at a time.Callahan's Crosstime Saloon contains the following stories, virtually all of which were published in Analog Science Fiction and Fact: * "The Guy With the Eyes" * "The Time-Traveler" * "The Centipede's Dilemma" * "Two Heads Are Better Than One" * "The Law Of Conservation of Pain" * "Just Dessert" * "A Voice is Heard in Ramah..." * "Unnatural Causes" * "The Wonderful Conspiracy"
Cells at Work!, Vol. 1
Akane Shimizu - 2015
Fortunately, she's not alone... she's got a whole human body's worth of cells ready to help out! The mysterious white blood cell, the buff and brash killer T cell, the nerdy neuron, even the cute little platelets -- everyone's got to come together if they want to keep you healthy!