New Releases by Bruce Sterling

From the subversive to the antic, the uproarious to the disturbing, the stories of Bruce Sterling are restless, energy-filled journeys through a world running on empty--the visionary work of one of our most imaginative and insightful modern writers. They live as strangers in strange lands. In worlds that have fallen--or should have. They wage battles in wars already lost and become heroes--and sometimes martyrs--in their last-ditch efforts to preserve the dignity and individuality of humanity. A hack Indian filmmaker takes the pulse of a wounded and declining civilization--21st-century Britain. A pair of swashbuckling Silicon Valley entrepreneurs join forces to make a commercial killing--in organic underground slime and computer-generated jellyfish. A man in a Japanese city takes orders from a talking cat while pursuing a drama of danger and adventure that has become the very essence of his life. From "The Littlest Jackal", a darkly hilarious thriller of mercs and gunrunners set in Finland, to a stark vision of a post-atomic netherworld in his haunting tale "Taklamakan", Bruce Sterling once again breaks boundaries, breaks icons, and breaks rules to unleash the most dangerously provocative and intelligent science fiction being written today.

Carlo Morse and Jimmy Ganzer pioneered dream-fabbing, but these days people only want to close their eyes to trashy stuff -- not the mention the kids and their fancy imported tech. It''s a good thing Schwartz''s Deli is still the same. At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Alongside William Gibson and Neal Stephenson, Bruce Sterling stands at the forefront of a select group of writers whose pitch-perfect grasp of the cultural and scientific zeitgeist endows their works of speculative near-future fiction with uncanny verisimilitude. To read a novel by Sterling is to receive a dispatch from a time traveler. Now, with The Caryatids, Sterling has written a stunning testament of faith in the power of human intellect, creativity, and spirit to overcome any obstacle–even the obstacles we carry inside ourselves. The world of 2060 is divided into three spheres of influence, each fighting with the others over the resources of fallen nations and an environment degraded almost to the point of no return. There is the Dispensation, centered in Los Angeles, where entertainment and capitalism have fused with the highest of high-tech. There is the Acquis, a Green-centered collective that uses invasive neurological technology to create a networked utopia. And there is China, the sole surviving nation-state, a dinosaur that has prospered only by pitilessly pruning its own population. Products of this monstrous world, the daughters of a monstrous mother, and–according to some–monsters themselves, are the Caryatids: the four surviving female clones of a mad Balkan genius and wanted war criminal now ensconced, safely beyond extradition, on an orbiting space station. Radmila is a Dispensation star determined to forget her past by building a glittering, impregnable future. Vera is an Acquis functionary dedicated to reclaiming their home, the Croatian island of Mljet, from catastrophic pollution. Sonja is a medical specialist in China renowned for selflessly risking herself to help others. And Biserka is a one-woman terrorist network. The four “sisters” are united only by their hatred for their “mother”–and for one another. When evidence surfaces of a coming environmental cataclysm, the Dispensation sends its greatest statesman–or salesman–John Montgomery Montalban, husband of Radmila, and lover of Vera and Sonja, to gather the Caryatids together in an audacious plan to save the world.

