The Knight and Knave of Swords

The Knight and Knave of Swords

Author: Fritz Leiber

Publisher: Open Road Media

Published: 2014-04-01

Total Pages: 371

ISBN-13: 1497616700

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The final book in the seminal sword and sorcery series featuring Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser from the Grand Master of Science Fiction and Fantasy. After their adventures in Swords and Ice Magic, Fafhrd the barbarian and Gray Mouser the thief remain on Rime Isle with their loves, seeking lives of respectability and peace. Fafhrd works to regain his archery skills after losing his left hand to Odin in battle. Meanwhile, the Gray Mouser embarks on a trading expedition aboard the ship Seahawk. But their respite will soon come to an end—for on the world of Nehwon, a brother and sister plot to regain the treasures stolen from them by the pirates of Rime Isle. Soon Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, alone and together, are plagued by dreams and curses that will force them to confront the vengeful siblings, destructive temptations, sea demons, and ancient obsessions as “one of the great works of fantasy in this century” comes to its climactic end (Publishers Weekly). The highly regarded British horror author Ramsey Campbell called Fritz Leiber “the greatest living writer of supernatural horror fiction.” Drawing many of his own themes from the works of Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe, and H. P. Lovecraft, master manipulator Fritz Leiber is a worldwide legend within the fantasy genre, actually having coined the term sword and sorcery that would describe the subgenre he would more than help create. While The Lord of the Rings took the world by storm, Leiber’s fantastic but thoroughly flawed antiheroes, Fafhrd and Grey Mouser, adventured and stumbled deep within the caves of Inner Earth as well, albeit a different one than Tolkien’s. They wondered and wandered to the edges of the Outer Sea, across the Land of Nehwon and throughout every nook and cranny of gothic Lankhmar, Nehwon’s grandest and most mystically corrupt city. Lankhmar is Leiber’s fully realized, vivid incarnation of urban decay and civilization’s corroding effect on the human psyche. Fafhrd and Mouse are not innocents; their world is no land of honor and righteousness. It is a world of human complexities and violent action, of discovery and mystery, of swords and sorcery.


Logical Labyrinths

Logical Labyrinths

Author: Raymond Smullyan

Publisher: CRC Press

Published: 2008-12-22

Total Pages: 332

ISBN-13: 143986537X

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This book features a unique approach to the teaching of mathematical logic by putting it in the context of the puzzles and paradoxes of common language and rational thought. It serves as a bridge from the author's puzzle books to his technical writing in the fascinating field of mathematical logic. Using the logic of lying and truth-telling, the au


Forever Undecided

Forever Undecided

Author: Raymond M. Smullyan

Publisher: Knopf

Published: 2012-07-04

Total Pages: 286

ISBN-13: 0307962466

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Forever Undecided is the most challenging yet of Raymond Smullyan’s puzzle collections. It is, at the same time, an introduction—ingenious, instructive, entertaining—to Gödel’s famous theorems. With all the wit and charm that have delighted readers of his previous books, Smullyan transports us once again to that magical island where knights always tell the truth and knaves always lie. Here we meet a new and amazing array of characters, visitors to the island, seeking to determine the natives’ identities. Among them: the census-taker McGregor; a philosophical-logician in search of his flighty bird-wife, Oona; and a regiment of Reasoners (timid ones, normal ones, conceited, modest, and peculiar ones) armed with the rules of propositional logic (if X is true, then so is Y). By following the Reasoners through brain-tingling exercises and adventures—including journeys into the “other possible worlds” of Kripke semantics—even the most illogical of us come to understand Gödel’s two great theorems on incompleteness and undecidability, some of their philosophical and mathematical implications, and why we, like Gödel himself, must remain Forever Undecided!


A Kestrel for a Knave

A Kestrel for a Knave

Author: Barry Hines

Publisher: Penguin UK

Published: 2000-05-25

Total Pages: 208

ISBN-13: 014190383X

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Life is tough and cheerless for Billy Casper, a disillusioned teenager growing up in a small Yorkshire mining town. Violence is commonplace and he is frequently cold and hungry. Yet he is determined to be a survivor and when he finds Kes, a kestrel hawk he discovers a passion in life. Billy identifies with her proud silence and she inspired in him the trust and love that nothing else can. Intense and raw and bitingly honest, A KETREL FOR A KNAVE was first published in 1968 and was also madeinto a highly acclaimed film, 'Kes', directed by Ken Loach.


What is the Name of this Book?

What is the Name of this Book?

