The Endless Column And The Limitless Sky

Ikari has enjoyed life on the family farm until a neighbour turns her in for being a talent, from that point on, things spiral rapidly beyond her control. She is put in a restrictor suit, shipped off world and sent to Teklan base to try to remove the suit without killing her. Ikari has an assignment as the courier on Dorali, and her new partner is waiting. Khivon has known his flier was coming to him for over a year, but when she shows up and her eyes spark memories of far-off nebulas, he feels his instincts taking over when his logic should have been holding fast.

An oversized compilation of Tim Fitzharris' photographic work from the past 20 years: 72 panoramic wilderness landscapes of the North American West, organized by 6 regions and includes personal observations by the photographer.

The New York Times–bestselling author of H is for Hawk explores the human relationship to the natural world in this “dazzling” essay collection (Wall Street Journal). In Vesper Flights, Helen Macdonald brings together a collection of her best loved essays, along with new pieces on topics ranging from nostalgia for a vanishing countryside to the tribulations of farming ostriches to her own private vespers while trying to fall asleep. Meditating on notions of captivity and freedom, immigration and flight, Helen invites us into her most intimate experiences: observing the massive migration of songbirds from the top of the Empire State Building, watching tens of thousands of cranes in Hungary, seeking the last golden orioles in Suffolk’s poplar forests. She writes with heart-tugging clarity about wild boar, swifts, mushroom hunting, migraines, the strangeness of birds’ nests, and the unexpected guidance and comfort we find when watching wildlife.

In a technologically suppressed future, information demands to be free in the debut novel from Hugo Award-winning author Charlie Stross. In the twenty-first century, life as we know it changed. Faster-than-light travel was perfected, and the Eschaton, a superhuman artificial intelligence, was born. Four hundred years later, the far-flung colonies that arose as a result of these events—scattered over three thousand years of time and a thousand parsecs of space—are beginning to rediscover their origins. The New Republic is one such colony. It has existed for centuries in self-imposed isolation, rejecting all but the most basic technology. Now, under attack by a devastating information plague, the colony must reach out to Earth for help. A battle fleet is dispatched, streaking across the stars to the rescue. But things are not what they seem—secret agendas and ulterior motives abound, both aboard the ship and on the ground. And watching over it all is the Eschaton, which has its own very definite ideas about the outcome...

"A towering epic to rank with Douglas Preston's Blasphemy and Michael Crichton's Prey... Pandemic drought, skyrocketing oil prices, dwindling energy supplies and wars of water scarcity threaten the planet. Only four people can prevent global chaos. Gary Morgan--a brilliant, renegade scientist is pilloried by the scientific community for his belief in a space elevator: a pillar to the sky, which he believes will make space flight fast, simple and affordable. Eva Morgan--a brilliant and beautiful scientist of Ukrainian descent, she has had a lifelong obsession to build a pillar to the sky, a vertiginous tower which would mine the power of the sun and supply humanity with cheap, limitless energy forever. Gunther Rothenberg--the ancient but revered rocket-scientist who labored at Peenemunda with von Braun to create the first rockets and continued on to build those of today. A legend, he has mentored Gary and Natalia for two decades, nurturing and encouraging their transcendent vision. Franklin Smith--the eccentric Silicon Valley billionaire who will champion their cause, wage war with Congress and government bureaucracy and most important, finance their herculean undertaking. This journey to the stars will not be easy--a tumultuous struggle filled with violence and heroism, love and death, spellbinding beauty and heartbreaking betrayal. The stakes could not be higher. Humanity's salvation will hang in the balance"--

Essays analysing the decline of Aldous Huxley as a novelist have become a commonplace of literary criticism over the past two decades, yet he continues to be read and few writers equal his ability to make moral concepts exciting, to animate ideas and clothe them with life and vitality. In this study of the nine major novels, from Crome Yellow (1921) to Island (1962), Mr Bowering offers a positive evaluation Huxley's achievements as a novelist of ideas, as the moralist of a scientific age, and as an ironist worthy to be compared with Swift. He shows how the conflicting claims of morality and art must be judged in relation to Huxley's work as a whole and to this search for a way of life which would 'fit all the facts of experience'. All the principle novels require some knowledge of Huxley's source materials to be adequately understood and Mr Bowering is particularly informative on this score. His discussion indeed attempts to set the novels in the widest possible area of reference.