“Nobody knows better than Bruce Sterling how thin the membrane between science fiction and real life has become, a state he correctly depicts as both thrilling and terrifying in this frisky, literate, clear-eyed sketch of the next half-century. Like all of the most interesting futurists, Sterling isn’t just talking about machines and biochemistry: what he really cares about are the interstices of technology with culture and human history.” -Kurt Andersen, author of Turn of the Century Visionary author Bruce Sterling views the future like no other writer. In his first nonfiction book since his classic The Hacker Crackdown, Sterling describes the world our children might be living in over the next fifty years and what to expect next in culture, geopolitics, and business. Time calls Bruce Sterling “one of America’s best-known science fiction writers and perhaps the sharpest observer of our media-choked culture working today in any genre.” Tomorrow Now is, as Sterling wryly describes it, “an ambitious, sprawling effort in thundering futurist punditry, in the pulsing vein of the futurists I’ve read and admired over the years: H. G. Wells, Arthur C. Clarke, and Alvin Toffler; Lewis Mumford, Reyner Banham, Peter Drucker, and Michael Dertouzos. This book asks the future two questions: What does it mean? and How does it feel? ” Taking a cue from one of William Shakespeare’s greatest soliloquies, Sterling devotes one chapter to each of the seven stages of humanity: birth, school, love, war, politics, business, and old age. As our children progress through Sterling’s Shakespearean life cycle, they will encounter new products; new weapons; new crimes; new moral conundrums, such as cloning and genetic alteration; and new political movements, which will augur the way wars of the future will be fought. Here are some of the author’s predictions: • Human clone babies will grow into the bitterest and surliest adolescents ever. • Microbes will be more important than the family farm. • Consumer items will look more and more like cuddly, squeezable pets. • Tomorrow’s kids will learn more from randomly clicking the Internet than they ever will from their textbooks. • Enemy governments will be nice to you and will badly want your tourist money, but global outlaws will scheme to kill you, loudly and publicly, on their Jihad TVs. • The future of politics is blandness punctuated with insanity. The future of activism belongs to a sophisticated, urbane global network that can make money—the Disney World version of Al Qaeda. Tomorrow Now will change the way you think about the future and our place in it. From the Hardcover edition.

Foreword by Judith Olch Richards. Essay by Jose Roca. Short story by Bruce Sterling.

A collection of thirteen individually introduced cyberpunk tales by the co-author of The Difference Engine brings readers beyond the imagined boundaries of future technology. Original.

“Gleeful, shrewd, speculative, cynical, closely observed . . . The Zenith Angle offers wisdom and solace, thrills and laughter.”—The Washington Post “Compelling and important . . . A darkly comic fable of info-war, the black budget, über-geek idealism, and the politics of Homeland Insecurity.”—William Gibson, author of Pattern Recognition Pioneering computer wizard Derek “Van” Vandeveer has been living extra-large as a VP for a booming Internet company. But the September 11 attacks on America change everything. Recruited as the key member of an elite federal computer-security team, Van enters the labyrinthine trenches of the Washington intelligence community. His special genius is needed to debug the software glitch in America’s most crucial KH-13 satellite, capable of detecting terrorist hotbeds worldwide. But the problem is much deeper. Now Van must make the unlikely leap from scientist to spy, team up with a ruthlessly resourceful ex-Special Forces commando, and root out an unknown enemy—one with access to a weapon of untold destructive power. “Great fun . . . A cyberthriller of 21st-century technologies [that] peeps wittily behind the national security scenes of a modern superpower.”—New Scientist “A comedic thriller for the homeland security era.”—Entertainment Weekly

A guide to the next great wave of technology -- an era of objects so programmable that they can be regarded as material instantiations of an immaterial system.

Na última década Bruce Sterling destaca-se entre os mais conceituados autores de ficção científica. Pela primeira vez, o autor reúne num só volume, uma novela, Schismatrix, e um conjunto de cinco contos passados no mesmo universo. Um futuro em constante rebelião, estimulado por mudanças sociais e tecnológicas onde duas poderosas facções irão disputar o controlo do sistema solar. De um lado, os Modeladores, do outro, os Mecanistas dão vida a um universo completamente diferente do nosso, um universo inteligente.

Are beads, bangles, and braids your passion? Then here''s your guide to stunning styles and dazzling jewelry. One handbook has beady basics and handy hints. Another presents a bonanza of bracelets, necklaces, fancy bandanas, and more to make. Join the "Braid Parade" and perfect your plaiting for hair and other projects, too. "Facts and Fashions" features a worldwide tour of beaded gems and wonderful weavings. "Plus" a birthstone chart, bookmark, pom-pom rings, stickers, and beads and braids to start you off!

