Science Reality

"AWAKE is a thrilling speculative adventure, with an action-packed plot that never wavers..." - Lisa Butts for IndieReader "An original techno-psychological thriller that captures the essence and surrealism of dreams with a sinister edge..." - Lee Hall for Reedsy Discovery Plagued by nightmares, ever since an attack that left him scarred for life as a boy, Edward Morrison's only solace was computers. This obsession, over years in isolation, made him the most famous VR game designer in the world. Success gave Edward the chance to build a Dream Simulator for controlling nightmares, but when ...

Two young men, Mark and Eric, struggle desperately trying to make it to their retreat in Northern California. Their truck is dead from an EMP. They have to walk 200 miles. Will they make it passed the gangs and the utter confusion of a powerless society? George and his son Junior, are set up in a retreat in Northern Wisconsin. Everything is going along great until disaster strikes. One mistake leaves his 18-year-old son to survive alone.

Do you ever wonder about lives in other planets? If you did, don’t worry about it. Such thoughts are beautiful. You are a special kind of smarts. Efficient and wondering minds almost always were/are the creative minds. When you think out of the box, it is because you want to learn and create. You are being inquisitive—a trait reserved—for smart folks. If you were criticized for such thoughts as being overly too smart, look at those doing the bad criticism as being overly too unable to think outside the box. But you must give them some respect. Being very smart is a gift. And the not ...

Half-norn event planner Anders Skuldsson is under strict orders from Asgard not to meddle with Fate. But with Enchanted Occasions’ latest booking - the competition for the hand of Faerie’s one true prince - crashing around his ears, it’s really, really, really difficult to toe that particular line. So...if Andy just happens to pose as a contender for the prince? It’s an emergency, damn it. Besides, it’s only temporary, so Odin can hardly blame him. Right?

The Reality Dysfunction by Peter F. Hamilton is the first in Night's Dawn, a sweeping galactic trilogy from the master of space opera. In AD 2600 the human race is finally realizing its full potential. Hundreds of colonized planets across the galaxy host a multitude of wildly diverse cultures. Genetic engineering has pushed evolution far beyond nature's boundaries, defeating disease and producing extraordinary space-born creatures.

The lukewarm coffee tasted the same as it had yesterday. And the day before. And the twenty-seven days preceding that. Dr. Silas Roderick took a slow, deliberate sip, the bitter liquid doing little to rouse him from the persistent fog that clung to his mornings. Outside his window, the insistent honking of a taxi echoed the one from yesterday, its impatient rhythm a jarring counterpoint to the monotonous tick-tock of his grandfather clock – a clock that had always kept perfect time, until now. He glanced at the digital display on his microwave: 7:14 AM. The same time the delivery truck ...

Instead of enjoying the game, I found myself trapped inside my character's dead body. Now the only way I can save myself is by procuring the Scroll of Rebirth. The problem is my chances of getting it are slim. I'm an undead: an outlaw with no friends, only fickle allies and plenty of enemies. Who are only waiting for their chance to strike. My undead hangman character has to tread a razor's edge, with only the support of his fellow players preventing his imminent plunge into the abyss. But are they who they claim they are?

None of them wanted to leave Earth. It might have been nightmarish, but it was all they knew. Gary wanted to concentrate on his exams in hopes of leaving the CityBlock and its bullies far behind. Kailee wanted to become an actress. Darrin merely wanted to live. But when the three teenagers win a competition, they find themselves taking the trip of a lifetime, a voyage to a colony world where they can see how the colonists live.

In 1939, Richard Feynman, a brilliant graduate of MIT, arrived in John Wheeler's Princeton office to report for duty as his teaching assistant. A lifelong friendship and enormously productive collaboration was born, despite sharp differences in personality. The soft-spoken Wheeler, though conservative in appearance, was a raging nonconformist full of wild ideas about the universe. The boisterous Feynman was a cautious physicist who believed only what could be tested. Yet they were complementary spirits.

Dying in virtual reality isn't fun, but facing bullets from real-world criminal overlords is really the pits. In such a desperate scenario, their demand to render them a service in VR doesn't sound like such a bad alternative. The problem is, the games played by spook agencies follow much harsher rules. For them, the absence of choice doesn't sound like a good excuse - not if you end up in the grindstones of their undercover schemes.