Author: Raymond M. Smullyan

Publisher: Dover Math Games & Puzzles

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780486481982

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A celebrated mathematician presents more than 200 increasingly complex problems that delve into Gödel's undecidability theorem and other examples of the deepest paradoxes of logic and set theory. Solutions.


King, Queen, Knave

King, Queen, Knave

Author: Vladimir Nabokov

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 1989-07-17

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 0679723404

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A love triangle, where two of the members attempt to murder the third. • King, Queen, Knave, like all Nabokov’s writing, bears the unmistakable stamp of his genius – brilliant, erotic, deliciously macabre, and wholly unique. “Fascinating…audacious and delightful.” – The New York Times The novel is the story of Dreyer, a wealthy and boisterous proprietor of a men's clothing emporium store. Ruddy, self-satisfied, and thoroughly masculine, he is perfectly repugnant to his exquisite but cold middle-class wife Martha. Attracted to his money but repelled by his oblivious passion, she longs for their nephew instead, the myopic Franz. Newly arrived in Berlin, Franz soon repays his uncle's condescension in his aunt's bed. “A simply overflowing sense of life.” – Life Magazine “A treat, a feast, the splendid work of a conscious and gifted artist.” – Book Week


Algorithmic Problem Solving

Algorithmic Problem Solving

Author: Roland Backhouse

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2011-10-24

Total Pages: 434

ISBN-13: 0470684534

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An entertaining and captivating way to learn the fundamentals of using algorithms to solve problems The algorithmic approach to solving problems in computer technology is an essential tool. With this unique book, algorithm guru Roland Backhouse shares his four decades of experience to teach the fundamental principles of using algorithms to solve problems. Using fun and well-known puzzles to gradually introduce different aspects of algorithms in mathematics and computing. Backhouse presents you with a readable, entertaining, and energetic book that will motivate and challenge you to open your mind to the algorithmic nature of problem solving. Provides a novel approach to the mathematics of problem solving focusing on the algorithmic nature of problem solving Uses popular and entertaining puzzles to teach you different aspects of using algorithms to solve mathematical and computing challenges Features a theory section that supports each of the puzzles presented throughout the book Assumes only an elementary understanding of mathematics Let Roland Backhouse and his four decades of experience show you how you can solve challenging problems with algorithms!


Motivation, Agency, and Public Policy

Motivation, Agency, and Public Policy

Author: Julian Le Grand

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2003-09-18

Total Pages: 206

ISBN-13: 0199266999

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"Uses a detailed empirical examination of policies in health services, education, social security and taxation to illustrate how policies can be designed to give the proper balance of motivation and agency." - cover.


The Gödelian Puzzle Book

The Gödelian Puzzle Book

Author: Raymond M. Smullyan

Publisher: Courier Corporation

Published: 2013-08-21

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 0486315770

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These logic puzzles provide entertaining variations on Gödel's incompleteness theorems, offering ingenious challenges related to infinity, truth and provability, undecidability, and other concepts. No background in formal logic necessary.


Games for Your Mind

Games for Your Mind

Author: Jason Rosenhouse

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2020-11-24

Total Pages: 348

ISBN-13: 0691200343

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A lively and engaging look at logic puzzles and their role in mathematics, philosophy, and recreation Logic puzzles were first introduced to the public by Lewis Carroll in the late nineteenth century and have been popular ever since. Games like Sudoku and Mastermind are fun and engrossing recreational activities, but they also share deep foundations in mathematical logic and are worthy of serious intellectual inquiry. Games for Your Mind explores the history and future of logic puzzles while enabling you to test your skill against a variety of puzzles yourself. In this informative and entertaining book, Jason Rosenhouse begins by introducing readers to logic and logic puzzles and goes on to reveal the rich history of these puzzles. He shows how Carroll's puzzles presented Aristotelian logic as a game for children, yet also informed his scholarly work on logic. He reveals how another pioneer of logic puzzles, Raymond Smullyan, drew on classic puzzles about liars and truthtellers to illustrate Kurt Gödel's theorems and illuminate profound questions in mathematical logic. Rosenhouse then presents a new vision for the future of logic puzzles based on nonclassical logic, which is used today in computer science and automated reasoning to manipulate large and sometimes contradictory sets of data. Featuring a wealth of sample puzzles ranging from simple to extremely challenging, this lively and engaging book brings together many of the most ingenious puzzles ever devised, including the "Hardest Logic Puzzle Ever," metapuzzles, paradoxes, and the logic puzzles in detective stories.