Crosswords, quizzes, optical illusions, problems and puzzles: if you love games, every kind of imaginable fun is right here, from jokes in code to connect-the-numbers riddles. And the lively pictures are a comic blast, too. Find the dinosaur''s lost spots and color them in. Put the dominoes in the correct order to see what they spell. Calculate the age of a snail by adding and subtracting the numbers on its shell. Brain challenges don''t get better than this.

Max and Sue are counting the animals on their farm can you help? One pig in the mud easy! Two horses in the corral and three cows in their stalls no problem. But four goats have poor Max on the run, and five sheep are all spread out. Hardest of all: the clucking, dashing chickens. From up in the tree, what can Max see? Six chicks! It adds up to lots of fun for toddlers. "

Learning has never been more fun! It''s a book, a toy, and a box of suprises all in one! Children will find looking at Bookubes "TM" pure play -- after all, what could be better than opening and closing the different faces, and mixing and matching words, numbers, and pictures in loads of delightful ways? As they change the shape from a square to a nice oblong and create a practically endless number of combinations, it''s a sure thing boredom can''t set in. Take them with you anywhere to keep youngsters occupied, or join them in the good times. From basics like numbers and letters to complete stories with charming illustrations, there''s something right for children of every age.

Bienvenue dans les années 2020 ! Multinationales toutes-puissantes, complots terroristes, réseaux informatiques, réveil du tiers monde, ingénierie génétique, retour en force de l''irrationnel, sida, torture, intox, chantage atomique... Toute ressemblance avec la Terre que vous connaissez n''est pas une pure coïncidence. Citoyenne de ce monde dément, Laura Webster a su s''adapter, trouver l''équilibre entre réalité et virtuel. Mais quand elle se retrouve impliquée malgré elle dans le meurtre du représentant d''un Etat-pirate, une course contre la mort s''engage pour échapper aux mailles du réseau. Cyberpunk, roman d''espionnage, thriller... Les mailles du réseau est, avec Schismatrice + du même auteur, l''un des livres les plus ambitieux de la génération câblée.

Dans une humanité déracinée, peuplant le système solaire de gigantesques stations orbitales, écartelée entre les tenants de l''évolution par la technologie et ceux de la manipulation génétique, Abélard Lindsay, jeune diplomate issu de la République corporative circumlunaire de Mare Serenitatis, tente de trouver son chemin. Fils d''aristocrate, il doit apprendre à survivre, à choisir son camp. Mais au moment où l''homme évolue, cesse d''exister en tant que tel pour se scinder en espèces nouvelles, il croit enfin comprendre son destin : réconcilier Mécas et Morphos autour d''un projet grandiose, la terraformation des mondes... Considérée, avec Neuromancien de William Gilson, comme le texte fondateur du mouvement cyberpunk, La schismatrice de Bruce Sterling est la figure de proue de l''immense Univers des Mécas et des Morphos, pour la première fois réuni en un seul volume.

Révolutionnaires ? Les cyberpunks forment la première génération d''auteurs de science-fiction à avoir grandi non seulement dans une tradition littéraire spécifique, mais aussi dans une réalité qui désormais dépasse les rêves - ou les cauchemars - de leurs prédécesseurs. Pour eux, les techniques de la science-fiction classique - extrapolation, savoir technologique - ne sont pas de simples outils littéraires, mais des adjuvants de la vie quotidienne, des moyens, extrêmement précieux, d''accéder à la compréhension. Pour les cyberpunks, contraste ô combien violent, la technologie est viscérale. Elle est envahissante, nous touche au plus intime. Non point en dehors de nous, mais à côté de nous. Sous notre peau ; et, souvent, à l''intérieur de notre esprit. Démonstration en douze leçons magistrales.

Want to know all the ins and outs of this most challenging, stimulating game? Get them from a Grandmaster...and then start playing--and winning--with your own magnetic chess set! In "Chess Basics, world-renowned champion Nigel Short proves that this "game of kings" doesn''t have to be complicated...not when there are easy-to-follow diagrams plus information on setting up the board; descriptions of every piece and its function; a guide to notation; a discussion of check and checkmate; a list of special moves; and more.