Science Reality

Every player in Barliona has heard of the Gray Lands - the land of the dead. Few have managed to travel there and speak with the heroes and villains of old. And of this minuscule number, only one bard has managed to bring the souls of the dead back to the world of the living: the Bard of Shadow. Now, it is up to her to determine the future of her race. Shall the Biota race become full-fledged members of Barliona, or will they oppose all that lives?

A war has broken out in the galaxy! The great spacefaring races are all entangled in the fight, and even at the very edge of the known universe, humanity can hear the echoes of its distant bloody battles. Gnat is with the Shiamiru crew on the front lines. He's just changed class to Listener, and his friends find themselves right in the thick of this grand interstellar war....

Margot Lane thought she had an exciting life-plenty of fans, lots of money, and even her dream role on a hit TV show. But when she busts out of the most expensive and exclusive celebrity fat camp on the east coast, things really get interesting. Pursued by personal trainers, Margot takes an opportunity to duck out of sight. But she realizes she may have gone from the frying pan into the fire when she finds out that she's "hiding" on the set of the hot new reality show that's captured the imagination of the entire planet.

We are entering a new technological age in which artificial intelligence and immersive media will transform society at all levels, mediating our lives by altering what we see, hear, and experience. If managed well, this could unleash a new age of abundance. If managed poorly, this technological revolution could easily go astray, compromising our privacy, autonomy, agency, and humanity. Two industry veterans provide a data-driven debate on whether the new world we're creating will be a technological utopia or an AI-powered dystopia and give guidance on how to aim for the best future we can.

Gnat is on his voyage with the Shiamiru, all the while trying to find backup for humanity among the great spacefaring races. After all, based on what he's already seen, he knows not to count on the good sense of his own kind. Even facing an external threat, the people of our Earth cannot see past their internal squabbles and come together to fight as one. Gnat does not expect gratitude from his leaders for taking such matters into his own hands, but when have laws and rules ever stopped our intrepid hero before?

Extended reality (XR for short) - which encompasses virtual reality, augmented reality, and mixed reality - is one of the biggest business trends of today. It refers to the use of technology to create more immersive digital experiences that are promising to transform many businesses and industries. In this book, best-selling author, strategic business advisor, and respected futurist Bernard Marr explains the role of XR in providing innovative businesses solutions for companies of varying sizes and across different industries.

Ceasefires have one big downside: They eventually come to an end. And when they do, once again game nodes are set ablaze, and platoons of Dark Faction soldiers threaten our customary world with destruction. The enemy has grown stronger and more numerous. To make matters worse, they also got their hands on even deadlier weaponry. They have learned painful lessons from previous encounters and adjusted their tactics accordingly.

For as long as historical records have existed, authoritarian regimes have tried to rewrite history to suit their purposes, using their dictatorial powers to create myths, spread propaganda, justify decisions, erase opponents, and even dispose of crimes. Today, as America’s Republican Party becomes increasingly radicalized, it’s not surprising to see the GOP read from a similarly despotic script. Indeed, the party is taking dangerous, aggressive steps to rewrite history—and not just from generations past.

Neal Stephenson is a blazing new force on the sci-fi scene. With the groundbreaking cyberpunk novel Snow Crash, he has "vaulted onto the literary stage." It weaves virtual reality, Sumerian myth, and just about everything in between with a cool, hip cybersensibility - in short, it is the gigathriller of the information age.

We play games to learn about the world, to understand our minds and the minds of others, and to make predictions about the future. Games are an essential aspect of humanity and a powerful tool for modeling reality. They’re also a lot of fun. But games can be dangerous, especially when we mistake the model worlds of games for reality itself and let gamification co-opt human decision making. Playing with Reality explores the riveting history of games since the Enlightenment.

In today’s society, games are fulfilling real human needs in ways that reality is not. Hundreds of millions of people globally - 174 million in the United States alone - regularly inhabit game worlds because they provide the rewards, stimulating challenges and epic victories that are so often lacking in the real world. Jane McGonigal argues that we need to figure out how to make the real world—our homes, our businesses and our communities—engage us in the way that games do.

Do you find yourself confused by the ever-changing diet landscape? Low-carb, keto, low-fat, Paleo, supplements you can’t pronounce, and of course the fix-all magic bullet—it becomes a minefield of endless frustration with little or no sustainable results to show for it. In his new book Flexible Dieting: A Science-Based, Reality-Tested Method for Achieving & Maintaining Your Optimal Physique, Performance, and Health, Alan Aragon is here to put an end to the confusion and put you on a path to success.

Dazzling, paranoid literary sci-fi for fans of Blake Crouch and Philip K. Dick: Vin, a down-on-his-luck young tech entrepreneur forced out of the software company he started, takes a job house-sitting an ultra-modern Seattle mansion whose owner has gone missing. There he discovers a secret basement lab with an array of computers and three large, smooth caskets. Inside one he finds a woman in a state of suspended animation. When Vin decides to climb into one of the caskets to see what happens, his reality begins to unravel....

The territory of Veelox has achieved perfect harmony. Fifteen-year-old Bobby Pendragon arrives on this territory in pursuit of the evil Saint Dane, but all is peaceful on Veelox - because it's deserted. The inhabitants have discovered a way to enter their own personal dream worlds, where they can be whomever they want, wherever they want. Their bodies lie in stasis while their minds escape to the dream realm.

In the year 2038, there’s only one destination that can play host to the world’s wealthiest adventure seekers: the Pengalaman Island Resort and Virtual Reality Theme Park. Located on a private South Pacific island, guests here live out their wildest fantasies in custom-made virtual reality simulations while also enjoying the usual amenities of an exclusive five-star getaway. All is relatively breezy until famed billionaire and avid guest, Mr. Wagner, goes missing within a virtual simulation. His only hope? A daring rescue led by Derek Ambrose and his ragtag search party.

Nothing has changed more in the last few decades than our concept and perception of reality. The effects have manifested in our news, entertainment, and Google searches; we're finding that a lot of things we thought were objective aren't automatically so. Reality is not a concept we want to flush down the toilet with yesterday's food, though. However, we must begin to understand how it works in a world where profit is the driving force.

This classic presents historical, archaeological, and anthropological evidence to support the theory that ancient Egypt was a black civilization.

In the Prime Kingdoms, the system dominates everything. It dictates one’s strength, skills, and power. It spawns dungeons and guides the actions of their monsters. But every system has its limits, and it’s about to push four oddball adventurers to theirs.

Mike Hagen, an American nicknamed "Crybaby", became one of those chosen to be given an augmented reality interface. However, his favorite game was an MMA fighter - possibly, for the reason that he'd never fought in real life, and the interface adapted itself to him.

In this captivating tale of imagination and ambition, a seemingly disparate array of people come into contact with a time traveller who must resist the pull to change the past and the future. The cast includes a British exile on the west coast of Canada in the early 1900s; the author of a bestselling novel about a fictional pandemic who embarks on a galaxy-spanning book tour during the outbreak of an actual pandemic; a resident of a moon colony almost 300 years in the future; and a lonely girl who films an old-growth forest and experiences a disruption in the recording.