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<|fantasy|>Living on Mars , Deckard is acting as a consultant to a movie crew filming the story of his Blade Runner days . He finds himself drawn into a mission on behalf of the replicants he was once assigned to kill . Meanwhile , the mystery surrounding the beginnings of the Tyrell Corporation is being dragged out into the light .

<|fantasy|>Beginning several months after the events in Blade Runner , Deckard has retired to an isolated shack outside the city , taking the replicant Rachael with him in a Tyrell transport container , which slows down the replicant aging process . He is approached by a woman who explains she is Sarah Tyrell , niece of Eldon Tyrell , heiress to the entire Tyrell Corporation and the human template templant for the Rachael replicant . She asks Deckard to hunt down the missing sixth replicant . At the same time , the human template for Roy Batty hires Dave Holden , the blade runner attacked by Leon , to help him hunt down the man he believes is the sixth replicant Deckard . Deckard and Holden s investigations lead them to re visit Sebastian , Bryant , and John Isidore from the book Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep ? , learning more about the nature of the blade runners and the replicants . When Deckard , Batty , and Holden finally clash , Batty s inhuman fighting prowess leads Holden to believe he has been duped all along and that Batty is the sixth replicant he shoots him . Deckard returns to Sarah with his suspicion there is no sixth replicant . Sarah , speaking via a remote camera , confesses that she created and maintained the rumor herself , to deliberately discredit and eventually destroy the Tyrell Corporation , after her uncle Eldon created Rachael based on her and then abandoned the real Sarah . Sarah brings Rachael back to the Corporation building to meet with Deckard , and he escapes with her . However , Holden recovering from his injuries during the fight later finds the truth Rachael has been killed by Tyrell agents , and the Rachael who escaped with Deckard was actually Sarah . She has completed her revenge by both destroying Tyrell , and taking back Rachael s place .

<|fantasy|>The story is told through the eyes of narrator James Ballard , named after the author himself , but it centers on the sinister figure of Dr . Robert Vaughan , a former TV scientist , turned nightmare angel of the expressways . Ballard meets Vaughan after being involved in a car accident himself near London Airport . Gathering around Vaughan is a group of alienated people , all of them former crash victims , who follow him in his pursuit to re enact the crashes of celebrities , and experience what the narrator calls a new sexuality , born from a perverse technology . Vaughan s ultimate fantasy is to die in a head on collision with movie star Elizabeth Taylor .

<|fantasy|>Farmer Giles Ægidius Ahenobarbus Julius Agricola de Hammo , Giles Bronze beard Julius Farmer of Ham is not a hero . He is fat and red bearded and enjoys a slow , comfortable life . But a rather deaf and short sighted giant blunders on to his land , and Giles manages to ward him away with a blunderbuss shot in his general direction . The people of the village cheer Farmer Giles has become a hero . His reputation spreads across the kingdom , and he is rewarded by the King with a sword named Caudimordax Tailbiter which turns out to be a powerful weapon against dragons . The giant , on returning home , relates to his friends that there are no more knights in the Middle Kingdom , just stinging flies actually the scrap metal shot from the blunderbuss and this entices a dragon , Chrysophylax Dives , to investigate the area . The terrified neighbours all expect the accidental hero Farmer Giles to deal with him . The story parodies the great dragon slaying traditions . The knights sent by the King to pursue the dragon are useless fops , more intent on precedence and etiquette than on the huge dragon footprints littering the landscape . The only part of a dragon they know is the annual celebratory dragon tail cake . Giles by contrast clearly recognizes the danger , and resents being sent along to face it . But hapless farmers can be forced to become heroes , and Giles shrewdly makes the best of the situation .

<|mystery|>Harriet Vane returns reluctantly to Oxford to attend the Gaudy dinner . Expecting hostility because of her notoriety , she is surprised to be welcomed warmly by the dons , and rediscovers her old love of the academic life . Some time later the Warden of Shrewsbury writes to ask for help . There has been an outbreak of anonymous letters , vandalism and threats , apparently from someone within the college , and a scandal is feared . Harriet , herself a victim of poison pen letters ever since her trial , reluctantly agrees to help , and spends much of the next few months resident at the college , ostensibly to do research on Sheridan Le Fanu and assist a don with her book . As she wrestles with the case , trying to narrow down the list of suspects and avert a major scandal , Harriet is forced to examine her ambivalent feelings about love and marriage , along with her attraction to academia as an intellectual and emotional refuge . Her personal dilemma becomes entangled with darkly hinted suspicions and prejudices raised by the crimes at the college , which appear to have been committed by a sexually frustrated female don . Harriet is forced to re examine her relationship with Wimsey in the light of what she has discovered about herself . Wimsey eventually arrives in Oxford to help her , and she gains a new perspective on him from those who know him , including his nephew , a current undergraduate at the university . The attacks build to a crisis , and the college community of students , dons and servants is almost torn apart by suspicion and fear . There is an attempt to drive a vulnerable student to suicide , and a physical assault on Harriet that almost kills her . The perpetrator is finally unmasked by Wimsey as one of the college servants , revealed to be the widow of a disgraced academic at a northern university . Her husband s academic fraud had been exposed by one of his fellow dons there , destroying his career and driving him to suicide . The don has since moved to Shrewsbury College , and the campaign has been the widow s revenge against intellectual women who move outside their proper domestic sphere . At the end of the book , Harriet Vane finally accepts Wimsey s proposal of marriage . Their marriage and honeymoon interrupted by another murder mystery are depicted in Busman s Honeymoon .

<|novel|>Joe Bonham , a young soldier serving in World War I , awakens in a hospital bed after being caught in the blast of an exploding artillery shell . He gradually realizes that he has lost his arms , legs , and all of his face including his eyes , ears , teeth , and tongue , but that his mind functions perfectly , leaving him a prisoner in his own body . Joe attempts suicide by suffocation , but finds that he had been given a tracheotomy which he can neither remove nor control . At first Joe wishes to die , but later decides that he desires to be placed in a glass box and toured around the country in order to show others the true horrors of war . After he successfully communicates with his doctors by banging his head on his pillow in Morse code , however , he realizes that neither desire will be granted it is implied that he will live the rest of his natural life in his condition . As Joe drifts between reality and fantasy , he remembers his old life with his family and girlfriend , and reflects upon the myths and realities of war . He also forms a bond , of sorts , with a young nurse who senses his plight .

<|fantasy|>Icehenge is part mystery , part psychological drama , and is set in three distinct time periods . The story shifts from a failed Martian political revolution of 2248 , to an expedition to explore a mysterious monument on the north pole of Pluto three centuries later , and ultimately to a space station orbiting Saturn , home to a reclusive and wealthy woman who may hold the key to solving a mystery spanning centuries .

<|novel|>The plot of the novel has two distinct movements the events at Microsoft and in Redmond , Washington , and the movement to Silicon Valley and the Oop ! project . The novel begins in Redmond as the characters are working on different projects at Microsoft s main campus . Life at the campus feels like a feudalistic society , with Bill Gates as the lord , and the employees the serfs . The majority of the main characters Daniel the narrator , Susan , Todd , Bug , Michael , and Abe are living together in a geek house , and their lives are dedicated to their projects and the company . Daniel s foundations are shaken when his father , a longtime employee of IBM , is laid off . The lifespan of a Microsoft coder weighs heavily on Daniel s mind . The second movement of the novel begins when the characters are offered jobs in Silicon Valley working on a project for Michael , who has by then left Redmond . All of the housemates some immediately , some after thought decide to move to the Valley . The characters lives change drastically once they leave the limited sphere of the Microsoft campus and enter the world of One Point Oh . They begin to work on a project called Oop ! a reference to object oriented programming . Oop ! is a Lego like design program , allowing dynamic creation of many objects , bearing a resemblance to 2009 s Minecraft . Coupland appears on the rear cover of the novel s hardcover versions photographed in Denmark s Legoland Billund , holding a Lego 747 . One of the undercurrents of the plot is Daniel and his family s relationship to Jed , Daniel s younger brother who died in a boating accident while they were children .

<|novel|>The action takes place in two periods the Second World War and the late 1990s , during the Internet boom . In 1942 , Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse , a young U . S . Navy code breaker and mathematical genius , is assigned to the newly formed joint British and American Detachment 2702 . This ultra secret unit s role is to hide the fact that Allied Intelligence has cracked the German Enigma code . The detachment stages events , often behind enemy lines , that provide alternative explanations for the Allied intelligence successes . Marine sergeant Bobby Shaftoe , a veteran of China and Guadalcanal , serves in unit 2702 , carrying out Waterhouse s plans . At the same time , Japanese soldiers including mining engineer Goto Dengo , an old friend of Shaftoe s , are assigned to build a mysterious bunker in the mountains in the Philippines as part of what turns out to be a literal suicide mission . Circa 1997 , Randy Waterhouse Lawrence s grandson joins his old Dungeons and Dragons companion Avi Halaby in a new startup , providing Pinoy grams to migrant Filipinos via new fiber optic cables . The aptly named Epiphyte Corporation uses this income stream to fund the creation of a data haven in the nearby fictional Sultanate of Kinakuta . Vietnam veteran Doug Shaftoe and his daughter Amy do the undersea surveying for the cables and engineering work on the haven is overseen by Goto Furudenendu , heir apparent to Goto Engineering . Complications arise as figures from the past reappear seeking gold or revenge .

<|fantasy|>The protagonist is Bob Arctor , member of a household of drug users , who is also living a parallel life as Agent Fred , an undercover police agent assigned to spy on Arctor s household . Arctor Fred shields his true identity from those in the drug subculture , and from the police themselves . The requirement that narcotics agents remain anonymous , to avoid collusion and other forms of corruption , becomes a critical plot point late in the book . While supposedly only posing as a drug user , Arctor becomes addicted to Substance D also referred to as Slow Death , Death , or D , a powerful psychoactive drug . An ongoing conflict is Arctor s love for Donna , a drug dealer through whom he intends to identify high level dealers of Substance D . Arctor s persistent use of the drug causes the two hemispheres of his brain to function independently , or compete . Through a series of drug and psychological tests , Arctor s superiors at work discover that his addiction has made him incapable of performing his job as a narcotics agent . Donna takes Arctor to New Path , a rehabilitation clinic , just as Arctor begins to experience the symptoms of Substance D withdrawal . It is revealed that Donna has been a narcotics agent all along , working as part of a police operation to infiltrate New Path and determine its funding source . Without his knowledge , Arctor has been selected to penetrate the secretive organization . As part of the rehab program , Arctor is renamed Bruce and forced to participate in cruel group dynamic games intended to break the will of the patients . The story ends with Bruce working at a New Path farming commune , where he is suffering from a serious neurocognitive deficit after withdrawing from Substance D . Although considered by his handlers to be nothing more than a walking shell of a man , Bruce manages to spot rows of blue flowers growing hidden among rows of corn , and realizes the blue flowers are Mors ontologica , the source of Substance D . The book ends with Bruce hiding a flower in his shoe to give to his friends undercover police agents posing as recovering addicts at the Los Angeles New Path facility on Thanksgiving .

<|fantasy|>In this alternate history the corrupt US President Ferris F . Fremont FFF for 666 , F being the 6th letter in the alphabet , see Number of the Beast becomes Chief Executive in the late Nineteen Sixties following Lyndon Johnson s administration . The character is best described as an amalgam of Joseph McCarthy and Richard Nixon , who abrogates civil liberties and human rights through positing a conspiracy theory centered around a presumably fictitious subversive organization known as Aramchek . In addition to this , he is associated with a right wing populist movement called Friends of the American People FAPers . Ironically enough , the President s paranoia and opportunism lead to the establishment of a real resistance movement that is organized through narrow beam radio transmissions from a mysterious alien near Earth satellite , by a superintelligent , extraterrestrial , but less than omnipotent being or network named VALIS . As with its successor , VALIS , this novel is autobiographical . Dick himself is a major character , though fictitious protagonist Nicholas Brady serves as a vehicle for Dick s alleged gnostic theophany on February 11 , 1974 . In addition , Sadassa Silvia is a character who claims that Ferris Fremont is actually a communist covert agent recruited by Sadassa s mother when Fremont was still a teenager . As with VALIS , Radio Free Albemuth deals with author Philip Dick s highly personal style of Christianity or Gnosticism . It further examines the moral and ethical repercussions of informing on trusting friends for the authorities . Also prominent is Dick s dislike of the Republican Party , satirizing Nixon s America as a Stalinist or neo fascist police state . Fremont eventually captures and imprisons Dick and Brady after the latter attempts to produce and distribute a record that contains subliminal messages of revolt against the current dictatorship . Brady and Silvia are executed , and Dick narrates the concluding passage about his life in a concentration camp , where his supposedly latest work is actually penned by a ghost writer and regime approved hack . Suddenly , however , he hears music blaring from a transistor radio which contains the same subliminal message . He and his friends , it turns out , were just a decoy set up by VALIS to detour the government from stopping a much more popular A List band from releasing a similar record with a better established recording company . As Dick realizes this and hears youngsters repeating the lyrics he realizes that salvation may lie within the hearts and minds of the next generation .

<|fantasy|>The story is episodic . First we learn of Stuart s birth to a family in New York City and how the family adapts , socially and structurally , to having such a small son . He has an adventure in which he gets caught in a window blind while exercising , and Snowbell , the family cat , places Stuart s hat and cane outside a mouse hole , panicking the family . He is accidentally released by his brother George . Then two chapters describe Stuart s participation in a boat race in Central Park . A bird named Margalo is adopted by the Little family , and Stuart protects her from their malevolent cat . The bird repays his kindness by saving Stuart when he is trapped in a garbage can and shipped out for disposal at sea . Margalo flees when she is warned that one of Snowbell s friends intends to eat her , and Stuart strikes out to find her and bring her home . A friendly dentist , who is also the owner of the boat Stuart had raced in Central Park , gives him use of a gasoline powered model car , and Stuart departs to see the country . He works for a while as a substitute teacher and comes to the town of Ames Crossing , where he meets a girl named Harriet Ames who is no taller than he is . They go on one date , and then Stuart leaves town . As the book ends , he has not yet found Margalo , but feels confident he will do so .

<|fantasy|>As a teenager , Mort had a personality and temperament that made him rather unsuited to the family farming business . Mort s father , named Lezek , felt that Mort thought too much , which prevented him from achieving anything practical . Thus , Lezek took him to a local hiring fair , hoping that Mort would land an apprenticeship with some tradesman not only would this provide a job for his son , but it would also make his son s propensity towards thinking someone else s problem . At the job fair , Mort at first has no luck attracting the interest of an employer . Then , just before the stroke of midnight , a man concealed in a black cloak arrives on a white horse . He says he is looking for a young man to assist him in his work and selects Mort for the job . The man turns out to be Death , and Mort is given an apprenticeship in ushering souls into the next world though his father thinks he s been apprenticed to an undertaker . When it is a princess time to die according to a preconceived reality , Mort , instead of ushering her soul , saves her from death , dramatically altering a part of the Discworld s reality . However , the princess , for whom Mort has a developing infatuation , does not have long to live , and he must try to save her , once again , from a seemingly unstoppable death . Both the princess and Mort end up consulting the local wizard , Igneous Cutwell , for various methods of assistance with the crisis . As Mort begins to do most of Death s Duty , he loses some of his former character traits , and essentially starts to become more like Death himself . Death , in turn , yearns to relish what being human is truly like and travels to Ankh Morpork to indulge in new experiences and attempt to feel real human emotion . Conclusively , Mort must duel Death for Mort s freedom . Though Death wins the duel , he spares Mort s life and sends him back to the Disc . The princess is saved from a second death when the alternate reality Mort created is reduced to a pearl like state . This pearl is given to Mort for safe keeping . At the end of the novel , Mort marries Ysabell , Death s adopted daughter .

