Second Lives

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Benjamin Woolley

Computers have changed our lives; with virtual reality, they will change our very experience, recreating it in an image of our choosing. That, at least, is what the champions of virtual reality claim. It will not simply reshape our view of technology, they say, but our view of ourselves and the world we live in. It is about the increasing power of information technology to create simulated environments, new universes that are neither actual nor fictional, but somewhere in between: virtual. In Virtual Worlds, Benjamin Woolley examines the reality of virtual reality. He looks at the dramatic intellectual and cultural upheavals that gave birth to it, at the hype that surrounds it, at the people who have promoted it, and at the dramatic implications of its development. Virtual reality is not simply a technology, it is a way of thinking created and promoted by a group of technologists and thinkers that sees itself as creating our future. Virtual Worlds reveals the politics and culture of these virtual realists, and examines whether they are creating reality, or losing their grasp of it.

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David Wingrove. Book 4, The stone within

Publication history Originally published between 1988 and 1999, Wingrove planned the series as nine books (three trilogies), but after publication of the seventh volume Wingrove's publisher insisted that the series be concluded in the next (eighth) volume, Marriage of the Living Dark. In February 2011 Corvus / Atlantic Books began a re-release of the entire Chung Kuo saga, recasting it as twenty books with approximately 500,000 words of new material. This includes two brand new prequel novels, Son of Heaven (released February. 2011 in e-book and March 2011 in hardback) and Daylight on Iron Mountain and a significant restructuring of the end of the series to reflect Wingrove's original intentions.[1][2] The two prequels cover events between 2045 and 2100 AD, telling the story of China's rise to power. Originally, only one prequel novel was planned for September 2010.[3] News of the additional prequel volume and a delayed release schedule was announced on the Interstellar Tactics blog.[2] Original release The Middle Kingdom (1989) The Broken Wheel (1990) The White Mountain (1992) The Stone Within (1993) Beneath the Tree of Heaven (1994) White Moon, Red Dragon (1994) Days of Bitter Strength (1997) The Marriage of the Living Dark (1999) Re-release[edit] The twenty books in the re-release schedule were planned to be published at regular intervals between February 2011 and June 2015.[2][3] After The White Mountain was published, the publishers discontinued the series because of poor sales. No future volumes are planned. Son of Heaven (February 2011) Daylight on Iron Mountain (November 2011) The Middle Kingdom (August 2012) Ice and Fire (December 2012) The Art of War (March 2013) An Inch of Ashes (July 2013) The Broken Wheel (November 2013) The White Mountain (March 2014) Monsters of the Deep The Stone Within Upon a Wheel of Fire Beneath the Tree of Heaven Song of the Bronze Statue White Moon Red Dragon China on the Rhine Days of Bitter Strength The Father of Lies Blood and Iron King of Infinite Space The Marriage of the Living Dark Reception[edit] Reviews of the original eight-book series praised its scope and detailed worldbuilding, comparing it to Frank Herbert's Dune series, James Clavell's Shōgun and Isaac Asimov's Foundation series. The Washington Post declared the series was "one of the masterpieces of the decade." However, in 1990, the New York Times felt that Wingrove's vision of a Chinese-dominated future was unlikely and "ungrounded in historical process."[4] One reviewer felt the final volume was so "nigh-incomprehensible" that it warranted a review of "a fake concluding novel."[5]

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Jeffrey Long

Evidence of the Afterlife shares the firsthand accounts of people who have died and lived to tell about it. Through their work at the Near Death Experience Research Foundation, radiation oncologist Jeffrey Long and his wife, Jody, have gathered thousands of accounts of near-death experiences (NDEs) from all over the world. In addition to sharing the personal narrative of their experiences, visitors to the website are asked to fill out a one hundred–item questionnaire designed to isolate specific elements of the experience and to flag counterfeit accounts.The website has become the largest NDE research database in the world, containing over 1,600 NDE accounts. The people whose stories are captured in the database span all age groups, races, and religious affiliations and come from all over the world, yet the similarities in their stories are as awe-inspiring as they are revealing. Using this treasure trove of data, Dr. Long explains how medical evidence fails to explain these reports and why there is only one plausible explanation—that people have survived death and traveled to another dimension.

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Robert Pollack

"The genetic age is upon us, yet most people have only a limited understanding of the wondrous chemical that encodes the formula for all living things. As DNA's secrets are revealed, they must be rescued from the obscuring language of science, and now Signs of Life does just that. Borrowing from the humanities, Robert Pollack offers an entirely fresh perspective: DNA, he argues, should be seen as a great work of natural literature, a three-billion-year-old, continuously evolving text." "An award-winning scientist and teacher, Pollack displays both a sophisticated understanding of biology and a remarkable gift for metaphor. In elegant prose, he shows precisely how DNA provides the instruction book for life. He takes us deep inside a living cell - a teeming walled city - and explains how the genetic script at its heart governs all its operations. He opens the book containing the human genome and lucidly reveals the process by which biologists and physicians have begun to read its words and sentences." "But the frontier of genetics now extends into troubling territory. Pollack identifies several areas of concern: the ambitious but flawed Human Genome Project, the widespread access to individual genetic data, the temptation to manipulate genetic codes to make them "better." Given our still-crude ability to interpret these living texts, our eagerness to rewrite them is alarming. The power to change the human genome brings with it enormous responsibilities, and Pollack offers persuasive evidence that if we fail to achieve a fuller understanding of the multiple meanings of DNA, we risk disaster." "Signs of Life is both a brilliant illumination of a biological text and a provocative meditation on our awesome new ability to alter it. With the grace of a born writer and teacher, Robert Pollack has written a book that will change the way people think about science, genetics, and the future of our species."--BOOK JACKET.