In Mechanical Gods, two Special Agents of the Coalition find themselves thrust into a world of intrigue and danger as they investigate an Android bombing in the bustling metropolis of New Washington. In this futuristic thriller, reverse engineered Androids and cutting-edge robotics threaten the stability of the newly rebuilt Western United National Coalition Zones. Against a backdrop of advancing capitalism and human augmentation, citizens are monitored by biochips, while Augmented Agents walk a fine line between safeguarding national security and sacrificing personal freedom. As the Agents navigate the ever-evolving landscape of Coalition enemies, they must confront their own limitations and adapt to survive in a world where obsolescence looms large. But beneath the surface lies a web of hidden agendas, forcing our protagonists to question loyalties and uncover truths that could change everything. Mechanical Gods is a pulse-pounding tale of technology, power, and the lengths humanity will go to control its own destiny.
With an “adroit and self-effacing style,” a Catholic brother, astronomer and physicist explains how scientists and engineers make sense of religion. In God's Mechanics, Brother Guy tells the stories of those who identify with the scientific mindset—so-called “techies”—while practicing religion. A self-decribed techie, astronomer, physicist and Director of the Vatican Observatory, Brother Guy shares some classic philosophical reflections, as well as his interviews with dozens of fellow techies, and his own personal take on his Catholic beliefs to provide, like a set of “worked out sample problems,” the hard data on the challenges and joys of embracing a life of faith as a techie. And he also gives a roadmap of the traps that can befall an unwary techie believer. With lively prose and wry humor, Brother Guy shows how he not only believes in God but gives religion an honored place alongside science in his life. This book offers an engaging look at how—and why—scientists and those with technological leanings can hold profound, “unprovable” religious beliefs while working in highly empirical fields. Through his own experience and interviews with other scientists and engineers who profess faith, Brother Guy explores how religious beliefs and practices make sense to those who are deeply rooted in the world of technology. “Brother Guy Consolmagno speaks in the softest, sanest voice imaginable as he enters the current firestorm of opinion re science and religion. His engaging commentary exposes the mindset of a true ‘techie’—but one who equates science with a sacred act.” —Dava Sobel, author, Galileo’s Daughter
In a time of uncertainty, humanity has touched the stars and claimed vast worlds under the unified Nations of Earth. Yet beneath the heels of the Mother World, the colonists grow too strong. Soon after, a war unlike any seen before would last for twenty years wherever independence had a voice. Towering machines, known as Unit Fighters, were piloted by the brave as historic battles were fought. And after nine years of peace between the newly established Pride Systems of Devoir-Con passed, the scars of such a mad war were not only left on the worlds they shed blood on but on the soldiers and soon-to-be combatants of Devoir. These are just a few of their stories as, once again, the torn and gritty flag of Devoir-Con will be raised among the controversies of war, peace, love, struggle, and innocents lost.
A strikingly original exploration of what it might mean to be authentically human in the age of artificial intelligence, from the author of the critically-acclaimed Interior States. • "At times personal, at times philosophical, with a bracing mixture of openness and skepticism, it speaks thoughtfully and articulately to the most crucial issues awaiting our future." —Phillip Lopate “[A] truly fantastic book.”—Ezra Klein For most of human history the world was a magical and enchanted place ruled by forces beyond our understanding. The rise of science and Descartes's division of mind from world made materialism our ruling paradigm, in the process asking whether our own consciousness—i.e., souls—might be illusions. Now the inexorable rise of technology, with artificial intelligences that surpass our comprehension and control, and the spread of digital metaphors for self-understanding, the core questions of existence—identity, knowledge, the very nature and purpose of life itself—urgently require rethinking. Meghan O'Gieblyn tackles this challenge with philosophical rigor, intellectual reach, essayistic verve, refreshing originality, and an ironic sense of contradiction. She draws deeply and sometimes humorously from her own personal experience as a formerly religious believer still haunted by questions of faith, and she serves as the best possible guide to navigating the territory we are all entering.
Traces the story of how ancient cultures envisioned artificial life, automata, self-moving devices and human enhancements, sharing insights into how the mythologies of the past related to and shaped ancient machine innovations.