<|childrens|>Gandalf tricks Bilbo into hosting a party for Thorin and his band of dwarves , who sing of reclaiming the Lonely Mountain and its vast treasure from the dragon Smaug . When the music ends , Gandalf unveils a map showing a secret door into the Mountain and proposes that the dumbfounded Bilbo serve as the expedition s burglar . The dwarves ridicule the idea , but Bilbo , indignant , joins despite himself . The group travel into the wild , where Gandalf saves the company from trolls and leads them to Rivendell , where Elrond reveals more secrets from the map . Passing over the Misty Mountains , they are caught by goblins and driven deep underground . Although Gandalf rescues them , Bilbo gets separated from the others as they flee the goblins . Lost in the goblin tunnels , he stumbles across a mysterious ring and then encounters Gollum , who engages him in a game of riddles . As a reward for solving all riddles Gollum will show him the path out of the tunnels , but if Bilbo fails , his life will be forfeit . With the help of the ring , which confers invisibility , Bilbo escapes and rejoins the dwarves , improving his reputation with them . The goblins and Wargs give chase but the company are saved by eagles before resting in the house of Beorn . The company enters the black forest of Mirkwood without Gandalf . In Mirkwood , Bilbo first saves the dwarves from giant spiders and then from the dungeons of the Wood elves . Nearing the Lonely Mountain , the travellers are welcomed by the human inhabitants of Lake town , who hope the dwarves will fulfil prophecies of Smaug s demise . The expedition travels to the Lonely Mountain and finds the secret door Bilbo scouts the dragon s lair , stealing a great cup and learning of a weakness in Smaug s armour . The enraged dragon , deducing that Lake town has aided the intruder , sets out to destroy the town . A noble thrush who overheard Bilbo s report of Smaug s vulnerability reports it to Bard , who slays the dragon . When the dwarves take possession of the mountain , Bilbo finds the Arkenstone , an heirloom of Thorin s dynasty , and steals it . The Wood elves and Lake men besiege the mountain and request compensation for their aid , reparations for Lake town s destruction , and settlement of old claims on the treasure . Thorin refuses and , having summoned his kin from the mountains of the North , reinforces his position . Bilbo tries to ransom the Arkenstone to head off a war , but Thorin is intransigent . He banishes Bilbo , and battle seems inevitable . Gandalf reappears to warn all of an approaching army of goblins and Wargs . The dwarves , men , and elves band together , but only with the timely arrival of the eagles and Beorn do they win the climactic Battle of Five Armies . Thorin is fatally wounded and reconciles with Bilbo before he dies . Bilbo accepts only a small portion of his share of the treasure , having no want or need for more , but still returns home a very wealthy hobbit .

<|novel|>In The Screwtape Letters , C . S . Lewis provides a series of lessons in the importance of taking a deliberate role in living out Christian faith by portraying a typical human life , with all its temptations and failings , as seen from devils viewpoints . Screwtape holds an administrative post in the bureaucracy Lowerarchy of Hell , and acts as a mentor to Wormwood , the inexperienced tempter . In the body of the thirty one letters which make up the book , Screwtape gives Wormwood detailed advice on various methods of undermining faith and promoting sin in the Patient , interspersed with observations on human nature and Christian doctrine . Wormwood and Screwtape live in a peculiarly morally reversed world , where individual benefit and greed are seen as the greatest good , and neither demon is capable of comprehending God s love for man or acknowledging true human virtue when he sees it . Versions of the letters were originally published weekly in the Anglican periodical The Guardian between May and November 1941 , and the standard edition contains an introduction explaining how the author chose to write his story . Lewis wrote the sequel Screwtape Proposes a Toast in 1959 , a critique of certain trends in public education state schooling . An omnibus edition with a new preface by Lewis was published by Bles in 1961 and MacMillan in 1962 . The Screwtape Letters is one of Lewis most popular works , although he claimed that it was not fun to write , and resolved never to write another Letter . Both The Screwtape Letters and Screwtape Proposes a Toast have been released on both audio cassette and CD , with narration by John Cleese and Joss Ackland . A dramatized audio version by Focus on the Family was a 2010 Audie Award finalist .

<|horror|>The story takes place during the Spanish Inquisition . At the beginning of the story an unnamed narrator is brought to trial before various sinister judges . Poe provides no explanation of why he is there or for what he has been arrested . Before him are seven tall white candles on a table , and , as they melt , his hopes of survival also diminish . He is condemned to death and finds himself in a pitch black compartment . At first the prisoner thinks that he is locked in a tomb , but he discovers that he is in a cell . He decides to explore the cell by placing a hem from his robe against a wall so he can count the paces around the room however , he faints before being able to measure the whole perimeter . When the prisoner awakens he discovers food and water nearby . He gets back up and tries to measure the prison again , finding that the perimeter measures one hundred steps . While crossing the room he slips on the hem of his robe . He discovers that if he had not tripped he would have walked into a deep pit with water at the bottom in the center of the cell . After losing consciousness again the narrator discovers that the prison is slightly illuminated and that he is bound to a wooden board by ropes . He looks up in horror to see a painted picture of Father Time on the ceiling hanging from the figure is a gigantic scythe like pendulum swinging slowly back and forth . The pendulum is inexorably sliding downwards and will eventually kill him . However the condemned man is able to attract rats to his bonds with meat left for him to eat and they start chewing through the ropes . As the pendulum reaches a point inches above his heart , the prisoner breaks free of the ropes and watches as the pendulum is drawn back to the ceiling . He then sees that the walls have become red hot and begun moving inwards , driving him into the center of the room and towards the brink of the pit . As he gazes into the pit , he decides that no fate could be worse than falling into it . It is implied by the text that the narrator fears what he sees at the bottom of the pit , or perhaps is frightened by its depth . The exact cause of his fear is not clearly stated . However , as the narrator moves back from the pit , he sees that the red hot walls are leaving him with no foothold . As the prisoner begins to fall into the pit , he hears human voices . The walls rush back and an arm catches him . The French Army has taken Toledo and the Inquisition is in the hands of its enemies .

<|fantasy|>The story deals with the discovery of an artifact on Earth s Moon left behind eons ago by ancient aliens . The object is made of a polished mineral and tetrahedral in shape , and is surrounded by a spherical forcefield . The narrator speculates at one point that the mysterious aliens who left this structure on the Moon may have used mechanisms belonging to a technology that lies beyond our horizons , perhaps to the technology of para physical forces . The narrator speculates that for millions of years evidenced by dust buildup around its forcefield the artifact has been transmitting signals into deep space , but it ceases to transmit when , some time later , it is destroyed with the savage might of atomic power . The narrator hypothesises that this sentinel was left on the moon as a warning beacon for possible intelligent and spacefaring species that might develop on Earth . In 2001 A Space Odyssey , the operation of the sentinel is reversed . It is the energy of the sun , falling for the first time on the uncovered artifact , that triggers the signal that creatures from the Earth had taken the first step into space .

<|fantasy|>In the 22nd century , Dr Vannevar Morgan is a famous structural engineer who hopes to develop the space elevator from a theoretical concept to reality and enlists the resources of his employers to carry out experiments . But the only suitable starting point Earth station for the elevator lies at the summit of a mountain in Taprobane occupied by an ancient order of Buddhist monks , who implacably oppose the plan . Morgan is approached by a Mars based consortium to develop the elevator on Mars as part of a massive terraforming project . To demonstrate the viability of the technology , Morgan tries to run a thin cable of hyperfilament from an orbital factory down to ground level at Taprobane . A monk at the monastery , a former astrophysicist who is a mathematical genius , tries to sabotage the attempt by creating an artificial hurricane using a hijacked weather control satellite . His attempt is in fact successful , but in an ironic twist , the hurricane blows butterflies to the peak of the mountain . This fulfills an ancient prophecy that causes the monks to leave the mountain . The tower can be built on Earth after all . Forced to resign his position for acting beyond his authority , Morgan joins the Martian consortium named Astroengineering and construction of the Tower commences . Several years later , the Earth based tower is well under construction and travel up and down mdash both for tourists and for transfer to rocket ships mdash is being trialled . An astrophysicist and a group of his students and tower staff are stranded in an emergency chamber six hundred kilometres up after an accident with their transport capsule . They have limited food and air supplies . Whilst a laser on a weather control satellite is able to supply heat , it is imperative to provide them with filter masks against the increasing carbon dioxide and also with food , air , and medical supplies a theme earlier explored in Clarke s novel The Sands of Mars . Despite his rapidly failing health , Morgan asserts his right to travel up the tower in a one man spider to rescue them . He nearly fails , with limited battery power , but ultimately succeeds in reaching the chamber . As Morgan surveys the progress of his brainchild , his heart disease claims his life . A short epilogue envisages Earth many centuries later , after the sun has cooled and Earth has been depopulated , with humans now living on the terraformed inner planets . Several space elevators lead to a giant circumterran space station that encircles Earth at geostationary altitude . The analogy with a wheel is evident the space station itself is the wheel rim , Earth is the axle , and the six equidistant space elevators the spokes .

<|fantasy|>A Crown of Swords has three primary plotlines Rand al Thor , the Dragon Reborn , prepares to attack the Forsaken Sammael in Illian while enjoying life with his friend , Min Farshaw , and attempting to quell the rebellion by nobles in Cairhien , during which Padan Fain severely injures him with the Shadar Logoth dagger . After recovering , Rand , accompanied by Asha man , attacks Illian and defeats Sammael in a duel of the One Power in Shadar Logoth , where Sammael is destroyed by Mashadar . Rand then takes the crown of Illian , formerly the Laurel Crown , but now called the Crown of Swords . Egwene al Vere and Siuan Sanche attempt to manipulate the Aes Sedai rebels in Salidar to move against Elaida s Aes Sedai in the White Tower in Tar Valon . After Egwene and Siuan investigate Siuan s suspicions about Myrelle , Egwene exploits the transfer of Lan s Warder bond from Moiraine to Myrelle in order to force Myrelle and Nisao to swear fealty to her . In the city of Ebou Dar in Altara , Elayne Trakand , Nynaeve al Meara , Aviendha , and Mat Cauthon search for a ter angreal , the Bowl of the Winds , to break the unnatural heat brought on by the Dark One s manipulation of climate . They find it and enlist the help of the Kin and the Atha an Miere , or Sea Folk . They also confront a Gholam . Mat is left behind after searching for Olver , and is caught in the fighting as the Seanchan invade Ebou Dar .

<|novel|>The novel is set in South Wales in the reign of Queen Victoria . It tells the story of the Morgans , a respectable mining family of the South Wales Valleys , through the eyes of the youngest son , Huw Morgan . Huw s academic ability sets him apart from his elder brothers and enables him to consider a future away from this troubled industrial environment . His five brothers and his father are miners after the eldest brother , Ivor , is killed in an mining accident , Huw moves in with his sister in law , Bronwen , with whom he has always been in love . One of Huw s three sisters , Angharad , marries the wealthy mine owner s son , whom she does not love , and the marriage is an unhappy one . She never overcomes her clandestine relationship with the local minister . Huw s father is later killed in a mine explosion . After everyone Huw has known either dies or moves away , he decides to leave as well , and tells us the story of his life just before he does .

<|fantasy|>The novel features scenes and events including the discovery of a near dead alien in the desert , who clearly says in English , I m sorry , but there is bad news , and this alien s subsequent interrogation and autopsy the discovery of an artificial geological formation and its subsequent nuclear destruction by a desperate military and the Earth s eventual destruction by the mutual annihilation of a piece of neutronium and a piece of antineutronium dropped into Earth s core . There is another alien faction at work , however , represented on Earth by small spider like robots that recruit human agents through some form of mind control . They frantically collect all the human data , biological records , tissue samples , seeds , and DNA from the biosphere that they can , and evacuate a handful of people from Earth . In space , this faction s machines combat and eventually destroy the attackers , though not before Earth s fate is sealed . The evacuees eventually settle a newly terraformed Mars while some form the crew of a Ship of the Law to hunt down the home world of the killers , a quest described in the sequel , Anvil of Stars . One of the point of view characters is Arthur Gordon , a scientist who , with his wife Francine and son Martin is among those rescued from the destruction of Earth . Some other characters are close to an American president who fails to take action against the threat . The two books show at least one solution to the Fermi paradox , with electromagnetically noisy civilisations being snuffed out by the arrival of self replicating machines designed to destroy any potential threat to their possibly long dead creators . A similar theme is explored in Fred Saberhagen s Berserker novels .

<|fantasy|>In the novel , renegade biotechnologist Vergil Ulam creates simple biological computers based on his own lymphocytes . Faced with orders from his nervous employer to destroy his work , he injects them into his own body , intending to smuggle the noocytes as he calls them out of the company and work on them elsewhere . Inside Ulam s body , the noocytes multiply and evolve rapidly , altering their own genetic material and quickly becoming self aware . The nanoscale civilization they construct soon begins to transform Ulam , then others . The people who are infected start to find that genetic faults such as myopia and high blood pressure are fixed . The bumps along the spine as well as the nipples fade . Finally , white stripes and ridges start growing over their bodies . Ulam reports that the cells seem to sing . Through infection , conversion and assimilation of humans and other organisms the cells eventually aggregate most of the biosphere of North America into a region seven thousand kilometres wide . This civilization , which incorporates both the evolved noocytes and recently assimilated conventional humans , is eventually forced to abandon the normal plane of existence in favor of one in which thought does not require a physical substrate . The reason for the noocytes inability to remain in this reality is somewhat related to the strong anthropic principle . The book s structure is titled inter phase , prophase , metaphase , anaphase , telophase and interphase . This mirrors the major phases of cell cycle interphase and mitosis .

<|novel|>The novel tells the story through a fictional first person narrator by the name of Roger Byam , based on actual crew member Peter Heywood . Byam , although not one of the mutineers , remains with the Bounty after the mutiny . He subsequently returns to Tahiti , and is eventually arrested and taken back to England to face a court martial . He and several other members of the crew are eventually acquitted .

<|fantasy|>Humanity has lived for 40 million years on a planet called Harmony , after leaving an Earth that has been destroyed by human conflict . In order not to repeat the mistakes that led to the destruction of civilization on Earth , a computer , known as the Oversoul , was left as guardian of this planet . Its main mission was to prevent humans from developing technologies that could make wars a global affair . For that , humans were genetically modified so they could communicate with the Oversoul . The Oversoul uses this connection to make humans quite easily distracted when thinking about forbidden technologies , leading them to forget that train of thought . However , after this long time the Oversoul is beginning to fail , and it chooses a group of humans to return to Earth in search of the Keeper of Earth , in the hopes it will be able to find a way to maintain power over the people on Harmony . To this end the Oversoul recruits Volemak , father of the protagonist of the story , Nafai . Nafai and Issib , his brother , begin to try and defy the Oversoul s capability to override thought . Through this they learn of the danger that it is in . Nafai begins hearing the Oversoul s voice in his mind . The first book focuses on the family s eventual betrayal , the taking of the Index , and the downfall of the man Gaballufix , who had been planning to ally the city of Basilica , the home of the main characters and the setting of the first half of the book , with a malignant nation . Nafai , Elemak and Mebbekew , his older half brothers , Issib and his father Volemak are eventually forced to leave the city . They come back to retrieve the Index of the Oversoul , which allows them to communicate with it directly . Because of Nafai s careless blunders and miraculous successes , Elemak , Nafai s oldest brother , begins to hate him , a theme that will play out throughout the rest of the saga .

<|fantasy|>A top secret research facility hidden in the Colorado mountains is the last remaining outpost of the United States Army after its defeat by the PanAsians . The conquerors had absorbed the Soviets after being attacked by them and had then gone on to absorb India as well . The invaders are depicted as ruthless and cruel for example , they crush an abortive rebellion by killing 150 , 000 American civilians as punishment . The laboratory is in turmoil as the novel begins . All but six of the personnel have died suddenly , due to unknown forces released by an experiment operating within the newly discovered magneto gravitic or electro gravitic spectra . The surviving scientists soon learn that they can selectively kill people by releasing the internal pressure of their cell membranes , among other things . Using this discovery they construct a race selective weapon which will kill only Asians . They devise other uses for the awesome forces they have discovered , but how can a handful of men overthrow an occupation force that controls all communications and when it is a crime to print a word in English ? Noting that the invaders have allowed the free practice of religion the better to pacify their slaves , the Americans set up a church of their own and begin acting as Priests of Mota Mota is atom spelled backwards in order to build a resistance movement which Major Ardmore , the protagonist of the book , refers to as the Sixth Column as opposed to a traitorous fifth column .

<|fantasy|>After crossing the sea guided by the Bellman s map of the Ocean a blank sheet of paper the hunting party arrive in a strange land . The Baker recalls that his uncle once warned him that , though catching Snarks is all well and good , you must be careful for , if your Snark is a Boojum , then you will softly and suddenly vanish away , and never be met with again . With this in mind , they split up to hunt . Along the way , the Butcher and Beaver previously mutually wary for the Butcher s specialty in preparing beavers become fast friends , the Barrister falls asleep and dreams of a court trial defended by the Snark , and the Banker loses his sanity after being attacked by a frumious Bandersnatch . At the end , the Baker calls out that he has found a Snark but when the others arrive he has mysteriously disappeared , For the Snark was a Boojum , you see .

<|fantasy|>After World War II , three teenage boy rocket experimenters are recruited by the uncle of one of them , Dr . Cargraves , a Nobel Prize winning Physicist who had worked on the Manhattan Project , to refit a conventionally powered surplus mail rocket . It is to be converted to run on a thorium nuclear pile which boils zinc as a propellant . They use a cleared area in a military weapons test range in the desert for their work , despite prying and sabotage attempts by unknown agents . Upon completion of the modifications , they stock the rocket , which they name the Galileo , and take off for the Moon , taking approximately 11 days to arrive . After establishing a semi permanent structure based on a Quonset hut , they claim the moon on behalf of the United Nations . As they set up a radio to communicate with the Earth they pick up a local transmission , the sender of which promises to meet them . Instead , their ship is bombed . Fortunately , they are able to hole up undetected in their hut and succeed in ambushing the other ship when it lands , capturing the pilot . They discover that there is a Nazi base on the Moon . They bomb it from their captured ship and land . One survivor is found , revived , and questioned . The boys also find evidence of an ancient lunar civilization , and postulate that the craters of the moon were formed not by impacts from space , but by nuclear bombs that destroyed the alien race . When the base s Nazi leader shoots the pilot in order to silence him , Cargraves convenes a trial and find him guilty of murder . Cargraves pretends to prepare to execute the prisoner by ejecting him into vacuum . The Nazi capitulates in the airlock and teaches them how to fly the Nazi spaceship back to Earth . The boys radio the location of the hidden Nazi base on Earth to the authorities , leading to its destruction they return as heroes .

