What does a Touri artifact have to do against the Primod threat? Kyda's journey brings her to Riboz, an ice planet. But things are not as they always seem. Kozun is waiting for them, seeking an artifact of great importance. His prized possession. Trying to retreive the artifact, with the stakes never being higher, Kyda faces a new dilemma from within her team. Something she never expected. Artifact Hunt is Book 2 in a Space Opera action thrill ride with twists and turns and space battles in the same Kyda Tren universe.
What dangers await Kyda on Remod, the Primod archives planet? Arriving at the position where Remod is supposed to be, they find nothing. Things are not as they seem, as Kyda and her friends must unravel the mystery of the planet Remod. But the stakes are higher than ever. A plethora of Primod agents are following their every move. And at the most unexpected of moments, an internal threat arises. Mission Remod is Book 3 in a Space Opera action thrill ride with twists and turns and space battles in the same Kyda Tren universe.
In her extensive Introduction, Lawton has highlighted the historical development of the movement and has related futurism both to the Russian national scene and to avant-garde movements worldwide.
In the heart of Asia, straddling the western Tien Shan mountain range, lies the former Soviet republic Kyrgyzstan. The country prides itself in an age old oral epic tradition that recounts the mighty deeds of the hero Manas. When explorers first encountered Manas performers in the late nineteenth century, they hailed their art as a true representation of the heroic age, and compared it to masterpieces such as the Kalevala and the Iliad. Today there are still many excellent performers who can keep their audiences spellbound. They are believed to draw their inspiration from the spirit of Manas himself. This book portrays the meaning of this huge work of art in Kyrgyz society. Based on extended periods of anthropological fieldwork between 1996 and 2000, it explores the calling of its performers, describes the transformations of the oral tradition in printed media and other forms of art, and examines its use as a key symbol for identity politics. It deals extensively with the impact of the Soviet period, during which Kyrgyzstan became an autonomous republic for the first time in history. The tremendous changes initiated during these years had far-reaching consequences for the transmission and reception of the Manas epic. The specific Soviet approach to ethnicity was also elementary in the decisions to assign the Manas epic the role of national symbol after 1991, when Kyrzygstan was thrown into the turnoil of a post-socialist existence.
What if the stars collided? Tredd Bounty is a navy reject turned bounty hunter, living in the grimy world of Spit City on orbit around planet Heeg. When he is given the chance to take on a dangerous yet lucrative mission to find and capture the mysterious Starcrasher device, rumoured to have the power to move the stars themselves, it seems like his luck is about to turn. He gathers a motley crew: an ex-navy pilot suffering from random black-outs; a Jindalar groupie hiding a shocking secret; a strapping Andron mechanic unable to step foot on any planet; and an eccentric doctor. Together, they take their battered Rutger-class cargo ship on a journey to uncharted star systems, luxurious space stations, and, against all odds, up against the unyielding Dawn Alliance Navy. But Tredd is hiding a superhuman secret: the ability to stop time. It is both a blessing that has kept him alive through many a suicide mission, and a curse that has dragged him down. As he travels across the universe, he finds that he can no longer ignore his past, and must face his lost childhood sweetheart and the men who betrayed him years ago. As he begins to close in on the Starcrasher, so do other, darker forces. Tredd realises he's not the only one with a dark secret, and that the mythical gods, the Shades, might just be more than just the bedtime story he heard as a child. Starcrasher is an exhilarating adventure, moving faster than the speed of light through an original universe that combines the technological wonders of the sci-fi genre with urban fantasy. If you loved Hitchhiker's Guide to Galaxy, the Space Quest video game series, and Firefly TV series, you'll love Starcrasher and the Shades Space Opera series.
An archive is a collection of documents and records that is preserved for historical purposes. As such, an archive is considered a site of the past, a place that contains traces of a collective memory of a nation, a people or a group. Digital archives have changed from stable entities into flexible systems, referred to with the term ?Living Archives?. But in which ways has this change affected our relationship to the past, present and future? Will the erased, forgotten and neglected be redeemed, and new memories be allowed? Will the fictional versus factual mode of archiving offer the democracy that the public domain implies, or is it another way for public instruments of power to operate? 'Lost and Living (in) Archives' shows that an archive is not simply a recording, a reflection, or an image of an event, but that it shapes the event itself and thus influences both present and past.
In this book, Slava Gerovitch argues that Soviet cybernetics was not just an intellectual trend but a social movement for radical reform in science and society as a whole. Followers of cybernetics viewed computer simulation as a universal method of problem solving and the language of cybernetics as a language of objectivity and truth. With this new objectivity, they challenged the existing order of things in economics and politics as well as in science. The history of Soviet cybernetics followed a curious arc. In the 1950s it was labeled a reactionary pseudoscience and a weapon of imperialist ideology. With the arrival of Khrushchev's political "thaw," however, it was seen as an innocent victim of political oppression, and it evolved into a movement for radical reform of the Stalinist system of science. In the early 1960s it was hailed as "science in the service of communism," but by the end of the decade it had turned into a shallow fashionable trend. Using extensive new archival materials, Gerovitch argues that these fluctuating attitudes reflected profound changes in scientific language and research methodology across disciplines, in power relations within the scientific community, and in the political role of scientists and engineers in Soviet society. His detailed analysis of scientific discourse shows how the Newspeak of the late Stalinist period and the Cyberspeak that challenged it eventually blended into "CyberNewspeak."
This book gathers high-quality papers presented at the Third International Conference on Smart Computing and Informatics (SCI 2018–19), which was organized by the School of Computer Engineering and School of Computer Application, Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology, Bhubaneswar, India, on 21–22 December, 2018. It includes advanced and multi-disciplinary research on the design of smart computing and informatics. Thematically, the book broadly focuses on several innovation paradigms in system knowledge, intelligence and sustainability that can help to provide realistic solutions to various problems confronting society, the environment, and industry. The respective papers offer valuable insights into the how emerging computational and knowledge transfer approaches can be used to deliver optimal solutions in science, technology and healthcare.
The ocean has always flowed through Sophie's life. It promises journeys of adventure and discovery – she is drawn to it. And when she gets the chance to cross the Atlantic on board her uncle's boat, The Wanderer, she can't wait to set sail. But troubled Sophie has a secret, and deep down she's terrified of where The Wanderer will take her. For this storm-tossed voyage will also be a journey into the mysterious past of her forgotten childhood. And she, and the rest of the crew aboard, may not survive it.
