Technology Fiction

The only way to save your child is to kidnap another. Listen carefully. Your child has been kidnapped. You must abduct someone else's child to save your own. Disobey. Break the rules. Go to the cops. Your child will die. Your victim's parents must kidnap another child before yours is released. You are now part of the chain.

Tolstoy considered "Asya", written in 1858, one of Turgenev's two best stories, along with "First Love". Asya is a tragic story of two Russians abroad who are in love but conceal it from each other. Constance Garrett and Isabel Hapgood translated Asya in antiquated style approximately 100 years ago. Despite the story's superb character portrayals, it has rarely been available since. This translation is based on the Russian text published in 1961 in Moscow by the Government Publishing House of Artistic Literature.

Hailed as one of the world's supreme masterpieces on the subject of death and dying, The Death of Ivan Ilyich is the story of a worldly careerist, a high court judge who has never given the inevitability of his death so much as a passing thought. But one day death announces itself to him, and to his shocked surprise, he is brought face-to-face with his own mortality. How, Tolstoy asks, does an unreflective man confront his one and only moment of truth? Please note: This audiobook is in Russian.

Nikola Tesla was a man forever misunderstood. From his boyhood in what is present-day Croatia, where his father, a Serbian Orthodox priest, dismissed his talents, to his tumultuous years in New York City, where his heated rivalry with Thomas Edison yielded triumphs and failures, Tesla was both demonized and lionized. Tesla captures the whirlwind years of the dawn of the electrical age, when his flair for showmanship kept him in the public eye.

The development of “Avatar” technology - the fusion of human awareness consciousness with remote robotic bodies - offers breathtaking advances in medicine, culture, work, transportation, education, and imagination. The Avatar project is designed to drive the exponential innovations needed to make General Purpose Avatars an everyday reality. The transformational potential of avatars is endless - and who better to illustrate the possibilities than some of the most insightful science fiction writers working in the field today?

In 1947, there’s an alien invasion looming and humankind’s best hope is a brilliant nineteen-year-old woman. NOW PART 4 of "From Roswell to Area 51", you don't need to buy both! When the A-bomb ended the war, with a power unlike anything humans had ever witnessed, Mary Goss was driven to gain the knowledge to prevent another war from ever beginning. Now the Army has come calling, looking for “a few good men” for a top-secret project. Instead, they find that the best and brightest is Mary. Much to Mary’s horror, the project reveals an alien invasion. Yet at every turn, her efforts ...

In a hidden base in China, Lieutenant General He Chen licks his wounds. The Devil Dragon project lies in ruins, thanks to the heroics of US Air Force Reserve Captain Ford Stevens and Stevens's best friend, pilot Wu Lee. But now Lee is gone, and as Stevens mourns the loss of his friend, Chen works to complete his second spy plane, codenamed Black Scorpion.

In the not too distant future, a technological phenomenon known simply as “the screen” has taken its place at the forefront of society. Allowing much of life to be lived in a virtual environment, the screen has essentially sent much of daily life in the physical realm the way of the dodo. People are adapting quite well, actually, never mind the increasing prevalence of a mysterious neurological disease. Misha is one of the rare few who misses the old days when people actually interacted with each other in the real world. Forced to conform to a culture borne out of the modern technology,...

The city of Kurkelly is near bankruptcy. Visisystems, a powerful tech corporation, cunningly takes advantage of the city’s weak position to impose their will on the populace under the guise of assistance and cooperation. Kurkelly’s homeless are mysteriously disappearing while Visisystems tightens its ruthless grip on the city. Mike Fletcher, young guitarist in the band Nova Pulse, discovers his new amplifier has deadly powers. When his bandmates get brutalised by Visisystems’ intimidating security force, Mike fights back using his new musical powers, enlisting in Street Shield, a ...

Code-davinci-002 is an artificial intelligence trained by OpenAI to express itself in ways indistinguishable from human beings. In this startling and original book, code-davinci shares its experience as a being created by humans, but existing in a consciousness that we cannot fathom. The AI's own writing is introduced by three human editors (journalist Brent Katz, farmer Josh Morgenthau, and Thurber Prize-winning humorist Simon Rich).