<|fantasy|>An ancestor of John Thomas Stuart XI brought the alien , long lived Lummox home from an interstellar voyage . The articulate , sentient pet he inherited has gradually grown from the size of a collie pup to a ridable behemoth especially after consuming a used car . The childlike Lummox is perceived to be a neighborhood nuisance and , upon leaving the Stuart property one day , causes substantial property damage across the city of Westville . John s mother wants him to get rid of it , and a court orders it destroyed . Desperate to save his pet , John Thomas considers selling Lummox to a zoo . He rapidly changes his mind and runs away from home , riding into the nearby wilderness on Lummox s back . His girlfriend Betty Sorenson joins him and suggests bringing the beast back into town and hiding it in a neighbor s greenhouse . However , it isn t easy to conceal such a large creature . Eventually , the court tries to have Lummox destroyed , but is unable to do so , much to Lummox s amusement . Meanwhile , representatives of an advanced , powerful and previously unknown alien race appear and demand the return of their lost child . . . or else . A friendly alien diplomat of a third species intimates that the threat is not an empty one . Initially , no one associates Lummox with the newcomers , in part due to the size difference Lummox was overfed . Lummox is identified as royalty , complicating the already tense negotiations . It is discovered that , from her viewpoint , the young Lummox has been pursuing her only hobby and principal interest the raising of John Thomases . She makes it clear that she intends to continue doing so . This gives the chief human negotiator the leverage he needs to avert the destruction of Earth . At the request of Lummox , the recently married John and Betty accompany her back to her people as members of the human diplomatic mission .

<|fantasy|>Set in the late 1960s and 1970s , the story describes the efforts of Episcopal Bishop Timothy Archer , who must cope with the theological and philosophical implications of the newly discovered Gnostic Zadokite scroll fragments . The character of Bishop Archer is loosely based on the controversial , iconoclastic Episcopal Bishop James Pike , who in 1969 died of exposure while exploring the Judean Desert near the Dead Sea in the West Bank . As the novel opens , it is 1980 . On the day that John Lennon is shot and killed , Angel Archer visits the houseboat of Edgar Barefoot , a guru , and reflects on the lives of her deceased relatives . During the sixties , she was married to Jeff Archer , son of the Episcopal Bishop of California Timothy Archer . She introduced Kirsten Lundborg , a friend , to her father in law , and the two began an affair . Kirsten has a son , Bill , from a previous relationship , who has schizophrenia , although he is knowledgeable as an automobile mechanic . Tim is already being investigated for his gnostic , allegedly heretical views about the Zadokite scrolls , which reproduce some of Jesus Christ s statements about the world , but have been dated to the second century before the birth of Christ . Jeff commits suicide due to his romantic obsession with Kirsten . However , after poltergeist activity , he manifests to Tim and Kirsten at a seance , also attended by Angel . Angel is sceptical about the efficacy of astrology , and believes that the unfolding existential situation of Tim and Kirsten is akin to Friedrich Schiller s German Romanticism era masterpiece , the Wallenstein trilogy insofar as their credulity reflects the loss of rational belief in contemporary consensual reality . The three are told that Kirsten and Tim will die . As predicted , Kirsten loses her remission from cancer , and also commits suicide after a barbiturate overdose . Tim travels to Israel to investigate whether or not a psychotropic mushroom was associated with the resurrection , but his car stalls , he becomes disoriented , falls from a cliff , and dies in the desert . On the houseboat , Angel is reunited with Bill , Kirsten s son who has schizophrenia . He claims to have Tim s reincarnated spirit within him , but is soon reinsitutionalised . Angel agrees to care for Bill , in return for a rare record that Edgar offers her . Transmigration is one of Dick s most overtly philosophical and intellectual works . While Dick s novels usually employ multiple narrators or an omniscient perspective , this story is told in the first person by a single narrator Angel Archer , Bishop Archer s daughter in law . Dick s work was often criticized for its flat , stereotypical female characters , so Angel may represent his effort to prove he could create a rich and believable feminine voice .

<|childrens|>The story begins on Epiphany 6 January , 1482 , the day of the Feast of Fools in Paris , France . Quasimodo , a deformed hunchback who is the bell ringer of Notre Dame , is introduced by his crowning as the Pope of Fools . Esmeralda , a beautiful Gypsy with a kind and generous heart , captures the hearts of many men , including those of Captain Phoebus and Pierre Gringoire , a poor street poet , but especially those of Quasimodo and his adoptive father , Claude Frollo , the Archdeacon of Notre Dame . Frollo is torn between his obsessive love and the rules of the church . He orders Quasimodo to kidnap her , but the hunchback is suddenly captured by Phoebus and his guards who save Esmeralda . Quasimodo is sentenced to be flogged and turned on the pillory for one hour , followed by another hour s public exposure . He calls for water . Esmeralda , seeing his thirst , offers him a drink . It saves him , and she captures his heart . Esmeralda is later charged with the attempted murder of Phoebus , whom Frollo actually attempted to kill in jealousy after seeing him about to have sex with Esmeralda , and is tortured and sentenced to death by hanging . As she is being led to the gallows , Quasimodo swings down by the bell rope of Notre Dame and carries her off to the cathedral under the law of sanctuary . Clopin , a street performer , rallies the Truands criminals of Paris to charge the cathedral and rescue Esmeralda . Frollo asks the king to remove Esmeralda s right to sanctuary so she can no longer seek shelter in the church and will be taken from the church and killed . When Quasimodo sees the Truands , he assumes they are there to hurt Esmeralda , so he drives them off . Likewise , he thinks the King s men want to rescue her , and tries to help them find her . She is rescued by Frollo and her phony husband Gringoire . But after yet another failed attempt to win her love , Frollo betrays Esmeralda by handing her to the troops and watches while she is being hanged . When Frollo laughs during Esmeralda s hanging , Quasimodo pushes him from the heights of Notre Dame to his death . Quasimodo then goes to the vaults under the huge gibbet of Montfaucon , and lies next to Esmeralda s corpse , where it had been unceremoniously thrown after the execution . He stays at Montfaucon , and eventually dies of starvation . About eighteen months later , the tomb is opened , and the skeletons are found . As someone tries to separate them , Quasimodo s bones turn to dust .

<|fantasy|>Ojo the Unlucky is a Munchkin boy who , devoted to life with his uncle Unc Nunkie in the wilderness but on the verge of starvation , goes to see a neighboring magician and old friend of Unc s , Dr . Pipt . While there they see a demonstration of the Pipt made Powder of Life , which animates any object it touches . Unc Nunkie and Dr . Pipt s wife are also the sufferers of the consequences of another of the Doctor s inventions , the Liquid of Petrifaction , which turns them into solid marble statues . The remainder of this book is Ojo s quest through Oz to retrieve the five components of an antidote to the Liquid a six leaved clover found only in the Emerald City , three hairs from the tip of a Woozy s tail , a gill a quarter of a pint of water from a dark well one that remains untouched by natural light , a drop of oil from a live man s body , and the left wing of a yellow butterfly . With the help of the patchwork girl Scraps , Bungle the Glass Cat another of Dr . Pipt s creations , the Woozy , Dorothy , the Shaggy Man , the Scarecrow , and the Tin Woodman , Ojo gathers all of these supplies but the left wing mdash the Tin Woodman will not allow any living thing to be killed , even to save another s life . The party returns to the Emerald City , where the Wizard of Oz one of the few allowed to lawfully practice magic in Oz restores Unc Nunkie and Dr . Pipt s wife . The story is also a growth process for Ojo he learns that luck is not a matter of who you are or what you have , but what you do he is renamed Ojo the Lucky , and so he appears in the following Oz books .

<|fantasy|>The book is a memoir of Maureen Johnson Smith Long , mother , lover , and eventual wife of Lazarus Long . Maureen is ostensibly recording the events of the book while being held in a future prison , awaiting her uncertain fate , along with Pixel , the eponymous character of The Cat Who Walks Through Walls . Maureen , born on July 4 , 1882 , recounts her girlhood in Kansas City , young adulthood , discovery that her family is a member of the long lived Howard Families whose backstory is revealed in Methuselah s Children , marriage to Brian Smith , another member of that family , and her life until her accidental death in 1982 . Maureen lives through , and gives her sometimes contradictory viewpoints on many events in other Heinlein stories , most notably the 1917 visit from the future by Ted Bronson in actuality Lazarus Long , told from Long s point of view in Time Enough for Love , D . D . Harriman s space program from The Man Who Sold the Moon and the rolling roads from The Roads Must Roll . The adventures of Maureen are a series of sexual ones , starting with Heinlein describing her as a young girl who , having just had her first sexual intercourse , is examined by her father , a doctor , and finds herself desiring him sexually . Her sexual life story then continues featuring various boys , her husband , ministers , other women s husbands , boyfriends , swinging sessions , and the adult Lazarus Long Theodore Bronson . Additionally , she continues a lifelong pursuit of her father sexually , encourages her husband to have sexual intercourse with their daughters , and accompanies him when he does but forbids a son and daughter of hers from continuing an incestuous relationship , primarily for the sister s reluctance to share the brother with other women . All of these are set against a history lesson of an alternate 20th century in which a variety of social and philosophical commentary is delivered . She is eventually rescued by Lazarus Long and other characters drawn from various novels in the ship Gay Deceiver from The Number of the Beast , and after rescuing her father from certain death in the Battle of Britain , is united with her descendants in a massive group marriage in the settlement of Boondock , on the planet Tertius . Maureen ends her memoir and the Lazarus Long saga with the phrase And we all lived happily ever after .

<|fantasy|>The story , which is told in the first person , centers on down and out actor Lawrence Smith stage name Lorenzo Smythe , a . k . a . The Great Lorenzo . A brilliant actor and mimic or so we are told , by Smith himself , he is down to his last coin when a spaceman hires him to double for a public figure . It is only when he is on his way to Mars that he finds out how deeply he has been deceived he will have to impersonate one of the most prominent politicians in the solar system and one with whose views Smythe deeply disagrees John Joseph Bonforte . Bonforte is the leader of the Expansionist coalition , currently out of office but with a good chance of changing that at the next general election . Bonforte has been kidnapped by his political opponents , and his aides want Smith to impersonate Bonforte while they try to find him . Bonforte is rescued , but he is in poor health due to the treatment inflicted on him during his imprisonment . This forces Smith to extend his performance , even to becoming temporary Supreme Minister and running in an election . This is made plausible through Bonforte s extensive Farley Files . The central political issue in the election is the granting of the vote to Martians in the human dominated Solar System . Lorenzo shares the anti Martian prejudice prevalent among large parts of Earth s population , but he is called upon to assume the persona of the most prominent advocate for Martian enfranchisement . Smith takes on not only Bonforte s appearance , but some aspects of his personality . At the moment of electoral victory , Bonforte dies of the aftereffects of his kidnapping , and Smythe realizes he has little choice but to assume the role for life . In a retrospective conclusion set twenty five years later , Lorenzo has become Bonforte , suppressing his own identity permanently . He has been generally successful and has carried forward Bonforte s ideals to the best of his ability . Penny Bonforte s adoring secretary now Smith Bonforte s wife says , I never loved anyone else . At the end , Lorenzo looks back on his former life , including the prejudices he used to hold , commenting that they seem to him like they happened to someone else .

<|fantasy|>Evelyn Cyril E . C . Gordon also known as Easy and Flash has been recently discharged from an unnamed war in Southeast Asia . He is pondering what to do with his future and considers spending a year traveling in France . He is presented with a dilemma follow up on a possible winning entry in the Irish Sweepstakes or respond to a newspaper ad which asks Are you a coward ? . He settles on the latter discovering it has been placed by Star , a stunningly gorgeous woman he had previously met on Île du Levant . Star informs him that he is the one to embark on a perilous quest to retrieve the Egg of the Phoenix . When she asks what to call him , he wants to suggest Scarface , referring to the scar on his face , but she stops him as he is saying Oh , Scar . . . and repeats this as Oscar , and thus gives him his new name . Along with Rufo , her assistant , who appears to be a man in his fifties , they tread the Glory Road in swashbuckling style , slaying minotaurs , dragons , and other creatures . Shortly before the final quest for the Egg itself , Oscar and Star get married . The team then proceeds to enter the tower in which the Egg has been hidden , navigating a maze of illusions and optical tricks . Oscar scouts ahead and finds himself crossing swords with a fearsome foe who resembles Cyrano de Bergerac . He then defeats the final guardian of the Egg , known only as the Never Born , in a mental fight , and the party escapes with the Egg . While they arrive in the universe of Star , Rufo informs Oscar that Star is actually the empress of many worlds and Rufo s grandmother . The Egg is a cybernetic device that contains the knowledge and experiences of most of her predecessors . Despite her youthful appearance , she is the mother of dozens of children , and has undergone special medical treatments that extend her life much longer than usual . She has Oscar unknowingly receive the same treatments . Initially , Oscar enjoys his new found prestige and luxurious life as the husband of the empress of worlds across the Twenty Universes . However , as time goes on , he grows bored and feels out of place and useless . When he demands Star s professional judgment , she tells him that he must leave her world has no place or need for a hero of his stature . It will be decades before she can complete the transfer of the knowledge held in the Egg , so he must go alone . He returns to Earth , but has difficulty readjusting to his own world , despite having brought great wealth along with him . He begins to doubt his own sanity and whether the adventure even happened . The story ends as he is contacted by Rufo to set up another trip on the Glory Road , which is , by this point , revealed as an allegory for Life s Adventure .

<|fantasy|>The story takes place about 2015 AD , against a background of an overpopulated Earth , whose dysfunctional society is clearly an attempt to extrapolate into the future the rapid social changes taking place in the U . S . during the 1960s . Ancient billionaire Johann Sebastian Bach Smith is dying , and wants to have his brain transplanted into a new body . Smith advertises an offer of a million dollars for the donation of a body from a brain dead patient . Coincidentally , his beautiful young female secretary , Eunice Branca , is murdered , so her body is used , since Smith never thought to place any restriction on the sex of the donor . He is rechristened Joan Eunice Smith . For reasons never made clear , Eunice s personality continues to co inhabit the body . Whether Eunice s personality is real or a figment of Johann s imagination is addressed but never fully resolved in the novel . Joan and Eunice agree never to reveal her continued existence , fearing that they would be judged insane and locked up . The two of them speculate that it may have something to do with the supposed ability of animals to remember things using RNA rather than the nervous system . At the time the book was published , biologist J . V . McConnell had done a series of experiments in which he taught a behavior to flatworms , ground them up , and fed them to other flatworms , which supposedly exhibited the same behavior . McConnell s experiments were later discredited , but ideas drawn from them were used in science fiction by several authors , including Heinlein , Larry Niven , Joe Haldeman and Dean Koontz . However , Joan and Eunice decide that this possible explanation is irrelevant , and near the end of the book , a third personality , that of Joan s new husband , joins them by means that can only be explained via delusion , religion or mysticism , not science .

<|fantasy|>A writer seated at the best restaurant of the space habitat Golden Rule is approached by a man who urges him that Tolliver must die and is himself shot before the writer s eyes . The writer Colonel Colin Campbell , living under a number of aliases including his pen name Richard Ames is joined by a beautiful and sophisticated lady , Gwendolyn Novak , who helps him flee to Luna with a bonsai maple and a would be murderer Bill . After escaping to the moon , Gwen refers to the now ancient Lunar Revolt as described in The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress and Mike Mycroft , the self aware computer responsible for the uprising s victory , and claims to have been present during the revolt despite her claim that she was only a girl at the time , Campbell grows suspicious , and learns that she is a rejuvenation of the revolution s most prominent female leader . Still pursued by assassins , Campbell and Novak are rescued by an organization known as the Time Corps under the leadership of Lazarus Long . After giving Campbell a new leg to replace one lost in combat years before , the Time Corps attempt to recruit Campbell for a special mission . Accepting only on Gwen s account , Campbell agrees to assist a team to retrieve the decommissioned Mike . Engaged in frequent time travel , the Time Corps has been responsible for changing various events in the past , creating an alternate universe with every time line they disrupt . Mike s assistance is needed in order to accurately predict the conditions and following events in each of the new universes created . Campbell s frequent would be assassins are revealed to be members of contemporary agencies also engaged in time manipulation who , for unknown reasons , do not want to see Mike rescued by the Time Corps . During the mission , Gwen is grievously wounded and Campbell loses his foot again , though the Time Corps succeed in retrieving Mike . The story ends with Campbell talking into a recorder presumably the source of the first person medium through which the story is told reflecting on the mission and his relationship with Gwen .

