Future Artifacts: Stories PDF Download

Author: Kameron Hurley
Publisher: Apex Publications
ISBN: 1955765014
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 287

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Book Description
Brutal. Devastating. Dangerous. Join an investigation into a cruel and heartless leader … crawl through filth and mud to escape biological warfare … team up with time-traveling soldiers faced with potentially life-altering instructions. Kameron Hurley, award-winning author and expert in the future of war and resistance movements, has created eighteen exhilarating tales giving glimpses into the warfare of tomorrow. A bleak future, yet there is hope for us. With Hurley’s characteristic grim optimism, her characters fight for what they believe is right. They exhibit degrees of humanity only possible in the worst of circumstances. It is these characters, driven by a murky sense of honor and written with sincere, deep empathy, that make Future Artifacts: Stories a powerful collection you won’t soon forget.

Author: Adrian Hon
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262539373
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 381

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Book Description
Imagining the history of the twenty-first century through its artifacts, from silent messaging systems to artificial worlds on asteroids. In the year 2082, a curator looks back at the twenty-first century, offering a history of the era through a series of objects and artifacts. He reminisces about the power of connectivity, which was reinforced by such technologies as silent messaging—wearable computers that relay subvocal communication; recalls the Fourth Great Awakening, when a regimen of pills could make someone virtuous; and notes disapprovingly the use of locked interrogation, which delivers “enhanced interrogation” simulations via virtual reality. The unnamed curator quotes from a self-help guide to making friends with “posthumans,” describes the establishment of artificial worlds on asteroids, and recounts pro-democracy movements in epistocratic states. In A New History of the Future in 100 Objects, Adrian Hon constructs a possible future by imagining the things it might leave in its wake. Many of these things are just an update or two away: improved ankle monitors, for example, and deliverbots. Others may be the logical conclusions of current trends—“downvote” networks that identify and erase undesirables, and Glyphish, an emoticon-based language that supersedes the written word. More benign are Braid Collective, which provides financial support for artists, and Rechartered Cities, which invites immigrants to revitalize urban areas hollowed out by changing demographics. With this engaging and ingenious work, Hon leads the way into an imagined future while offering readers a new perspective on the present.

Author: Robert Nathan
Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing
ISBN: 1787200728
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 46

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Book Description
Nothing has so completely stirred the imagination of the entire civilized world as the recent discovery of a civilization, lost for more than 5,000 years, of the Weans of the Great West, or Salt, Continent. Now for the first time this fascinating story of the expeditions of Kenya’s greatest scientists is told—in terms comprehensible to the general reader. Who were these Weans, whose eastern coast was guarded by a ferocious giantess, who worshipped (among others) a root deity and danced when the spirit came down, and whose final destruction and disappearance is shrouded in mystery? You will thrill—as who has not?—to the descriptions of the rich finds in the diggings at n. Yok, Bosstin, and Oleens, and the spectacular discoveries in the Valley of the Sun by the team of Sri. B’Han Bollek, Bes Nef and his wife, Sra. Bess Nebby, and Nat Obelgerst-Levy, here related by Robert Nathan, who was himself a member of one of the three triumphant expeditions generously underwritten by the Konegi Foundation and the archaeological departments of the universities of Kenya, Uganda, and Ruwenzori. “This will be the big archaeological book of the century”—Nat Obelgerst-Levy, Archaeol. D., Ruwenzori University

Author: Leanne Shapton
Publisher: Sarah Crichton Books
ISBN: 1429958618
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 148

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Book Description
A love story told in the form of an auction catalog. Auction catalogs can tell you a lot about a person -- their passions and vanities, peccadilloes and aesthetics; their flush years and lean. Think of the collections of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Truman Capote, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. In Leanne Shapton's marvelously inventive and invented auction catalog, the 325 lots up for auction are what remain from the relationship between Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris (who aren't real people, but might as well be). Through photographs of the couple's personal effects -- the usual auction items (jewelry, fine art, and rare furniture) and the seemingly worthless (pajamas, Post-it notes, worn paperbacks) -- the story of a failed love affair vividly (and cleverly) emerges. From first meeting to final separation, the progress and rituals of intimacy are revealed through the couple's accumulated relics and memorabilia. And a love story, in all its tenderness and struggle, emerges from the evidence that has been left behind, laid out for us to appraise and appreciate. In an earlier work, Was She Pretty?, Shapton, a talented artist and illustrator, subtly explored the seemingly simple yet powerfully complicated nature of sexual jealousy. In Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris—a very different yet equally original book—she invites us to contemplate what is truly valuable, and to consider the art we make of our private lives.

Author: Miles Cameron
Publisher: Gollancz
ISBN: 1473232627
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 479

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Book Description
Out in the darkness of space, something is targeting the Greatships. With their vast cargo holds and a crew that could fill a city, the Greatships are the lifeblood of human occupied space, transporting an unimaginable volume - and value - of goods from City, the greatest human orbital, all the way to Tradepoint at the other, to trade for xenoglas with an unknowable alien species. It has always been Marca Nbaro's dream to achieve the near-impossible: escape her upbringing and venture into space. All it took, to make her way onto the crew of the Greatship Athens was thousands of hours in simulators, dedication, and pawning or selling every scrap of her old life in order to forge a new one. But though she's made her way onboard with faked papers, leaving her old life - and scandals - behind isn't so easy. She may have just combined all the dangers of her former life, with all the perils of the new . . .

