Issue link: http://cp.revolio.com/i/2624
86 Fall 2009 goD wanTs you DeaD SEAN HASTINGS AND PAUL ROSENBERG VeRa VeRBa Sean Hastings, an original cypherpunk and one of the major shakers behind the Seasteading Institute (floating communities outside the law) calls bullshit on most of our society's treasured beliefs from a radically anarchistic perspective. You have to buy this book just for the title! – RU Sirius The BuRning sKies DAVID WILLIAMS specTRa The Burning Skies is the second book in David Williams' "Autumn Rain" trilogy, a political-military science fiction story set early in the next century. Imminent singularities and dreams of post-scarcity utopias long ago gave way to a global ecosystem in full collapse, a global economy close behind, and once-democratic nation-states now run by high-tech warlords. Into the simmering conflict between Eastern and Western superpowers comes the terrorist Autumn Rain movement, nightmarish post-human global guerillas. In the first book in the trilogy, The Mirrored Heavens, Autumn Rain brings down Earth's space elevator. In The Burning Skies, the group attempts to decapitate Eastern and Western superpower leadership. Our protagonist in this mess, Claire Haskell, is so deeply wired into digital networks that she may no longer be truly human. She's a complicated figure, and her true allegiances remain muddled, even to her. Few of the characters are precisely who they seem, in fact. Williams has a gift for paranoiac storytelling. As relatively near-future hard science fiction, The Burning Skies (and its predecessor) offer up abundant conflict, well-grounded in both technological and political possibility. Moreover, the underlying story — of the politics of post-humanism and power — is well worth reflection. This isn't to say that the Autumn Rain stories are meandering philosophical debates; nearly all of The Burning Skies takes place over the course of one very long battle, and military SF aficionados will delight in the details. It's a depressing future, to be sure, but Williams has a knack for making it seem perversely attractive, and filled with the potential for something greater to emerge from it. – Jamais Cascio 8 recoMMended The eVoluTion oF goD ROBERT WRIGHT LITTLE, BRoWN AND CoMPANY How has our notion of god evolved... and why? Incorporating game theory and evolutionary psychology, Wright takes us through the ages and shows us positive change as the "circle of consideration" (those who we do not treat as others) continuously expands. – RU Sirius wheRe To Buy http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0979601118?ie=uTF8&ta g=betterhuman01-20&linkcode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325 &creativeasin=0979601118 wheRe To Buy http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0553385429?ie=uTF8&tag=betterhuman0 1-20&linkcode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeasin=0553385429 wheRe To Buy http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0316734918?ie=u TF8&tag=betterhuman01-20&linkcode=as2&camp=17 89&creative=932 5 &creativeasi n = 0 31 67 3 4 918 The playFul BRain: VenTuRing To The limiTs oF neuRoscience VIVIEN PELLIS AND SERGIO PELLIS one woRlD pRoDucTions This is a rather scholarly treatise on play in complex mammals (mostly rats, but including us). But by the end of the book, the authors support the notion that some play simply escapes any functionality (in evolution or development) we might ascribe to it. Sometimes monkeys just leap crazily, for the hell of it. – Pat Kane wheRe To Buy http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1851686320?ie=uTF8 &tag=betterhuman01-20&linkcode=as2&camp=1789&cr eative=9325&creativeasin=1851686320