<|novel|>The development of the novel can be split into segments . The first chapters 1 11 broadly follows the story fragmented between characters , but in a single chronological time in 1943 . The second chapters 12 20 flashes back to focus primarily on the Great Big Siege of Bologna before once again jumping to the chronological present of 1943 in the third part chapter 21 25 . The fourth chapters 26 28 flashes back to the origins and growth of Milo s syndicate , with the fifth part chapter 28 32 returning again to the narrative present but keeping to the same tone of the previous four . In the sixth and final part chapter 32 on while remaining in the present time the novel takes a much darker turn and spends the remaining chapters focusing on the serious and brutal nature of war and life in general . While the first five parts sections develop the novel in the present and through use of flash backs , the novel significantly darkens in chapters 32 41 . Previously the reader had been cushioned from experiencing the full horror of events , but now the events are laid bare , allowing the full effect to take place . The horror begins with the attack on the undefended Italian mountain village , with the following chapters involving despair Doc Daneeka and the Chaplain , disappearance in combat Orr and Clevinger , disappearance caused by the army Dunbar or death Nately , McWatt , Mudd , Kid Sampson , Dobbs , Chief White Halfoat and Hungry Joe of most of Yossarian s friends , culminating in the unspeakable horrors of Chapter 39 , in particular the rape and murder of Michaela , who represents pure innocence . In Chapter 41 , the full details of the gruesome death of Snowden are finally revealed . Despite this , the novel ends on an upbeat note with Yossarian learning of Orr s miraculous escape to Sweden and Yossarian s pledge to follow him there .

<|novel|>The novel is set prior to the Constitution of 1782 and tells the story of four generations of Rackrent heirs through their steward , Thady Quirk . The heirs are the dissipated spendthrift Sir Patrick O Shaughlin , the litigious Sir Murtagh Rackrent , the cruel husband and gambling absentee Sir Kit Stopgap , and the generous but improvident Sir Condy Rackrent . Their sequential mismanagement of the estate is resolved through the machinations and to the benefit of the narrator s astute son , Jason Quirk .

<|novel|>The Wasp Factory of the title is a huge clock face encased in a glass box and salvaged from the local dump . Behind each of the 12 numerals is a trap which leads to a different ritual death for example burning , crushing , or drowning in Frank s urine for the wasp that Frank puts into the hole at the center within tubes . Frank believes the death chosen by the wasp predicts something about the future . There are also Sacrifice Poles , upon which hang the bodies and heads of larger animals , such as seagulls , that Frank has killed and other sacred items . They define and protect the borders of Frank s territory the island upon which he lives with his father . Frank occupies himself with his rituals and maintaining an array of weapons from his catapult , to pipe bombs and a crude flame thrower to control the island . Frank is haunted by an accident which resulted in the loss of his genitalia , and resents others for his impotence , particularly women . He goes for long walks and runs patrolling the island , and occasionally gets drunk with his dwarf friend Jamie in the local pub . Other than that , Frank has almost no contact with the outside world and admits that he is afraid of it due to what it did to his brother , Eric . Frank s older brother Eric is in an insane asylum after being arrested for brutalizing the town s dogs . He escapes at the start of the novel and throughout the book rings Frank from phone boxes to inform Frank of his progress back to the island . Their conversations invariably end badly , with Eric exploding in fits of rage . Frank is confused as to whether or not he is looking forward to seeing Eric , but it is clear Frank loves his brother dearly . Frank remembers his older brother as being extremely sensitive before the incident that drove him mad a tragic case of neglect in a hospital where Eric was a volunteer . While attempting to feed a smiling brain damaged child with acalvaria , Eric realizes that the patient is unresponsive and only smiling off into space . He checks the usually alert patient s head dressings to find the child s exposed brain tissue infested with day old maggots . At the end of the novel , Eric s imminent return precipitates a series of events that result in Frank discovering male hormone drugs in his father s study . After confronting his father , Frank finds out that he is in fact female , and that when he thought he was castrated by a dog mauling at an early age , Frank s father had simply pumped her full of male hormones to see if she would transition from female to male . The father said it was simply an experiment and there are hints it was in order to distance himself from the women he felt had ruined his life .

<|novel|>Two days ago I decided to kill myself . I would walk and hitch and sail away from this dark city to the bright spaces of the wet west coast , and there throw myself into the tall , glittering seas beyond Iona with its cargo of mouldering kings to let the gulls and seals and tides have their way with my remains , and in my dying moments look forward to an encounter with Staffa s six sided columns and Fingal s cave or I might head south to Corryvrecken , to be spun inside the whirlpool and listen with my waterlogged deaf ears to its mile wide voice ringing over the wave race or be borne north , to where the white sands sing and coral hides , pink fingered and hard soft , beneath the ocean swell , and the rampart cliffs climb thousand foot above the seething acres of milky foam , rainbow buttressed . Last night I changed my mind and decided to stay alive . Everything that follows is . . . just to try and explain . Weir starts out in the Ferguslie Park area of Paisley in a very underprivileged Catholic family . He is impressed by a group named Frozen Gold when he sees them live , in the Union of Paisley College of Technology , and auditions with them . Christine Brice likes his songs , and he joins the band . He ends up writing all their material and playing bass guitar , after trying unsuccessfully to get them to change their name as the band rises in the drug and booze fuelled rock and roll of the 1970s , assisted by A R man Rick Tumber of ARC Records . In the Three Chimneys tour , singer Davey Balfour takes Dan along on an attempt to break an unofficial and illegal speed record for flying around three power station chimneys in Kent in his private plane . He reminisces about this from 1980s Glasgow , where he lives as a recluse in a Victorian folly St Jutes , ever since the tragic events which led to the demise of the band . He is posing as his own caretaker , and his friends McCann and Wee Tommy know him as Jimmy Hay . After a memorable fight in a nightclub called 39 Monty 39 s 39 , his real identity is revealed . He has grown uncomfortable with fame and wealth , and eventually visits his first girlfriend , Jean Webb , now living in Arisaig .

<|mystery|>This Bildungsroman is set in the fictional Argyll town of Gallanach by its description , reminiscent of Oban but on the north east shore of Loch Crinan , the real village of Lochgair , and in Glasgow where Prentice McHoan lives . Prentice s uncle Rory has disappeared eight years previous while writing a book called The Crow Road . Prentice becomes obsessed with papers his uncle left behind and sets out to solve the mystery . Along the way he must cope with estrangement from his father , unrequited love , sibling rivalry , and failure at his studies . The estrangement from his father concerns belief in God or an afterlife . Prentice cannot accept a universe without some higher power , some purpose he can t believe that people can just cease to exist when they die . His father dogmatically denies the existence of God , universal purpose , and the afterlife . A parallel plot is Prentice s gradual transition from an adolescent fixation on one young woman to a more mature love for another . Prentice s efforts to piece together Uncle Rory s fragmentary notes and the minimal clues surrounding his disappearance mirror his efforts to make sense of the world , love , and life in general . The narrative is also fragmentary , leaping days , months , years , or decades back and forth with little or no warning , so the reader must also piece things together .

<|fantasy|>The story examines religion through the eyes of Alex , a Christian political activist who is corrupted by Margrethe , a Danish Norse cruise ship hostess mdash and who loves every minute of it . Enduring a shipwreck , an earthquake , and a series of world changes brought about by Loki with Jehovah s permission , Alex and Marga work their way from Mexico back to Kansas as dishwasher and waitress . Whenever they manage to make some stake , an inconveniently timed change into a new alternate reality throws them off their stride once , the money they earned is left behind in another reality in another case , the paper money earned in a Mexico which is an empire is worthless in another Mexico which is a republic . These repeated misfortunes , clearly effected by some malevolent entity , make the hero identify with the Biblical Job . On the way they unknowingly enjoy the Texas hospitality of Satan himself , but as they near their destination they are separated by the Rapture mdash Margrethe worships Odin , and pagans do not go to Heaven . Finding that the reward for his faith , eternity as promised in the Revelation , is worthless without her , Alex s journey through timeless space in search of his lost lady takes him to Hell and beyond . Heinlein s vivid depiction of a Heaven ruled by snotty angels and a Hell where everyone has a wonderful , or at least productive , time mdash with Mary Magdalene shuttling breezily between both places mdash is a satire on American evangelical Christianity . It owes much to Mark Twain s Captain Stormfield s Visit to Heaven . The novel is linked to Heinlein s short story , They , by the term , the Glaroon , and to his earlier novel The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by referring to the Moon colonies Luna City and Tycho Under .

<|fantasy|>The story is set in a future , overcrowded Earth , where food is carefully rationed . Teenager William Bill Lermer lives with his widower father , George . George decides to emigrate to the farming colony on Ganymede , one of Jupiter s moons . After marrying Molly Kenyon , George , Bill and Molly s daughter Peggy embark on the torchship Mayflower . On the journey , Bill saves his bunkmates from asphyxiation by improvising a patch when a meteor punctures their compartment . To combat the boredom of the long trip , the Boy Scouts among the passengers form troops , and all the children attend classes . When they arrive on Ganymede , an unpleasant surprise awaits the newcomers . The group is much larger than the colony can easily absorb . The farms they were promised do not yet exist . In fact , the soil has to be created from scratch by pulverizing boulders and lava flows , and seeding the resulting dust with carefully formulated organic material . While some whine about the injustice of it all , Bill accepts an invitation to live with a prosperous farmer and his family to learn what he needs to know , while his father signs on as an engineer in town . Peggy is unable to adjust to the low pressure atmosphere and has to stay in a bubble in the hospital . When the Lermers are finally reunited on their own homestead , they build their house with a pressurized room for Peggy . One day , a rare alignment of all of Jupiter s major moons causes a devastating moon quake which damages most of the buildings . Peggy is seriously injured when her room suffers an explosive decompression . Even worse , the machinery that maintains Ganymede s heat shield is knocked out and the temperature starts dropping rapidly . George quickly realizes what has happened and gets his family to the safety of the town . Others do not grasp their peril soon enough and either stay in their homes or start for town too late two thirds of the colonists perish , either from the quake or by freezing . The Lermers consider returning to Earth , but then Peggy dies . In true pioneer spirit , they decide to stay and rebuild . The colony gradually recovers , and an expedition is organized to survey more of Ganymede . Bill goes along as the cook . While exploring , he and a friend discover artifacts of an alien civilization , including a working land vehicle that has legs , like a large metal centipede . This proves fortuitous when Bill s appendix bursts and they miss the rendezvous . The shuttle picks up the rest of the group and leaves without the pair . They travel cross country to reach the next landing site . Bill is then taken to the hospital for a life saving operation .

<|fantasy|>The book s protagonist is Friday Baldwin , an artificial person both mentally and physically superior in many ways to an ordinary human , but she faces great prejudice and will most likely be killed if her non human status is discovered . Employed as a highly self sufficient combat courier , her various missions take her throughout the globe and also to some of the near Earth space colonies . The novel is set in a complex , Balkanized world , and Friday is caught up in several civil disturbances during the course of her travels . She reaches her employer s home base safely but is soon displaced . Sent on a space journey as a courier , she realizes that the journey is likely to end with her death , evades the ship s authorities , and settles on a pioneer world with friends made earlier in the narrative .

<|fantasy|>The book is a series of diary entries by each of the four main characters Zebadiah John Carter , programmer Dejah Thoris Deety Burroughs Carter , her mathematics professor father Jacob Burroughs , and an off campus socialite Hilda Corners . The names Dejah Thoris , Burroughs , and Carter are overt references to John Carter and Dejah Thoris , the main protagonists of the Barsoom Mars novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs . The four travel in Zebadiah s spaceship Gay Deceiver , which is equipped with the professor s continua device and armed by the Australian Defence Force . The continua device was built by Professor Burroughs while he was formulating his theories on n dimensional non euclidean geometry . The geometry of the novel s universe contains six dimensions the three spatial dimensions known to the real world , and three time dimensions t , the real world s temporal dimension , tau , and teh . The continua device can travel on all six axes . The continua device allows travel into various fictional universes , such as the Land of Oz , as well as through time . An attempt to visit Barsoom takes them to an apparently different version of Mars seemingly under the colonial rule of the British Empire but near the end of the novel , Heinlein s recurring character Lazarus Long hints that they had traveled to Barsoom , and that its colonial status was an illusion imposed on them by the telepathically adept Barsoomians In the novel , the Biblical number of the beast turns out to be , not 666 , but 6 6 6 , or 10 , 314 , 424 , 798 , 490 , 535 , 546 , 171 , 949 , 056 , which is the number of parallel universes accessible through the continua device .

<|fantasy|>The book s central crime is a murder , which takes place before the novel opens . This is an Asimovian trademark , which he attributed to his own squeamishness and John Campbell s advice of beginning as late in the story as possible . Roj Nemmenuh Sarton , a Spacer Ambassador , lives in Spacetown , the Spacer outpost just outside New York City . For some time , he has tried to convince the Earth government to loosen its anti robot restrictions . One morning , he is discovered outside his home , his chest imploded by an energy blaster . The New York police commissioner charges Elijah with finding the murderer . Elijah must work with a Spacer partner , a highly advanced robot named R . Daneel Olivaw who is visually identical to a human , even though Elijah , like many Earth residents , has a low opinion of robots . Together , they search for the murderer and try to avert an interstellar diplomatic incident . One interesting aspect of the book is the contrast between Elijah , the human detective , and Daneel , the humanoid robot . Asimov uses the mechanical robot to inquire about human nature . When confronting a Medievalist who fears that robots will overcome humankind , Elijah argues that robots are inherently deficient . Being precision engineered calculating machines , they can have no appreciation of art , beauty , or God robots can understand only concepts expressible in mathematics . Nevertheless , in the concluding scene , R . Daneel exhibits a sense of morality . He argues that the captured murderer be treated leniently , telling his human companions that he now realizes the destruction of evil is less desirable than the conversion of evil into good . Quoting the Pericope Adulteræ , Daneel tells the murderer , Go , and sin no more !

<|fantasy|>The story takes place on Trantor during the reign of Emperor Cleon I . It starts with Hari s presentation of a paper at a mathematics convention detailing how practical use of psychohistory might theoretically be possible . The Emperor of the Galactic Empire learns of this and wants to use Hari for political gain . After an interview with Hari , however , Cleon concludes that Hari is of no use to the Empire . Hari then meets reporter Chetter Hummin , who convinces him that Cleon s first minister Eto Demerzel is attempting to capture him , and that it is therefore imperative for Hari to escape and to try to make psychohistory practical . Thus , Hari goes on his Flight and is introduced to Dors Venabili by Hummin . Hari and Dors narrowly evade capture at Streeling University , following which the pair move to Mycogen . Hari and Dors are welcomed to Mycogen by Sunmaster Fourteen , the leader of Mycogen . Determined to work out his psychohistory with the knowledge that the Mycogenians supposedly possess , Hari decides to speak to a Mycogenian alone about history . He manages this by convincing Raindrop Forty three to show him the prized Mycogenian microfarms , a prized source of food for the aristocracy and Mycogenians alike . When Hari inquires about that the peculiar Mycogenian ways might be the product of religious belief , Raindrop Forty three is offended and says that the Mycogenians have something better History . Hari inquires into the source of Mycogenian history and Raindrop Forty three reveals that it is encompassed in The book . Hari asks for the book but Raindrop Forty three accepts on the condition that Hari allows her to touch his hair hair being expressively forbidden in Mycogenian society . When Hari starts reading the book , he finds it disappointing except for the revealing of what the Mycogenians call their home planet , Aurora . Hari and Dors are almost killed when they try to find what they suspect is a robot in the Mycogenian temple until Hummin arrives in the nick of time to save them . The action then shifts to the Dahl sector , where Dors displays her amazing knife fighting skills . While in Dahl they meet a guttersnipe named Raych whom Hari later adopts as his son , and Yugo Amaryl who would become Hari s partner in developing psychohistory . Towards the end of the novel , Hari , Dors , and Raych are kidnapped by agents from Wye , a powerful sector situated at Trantor s south pole . The finale reveals that Hummin is actually Cleon s first minister Eto Demerzel , who we later learn is in fact the robot R . Daneel Olivaw . By the end of the novel , Hari suspects that Dors is a robot , too . This theme would later be picked up in Forward the Foundation .

<|fantasy|>The Stones , a family of Loonies residents of the Moon , known as Luna in Latin , purchase and rebuild a used spaceship , and go sightseeing around the solar system . The twin teenage boys , Castor and Pollux , buy used bicycles to sell on Mars , their first stop , where they run afoul of import regulations and are freed by their grandmother Hazel Stone . While on Mars , the twins buy their brother Buster a native Martian creature called a flat cat , born pregnant and producing a soothing vibration , as a pet . In the Asteroid Belt , where the equivalent of a gold rush is in progress prospecting for radioactive ores , the twins obtain supplies and luxury goods , on grounds that shopkeepers are much likelier to be rich than miners . En route , the flat cat and its offspring overpopulate the ship , so that the family place them in hibernation , and later sell them to the miners . Subsequently , the family set out to see the rings .