Author: David Macaulay
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 0547770723
Category : Young Adult Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 97

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Book Description
It is the year 4022; all of the ancient country of Usa has been buried under many feet of detritus from a catastrophe that occurred back in 1985. Imagine, then, the excitement that Howard Carson, an amateur archeologist at best, experienced when in crossing the perimeter of an abandoned excavation site he felt the ground give way beneath him and found himself at the bottom of a shaft, which, judging from the DO NOT DISTURB sign hanging from an archaic doorknob, was clearly the entrance to a still-sealed burial chamber. Carson's incredible discoveries, including the remains of two bodies, one of then on a ceremonial bed facing an altar that appeared to be a means of communicating with the Gods and the other lying in a porcelain sarcophagus in the Inner Chamber, permitted him to piece together the whole fabric of that extraordinary civilization.

Author: Adrian Hon
Publisher: Skyhook
ISBN: 9780955181092
Category : Future, The
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
What are the 100 objects, ideas, developments, or events that future historians will use to sum up our century? Smart drugs that change the way we think? A wedding ring between a human and an AI? A society which no longer has work to do? A cure for hate? Adrian Hon's eloquent, playful and informed survey takes its cue from the popular BBC Radio 4 Series A History of the World in 100 Objects, and explores what the future might hold - not just in the fields of technology and science, but also religion, advertising, wars, economics, fashion, education and politics. These hundred essays, hybrids of near fact and outright fiction, gather personal experiences, newspaper stories, official reports and scientific papers in a speculative narrative of how we will live, work and play. [Book description]

Author: L. E. Modesitt, Jr.
Publisher: Tor Books
ISBN: 1429914009
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 488

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Book Description
5,000 years in the future, humankind has spread across thousands of worlds, and more than a dozen different governments exist in an uneasy truce. But human beings have found no signs of other life anywhere approaching human intelligence. This changes when scientists discover a sunless planet they name Danann, travelling the void just beyond the edge of the Galaxy at such a high speed that it cannot be natural. Its continents and oceans have been sculpted and shaped, with but a single megaplex upon it--close to perfectly preserved--with tens of thousands of near-identical metallic-silver-blue towers set along curved canals. Yet Danann has been abandoned for so long that even the atmosphere has frozen solid. Within a few years Danann will approach an area of singularities that will make exploration and investigation impossible. Orbital shuttle pilot Jiendra Chang, artist Chendor Barna, and history professor Liam Fitzhugh are recruited by the Comity government and its Deep Space Service, along with scores of other experts as part of an unprecedented and unique expedition to unravel Danann's secrets. And there are forces that will stop at nothing to prevent them, even if it means interstellar war. Other Series by L.E. Modesitt, Jr. The Saga of Recluce The Imager Portfolio The Corean Chronicles The Spellsong Cycle The Ghost Books The Ecolitan Matter The Forever Hero Timegod's World Other Books The Green Progression Hammer of Darkness The Parafaith War Adiamante Gravity Dreams The Octagonal Raven Archform: Beauty The Ethos Effect Flash The Eternity Artifact The Elysium Commission Viewpoints Critical Haze Empress of Eternity The One-Eyed Man Solar Express At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Author: Gregg Mitman
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022650882X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
What can a pesticide pump, a jar full of sand, or an old calico print tell us about the Anthropocene—the age of humans? Just as paleontologists look to fossil remains to infer past conditions of life on earth, so might past and present-day objects offer clues to intertwined human and natural histories that shape our planetary futures. In this era of aggressive hydrocarbon extraction, extreme weather, and severe economic disparity, how might certain objects make visible the uneven interplay of economic, material, and social forces that shape relationships among human and nonhuman beings? Future Remains is a thoughtful and creative meditation on these questions. The fifteen objects gathered in this book resemble more the tarots of a fortuneteller than the archaeological finds of an expedition—they speak of planetary futures. Marco Armiero, Robert S. Emmett, and Gregg Mitman have assembled a cabinet of curiosities for the Anthropocene, bringing together a mix of lively essays, creatively chosen objects, and stunning photographs by acclaimed photographer Tim Flach. The result is a book that interrogates the origins, implications, and potential dangers of the Anthropocene and makes us wonder anew about what exactly human history is made of.

Author: Peggy Levitt
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520286065
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 255

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Book Description
What can we learn about nationalism by looking at a countryÕs cultural institutions? How do the history and culture of particular cities help explain how museums represent diversity? Artifacts and Allegiances takes us around the world to tell the compelling story of how museums today are making sense of immigration and globalization. Based on firsthand conversations with museum directors, curators, and policymakers; descriptions of current and future exhibitions; and inside stories about the famous paintings and iconic objects that define collections across the globe, this work provides a close-up view of how different kinds of institutions balance nationalism and cosmopolitanism. By comparing museums in Europe, the United States, Asia, and the Middle East, Peggy Levitt offers a fresh perspective on the role of the museum in shaping citizens. Taken together, these accounts tell the fascinating story of a sea change underway in the museum world at large.