Mature Readers: combat, violence, elements of horror, some sex, some language. She awakens in a windowless room full of lab equipment and spends a minute getting used to the pumping heart, tingly skin, and air filling the lungs of her new healthy body. Her name is Mary, and she has returned from the Ten Sigma Program, a virtual universe designed to produce the greatest fighters the Earth has ever seen through the harshest training methods ever devised. Now stuffed with every type of lethal knowledge and a victor in countless life-and-death struggles, she has one goal: to reunite with her ...

T-Rex? Check. Terror birds? Check. They all want to kill you? Check. Corter Laurence beat the odds to get selected as a contestant for Darwin's Quest, the most popular reality show in the galaxy. All he has to do is outlast his other 15 castmates and the money and fame will be his. Darwin's Quest is not for the faint-hearted, though. The show is beset with dangers, both natural and man-made, and the winner truly is the "Ultimate Survivor." Although each season is a little different and has its own theme, initially, the show proceeds as can be expected. Contestants are eliminated, and the ...

When aimless twenty-something Mara lands a job as the night-shift production assistant on her cousin’s ghost hunting/home makeover reality TV show Haunt Sweet Home, she quickly determines her new role will require a healthy attitude toward duplicity. But as she hides fog machines in the woods and improvises scares to spook new homeowners, a series of unnerving incidents on set and a creepy new coworker force Mara to confront whether the person she's truly been deceiving and hiding from all along—is herself.

I’m done hiding. I’ve stopped running. And I’ve finally accepted my destiny - to take four dragon shifters as my mates so I can become the next Black Dragon, the wielder of all the elements. I’ve already bonded with Jasin, my smoldering soldier, and soon, I’ll be getting intimate with Auric, Slade, and Reven. Only then can we become powerful enough to stop the current Dragons, the overlords of our world. But as we continue our journey, secrets are uncovered about my mates that make me question everything, even as things heat up between us.

Devilishly clever, Next blends fact and fiction into a breathless tale of a new world where nothing is what it seems, and a set of new possibilities can open at every turn. Next challenges our sense of reality and notions of morality. Balancing the comic and bizarre with the genuinely frightening and disturbing, Next shatters our assumptions and reveals shocking new choices where we least expect.

Some houses are haunted by the past. This one is haunted by everything. When investigative tech journalist Jason Vell receives an encrypted audio file from a dead colleague, he expects another deep-web conspiracy. Instead, he hears his name whispered in static—and a location tag pointing to the infamous Lizzie Borden House, where his mother vanished without a trace seventeen years ago. Desperate for answers, Jason checks into the Victorian bed-and-breakfast turned paranormal attraction. But the creaking floors and flickering lights hide more than ghost stories. Beneath the wallpaper and ...

Ever wondered about the discrepancies between Western perceptions of Islam and its genuine teachings? In a world where outward appearances can obscure deeper truths, this book delves into one of the most misinterpreted religions today. Elass reveals the stark discrepancies between the image of Islam portrayed by Western media and Muslim advocates and the religion’s genuine teachings and historical practices that remain less visible. The book navigates the core of Islam, challenging common narratives and shedding light on the traditional teachings at the heart of its sacred texts. Elass ...

Carlos is dead. A soldier who died for his ideals a thousand years ago, he's been reincarnated and conscripted to fight an A.I. revolution in deep space. And he's not sure he's fighting for the right side. Seba is alive. By a fluke of nature, a contractual overlap, and a loop in its subroutines, this lunar mining robot has gained sentience. Gathering with other "freeboots", Seba is taking a stand against the corporations that want it and its kind gone.

In the coming decades, the technology that enables virtual and augmented reality will improve beyond recognition. Within a century, world-renowned philosopher David J. Chalmers predicts, we will have virtual worlds that are impossible to distinguish from non-virtual worlds. But is virtual reality just escapism? In a highly original work of 'technophilosophy', Chalmers argues categorically, no: virtual reality is genuine reality. Virtual worlds are not second-class worlds. We can live a meaningful life in virtual reality - and increasingly, we will.

Thomas Sowell takes a tough, factual look at whether the civil rights movement has lived up to its hopes or its rhetoric. In the decades since the historic Supreme Court decision on desegregation, who has gained and who has lost? Which of the assumptions behind the civil rights revolution have stood the test of time, and which have proven to be mistaken or even catastrophic to those who were supposed to be helped?