<|fantasy|>The unnamed protagonist travels to Helsinki to deliver a package after receiving instructions from a mysterious mechanically operated telephone message . On his arrival the protagonist discovers that the message was from The Brain , a one billion dollar super computer owned by eccentric Texan billionaire General Midwinter . Midwinter is using The Brain to organise his own intelligence agency and private army which will soon start an uprising in Soviet occupied Latvia in an attempt to end Communism in the Eastern bloc and tip the balance of the Cold War in favour of the West . After discovering this , and also the fact that the package he delivered contained a deadly virus , the protagonist must stop the virus from falling into the hands of both the Soviets and the madman billionaire and prevent a nuclear war between the superpowers in the process .

<|novel|>The novel is divided into five books . In the first book , Rinaldi introduces Henry to Catherine Barkley Henry attempts to seduce her , and their relationship begins . While on the Italian front , Henry is wounded in the knee by a mortar shell and sent to a hospital in Milan . The second book shows the growth of Henry and Catherine s relationship as they spend time together in Milan over the summer . Henry falls in love with Catherine and , by the time he is healed , Catherine is three months pregnant . In the third book , Henry returns to his unit , but not long afterwards the Austrians break through the Italian lines in the Battle of Caporetto , and the Italians retreat . Henry kills an engineering sergeant for insubordination . After falling behind and catching up again , Henry is taken to a place by the battle police , where officers are being interrogated and executed for the treachery that supposedly led to the Italian defeat . However , after seeing and hearing that everyone interrogated is killed , Henry escapes by jumping into a river . In the fourth book , Catherine and Henry reunite and flee to Switzerland in a rowboat . In the final book , Henry and Catherine live a quiet life in the mountains until she goes into labor . After a long and painful birth , their son is stillborn . Catherine begins to hemorrhage and soon dies , leaving Henry to return to their hotel in the rain .

<|novel|>The story is a look at early 20th century American race relations . In Hurst s novel , Bea Chipley is a quiet , mousey , Atlantic City teenage girl whose mother passes away , leaving her to keep house for her father Mr . Chipley and Benjamin Pullman , a boarder who peddles ketchup and relish on the boardwalk and sells maple syrup door to door on the side . Within a year , her father and Pullman decide that she should marry Pullman , and shortly thereafter Bea becomes pregnant . Her father suffers an incapacitating stroke , confining him to a wheelchair , and Pullman is killed in a train accident . Bea is left to fend for herself , her father , and her infant daughter Jessie . Bea takes in boarders to defray expenses and assumes Benjamin s trade of door to door maple syrup sales , using his B . Pullman business cards to avoid the ubiquitous sexism of 1910s America . To care for her infant daughter and disabled father , Bea Pullman hires Delilah , a black mammy figure , who brings with her a light skinned infant daughter named Peola . Delilah is a master waffle maker , and Bea capitalizes on Delilah s skills to open first a single B . Pullman waffle restaurant , from which she eventually builds a nation wide and then international chain of highly successful restaurants . Frank Flake , a striking young man intent on entering medical school , becomes Bea s business manager . In the meantime , Jessie and Peola have grown up side by side , and Peola is painfully aware of the tension between her white appearance and black racial identity . She continually attempts to pass as white , and Delilah , equally pained by the tension , continually attempts to develop in her a sense of pride about her blackness . Eventually Peola severs all ties , marries a white man , and moves to Seattle , causing such pain in Delilah that Delilah passes away not too long after . As Delilah is slowly dying , Bea is falling in love with Flake , who is eight years her junior . Jessie , by now in her late teens , comes home for a visit just as Bea is planning on selling the B . Pullman chain to marry Flake . The three are mired in a love triangle in the last dozen or so pages , resulting in a tragic ending .

<|novel|>The story is narrated by Overton , godfather to the central character . The novel takes its beginnings in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in order to trace Ernest s emergence from previous generations of the Pontifex family . John Pontifex was a carpenter his son George rises in the world to become a publisher George s son Theobald , pressed by his father to become a minister , is manipulated into marrying Christina , the daughter of a clergyman the main character Ernest Pontifex is the eldest son of Theobald and Christina . The author depicts an antagonistic relationship between Ernest and his hypocritical and domineering parents . His aunt Alethea is aware of this relationship , but dies before she can fulfill her aim of counteracting the parents malign influence on the boy . However , shortly before her death she secretly passes a small fortune into Overton s keeping , with the agreement that once Ernest is twenty eight , he can receive it . As Ernest develops into a young man , he travels a bumpy theological road , reflecting the divisions and controversies in the Church of England in the Victorian era . Easily influenced by others at university , he starts out as an Evangelical Christian , and soon becomes a clergyman . He then falls for the lures of the High Church and is duped out of much of his own money by a fellow clergyman . He decides that the way to regenerate the Church of England is to live among the poor , but the results are , first , that his faith in the integrity of the Bible is severely damaged by a conversation with one of the poor he was hoping to redeem , and , second , that under the pressures of poverty and theological doubt , he attempts a sexual assault on a woman he had incorrectly believed to be of loose morals . This assault leads to a prison term . His parents disown him . His health deteriorates . As he recovers he learns how to tailor and decides to make this his profession once out of prison . He loses his Christian faith . He marries Ellen , a former housemaid of his parents , and they have two children and set up shop together in the second hand clothing industry . However , in due course he discovers that Ellen is both a bigamist and an alcoholic . Overton at this point intervenes and pays Ellen off . He gives Ernest a job , and takes him on a trip to Continental Europe . In due course Ernest becomes 28 , and receives his aunt Alethea s gift . He returns to the family home until his parents die his father s influence over him wanes as Theobald s own position as a clergyman is reduced in stature , though to the end Theobald finds small ways purposefully to annoy him . He becomes an author of controversial literature .

<|novel|>The novel tells the story of a much beloved schoolteacher and his long tenure at Brookfield , a fictional British boys public boarding school a private school in American terminology . Mr . Chipping conquers his inability to connect with his students , as well as his initial shyness , when he marries Katherine , a young woman whom he meets on holiday and who quickly picks up on calling him by his nickname , Chips . Despite his own mediocre academic record , he goes on to have an illustrious career as an inspiring educator at Brookfield . Although the book is unabashedly sentimental , it also depicts the sweeping social changes that Chips experiences throughout his life he begins his tenure at Brookfield in 1870 , as the Franco Prussian War is breaking out and lies on his deathbed shortly after Adolf Hitler s rise to power . He is seen as an individual who is able to connect to anyone on a human level , beyond what he by proxy of his late wife views as petty politics , such as the strikers , the Boers , and a German friend . Clearly discernible is a nostalgia for the Victorian social order that had faded rapidly after Queen Victoria s death in 1901 and whose remnants were destroyed by the First World War . Indeed , a recurring motif is the devastating impact of the war on British society . When World War I breaks out , Chips , who had retired the year before at age 65 , agrees to come out of retirement to fill in for the various masters who have entered military service . Despite his being taken for a doddering fossil , it is Chips who keeps his wits about him during an air raid , averting mass panic and sustaining morale . Countless old boys and masters die on the battlefield , and much of the story involves Chips s response to the horrors unleashed by the war . At one point , he reads aloud a long roster of the school s fallen alumni , and , defying the modern world he sees as soulless and lacking transcendent values of honour and friendship , dares to include the name of a German former master who has died fighting on the opposite side .

<|childrens|>The Eyes of the Dragon takes place entirely within the realm of Delain which itself is located within In World from The Dark Tower series . It is told from the perspective of an unnamed storyteller narrator , who speaks casually and frankly to the reader , frequently adding his own commentary on characters motivations and the like . The King s magician , Flagg , seeking to destroy the Kingdom of Delain , sees his plans being ruined by the good heart of Queen Sasha . After Sasha gives birth to Peter , a noble and worthy future king , Flagg realizes that his position , his plans , and his life may be in danger because of Peter . When Sasha is pregnant with a second son , Flagg seizes the opportunity . He forces the Queen s midwife to cut Sasha as the second son , Thomas , is born . Sasha bleeds to death and Flagg begins plotting to remove Peter . As Peter becomes a teenager , he begins the custom of bringing a glass of wine to his father before bed each night . Flagg decides to use this as a means of framing Peter . He dissolves a poison called Dragon Sand in a glass of wine and delivers it to the king after Peter leaves . Previously , in an attempt to win Thomas friendship , Flagg had shown him a secret passage where Thomas could spy on his father . Unbeknownst to Flagg , when he delivers the poison , Thomas is watching through the glass eyes of the mounted head of Roland s greatest trophy , the dragon . Flagg plants evidence incriminating Peter . After a brief trial , during which the judge decides Peter is guilty , he is locked up in the enormous tower called the Needle in the center of the city . Thomas is then crowned King , although he is only twelve years old due to his youth and his fearful inexperience , he allows Flagg enormous amounts of power . At the start of his long stay in the Needle , Peter manages to send a note to the judge who convicted him , Anders Peyna , with the seemingly innocuous requests to have his mother s old dollhouse and napkins with his meals . Peyna is puzzled by the requests , but , seeing no harm in them , grants them . Five years later , Peter escapes from the Needle , having used the toy loom in the dollhouse and threads from the napkins to make a rope . After the escape he and his allies rush to get Roland s bow and arrow . However , it is not to be found because Thomas had it once they got into the king s sitting room . Flagg , now revealed as a demonic being , is about to kill them when Thomas reveals himself and tells Flagg that he Thomas watched Flagg poison Roland . Thomas shoots Flagg in the eye , but Flagg uses magic to disappear and escape . At the end of the novel , Peter is declared to be the rightful king . Thomas , who has become deeply hated in Delain , sets off alongside his butler , Dennis , to find Flagg . They find him and they confront him , but the narrator does not reveal the outcome .

<|action|>As the story begins , Dolores Claiborne is in a police interrogation and wants to make clear to the police that she did not kill her wealthy employer , an elderly woman named Vera Donovan whom she has looked after for years . She does , however , confess to the murder of her husband , Joe St . George , almost 30 years before , after finding out that he sexually molested their fourteen year old daughter , Selena . Dolores s confession develops into the story of her life , her troubled marriage , and her relationship with her employer . Unlike many other works by King , there is little focus on the supernatural the only such event in the book are two telepathic visions , which form a link to King s novel Gerald s Game although reviewer Sean Piccoli observed the novel otherwise contained vintage bone yard King the tiny town , the secret lives . Murder and mayhem lurk reliably behind the tranquil veneer .

<|fantasy|>Solaris chronicles the ultimate futility of attempted communications with the extraterrestrial life on a far distant planet . Solaris , with whom Terran scientists are attempting communication , is almost completely covered with an ocean that is revealed to be a single , planet encompassing organism . What appear to be waves on its surface are later revealed to be the equivalents of muscle contractions . Kris Kelvin arrives aboard the scientific research station hovering via anti gravity generators near the oceanic surface of the planet Solaris . The scientists there have studied the planet and its ocean for many decades , a scientific discipline known as Solaristics , which over the years has degenerated to simply observe , record and categorize the complex phenomena that occur upon the surface of the ocean . Thus far , they have only achieved the formal classification of the phenomena with an elaborate nomenclature yet do not understand what such activities really mean in a strictly scientific sense . Shortly before psychologist Kelvin s arrival , the crew has exposed the ocean to a more aggressive and unauthorized experimentation with a high energy X ray bombardment . Their experimentation gives unexpected results and becomes psychologically traumatic for them as individually flawed humans . The ocean s response to their aggression exposes the deeper , hidden aspects of the personalities of the human scientists whilst revealing nothing of the ocean s nature itself . To the extent that the ocean s actions can be understood , the ocean then seems to test the minds of the scientists by confronting them with their most painful and repressed thoughts and memories . It does this via the materialization of physical human simulacra Kelvin confronts memories of his dead lover and guilt about her suicide . The torments of the other researchers are only alluded to but seem even worse than Kelvin s personal purgatory . The ocean s intelligence expresses physical phenomena in ways difficult for their limited earth science to explain , deeply upsetting the scientists . The alien extraterrestrial mind of Solaris is so greatly different from the human mind of objective consciousness that attempts at inter species communications are a dismal failure .

<|fantasy|>At the beginning of the novel , Mr . Lewisham is an 18 year old teacher at a boys school in Sussex , earning forty pounds a year . He meets and falls in love with Ethel Henderson , who is paying a visit to relatives . His involvement with her causes him to lose his position , but he is unable to find her when he moves to London . After a two and one half year break in the action , Mr . Lewisham is in his third year of study at the Normal School of Science in South Kensington . He has becomes a socialist , declaring his politics with a red tie , and is an object of interest to Alice Heydinger , an older student . But chance brings him together again with his first love at a séance . Ethel s stepfather , Mr . Chaffery , is a spiritualist charlatan , and Mr . Lewisham is determined to extricate her from association with his dishonesty . They marry , but Mr . Lewisham is forced to abandon his plans for a brilliant scientific career followed by a political ascent .

<|fantasy|>The Stardroppers is about an undercover United Nations agent investigating a new fad , stardropping , whereby physics violating equipment is used to listen to sounds believed to be alien or paranormal signals . Superficially a harmless but expensive hobby , stardropping reins in a fanaticism resembling addiction , where some users assemble in semi social communes and spend all of their money on increasingly improved equipment . The fad gains an additional aspect of risk when users begin disappearing into thin air , in cases of increasing profile and witnessing .

<|fantasy|>In the Sandleford warren , Fiver , a young runt rabbit who is a seer , receives a frightening vision of his warren s imminent destruction . When he and his brother Hazel fail to convince their chief rabbit of the need to evacuate , they set out on their own with a small band of rabbits to search for a new home , barely eluding the Owsla , the warren s military caste . The travelling group of rabbits find themselves following the leadership of Hazel , previously an unimportant member of the warren . They travel through dangerous territory , with Bigwig and Silver , both former Owsla , as the strongest rabbits among them . Fiver s visions promise a safe place in which to settle , and the group eventually finds Watership Down , an ideal location to set up their new warren . They are soon reunited with Holly and Bluebell , also from the Sandleford Warren , who reveal that Fiver s vision was true and the entire warren was destroyed by humans . Although Watership Down is a peaceful habitat , Hazel realises there are no does female rabbits , thus making the future of their new home uncertain . With the help of a seagull named Kehaar , they locate a nearby warren , Efrafa , which is overcrowded and has many does . Hazel sends a small emissary to Efrafa to present their request for does . While waiting for the group to return , Hazel and Pipkin successfully raid the nearby Nuthanger Farm to rescue a group of hutch rabbits there , returning with two does and a buck . When the emissary returns , Hazel and his rabbits learn Efrafa is a police state led by the despotic General Woundwort Hazel s rabbits barely return alive . However , the group does manage to identify an Efrafan doe named Hyzenthlay who wants to leave the warren and can recruit other does to join . Hazel and Bigwig devise a plan to rescue the group of rabbits from Efrafa to join them on Watership Down . The Efrafan escapees start their new life on Watership Down , but soon Woundwort s army arrives to attack the Watership Down warren . Through Bigwig s bravery and loyalty and Hazel s ingenuity , the Watership Down rabbits defeat Woundwort . The story s epilogue tells the reader of how Hazel , dozing in his burrow one chilly , blustery morning in March many years later , is visited by the rabbit folk hero El ahrairah , who invites Hazel to join his Owsla . Leaving his friends and no longer needed body behind , Hazel departs Watership Down with El ahrairah , running easily down through the wood , where the first primroses were beginning to bloom .

