The Fourth Protocol. The Fourth Protocol is a novel written by Frederick Forsyth and published in August 1984. Etymology[edit] The title refers to the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which (at least in the world of the novel) contained four secret protocols. The fourth of the protocols was meant to prohibit non-conventional deliveries of nuclear weapons, i.e. by means other than being dropped from aircraft or carried on ballistic missiles.
This included postal delivery or being assembled in secret, close to the target, before being detonated. Plot[edit] On New Year's Eve 1986, professional thief Jim Rawlings breaks into the apartment of a senior civil servant, and unintentionally discovers stolen top secret documents. MI5 officer John Preston, who was exploring hard left infiltration of the Labour party, investigates the stolen documents and finds that they were leaked by George Berenson, a passionate anti-communist and supporter of South Africa. Adaptations[edit] I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream. It won a Hugo Award in 1968. The name was also used for a short story collection of Ellison's work, featuring this story. It was recently reprinted by the Library of America, collected in volume two (Terror and the Uncanny, from the 1940s to Now) of American Fantastic Tales (2009).
Background[edit] Ellison wrote "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" in a single night in 1966, making virtually no changes from the first draft. He derived the story's title, as well as inspiration for this story, from a drawing by a friend, William Rotsler. Characters[edit] AM, the supercomputer which brought about the near-extinction of humanity. Plot[edit] The story takes place 109 years after the complete destruction of human civilization. The machines are each referred to as "AM," which originally stood for "Allied Mastercomputer," and then was later called "Adaptive Manipulator.
" The survivors live together underground in an endless complex, the only habitable place left. Adaptations[edit] References[edit] The Intelligent Man's Guide to Science. The Intelligent Man's Guide to Science is a general guide to the sciences written by Isaac Asimov. It was first published in 1960 by Basic Books in two volumes, Physical Sciences and Biological Sciences, though some subsequent editions were published as single volumes. A paperback edition was published in 1969 by Washington Square Press in two volumes under the titles The Intelligent Man's Guide to the Physical Sciences and The Intelligent Man's Guide to the Biological Sciences. Later, updated editions were: The New Intelligent Man's Guide to Science (1965)Asimov's Guide to Science (1972)Asimov's New Guide to Science (1984) Writing and publication[edit] Asimov was first contacted by Leon Svirsky of Basic Books in 1959 about the possibility of writing a book that would provide an overview of science, and the two met at Asimov's home on 13 May to discuss the details.
[edit] "Here, at last, is something new in popular science writing. Notes[edit] References[edit] Asimov, Isaac (1980). The Hero with a Thousand Faces. The Hero with a Thousand Faces (first published in 1949) is a non-fiction book, and seminal work of comparative mythology by Joseph Campbell. In this publication, Campbell discusses his theory of the journey of the archetypal hero found in world mythologies. Since publication of The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Campbell's theory has been consciously applied by a wide variety of modern writers and artists. The best known is perhaps George Lucas, who has acknowledged a debt to Campbell regarding the stories of the Star Wars films.[1] Summary[edit] Campbell explores the theory that important myths from around the world which have survived for thousands of years all share a fundamental structure, which Campbell called the monomyth.
In laying out the monomyth, Campbell describes a number of stages or steps along this journey. Background[edit] Publishing history[edit] The hero's journey and women[edit] Late in his life, Campbell had this to say: Artists influenced by the work[edit] See also[edit] The Final Solution (novel) The Final Solution: A Story of Detection is a 2004 novella [1] by Michael Chabon. It is a detective story that in many ways pays homage to the writings of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and other writers of the genre. The story, set in 1944, revolves around an unnamed 89-year-old long-retired detective (who may or may not be Sherlock Holmes but is always called just "the old man"), now interested mostly in beekeeping, and his quest to find a missing parrot, the only friend of a mute Jewish boy. The title of the novella references Doyle's Sherlock Holmes story "The Final Problem," in which Holmes confronts his greatest enemy, Professor Moriarty, at Reichenbach Falls, and the Final Solution, the Nazis' plan for the genocide of the Jewish people.
Although the plot of the story is modelled on the classic ratiocination stories of Doyle, there are two separate mysteries in the book, only one of which the Holmes character is able to solve by the end. After Mr. The Final Solution at Metacritic. The Screwtape Letters. The Screwtape Letters is a satirical Christian apologetic novel written in epistolary style by C. S. Lewis, first published in book form in February 1942.[1] The story takes the form of a series of letters from a senior Demon Screwtape to his nephew Wormwood, a Junior Tempter. The uncle's mentorship pertains to the nephew's responsibility for securing the damnation of a British man known only as "the Patient". Summary[edit] In The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis wrote the sequel Screwtape Proposes a Toast in 1959, a critique of certain trends in public education (state schooling).
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. Plot overview[edit] Lewis's use of this "correspondence" is both varied and hard-hitting. Though C. The Decameron. The Decameron (Italian: Decamerone), subtitled Prince Galehaut (Italian: Prencipe Galeotto), is a collection of novellas by the 14th-century Italian author Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–1375). The book is structured as a frame story containing 100 tales told by a group of seven young women and three young men sheltering in a secluded villa just outside Florence to escape the Black Death, which was afflicting the city.
Boccaccio probably conceived the Decameron after the epidemic of 1348, and completed it by 1353. The various tales of love in The Decameron range from the erotic to the tragic. Tales of wit, practical jokes, and life lessons contribute to the mosaic. In addition to its literary value and widespread influence (for example on Chaucer's Canterbury Tales), it provides a document of life at the time. Title[edit] Dante's description of Galehaut's munificence and savoir-faire amidst this intrigue impressed Boccaccio. Frame story[edit] Analysis[edit] Literary sources[edit] Top 15 Great Science Fiction Books. Books There are so many astounding science fiction books out there that this has been one of the hardest lists for me to put together.
