Search results for ""author annalee newitz""

In Pretend We’re Dead, Annalee Newitz argues that the slimy zombies and gore-soaked murderers who have stormed through American film and literature over the past century embody the violent contradictions of capitalism. Ravaged by overwork, alienated by corporate conformity, and mutilated by the unfettered lust for profit, fictional monsters act out the problems with an economic system that seems designed to eat people whole.Newitz looks at representations of serial killers, mad doctors, the undead, cyborgs, and unfortunates mutated by their involvement with the mass media industry. Whether considering the serial killer who turns murder into a kind of labor by mass producing dead bodies, or the hack writers and bloodthirsty actresses trapped inside Hollywood’s profit-mad storytelling machine, she reveals that each creature has its own tale to tell about how a freewheeling market economy turns human beings into monstrosities. Newitz tracks the monsters spawned by capitalism through b movies, Hollywood blockbusters, pulp fiction, and American literary classics, looking at their manifestations in works such as Norman Mailer’s “true life novel” The Executioner’s Song; the short stories of Isaac Asimov and H. P. Lovecraft; the cyberpunk novels of William Gibson and Marge Piercy; true-crime books about the serial killers Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer; and movies including Modern Times (1936), Donovan’s Brain (1953), Night of the Living Dead (1968), RoboCop (1987), The Silence of the Lambs (1991), and Artificial Intelligence: AI (2001). Newitz shows that as literature and film tell it, the story of American capitalism since the late nineteenth century is a tale of body-mangling, soul-crushing horror.

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In Four Lost Cities, acclaimed science journalist Annalee Newitz takes readers on an entertaining and mind-bending adventure into the deep history of urban life. Investigating across the centuries and around the world, Newitz explores the rise and fall of four ancient cities, each the centre of a sophisticated civilisation: the Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük in Central Turkey, the Roman town of Pompeii on Italy’s southern coast, the medieval megacity of Angkor in Cambodia and the indigenous American metropolis Cahokia, which stood beside the Mississippi River where East St. Louis is today. Newitz travels to all four sites and investigates the cutting-edge research in archaeology, revealing the mix of environmental changes and political turmoil that doomed these ancient settlements. Tracing the early development of urban planning, Newitz also introduces us to the often-anonymous workers—slaves, women, immigrants and manual labourers—who built these cities and created monuments that lasted millennia. Four Lost Cities is a journey into the forgotten past but, foreseeing a future in which the majority of people on Earth will be living in cities. It may also reveal something of our own fate.

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'Autonomous is to biotech and AI what Neuromancer was to the internet' NEAL STEPHENSON 'Something genuinely and thrillingly new' WILLIAM GIBSON 'Holy hell. Autonomous is remarkable' LAUREN BEUKESWINNER OF THE 2018 LAMBDA AWARD FOR SFFSHORTLISTED FOR THE NEBULA AWARD 2018SHORTLISTED FOR THE LOCUS AWARD FOR BEST DEBUT 2018Earth, 2144. Jack is an anti-patent scientist turned drug pirate, traversing the world in a submarine as a pharmaceutical Robin Hood, fabricating cheap medicines for those who can't otherwise afford them. But her latest drug hack has left a trail of lethal overdoses as people become addicted to their work, doing repetitive tasks until they become unsafe or insane. Hot on her trail is an unlikely pair: Eliasz, a brooding military agent, and his indentured robotic partner, Paladin. As they race to stop information about the sinister origins of Jack's drug from getting out, they begin to form an uncommonly close bond that neither of them fully understands. And underlying it all is one fundamental question: is freedom possible in a culture where everything, even people, can be owned?

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From the best-selling author of Four Lost Cities comes a sharp and timely book about the dark art of manipulation through weaponised storytelling

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From science fiction visionary Annalee Newitz comes The Terraformers, a sweeping, uplifting, and illuminating exploration of the future.Destry's life is dedicated to terraforming Sask-E. As part of the Environmental Rescue Team, she cares for the planet and its burgeoning eco-systems as her parents and their parents did before her.But the bright, clean future they're building comes under threat when Destry discovers a city full of people that shouldn't exist, hidden inside a massive volcano.As she uncovers more about their past, Destry begins to question the mission she's devoted her life to, and must make a choice that will reverberate through Sask-E's future for generations to come.A science fiction epic for our times and a love letter to our future, The Terraformers will take you on a journey spanning thousands of years and exploring the triumphs, strife, and hope that find us wherever we make our home.'The Terraformers is so engaging, you could almost miss the pyrotechnic worldbuilding and bone-deep intelligence. Newitz continues doing some of the best work in the field' James S. A. Corey'A complete reimagining of the great galactic story of terraformers. Startling fun!' Kim Stanley Robinson'Newitz always sees to the heart of complex systems and breaks them down with poetic ferocity' N. K. JemisinAlso by Annalee NewitzAutonomousThe Future of Another Timeline

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"Do you remember when we had the vote?"In a world that's just a step away from our own, time travel is possible. But war is brewing - a secret group is trying to destroy women's rights, and their access to the timeline. If they succeed, only a small elite will have the power to shape the past, present, and future. Our only hope lies with an unlikely group of allies, from riot grrls to suffragettes, their lives separated by centuries, battling for a world where anyone can change the future. A final confrontation is coming. The Future of Another Timeline is a breathtakingly original novel from Annalee Newitz, founding editor of io9, about the lengths we'll go to make history. 'A revolution is happening in speculative fiction, and Annalee Newitz is leading the vanguard' Wil Wheaton, actor Star Trek and Big Bang Theory'Clever, compelling and utterly original' Laurie Penny"Smart and profound on every level, this is a deeply satisfying novel' Publishers Weekly, STARRED review'A glorious tale of hope in the face of outrage, an anthem of timeless resistance against the powers that would lead us to our worst futures' Ken Liu'A page-turner and an ambitious feminist lens on the time-traveler story' Kelly Sue DeConnick, screenwriter for Captain Marvel'Exciting and urgent in the here and now' Saladin Ahmed'Secret history becomes a thrilling secret war' Nicola Griffith

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A fascinating look at four of the most spectacular cities in human history-and why they were all abandoned.

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A-bomb + a slacker prof + a sexy hypersphere = cyberpunk extravaganza in this outrageous, comic, and oddly erotic tale of true love and nuclear terrorism from Rudy Rucker. When Alwin, a disaffected young physicist, takes a vacation in Florence with his wife Sybil and finds himself kidnapped by terrorists, he is soon wrapped up in a potentially wor

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