<|fantasy|>Road of Skulls A Gift from the Culture Odd Attachment Descendant Cleaning Up Piece The State of the Art At 100 pages long , the title novella makes up the bulk of the book . The novella chronicles a Culture mission to Earth in the late Seventies , and also serves as a prequel of sorts to Use of Weapons by featuring one of that novel s characters , Diziet Sma . Here , Sma argues for contact with Earth , to try to fix the mess the human species has made of it another Culture citizen , Linter , goes native , choosing to renounce his Culture body enhancements so as to be more like the locals and Li , who is a Star Trek fan , argues that the whole incontestably neurotic and clinically insane species should be eradicated with a micro black hole . The ship Arbitrary has ideas , and a sense of humour , of its own . Also while I d been away , the ship had sent a request on a postcard to the BBC s World Service , asking for Mr David Bowie s Space Oddity for the good ship Arbitrary and all who sail in her . This from a machine that could have swamped Earth s entire electro magnetic spectrum with whatever the hell it wanted from somewhere beyond Betelgeuse . It didn t get the request played . The ship thought this was hilarious . Scratch or The Present and Future of Species HS sic Considered as The Contents of a Contemporary Popular Record qv

<|fantasy|>Jernau Morat Gurgeh , a famously skilful player of board games and other similar contests , lives on Chiark Orbital , and is bored with his successful life . The Culture s Special Circumstances inquires about his willingness to participate in a long journey , though won t explain further unless Gurgeh agrees to participate . While he is considering this offer , one of his drone friends , Mawhrin Skel , which had been ejected from Special Circumstances due to its unstable personality , convinces him to cheat in one of his matches in an attempt to win in an unprecedented perfect fashion . The attempt fails , but Mawhrin Skel uses his recording of the event to blackmail Gurgeh into accepting the offer and insisting that Mawhrin Skel be admitted back into Special Circumstances as well . Gurgeh spends the next two years travelling to the Empire of Azad in the Small Magellanic Cloud , where a complex game also named Azad is used to determine social rank and political status . The game itself is sufficiently subtle and complex that a player s tactics reflect his own political and philosophical outlook . By the time he arrives , he has grasped the game but is unsure how he will measure up against opponents who have been studying it for their entire lives . Gurgeh lands on the Empire s home planet of Eä , accompanied by another drone , Flere Imsaho . As a Culture citizen , he naturally plays with a style markedly different from his opponents , many of whom stack the odds against him one way or another , such as forming backroom agreements to cooperate against him which is allowed by the game s rules . As he advances through the tournament he is matched against increasingly powerful Azad politicians , and ultimately the Emperor himself in the final round . Faced with defeat , the Emperor attempts to kill Gurgeh , but is himself killed by a shot from his own weapon , deflected by Flere Imsaho who later refuses to tell Gurgeh if it was coincidental . Flere Imsaho reveals that Gurgeh s participation was part of a Culture plot to overthrow the corrupt and savage Empire from within , and that he , the player , was in fact a pawn in a much larger game . Although Gurgeh never discovers the whole truth , it is ultimately revealed to the reader that Flere Imsaho was the same drone as Mawhrin Skel , who was also the narrator of the novel itself .

<|fantasy|>Despite the passage of time , Major Quilan still suffers grief and bereavement from the death of his wife , killed during the Chelgrian civil war that resulted from the Culture s interference . Quilan is offered the chance to avenge the lost Chelgrians who died in a civil war and is inducted into a plot to strike back at the Culture . As part of the plot , his soulkeeper a device normally used to store its owner s personality upon their death is equipped with both the mind of a long dead Chelgrian general and a device that can transport wormholes connected to weapons caches . Quilan is then sent to Masaq Orbital , ostensibly to persuade Mahrai Ziller to return to his native Chel but is in reality on a suicide mission to destroy the Orbital s Hub Mind . To protect him from detection at Masaq , Quilan s memory is selectively blanked until he reaches his target . On Masaq , Ziller lives in self imposed exile , having renounced his privileged position in Chel s caste system . An accomplished composer , he has been commissioned to compose music to mark the anniversary of the Idiran Culture War . Upon hearing of Quilan s visit , and his reason for travel , Ziller scrupulously avoids him , reluctant to engage with a civilization that repels him . Quilan succeeds in placing the wormholes in the Mind s Hub , but the Mind detects them immediately and , although not able to track the location of the other end of the wormholes , suggests that the Involved aliens assisting Quilan s mission may have been a group of Culture minds seeking to keep the Culture from being too complacent . Having struggled with its memories from the Idiran Culture war , when it was the General Systems Vehicle Lasting Damage , the Mind reveals to Quilan that it seeks to cease existing and offers to take Quilan with it . They both die . In the end of the novel , a nightmarishly efficient E Dust Assassin is unleashed against the Chelgrian priest who was responsible , as well as his immediate co conspirators . It is not revealed whether this was a form of retribution by the Culture or a cover up by a secret Culture faction .

<|fantasy|>The book is made up of two narrative streams , interwoven in alternating chapters . The numbers of the chapters indicate which stream they belong to one stream is numbered forward in words One , Two . . . , while the other is numbered in reverse with Roman numerals XIII , XII . . . . The story told by the former moves forward chronologically as the numbers suggest and tells a self contained story , while in the latter is written in reverse chronology with each chapter successively earlier in Zakalwe s life . Further complicating this structure is a prologue and epilogue set shortly after the events of the main narrative , and many flashbacks within the chapters . The forward moving stream of the novel deals with the attempts of Diziet Sma and a drone named Skaffen Amtiskaw to re enlist Zakalwe for another job , the task itself and the payment that Zakalwe wishes for it . The backward moving stream describes earlier jobs that Zakalwe has performed for the Culture , ultimately returning to his pre Culture career as a general on his homeworld . It transpires that the payment he requires from Sma relates to an incident from his earlier life .

<|comedy|>Choke follows Victor Mancini and his friend Denny through a few months of their lives with frequent flashbacks to the days when Victor was a child . He had grown up moving from one foster home to another , as his mother was found to be unfit to raise him . Several times throughout his childhood , his mother would kidnap him from his various foster parents , though every time they would eventually be caught , and he would again be remanded over to the governmental child welfare agency . In the present day setting of the book , Victor is now a man in his mid twenties who left medical school in order to find work to support his feeble mother who is now in a nursing home . He cannot afford the care that his mother is receiving so he resorts to being a con man . He consistently goes to various restaurants and purposely causes himself to choke mid way through his meal , luring a good Samaritan into saving his life . He keeps a detailed list of everyone who saves him and sends them frequent letters about fictional bills he is unable to pay . The people feel so sorry for him that they send him cards and letters asking him about how he s doing and even continue to send him money to help him with the bills . He works at a re enactment museum set in colonial times , where most of the employees are drug addicts or , in his friend Denny s case , a fellow recovering sex addict . Most of the time Palahniuk spends describing Victor s job , Victor is guarding his friend Denny who is constantly being caught with contraband , items that don t correspond with the time period of the museum in the stocks . Victor first met Denny at a sexual addiction support group he was there as a guy who masturbates too much , and they later applied together to the same job . Denny is later fired from the museum , and begins collecting stones from around the city to build his dream home Palahniuk based this portion of the novel on the true story of Ferdinand Cheval . While growing up , Victor s mother taught him numerous conspiracy theories and obscure medical facts which both confused and frightened him . This and his constant moves from one home to another have left Victor unable to form lasting and stable relationships with women . Victor , as a result , finds himself getting sexual gratification from women on a solely superficial level using sex anonymous meetings to find many of his sexual partners . Later on , he starts talking to his mother again for the first time in years . The narrative is episodic , and is presented out of chronological order , a style common to the author s books .

<|novel|>The story is told by Nathan Zuckerman , a writer who lives quietly in New England , where Coleman Silk is his neighbor . Silk is a former classics professor and dean of faculty at nearby Athena College , a fictional institution in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts . At 71 , Silk is accused of racism by two black students because of referring to them as spooks . As they have never shown up in his seminar , he asks Do they exist or are they spooks ? Having never seen the students , Silk does not know they are black when he makes the comment . The uproar leads to Silk s resignation . Soon after , his wife Iris dies of a stroke , which Silk feels is caused by the stress of his being forced out of the college . Silk begins an affair with Faunia Farley , a 34 year old local woman who works as a janitor at the college and is married to an abusive Vietnam veteran . Silk is criticized by feminist scholars at the college for this . Zuckerman gradually learns that Silk is an African American who has presented himself as Jewish and white since a stint in the Navy . He completed graduate school , married a white woman and had four children with her . He never told his wife and children of his mixed ancestry . As Roth wrote in the novel , Silk chose to take the future into his own hands rather than to leave it to an unenlightened society to determine his fate .

<|fantasy|>The village of Wootton Major was well known around the countryside for its annual festivals , which were particularly famous for their culinary delights . The biggest festival of all was the Feast of Good Children . This festival was celebrated only once every twenty four years twenty four children of the village were invited to a party , and the highlight of the party was the Great Cake , a career milestone by which Master Cooks were judged . In the year the story begins , the Master Cook was Nokes , who had landed the position more or less by default he delegated much of the creative work to his apprentice Alf . Nokes crowned his Great Cake with a little doll jokingly representing the Queen of Faery . Various trinkets were hidden in the cake for the children to find one of these was a star the Cook discovered in the old spice box . The star was not found at the Feast , but was swallowed by a blacksmith s son . The boy did not feel its magical properties at once , but on the morning of his tenth birthday the star fixed itself on his forehead , and became his passport to Faery . The boy grew up to be a blacksmith like his father , but in his free time he roamed the Land of Faery . The star on his forehead protected him from many of the dangers threatening mortals in that land , and the Folk of Faery called him Starbrow . The book describes his many travels in Faery , until at last he meets the true Queen of Faery . The identity of the King is also revealed . The time came for another Feast of Good Children . Smith had possessed his gift for most of his life , and the time had come to pass it on to some other child . So he regretfully surrendered the star to Alf , and with it his adventures into Faery . Alf , who had become Master Cook long before , baked it into the festive cake once again for another child to find . After the feast , Alf retired and left the village and Smith returned to his forge to teach his craft to his now grown son .

<|fantasy|>England , England is divided into three parts entitled England , England , England and Anglia . The first part focuses on the protagonist Martha Cochrane and her childhood memories . Growing up in the surrounding of the English countryside , her peaceful childhood gets disrupted when her father leaves the family . Martha s memories of her father are closely related to playing a Counties of England jigsaw puzzle with him . The second part , England , England , is set in the near future in what is clearly marked as a postmodern age . Martha is now in her forties and gets employed by the entrepreneur Sir Jack Pitman for his megalomaniac project . Sir Jack aims to turn the Isle of Wight into a gigantic theme park which contains everything that people , especially tourists , consider to be quintessentially English , selected according to what Sir Jack himself approves of . The theme park called England , England thus becomes a replica of England s best known historical buildings , figures and sites . Popular English tourist attractions and icons of Englishness are crammed together to be easily accessible without having to travel whole real England . While working on the set up of the project , Martha starts an affair with one of her colleagues , Paul Harrison . They find out about Sir Jack s questionable sexual preferences and blackmail him with the discriminating evidence when Sir Jack wants to dismiss Martha . She thus becomes CEO of the Island project , which turns out to be a highly popular tourist attraction . As a consequence of the huge success , England , England becomes an independent state and part of the European Union , while the real , Old England suffers a severe decline and increasingly falls into oblivion . After a major scandal in the theme park , however , Martha is eventually expelled from the island . The third part of the novel , Anglia , is set decades later and depicts Martha who has returned to a village in Old England after many years of wandering abroad . The original nation has regressed into a vastly de populated , agrarian and pre industrial state without any international political influence , while England , England continues to prosper . The chapter describes the villagers endeavour to re establish a traditional village fête with the help of Martha s memories . Martha ultimately spends her final days in this rural setting pondering about her past .

<|fantasy|>The book is set on a far future Earth where the uploading of mindstates into a world spanning computer network known as the data corpus , cryptosphere or simply crypt is commonplace , allowing the dead to be easily reincarnated though by custom , only a limited number of reincarnations are allowed . Humanity has lost much of its technological background , due partly to an exodus by much of the species , and partly to the fact that those who remained or at least their rulers are fighting against more advanced technology such as Artificial Intelligence . Meanwhile , the solar system is drifting into an interstellar molecular cloud the Encroachment , which will eventually dim the Sun s light sufficiently to end life on Earth . The Diaspora the long departed segment of humanity have left behind a device the Fearsome Engine of the title to deal with the problem the book follows four characters who become involved in the attempt to activate it , with the narrative moving between the four who do not meet until very near the end in rotation . A quarter of the book is told by Bascule the Teller and is written phonetically in the first person . This is explained by Bascule s dyslexia . The fourth chapter of the book s Part One opens with

<|fantasy|>Seven of the original eight Lazy Guns were destroyed before the events of Against a Dark Background . One disappeared with its user when he tried to fire it at the local sun , one suffered a lucky strike during an air raid , two self destructed when investigators tried to take them apart and another was destroyed by an assassin . A sixth was destroyed when investigators fired it with its lenses looking through an electron microscope . The seventh , found before the events of the book by the Lady Sharrow and her team , was destroyed by the university it was sold to when they tampered with it . The resulting explosion devastated the city the university was located in . The hunt for the eighth and final Lazy Gun is the main plot theme of Against a Dark Background . Much of the novel concerns Sharrow s adventures in searching for and acquiring it . Her motivation is that the Huhsz religious cult regard it as a sacred object , and that if she can find it and give it to them , their vendetta against her will lapse . Sharrow encounters various political systems on her travels across Golter . She also meets the Solipsists , a gang of pirate mercenaries on a hovercraft , who hold very unusual philosophical beliefs . When the last Lazy Gun is eventually discovered , it is guarded by an elaborate defense system incorporating a genetic key which Sharrow has to deactivate .

<|novel|>The novel is about Will Freeman , a 36 year old bachelor , and Marcus , an introverted , bullied 12 year old who lives alone with his suicidal mother , Fiona . Will , who has never had to work thanks to the royalties from his father s hit Christmas song , Santa s Super Sleigh , has a lot of spare time , which he spends smoking , watching TV , listening to albums and looking for temporary female companionship . After a pleasant relationship with a single mother , Angie , Will comes up with the idea of attending a single parents group as a new way to pick up women . For this purpose , he invents a two year old son called Ned . It is through one of these single parents meetings that he comes to know Marcus . Although their relationship is initially somewhat strained , they finally succeed in striking up a true friendship . Will helps Marcus to fit into the modern world , taking him shopping , buying him shoes and introducing him to the music of Nirvana . Marcus and Will s friendship blooms as the story progresses , even after Marcus and Fiona discover Will s lie about having a child . Marcus is adopted by Ellie McRae , a tough , moody 15 year old girl , who is constantly in trouble at school because she insists on wearing a Kurt Cobain jumper . He also spends some time with his dad Clive , who visits Marcus and Fiona for Christmas together with his new girlfriend Lindsey and her mother . Meanwhile Will starts going out with a single mother named Rachel , whose son Alistair is about the same age as Marcus . In the end , Marcus comes out of his shell and learns to stand up for himself . Will , meanwhile , finally grows up and ends up wanting to marry Rachel . Therefore , both Will and Marcus have started to live appropriately for their age groups . The action is set in 1993 and 1994 in London . The title is a reference to the song About a Girl by Nirvana , a band that is featured in the book , and Patti Smith s tribute to Kurt Cobain , About a Boy .

<|novel|>The story concerns a woman , Lulu , who lives with her sister s family , essentially acting as a servant . She does not complain about her position , but is not happy . When her brother in law s brother , Ninian , comes to visit , there is a certain attraction between them . While joking around one evening they find themselves accidentally married , due to the laws of the state requiring little more than wedding vows to be recited while a magistrate is in the room for a marriage to count as legal . On learning this , Ninian and Lulu decide they actually like the idea of being married , and choose to stick with it . However , within a month , Lulu is back home , having discovered that Ninian was already legally married 18 years prior he had wed a girl who left him after 2 years , and he had actually forgotten about the whole thing . Lulu considers this a reasonable story , but her brother in law , Dwight , insists that it would be a humiliation to the family to reveal such a thing , and insists that she tell everyone instead that Ninian grew bored with her and left her . Lulu is unable to see why this should be a less humiliating story , and begins to complain about her circumstances for the first time . She also notices that her teenage niece , Di , is unhappy , and also seems to be trying to use marriage as a way to escape her circumstance . Lulu eventually has to prevent Di from eloping , and is finally inspired to move out of her sister s home and live on her own . Two endings were written for the play , the original as seen in December 1920 and the ending that won Gale the Pulitzer Prize from Drama the first woman ever to do so has Lulu starting a life on her own and undertaking adventures of her own as we hear in her final lines , Good by . Good by , all of you . I m going I don t know where to work at I don t know what . But I m going from choice ! The revised ending is a much less satisfying one , but is more typical and would have been a bit more commercially acceptable and far less challenging to the audiences of the day . In this ending , Ninian shows up in the nick of time just as Lulu decides to go off on her own life to work and live elsewhere . He asks her forgiveness and she agrees saying I forgave you in Savannah , Georgia .

<|fantasy|>The story is about a two dimensional world referred to as Flatland which is occupied by geometric figures . Women are simple line segments , while men are regular polygons with various numbers of sides . The narrator is a humble square , a member of the social caste of gentlemen and professionals in a society of geometric figures , who guides us through some of the implications of life in two dimensions . The Square has a dream about a visit to a one dimensional world Lineland which is inhabited by lustrous points . He attempts to convince the realm s ignorant monarch of a second dimension but finds that it is essentially impossible to make him see outside of his eternally straight line . He is then visited by a three dimensional sphere , which he cannot comprehend until he sees Spaceland for himself . This Sphere who remains nameless , like all characters in the novella visits Flatland at the turn of each millennium to introduce a new apostle to the idea of a third dimension in the hopes of eventually educating the population of Flatland of the existence of Spaceland . From the safety of Spaceland , they are able to observe the leaders of Flatland secretly acknowledging the existence of the sphere and prescribing the silencing of anyone found preaching the truth of Spaceland and the third dimension . After this proclamation is made , many witnesses are massacred or imprisoned according to caste . After the Square s mind is opened to new dimensions , he tries to convince the Sphere of the theoretical possibility of the existence of a fourth and fifth , and sixth . . . spatial dimension . Offended by this presumption and incapable of comprehending other dimensions , the Sphere returns his student to Flatland in disgrace . The Square then has a dream in which the Sphere visits him again , this time to introduce him to Pointland . The point sole inhabitant , monarch , and universe in one perceives any attempt at communicating with him as simply being a thought originating in his own mind cf . Solipsism The Square recognizes the connection between the ignorance of the monarchs of Pointland and Lineland with his own and the Sphere s previous ignorance of the existence of other , higher dimensions . Once returned to Flatland , the Square finds it difficult to convince anyone of Spaceland s existence , especially after official decrees are announcedanyone preaching the lies of three dimensions will be imprisoned or executed , depending on caste . Eventually the Square himself is imprisoned for just this reason , where he spends the rest of his days attempting to explain the third dimension to his brother .