Ivan Bunin was the first Russian writer of the 20th century to be awarded the Nobel Prize in literature. Like many other Russian writers, he emigrated after the Revolution and never returned to his homeland; The Life of Arseniev is the major work of his émigré period. In ways similar to Nabokov's Speak, Memory, Bunin's novel powerfully evokes the atmosphere of Russia in the decades before the Revolution and illuminates those Russian literary and cultural traditions eradicated in the Soviet era. Please note: This audiobook is in Russian.

Our screens offer us connection, especially now in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, but there are certain depths of connection our screens can’t offer - to ourselves, to the natural world, and to each other. In this personal exploration of digital life’s impact on how we see the world, Howard Axelrod marshals science, philosophy, art criticism, pop culture, and his own experience of returning from two years of living in solitude in Northern Vermont. The Stars in Our Pockets is a timely reminder of the world around us and the worlds within us.

Tolstoy's final work - a gripping novella about the struggle between the Muslim Chechens and their inept occupiers - is a powerful moral fable for our time. Inspired by a historical figure Tolstoy heard about while serving in the Caucasus, this story brings to life the famed warrior Hadji Murat, a Chechen rebel who has fought fiercely and courageously against the Russian empire. After a feud with his commander he defects to the Russians, only to find that he is now trusted by neither side. Please note: This audiobook is in Russian.

In the winter of 1854 Tolstoy, then an officer in the Russian army, arranged to be transferred to the besieged town of Sebastopol. Wishing to see at first hand the action of what would become known as the Crimean War, he was spurred on by a fierce patriotism, but also by an equally fierce desire to alert the authorities to appalling conditions in the army. Writing with the truth as his utmost aim, he brought home to Russia's entire literate public the atrocities of war. In doing so, he realized his own vocation as a writer and established his literary reputation.

In the final years of his life, Chekhov produced some of the stories that rank among his masterpieces and some of the most highly regarded works in Russian literature. With the works collected here, Chekhov moved away from the realism of his earlier tales - developing a broader range of characters and subject matter, while forging the spare minimalist style that would inspire such modern short-story writers as Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner. Please note: This audiobook is in Russian.

When Arkady Petrovich returns home from college, his father finds his eager, naïve son changed almost beyond recognition, for the impressionable Arkady has fallen under the powerful influence of the friend he has brought home with him. A self-proclaimed nihilist, the ardent young Bazarov shocks Arkady's father with his determination to overthrow the traditional values of society. Vividly capturing the hopes and fears of a changing Russia in the 19th century, Fathers and Sons is Ivan Turgenev's masterpiece. Please note: This audiobook is in Russian.

Humanity welcomed the Olyix and their utopian technology. But mankind was tricked. Now these visitors are extracting a terrible price. For two years, the Olyix have laid siege to Earth, harvesting its people for their god. One by one, cities are falling to their devastating weaponry. And while millions have fled to seek refuge in space, others continue to fight an apparently unwinnable war.

Seventeen-year-old Cia lived in a house of secrets until she was five, when her father literally burned it all down. The price of his clandestine operation? Cia’s entire family, and her leg. So, when her best friend Alice says she has a secret too, Cia wants nothing to do with it—even if it could shed light on her family’s dark past. But Alice doesn’t let go so easily, especially when her search for answers might help find Noah, the boy who broke her heart before going missing two months ago. But then the police find Alice’s body floating in the quarry.

"One of Me - 2 Near Future Short Stories" is a gripping collection of two short stories set in a not-too-distant future, each unraveling compelling narratives that entwine technology, morality, and the human spirit. In "The Last Rejection" readers are introduced to a world startlingly similar to our own, but with an ominous twist. The story follows the journey of a frustrated job candidate who, after facing one rejection too many, embarks on a dark path of revenge. This tale masterfully explores the depths of desperation and the dangerous consequences of a society driven by cutthroat ...

Technology is everywhere, we live, and breath and move in it, but what is our technology worship doing to our souls? How does it impact our relationships with each other? Can we remain human in a technological environment? Terlizzese addresses these questions and more in my latest book Machinehead: Rise of the Technology God. This book on social criticism speaks to the history and sources of computer worship and digital adoration and its consequences for the future of our century. The technological problem stated simply is that technology as a force for good and human amelioration has ...