Science Fiction Technology

The periodic table is a crowning scientific achievement, but it's also a treasure trove of adventure, greed, betrayal, and obsession. The fascinating tales in The Disappearing Spoon follow elements on the table as they play out their parts in human history, finance, mythology, conflict, the arts, medicine, and the lives of the (frequently) mad scientists who discovered them.

The Athenian court has found Socrates guilty and sentenced him to death. While he is waiting to be executed, his friend, Crito, comes to the prison to persuade him to escape and go into exile. Socrates responds by examining the essence of law and community, probing the various kinds of law and making distinctions that go far beyond the particular issue of whether or not Socrates should escape.

In The Poisoner's Handbook, Blum draws from highly original research to track the fascinating, perilous days when a pair of forensic scientists began their trailblazing chemical detective work, fighting to end an era when untraceable poisons offered an easy path to the perfect crime.

Talk about a change of plans! Ms. Frizzle and her class are on the Magic School Bus headed for a museum. They have been studying how the body turns food into energy, and now they are going to see an exhibit on the human body. Things seem fine until they stop for lunch. A strange mishap causes the bus to shrink and then be swallowed! Ms. Frizzle's class is suddenly inside a real human body!

Rupert P. Brown’s biggest worry about sixth grade is it might be, well, a little bit dull. After all, how can a fellow be expected to top a fifth grade year in which his best friend was kidnapped, and he found out his best teacher ever was a real, honest-to-goodness witch? But when Rupert types the word "computowitch" in an e-mail message, his screen goes all green, and then his parakeet starts giving him math lessons. He knows it can only mean one thing: Miss Switch is back!

From the start, his path was never predictable. Steve Jobs was given up for adoption at birth, dropped out of college after one semester, and at the age of 20, created Apple in his parents' garage with his friend Steve Wozniack. Then came the core and hallmark of his genius - his exacting insistence on perfection, his counterculture life approach, and his level of taste and style that pushed all boundaries.

Today, everyone is familiar with Neil Armstrong's famous words as he first set foot on the moon: "one small step for man; one giant leap for mankind." But America's journey to the moon was anything but simple. In 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the world's first satellite, into orbit; later that year, America's first attempt was such a failure that the media nicknamed it "Kaputnik." Still, we didn't give up. With each failure, we gleaned valuable information about what went wrong, and how to avoid it in the future. So we tried again. And again. And each time we failed, we failed a little bit better.

Scrub all you want, but you'll never get your body entirely clean. From rash causing itch mites to bacteria swimming in your stomach, meet the tiny creatures hitching a ride on your body.

The last 20 years have brought us the rise of the Internet, the development of artificial intelligence, the ubiquity of once unimaginably powerful computers, and the thorough transformation of our economy and society. Through it all, Ellen Ullman lived and worked inside that rising culture of technology, and in Life in Code she tells the continuing story of the changes it wrought with a unique, expert perspective.

Do you suffer from “Pony Fever”? Have you been waiting a long time to add a horse to your family? Have you carefully considered a match between you and your new equine buddy? Have you decided exactly where he’s going to live and how you’re going to keep him happy? Do you have moments when the idea of bringing a horse into your life is scary? Horses are unlike any other animal companion. They’re too big to live in your house, so they have to live in specialized homes of their own.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, long-suppressed information has emerged on Heisenberg’s role in the Nazi atomic bomb project. In Beyond Uncertainty, Cassidy interprets this and other previously unknown material within the context of his vast research and tackles the vexing questions of a scientist’s personal responsibility and guilt when serving an abhorrent military regime.

Corn. Chocolate. Fishing hooks. Boats that float. Insulated double-walled construction. Recorded history and folklore. Life-saving disinfectant. Forest fire management. Our lives would be unrecognizable without these, and countless other, scientific discoveries and technological inventions from Indigenous North Americans. Spanning topics from transportation to civil engineering, hunting technologies, astronomy, brain surgery, architecture, and agriculture, Indigenous Ingenuity is a wide-ranging STEM offering that answers the call for Indigenous nonfiction by reappropriating hidden history.

Like it or not, global warming is a hot topic, and it will affect the younger generation the most. So why not turn to the teacher kids like the most, Ms. Frizzle! Only the Friz can boil all the hoopla down to the scientific facts in a fun and informative way. Kids already love the Magic School Bus, and the love to do what's right by the planet. At last, a way to teach the curriculum and make an impact!

The future has amazing technology. Our alien allies have magic. Together, we are building a training system to teach the best of humanity to go to the stars. But the training is monumentally expensive. Stephanie Morgana is a genius, she just doesn't know it. The artificial intelligence that runs the virtual world is charged with testing Stephanie, a task it has never performed before. Will Stephanie pass the test and be moved to the advanced preparatory schools, or will the system miss her?

Coyote Peterson, YouTube star, animal enthusiast, and creator of the Brave Adventure series, has tracked down some of the world's most painfully stinging insects and chronicled getting stung by each of them on his YouTube channel. Coyote has saved the best - or possibly the worst - for last, and he's finally ready to share his experience with the most painful sting in the world: the Executioner Wasp. Packed with facts about nature's most misunderstood creatures, The King of Sting is a dream book for any kid that loves animals, bugs, outdoor exploration, and danger!

It's 2027. The AI revolution has merged with quantum computing to take control of global financial markets. Operated by the mysterious Bank for International Settlements based in Basel, Switzerland, the quantum supercomputer known as ICARUS has promised the world a more stable economy, devoid of bank failures and volatile share prices. And it has delivered . . . until now.

One treat a day! A 23-volume series of 365 treats: stories, facts, questions and answers, and science experiments for young listeners.

In the mid- to late-19th century, a burgeoning science called electricity promised to shine new light on a rousing nation. Inventive and ambitious minds were hard at work. Soon that spark was fanned, and a war was under way to be the first to light - and run - the world with electricity. Thomas Alva Edison, the inventor of direct current (DC), engaged in a brutal battle with Nikola Tesla and George Westinghouse, the inventors of alternating current (AC). There would be no ties in this race - only a winner and a loser - and the prize was a nationwide monopoly in electric current.

Socrates questions Ion, an actor who just won a major prize, about his ability to interpret the epic poetry of Homer. How does an actor, a poet, or any other artist create? Is it by knowing? Is it by inspiration? As the dialogue proceeds, the nature of human creativity emerges as a mysterious process and an unsolved puzzle.

Veteran video-game designer Dustin Hansen takes YA listeners on a fun and fascinating trip through the brief but intensely innovative history of video games. Find out about the fast and furious growth and evolution of video games (including how they are quickly taking over the world!) by looking at some of the most popular, innovative, and influential games ever, from Pong, the very first arcade game ever, to modern hits like Uncharted.