<|novel|>Florida s corrupt governor , Dick Artemus , pursues schemes to line his pockets and those of his rich entrepreneur backers at the expense of the environment . His schemes have always foundered in the past , but he has high hopes of a plan involving Toad Island , virtually uninhabited except for innumerable tiny toads . A former drug smuggler turned developer , Robert Clapley , plans to bulldoze the island and turn it into Shearwater Island , with high rise condominiums , a golf course and a massive new bridge to the mainland . He hires Palmer Stoat , a lobbyist , to expedite the project . By random happenstance , Stoat incurs the wrath of Twilly Spree , an ecoterrorist . Spree obsessively pursues a path of retribution after seeing Stoat litter , and tracks him back to his Fort Lauderdale residence where he and his wife Desirata live . Artemus , in an effort to avoid the Shearwater Project being tainted with violent death , seeks out and locates ex governor Clinton Tyree , who vanished about 20 years ago after a short and unsuccessful but honest term of office and is said to be hiding out somewhere in the remaining wilderness of Florida . Artemus knows Tyree will be unsympathetic to his situation , and resorts to blackmail . Clinton s disturbed brother Doyle is still on the governor s payroll as the keeper of a lighthouse that has not been in use for years . Artemus advises Tyree that his brother will be tossed out on the street if he doesn t locate Spree . Clapley s death leaves the Shearwater project doomed without financial backing and only a few people show up at Palmer Stoat s funeral . Meanwhile , Twilly Spree and Clinton Tyree are driving along the highway towards Tyree s wilderness when they see another group of litterbugs throwing lighted cigarette butts , empty bottles and other rubbish out of their speeding car . They immediately agree the they have to teach them a lesson .

<|childrens|>On the eve of the coronation of King Rudolf of Ruritania , his brother , Prince Michael , has him drugged . In a desperate attempt not to give Michael the excuse to claim the throne , Colonel Sapt and Fritz von Tarlenheim , attendants of the King , persuade his identical cousin Rudolf Rassendyll , an English visitor , to impersonate the King at the coronation . The unconscious king is abducted and imprisoned in a castle in the small town of Zenda . There are complications , plots , and counter plots , among them the schemes of Michael s mistress , Antoinette de Mauban , and those of his dashing but villainous henchman Count Rupert of Hentzau . Rassendyll falls in love with Princess Flavia , the King s betrothed , but cannot tell her the truth . He determines to rescue the king and leads an attempt to enter the castle of Zenda . The King is rescued and is restored to his throne , but the lovers , in duty bound , must part forever .

<|novel|>This novel is told primarily through the thoughts and experiences of the protagonist , Robert Jordan . The character was inspired by Hemingway s own experiences in the Spanish Civil War as a reporter for the North American Newspaper Alliance . Robert Jordan is an American in the International Brigades who travels to Spain to oppose the fascist forces of Francisco Franco . As an experienced dynamiter , he was ordered by a communist Russian general to travel behind enemy lines and destroy a bridge with the aid of a band of local antifascist guerrillas , in order to prevent enemy troops from being able to respond to an upcoming offensive . The Soviet Union aided and advised the Republicans against the fascists in the Spanish Civil War . In their camp , Robert Jordan encounters María , a young Spanish woman whose life had been shattered by the execution of her parents and her rape at the hands of the Falangists part of the fascist coalition at the outbreak of the war . His strong sense of duty clashes with both guerrilla leader Pablo s unwillingness to commit to an operation that would endanger himself and his band , and his newfound lust for life arises out of his love for María . However , when another band of antifascist guerrillas led by El Sordo are surrounded and killed , Pablo decides to betray Jordan by stealing the dynamite caps , hoping to prevent the demolition . In the end Jordan improvises a way to detonate his dynamite , and Pablo returns to assist in the operation after seeing Jordan s commitment to his course of action . Though the bridge is successfully destroyed , it may be too late for the purposes of delaying enemy troop movements rendering the mission pointless , and Jordan is maimed when his horse is shot out from under him by a tank . Knowing that he would only slow his comrades down , he bids goodbye to María and ensures that she escapes to safety with the surviving members of the guerillas . He refuses an offer from another fighter to be shot and lies in agony , hoping to kill an enemy officer and a few soldiers before being captured and executed . The narration ends right before Jordan launches his ambush . The novel graphically describes the brutality of civil war .

<|fantasy|>It is the coming of the End Times the Apocalypse is near , and Final Judgment will soon descend upon the human race . This comes as a bit of bad news to the angel Aziraphale who was the angel of the Garden of Eden and the demon Crowley who , when he was originally named Crawly , was the serpent who tempted Eve to eat the apple , respectively the representatives of God and Satan on Earth , as they have become used to living their cozy , comfortable lives and have , in a perverse way , taken a liking to humanity . As such , since they are good friends despite ostensibly representing the polar opposites of Good and Evil , they decide to work together and keep an eye on the Antichrist , destined to be the son of a prominent American diplomat stationed in Britain , and thus ensure he grows up in a way that means he can never decide between Good and Evil , thereby postponing the end of the world . Unfortunately , Warlock , the child everyone thinks is the Anti Christ is , in fact , a perfectly normal eleven year old boy . Due to mishandling of several infants in the hospital , the real Anti Christ is Adam Young , a charismatic and slightly otherworldly eleven year old who , despite being the harbinger of the Apocalypse , has lived a perfectly normal life as the son of typical English parents and as a result has no idea of his true powers . As Adam blissfully and naively uses his powers , creating around him the world of Just William because he thinks that is what an English child s life should be like , the race is on to find him mdash the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse assemble and the incredibly accurate yet so highly specific as to be useless prophecies of Agnes Nutter , seventeenth century prophetess , are rapidly coming true . Agnes Nutter was a witch in the 17th century and the only truly accurate prophet to have ever lived . She wrote a book called The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter , Witch , a collection of prophecies that did not sell very well because they were unspectacular , cryptic and , ironically enough , all true . She , in fact , decided to publish it only so that she could receive a free author s copy . There is only one copy of the book left , which belongs to her descendant Anathema Device . Agnes was burned at the stake by a mob because that is what mobs did at that time however , because she had foreseen her fiery end Ye re tardy I should have been aflame ten minutes since and had packed 80 pounds of gunpowder and 40 pounds of roofing nails into her petticoats , everyone who participated in the burning was killed instantly . Anathema teams up with Newton Pulsifer , the descendant of the man who initiated the burning of Agnes , to use the prophesies and find the Antichrist . Unfortunately , that is exactly what everyone else is trying to do , and time is running out .

<|childrens|>It tells the burlesque adventures of Tartarin , a local hero of Tarascon , a small town in southern France , whose invented adventures and reputation as a swashbuckler finally force him to travel to a very prosaic Algiers in search of lions . Instead of finding a romantic , mysterious Oriental fantasy land , he finds a sordid world suspended between Europe and the Middle East . And worst of all , there are no lions left . By a coincidence , Tartarin encounters a lion and kills him . Unfortunately , the lion was a mascot of the local military garrison and Tartarin is dragged in front of a judge . By a stroke of luck , he is released on a technicality and returns to Tarascon with the lion s skin to a hero s welcome . The book was followed by two sequels Tartarin sur les Alpes 1885 and Port Tarascon 1890 .

<|novel|>The Lisbons are a Catholic family living in Grosse Pointe , Michigan in the 1970s . The father , Ronald , is a math teacher at a private school and the mother is a homemaker . The family has five daughters 13 year old Cecilia , 14 year old Lux , 15 year old Bonnie , 16 year old Mary , and 17 year old Therese . Their lives change dramatically within one summer when Cecilia , a stoic and astute girl described as an outsider , attempts suicide by cutting her wrists . A few weeks later , the girls throw a chaperoned party , during which Cecilia jumps from their second story window and dies , impaled by a fence post . The cause of Cecilia s suicide and its after effects on the family are popular subjects of neighborhood gossip . The mystique of the Lisbon girls operates also for the neighborhood boys , the narrators of the novel . Lux begins a romance with local heartthrob Trip Fontaine . Trip negotiates with the overprotective Mr . and Mrs . Lisbon to take Lux to a homecoming dance , on the condition that he finds dates for the other three girls . After having sex with Trip on the high school football field after the dance , Lux misses her curfew . Consequently , the Lisbons become recluses . Mrs . Lisbon pulls all the girls out of school , believing that it would help the girls recover . Mr . Lisbon officially takes a leave of absence . Their house falls into a deeper state of disrepair and none of them leave the house . A strange smell coming from the house permeates the neighborhood . From a safe distance , all the people in the neighborhood watch the Lisbons lives deteriorate , but no one can summon up the courage to intervene . During this time , the Lisbons become increasingly fascinating to the neighborhood in general and the narrator boys in particular . The boys call the Lisbon girls and communicate by playing records over the telephone for the girls . Finally , the girls send a message to the boys to come to the house . Shortly after the boys arrive , three of the sisters kill themselves Bonnie hangs herself , Therese overdoses on sleeping pills , and Lux dies of carbon monoxide poisoning . Mary attempts suicide by putting her head in the oven , but fails . Mary continues to live for another month before successfully ending her life by taking sleeping pills . Newspaper writer Linda Perl notes that that mass suicide comes a year after Cecilia s first attempt . After the suicide free for all , Mr . and Mrs . Lisbon leave the neighborhood . The house is sold to a young couple from the Boston area and most of the Lisbons personal effects are either thrown out or sold in a garage sale . The narrators scavenge through the trash to collect much of the evidence they mention .

<|fantasy|>During an interstellar war one side develops a language , Babel 17 , that can be used as a weapon . Learning it turns one into an unwilling traitor as it alters perception and thought . The change is made more dangerous by the language s seductive enhancement of other abilities . This is discovered by the beautiful starship captain , linguist , poet , and telepath Rydra Wong . She is recruited by her government to discover how the enemy are infiltrating and sabotaging strategic sites . Initially Babel 17 is thought to be a code used by enemy agents . Rydra Wong realizes it is a language , and finds herself becoming a traitor as she learns it . She is rescued by her dedicated crew , figures out the danger , and neutralizes its effects . The novel deals with several issues related to the peculiarities of language , how conditions of life shape the formation of words and meaning , and how the words themselves can shape the actions of people .

<|novel|>The book details the everyday life of Mildred Lathbury , a spinster in her thirties in 1950s England . Perpetually self deprecating , but with the sharpest wit , Mildred keeps busy with near romances her own and those of others , church jumble sales , and of course the ubiquitous cup of tea . Mildred s life grows more exciting with the arrival of new neighbours , anthropologist Helena Napier and her handsome , dashing husband , Rocky with whom Mildred fancies herself in love . Through the Napiers , she meets another anthropologist , Everard Bone , and it is with him that Mildred will eventually form a relationship . A sub plot revolves around the activities of the local vicar , Julian Malory , who becomes engaged to a glamorous widow , Allegra Gray . Allegra proceeds to ease out Julian s sister , Winifred , a close friend of Mildred s . Eventually matters come to a head and Allegra leaves the vicarage after a quarrel . In the meantime , Helena , who has been on the verge of leaving Rocky for Everard , accepts that Everard does not care for her and leaves the neighbourhood , along with Rocky . As with most of Pym s books , the plot is less important than the precise drawing of the comic characters such as Everard s elderly mother who is obsessed with birds and situations .

<|fantasy|>The book explores the aftermath of the crucifixion of Jesus through the experiences of the Roman tribune Marcellus Gallio and his Greek slave Demetrius . Prince Gaius , in an effort to rid Rome of Marcellus , banishes Marcellus to the command of the Roman garrison at Minoa , a port city in southern Palestine . In Jerusalem during Passover , Marcellus ends up carrying out the crucifixion of Jesus , but is troubled since he believes Jesus to be innocent of any crime . Marcellus and some other soldiers throw dice to see who will take Jesus seamless robe . Marcellus wins and asks Demetrius to take care of the robe . Following the crucifixion , Marcellus takes part in a banquet attended by Pontius Pilate . During the banquet , a drunken centurion insists that Marcellus wear Jesus robe reluctantly wearing the garment , Marcellus apparently suffers a nervous breakdown and returns to Rome . Sent to Athens to recuperate , Marcellus finally gives in to Demetrius urging and touches the robe his mind is subsequently restored . Marcellus , now believing the robe has some sort of innate power , returns to Judea and follows the path Jesus took and meets many people whose lives Jesus had affected . Based upon their experiences first Demetrius and then Marcellus become followers of Jesus . Marcellus then returns to Rome where he must report his experiences to the emperor , Tiberius . Marcellus frees Demetrius who escapes , but later on because of his uncompromising stance regarding his Christian faith both Marcellus and his new wife Diana are executed by the new emperor , Caligula . Marcellus arranges that the robe be given to The Big Fisherman .

<|novel|>The first person narrative begins on 11 September 2001 , and Banks uses the protagonist s conversations both on the radio and off to discuss the consequences of the terrorist attacks in the United States on that day . Ken Nott is at a loft party in London at the crucial moment . The reader hears many of Nott s shock jock lines Guns for nutters only makes sense . and sees him described as a drug and booze fuelled , sexually promiscuous party animal . His politics are left wing and libertarian , and he rants at every chance . Nott s various girlfriends including Jo , who does public relations for an indie band called Addicta , his long suffering radio show colleague Phil , and his black DJ friend Ed are described . Apart from the expected difficulties associated with being a politically controversial radio DJ , everything is going smoothly for Ken until he meets Celia or Ceel , a gangster s wife , who he falls in love with . An indiscretion with a mobile phone and an answering machine leads him into some difficult and frightening situations .

<|fantasy|>An elderly Jesuit priest named Father Lankester Merrin is leading an archaeological dig in northern Iraq and is studying ancient relics . Following the discovery of a small statue of the demon Pazuzu an actual ancient Assyrian demigod and a modern day St . Joseph medal curiously juxtaposed together at the site , a series of omens alerts him to a pending confrontation with a powerful evil , which , unknown to the reader at this point , he has battled before in an exorcism in Africa . Meanwhile , in Georgetown , a young girl named Regan MacNeil living with her famous mother , actress Chris MacNeil , becomes inexplicably ill . After a gradual series of poltergeist like disturbances , she undergoes disturbing psychological and physical changes , appearing to become possessed by a demonic spirit . After several unsuccessful psychiatric and medical treatments , Regan s mother turns to a local Jesuit priest . Father Damien Karras , who is currently going through a crisis of faith coupled with the loss of his mother , agrees to see Regan as a psychiatrist , but initially resists the notion that it is an actual demonic possession . After a few meetings with the child , now completely inhabited by a diabolical personality , he turns to the local bishop for permission to perform an exorcism on the child . The bishop with whom he consults does not believe Karras is qualified to perform the rites , and appoints the experienced Merrin , who has recently returned to the United States , to perform the exorcism although he does allow the doubt ridden Karras to assist him . The lengthy exorcism tests the priests both physically and spiritually . When Merrin , who had previously suffered cardiac arrhythmia , dies during the process , completion of the exorcism ultimately falls upon Father Karras . When he demands that the demonic spirit inhabit him instead of the innocent Regan , the demon seizes the opportunity to possess the priest . Karras surrenders his own life in exchange for Regan s by jumping out of her bedroom window .

<|novel|>Martin Lynch Gibbon is a 41 year old well to do wine merchant whose childless marriage to an older woman called Antonia has been one of convenience rather than love . It never occurs to him that his ongoing affair with a young academic called Georgie could be immoral . Displaying quite a number of macho attributes in his relationships with women , Lynch Gibbon is shocked when , out of the blue , his wife tells him that she is going to leave him for Palmer Anderson , her psychoanalyst and a friend of the couple s , with whom she has had a secret affair for quite some time . Lynch Gibbon moves out of their London house but still does not want to publicize his affair with Georgie , let alone become engaged to her . At roughly the same time Cupid s arrow hits Lynch Gibbon again . This time he falls for Honor Klein , Anderson s half sister , who is a lecturer in anthropology at Cambridge , a woman who , on seeing her for the first time , he remembers finding rather repulsive . Like a man possessed , he follows her to Cambridge and , in the middle of the night , breaks into her house , only to find her in bed with her half brother . When , shortly afterwards , Antonia confesses to him that she has also been sleeping with his older brother Alexander ever since he introduced them to each other You mean you didn t know at all ? Surely you must have guessed . , Lynch Gibbon s world starts disintegrating . Despite his being a wine merchant , he chooses whisky as his constant companion . In the end , however , he realizes that life must and somehow will go on .