From transforming the ways of war to offering godlike views of inaccessible spots, revolutionizing rescues worldwide, and providing some of our most-watched TV moments—including the cloud of newscopters that trailed O. J. Simpson’s Bronco—the helicopter is far more capable than early inventors expected. Now James Chiles profiles the many helicoptrians who contributed to the development of this amazing machine, and pays tribute to the selfless heroism of pilots and crews. A virtual flying lesson and scientific adventure tale, The God Machine is more than the history of an invention; it is a journey into the minds of imaginative thinkers and a fascinating look at the ways they changed our world.
How new is atheism? Although adherents and opponents alike today present it as an invention of the European Enlightenment, when the forces of science and secularism broadly challenged those of faith, disbelief in the gods, in fact, originated in a far more remote past. In Battling the Gods, Tim Whitmarsh journeys into the ancient Mediterranean, a world almost unimaginably different from our own, to recover the stories and voices of those who first refused the divinities. Homer’s epic poems of human striving, journeying, and passion were ancient Greece’s only “sacred texts,” but no ancient Greek thought twice about questioning or mocking his stories of the gods. Priests were functionaries rather than sources of moral or cosmological wisdom. The absence of centralized religious authority made for an extraordinary variety of perspectives on sacred matters, from the devotional to the atheos, or “godless.” Whitmarsh explores this kaleidoscopic range of ideas about the gods, focusing on the colorful individuals who challenged their existence. Among these were some of the greatest ancient poets and philosophers and writers, as well as the less well known: Diagoras of Melos, perhaps the first self-professed atheist; Democritus, the first materialist; Socrates, executed for rejecting the gods of the Athenian state; Epicurus and his followers, who thought gods could not intervene in human affairs; the brilliantly mischievous satirist Lucian of Samosata. Before the revolutions of late antiquity, which saw the scriptural religions of Christianity and Islam enforced by imperial might, there were few constraints on belief. Everything changed, however, in the millennium between the appearance of the Homeric poems and Christianity’s establishment as Rome’s state religion in the fourth century AD. As successive Greco-Roman empires grew in size and complexity, and power was increasingly concentrated in central capitals, states sought to impose collective religious adherence, first to cults devoted to individual rulers, and ultimately to monotheism. In this new world, there was no room for outright disbelief: the label “atheist” was used now to demonize anyone who merely disagreed with the orthodoxy—and so it would remain for centuries. As the twenty-first century shapes up into a time of mass information, but also, paradoxically, of collective amnesia concerning the tangled histories of religions, Whitmarsh provides a bracing antidote to our assumptions about the roots of freethinking. By shining a light on atheism’s first thousand years, Battling the Gods offers a timely reminder that nonbelief has a wealth of tradition of its own, and, indeed, its own heroes.
A thrilling new Steampunk fantasy from a talented debut author TWO GODS-ONE CHANCE FOR MANKIND In Victorian London, the Whitechapel section is a mechanized, steam-driven hell, cut off and ruled by two mysterious, mechanical gods-Mama Engine and Grandfather Clock. Some years have passed since the Great Uprising, when humans rose up to fight against the machines, but a few brave veterans of the Uprising have formed their own Resistance-and are gathering for another attack. For now they have a secret weapon that may finally free them-or kill them all...
A brand-new anthology of stories featuring the enigmatic Adeptus Mechanicus, cybernetic servants of the Imperium who venerate technology above all else. It is the 41st millennium and humanity teeters on the brink of destruction. Yet out of the darkness comes a cold hope. The Adeptus Mechanicus are logical, remote beings of cybernetic construction. Their armour is a work of mechanical art, their weapons unparalleled in intelligent design. One of the most hostile fighting forces of the Imperium, the Priesthood of Mars serves justice upon their enemies with forbidding momentum. Though nominally allied with mankind, it is in the name of the Omnissiah that their mighty war machines step forth into the cauldron of war, for the Machine God alone is worthy of their sacrifice and neither man nor xenos can deter them from their single purpose of championing his dominion. This anthology contains a dozen gripping tales about the formidable Titans, Imperial Knights, battle-servitors and skitarii legions with which the Adeptus Mechanicus wage war, all written by some of Black Library’s most popular authors, including Graham McNeill, Gav Thorpe, Josh Reynolds, Rob Sanders, David Guymer, David Annandale and Andy Clark.