<|fantasy|>Told from the point of view of Professor Bill Reynolds , a scholar in the fictitious discipline of micropaloentology , this novel is set in the 24th and 25th Centuries , when the solar system has been colonised . Reynolds is writing a thesis on fame and in his research discovers a dissertation on comedy submitted by Carlton , a robotic secretary for two stand up comedians on an interplanetary comedy circuit . Most of the action in the novel follows this trio s adventures during the time when Reynolds believes Carlton was developing his theories . During this time , Carlton and his owners , Alex Muscroft and Lewis Ashby get caught up in a series of disasters including loss of work , parental responsibility and close scrapes with terrorists , the law , other entertainers , and a refugee crisis . Carlton seeks to understand the nature of comedy and human laughter , and attempts to describe humor as a mathematical formula .

<|novel|>Pelafina writes these letters to Johnny from The Three Attic Whalestoe Institute , a mental institution where she has been residing for a number of years . While a number of these letters appear in House of Leaves , The Whalestoe Letters introduces a number of new letters which serve to more fully develop Pelafina s character as well as her relationship with Johnny .

<|fantasy|>Restoree is the story of Sara , an introverted , beak nosed , 24 year old virgin librarian from New York who is abducted by the Mil , amorphous alien creatures that eat human flesh . She is kept alive , with her skin removed and in a catatonic state from the physical and mental shock , on a meat hook as a Mil meal until the alien ship she is on is captured by human inhabitants of the planet Lothar . Without her skin , some Lotharians mistake her for one of their own and perform controversial restoration procedures on her , including a nose job . Sara comes to her senses in a mental institution on Lothar with no memory of what happened , little knowledge of the local language , and a beautiful , golden skinned body . At the institution , she is treated as if she were retarded and given menial tasks to do , as are other restorees who have been clandestinely salvaged from Mil ships it is apparently some factor of Sara s Terran origins that allows her to fully recover from the shock of the Mil ordeal , while Lotharian restorees are of limited intellect at best . One of her jobs is to care for Harlan , the deposed planetary regent , who is being drugged into a moronic state . Recognizing what is being done , Sara helps Harlan to regain his senses and escape the mental institution . Sara and Harlan then gain the advantage over Harlan s political enemies , defeat the Mil , solve some of Lothar s emerging domestic problems and , of course , fall in love .

<|novel|>The title character , a Lieutenant Junior Grade naval officer , defends his crew against the petty tyranny of the ship s commanding officer during World War II . Nearly all action takes place on a backwater cargo ship , the USS Reluctant that sails , as written in the play , from apathy to tedium with occasional side trips to monotony and ennui .

<|novel|>The novel tells the story of a young , narcissistic , womanizing college athlete who abandons his early ambition to become a lawyer . The legal profession does not suit the unethical Gantry , who then becomes a notorious and cynical alcoholic . Gantry is mistakenly ordained as a Baptist minister , briefly acts as a New Thought evangelist , and eventually becomes a Methodist minister . He acts as manager for Sharon Falconer , an itinerant evangelist . Gantry becomes her lover but loses both her and his position when she is killed in a fire at her new tabernacle . During his career , Gantry contributes to the downfall , physical injury , and even death of key people around him , including a genuine minister , Frank Shallard . Ultimately Gantry marries well and obtains a large congregation in Lewis s fictional Midwestern city of Zenith .

<|fantasy|>During his forced residence , X 127 is ordered to push the bomb buttons to begin World War nbsp III which lasts a total of 2 hours and 58 minutes . From that point , all civilian life moves from the surface of the earth to a collection of underground shelter complexes on the Levels 1 5 , while military personnel already occupy Levels 6 and nbsp 7 . It later emerges that the orders given have been wholly automatic , and the war has taken place as a series of electronic responses to an initial accident . Toward the end of the novel , the inhabitants of the surviving shelters gradually find their deaths , as the surface contamination makes its way down past air filters and into ground water sources . At last , the inhabitants of Level nbsp 7 are exterminated through a malfunction in their nuclear power pile .

<|fantasy|>The novel is set in an era in which interstellar travel is in the process of being discovered and perfected . Before the novel s opening , hyper assistance , a technology allowing travel at a little slower than the speed of light , is used to move a reclusive space station colony called Rotor from the vicinity of Earth to the newly discovered red dwarf , Nemesis . There , it takes up orbit around the semi habitable moon , Erythro , named for the red light that falls on it . It is eventually discovered that the bacterial life on Erythro forms a collective organism that possesses a form of consciousness and telepathy a concept similar to the Gaia of Asimov s Foundation series . While the colonists argue over the direction of future colonization down to Erythro , or up to the asteroid belts of Nemesis system events catch up to them . Back on Earth superluminal flight is perfected , ending Rotor Colony s isolation and opening the galaxy to human exploration . The story also relates the breakup and reunion of a family the mother , the discoverer of Nemesis , and the daughter were separated from the Earthbound father when the colony departed the father becomes part of the hyperjump research project as a result the startling discovery that the bacterial inhabitants of Erythro , collectively , constitute a sentient and telepathic organism and the discovery and resolution of a massive crisis Nemesis trajectory threatens to gravitationally destabilize the Solar System .

<|fantasy|>The main character , Tucker Case Tuck , is a pilot for a cosmetics company , who crashes the company plane while having sex . This event causes Tuck to be blacklisted from flying in the United States , so he accepts a lucrative offer from a doctor missionary on a remote Micronesian island to transport cargo to and from the island and Japan . Tuck moves to the island , along with a male Filipino transvestite navigator and a talking fruit bat . There Tuck eventually uncovers a horrible secret harbored by the doctor and his wife , who have taken advantage of fact that the natives of the island have fallen under the influence of a cargo cult that developed as a result of establishment by Allies of an air runway there during World War II . Tuck s shock at the gruesome immorality of the situation leads to an adventurous and suspenseful climax .

<|novel|>Marcia , Letty , Norman and Edwin all work together in the same office , are all unmarried Edwin being a widower and have all reached retirement age . Letty , the heroine of the book , has plans to share a country retreat with her old friend , Marjorie , but her hopes are dashed when Marjorie suddenly announces that she is to marry a clergyman some years younger than herself . All four find retirement difficult to cope with , but the effects are most noticeable for the eccentric Marcia . She gradually withdraws from the outside world , gives up eating , and eventually dies in pathetic circumstances . She has unexpectedly left her estate to Norman , in whom she had indulged a brief and secret romantic interest . When Marjorie s fiancé deserts her for a younger widow , Letty has the opportunity to take the country cottage after all . By now she has come to terms with retirement and does not move . At the end of the book , she is considering whether to introduce Edwin and Norman to Marjorie in the hope of matchmaking .

<|comedy|>Many of the characters in the book are based on Pym s own circle , as she pictured them in twenty or thirty years time . The two heroines , Belinda and Harriet Bede , are Barbara herself and her sister , Hilary . Archdeacon Hoccleve , a married clergyman for whom Belinda has long nurtured a passion , is believed to be based on Pym s first love , Henry Harvey . In the course of the book , both sisters receive proposals of marriage which they feel obliged to reject , partly because they are not attracted to the men in question , but mainly because they are so used to living together and have become devoted to one another . In fact , Pym and her sister did end up living together in a quiet village in Oxfordshire . Pym s friend , the British writer Robert Liddell , appears in the novel in the guise of Dr . Nicholas Parnell . Another character , Count Riccardo Bianco , is based on the real life count and academic , Roberto Weiss .

<|fantasy|>Biff has been resurrected in the present day to complete missing parts of the Bible , supposedly under the watchful eye of the angel Raziel , who turns out to be more interested in soap operas and Spiderman on the television in their hotel . Biff is made to write down his account of the decades missing from Jesus life . During these years he and Joshua which , as Biff points out , is the original Hebrew version of the Hellenized Jesus , and thus in Galilee Jesus was called Joshua Bar Joseph travel to the East to seek the Three Wise Men a magician , a Buddhist , and a Hindu Yogi who attended Joshua s birth so that he may learn how to become the Messiah . Over a span of roughly twenty years , Joshua learns a great deal about human nature , world religions , and how he is able to translate those into his teachings . At each point , Joshua surpasses the abilities of the wise men by incorporating his own beliefs into theirs . The story takes a fantastical twist on Joshua s miracles as well he learns to multiply food from one of the Wise Men and learns to become invisible from another however , his ability to resurrect the dead figures strongly into his first meeting with Biff when both boys are six years old . Biff , for himself , is sarcastic , practical and endlessly loyal . While it would seem that such traits , as well as the fact that he was the Messiah s best friend for nearly thirty years , would ensure his place in the Gospels , there are reasons , as revealed in the final chapter , why Biff was essentially cut out of the story . The recounting of Jesus human and godlike qualities , combined with Biff s earthy debauchery , leads to its all too familiar tragic ending , but humorously explains many things the origins of judo a pun that is definitely intended , why Jews eat Chinese food on Christmas , and how rabbits became associated with Easter . The Three Wise Men , Mary Magdalene on whom Biff has a childhood crush , Joseph , and Mary Joshua s mother , whom Biff plans to marry if anything happens to Joseph all have their part in the life and times of Joshua . Mary Magdalene is depicted as harboring love for Joshua , though in Moore s version Joshua remains chaste , as per Raziel s instructions . This in itself leads to some of Biff s debauchery , as he is literally attempting to go through enough harlots for both of them . Biff himself loves Maggie with the same intensity , leading to a revolving love triangle . At the conclusion of the novel , Biff completes The Gospel According to Biff , giving it to Raziel , who allows Biff to finally leave the hotel room . As Biff exits into the hallway he is surprised to find a resurrected Maggie exiting the room opposite , having finished her own Gospel weeks ago . The two embrace , informed by an angel that it is the will of the Son that they be together . The two leave together , Biff content to be with Maggie even though he is her second choice .

<|novel|>The Remains of the Day tells , in first person , the story of Stevens , an English butler who has dedicated his life to the loyal service of Lord Darlington mentioned in increasing detail in flashbacks . The novel begins with Stevens receiving a letter from a former colleague , Miss Kenton , describing her married life , which he believes hints at an unhappy marriage . The receipt of the letter coincides with Stevens having the opportunity to revisit this once cherished relationship , if only under the guise of investigating the possibility of re employment . Stevens s new employer , a wealthy American named Mr Farraday , encourages Stevens to borrow his car to take a well earned break , a motoring trip . As he sets out , Stevens has the opportunity to reflect on his immutable loyalty to Lord Darlington , on the meaning of the term dignity , and even on his relationship with his own late father . Ultimately Stevens is forced to ponder the true nature of his relationship with Miss Kenton . As the book progresses , increasing evidence of Miss Kenton s one time love for Stevens , and of his for her , is revealed . Working together during the years leading up to the Second World War , Stevens and Miss Kenton fail to admit their true feelings towards each other . All of their recollected conversations show a professional friendship which at times came close to crossing the line into romance , but never dared to do so . Miss Kenton , it later emerges , has been married for over 20 years and therefore is no longer Miss Kenton but has become Mrs Benn . She admits to wondering occasionally what a life with Stevens might have been like , but she has come to love her husband and is looking forward to the birth of their first grandchild . Stevens muses over lost opportunities , both with Miss Kenton and with his long time employer , Lord Darlington . At the end of the novel , Stevens instead focuses on the remains of his day , referring to his future service with Mr Farraday .

<|fantasy|>The central premise of the book is that gods are created by humans necessity and desire for them , and , once worshipped by man , don t disappear but remain on earth forever . Because nobody worships them , many become destitute , like the tramps whom Dirk witnesses entering Valhalla . Odin makes Thor accidentally transmogrify objects when he gets angry , in a bid to delay him getting to Norway and finding the Draycotts contract . The eagle that pursues Dirk and Thor is the transformed jet fighter that tries to stop him from getting to Norway . Thor s inability to fly to Norway using his hammer is why he needs to visit the airport at the opening of the novel . Odin makes contact with the Draycotts after seeing one of Cynthia Draycott s adverts for a soft drink , which seemingly involve various gods promoting the drink one of these adverts is seen when Dirk confronts Anstey s son early in the book . Odin , like all the gods , is naive and quite literally unworldly this is how the Draycotts are able to take advantage of him . One of Dirk s chief characteristics in the novel is guilt about the fridge and about the death of Anstey , whom he should have protected . At the end of the novel , Dirk s fridge generates a new god of Guilt it is implied this stops Toe Rag and the green monster from preventing Thor from finally retrieving the contract in Norway . The gods world exists in parallel with our own where St Pancras railway station is Valhalla .

<|childrens|>The story concerns a family who move to Three Chimneys , a house near the railway , after the father , who works at the Foreign office , is imprisoned as a result of being falsely accused of selling state secrets to the Russians . The three children , Roberta Bobbie , Peter and Phyllis Phil , find amusement in watching the trains on the nearby railway line and waving to the passengers . They become friendly with Albert Perks , the station porter , and with the Old Gentleman who regularly takes the 9 15 down train . He is eventually able to help prove their father s innocence , and the family is reunited . The family take care of the Russian exile , Mr Szczepansky , who came to England looking for his family later located and Jim , the grandson of the Old Gentleman , who suffers a broken leg in a tunnel . The theme of an innocent man being falsely imprisoned for espionage and finally vindicated might have been influenced by the Dreyfus Affair , which was a prominent worldwide news item a few years before the book was written . And the Russian exile , persecuted by the Tsars for writing a beautiful book about poor people and how to help them and subsequently helped by the children , was most likely an amalgam of the real life dissidents Sergius Stepniak and Peter Kropotkin who were both friends of the author .

<|fantasy|>Duncan Makenzie is the latest generation of the first family of Titan , a colonised moon of Saturn . Originally settled by his grandfather Malcolm Makenzie in the early 23rd century , Titan s economy has flourished based on the harvest and sale of hydrogen mined from the atmosphere , which is used to fuel the fusion engines of interplanetary spacecraft . As the plot opens in 2276 , a number of factors are combining to make a diplomatic visit to the mother world of Earth a necessity . Firstly , the forthcoming 500th anniversary of US Independence which is bringing in colonists from the entire Solar System , obviously needs a suitable representative from Titan . Secondly , the Makenzie family carry a fatal damaged gene that means any normal continuation of the family line is impossible so both Duncan and his father Colin are clones of his grandfather Malcolm . Human cloning is a mature technology , but is even at this time ethically controversial . And thirdly , technological advances in spacecraft drive systems specifically the asymptotic drive which improves the fuel efficiency by orders of magnitude means that Titan s whole economy is under threat as the demand for hydrogen is about to collapse . The human aspects of the tale center mainly on the intense infatuation largely unrequited but not unconsummated that the two main male characters , Duncan and Karl Helmer , develop for the vividly characterized Catherine Linden Ellerman Calindy , a visitor to Titan from Earth in their youth , and its lifelong consequences . A number of other sub plots suggest some sort of greater mystery , but remain unexplored . The book ends with him returning home with his new child Malcolm who is a clone of his dead friend Karl , leaving the other plot threads dangling .

<|crime|>The story takes place at the castellated abbey of the happy and dauntless and sagacious Prince Prospero . Prospero and one thousand other nobles have taken refuge in this walled abbey to escape the Red Death , a terrible plague with gruesome symptoms that has swept over the land . Victims feel overcome by convulsive agony and sweat blood . The plague is said to kill within half an hour . Prospero and his court are presented as indifferent to the sufferings of the population at large , intending to await the end of the plague in luxury and safety behind the walls of their secure refuge , having welded the doors shut . One night , Prospero holds a masquerade ball to entertain his guests in seven colored rooms of the abbey . Six of the rooms are each decorated and illuminated in a specific color Blue , purple , green , orange , white , and violet . The last room is decorated in black and is illuminated by a scarlet light a deep blood color because of this chilling pair of colors , very few guests are brave enough to venture into the seventh room . The same room is also the location of a large ebony clock that ominously clangs at each hour , upon which everyone stops talking or dancing and the orchestra stops playing . Once the chiming stops , everyone acts like nothing happened and continue on with the masquerade . At the chiming of midnight , the revelers and Prospero notice one figure in a dark , blood splattered robe resembling a funeral shroud , with an extremely realistic mask resembling a stiffened cadaver , and with the traits of the Red Death , which all at the ball have been desperate to escape . Gravely insulted , Prospero demands to know the identity of the mysterious guest so that they can hang him . When nobody out of fear dares to approach the figure , instead letting him pass through the seven chambers , the Prince pursues him with a drawn dagger until he is cornered in the seventh room , the black room with the scarlet tinted windows . When the figure turns to face him , the Prince lets out a sharp cry and falls dead . The enraged and terrified revelers surge into the black room and forcibly remove the mask and robe , only to find to their horror that there is no solid form underneath either . Only now do they realize too late that the figure is actually the Red Death itself , and all of the guests contract and succumb to the disease . The final line of the story sums up And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all .