I have added and culled but finally I have a list of the most important 15 Science Fiction Books of all time. I realise that not everyone will be satisfied with this list – so please use the comments to add the books that I couldn’t due to space and time. In no particular order… 1. The Time Machine was first published in 1895, making it the oldest book on this list. Buy it at Amazon 2. Stranger in a strange land tells the story of Valentine Michael Smith, a human raised by Martians on the planet Mars, upon his return to Earth in early adulthood.
Buy it at Amazon 3. I remember one summer in my childhood when all the other kids were busy hanging out at the movies and playing video games, that I spent every day lying in the backyard all day reading every book that E E Smith wrote (luckily my dad is a keen Sci-Fi fan so he had them all). Buy it at Amazon 5. 6. The Intelligent Investor. The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham, first published in 1949, is a widely acclaimed book on value investing, an investment approach Graham began teaching at Columbia Business School in 1928 and subsequently refined with David Dodd. Famous investor Warren Buffett described it as "by far the best book on investing ever written",[1] a sentiment echoed by other Graham disciples such as Irving Kahn and Walter Schloss. Mr. Market[edit] The point of this anecdote is that the investor should not regard the whims of Mr.
Market as a determining factor in the value of the shares the investor owns. He should profit from market folly rather than participate in it. Editions[edit] Since the work was published in 1949 Graham revised it several times, most recently in 1971/72. The Intelligent Investor (Re-issue of the 1949 edition) by Benjamin Graham. Book contents[edit] 2003 edition by Benjamin Graham and Jason Zweig See also[edit] References[edit] Further reading[edit] Williams, John Burr. East of Eden (novel) East of Eden is a novel by Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck, published in September 1952. Often described as Steinbeck's most ambitious novel, East of Eden brings to life the intricate details of two families, the Trasks and the Hamiltons, and their interwoven stories. The novel was originally addressed to Steinbeck's young sons, Thom and John (then 6½ and 4½ years old, respectively).
Steinbeck wanted to describe the Salinas Valley for them in detail: the sights, sounds, smells, and colors. The Hamilton family in the novel is said to be based on the real-life family of Samuel Hamilton, Steinbeck's maternal grandfather.[1] A young John Steinbeck also appears briefly in the novel as a minor character.[2] According to his third and last wife, Elaine, Steinbeck considered it his magnum opus – his greatest novel.[3] Steinbeck stated about East of Eden: "It has everything in it I have been able to learn about my craft or profession in all these years. " The Trask family: Cyrus Trask, Mrs. Peter and Wendy. The novel was first published in 1911 by Hodder & Stoughton in the United Kingdom and Charles Scribner's Sons in the United States. The original book contains a frontispiece and 11 half-tone plates by artist F.
D. Bedford (whose illustrations are still in copyright in the EU). The novel was first abridged by May Byron in 1915, with Barrie's permission, and published under the title Peter Pan and Wendy, the first time this form was used. This version was later illustrated by Mabel Lucie Attwell in 1921. Background[edit] J. Barrie created Peter Pan in stories he told to the sons of his friend Sylvia Llewelyn Davies, with whom he had forged a special relationship. The Peter Pan character first appeared in print in the 1902 novel The Little White Bird, written for adults. In 1906, the chapters of The Little White Bird which featured Peter Pan was published as the book Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, with illustrations by Arthur Rackham.
Plot summary[edit] Illustration by F. Characters[edit] The Periodic Table (book) The elements that are titles of the stories. The Periodic Table (Italian: Il Sistema Periodico) is a collection of short stories by Primo Levi, published in 1975, named after the periodic table in chemistry. In 2006, the Royal Institution of Great Britain named it the best science book ever.[1] The stories are autobiographical episodes of the author's experiences as a Jewish-Italian doctoral-level chemist under the Fascist regime and afterwards. They include various themes following a chronological sequence: his ancestry, his study of chemistry and practising the profession in wartime Italy, a pair of imaginative tales he wrote at that time,[2] and his subsequent experiences as an anti-Fascist partisan, his arrest and imprisonment, interrogation, and internment in the Fossoli di Carpi and Auschwitz camps, and postwar life as an industrial chemist. Every story, 21 in total, has the name of a chemical element and is connected to it in some way.
The Age of Wonder. Overview[edit] In this book, Holmes focuses particularly on the work of Sir Joseph Banks, William Herschel and Humphry Davy. The book also describes the relationships between the scientists of that time, and the early days of the Royal Society.[3] Reception[edit] The book received very good reviews, with Mike Jay of the Daily Telegraph writing: "Scientists, like poets, need a sense of wonder, a sense of humility and a sense of humour. Holmes has all three in abundance".[4] Peter Forbes of The Independent wrote of the book: "Its heart – the linked stories of Banks, Herschel and Davy – is thrilling: a portrait of bold adventure among the stars, across the oceans, deep into matter, poetry and the human psyche"[5] See also[edit] References[edit] External links[edit] The Age of Wonder at HarperCollins publishers.
A Song of Ice and Fire. This article is about the series of novels. For the television adaptation, see Game of Thrones. A Song of Ice and Fire is a series of epic fantasy novels by the American novelist and screenwriter George R. R. Martin. The first volume of the series, A Game of Thrones, was begun in 1991 and first published in 1996. The series has grown from a planned trilogy to seven volumes, the fifth and most recent of which, A Dance with Dragons, took Martin five years to write before its publication in 2011.
The sixth novel, The Winds of Winter, is still being written. Martin's inspirations included the Wars of the Roses and the French historical novels The Accursed Kings by Maurice Druon. Plot synopsis[edit] The story of A Song of Ice and Fire takes place in a fictional world in which seasons last for years on end. The third story is set on an eastern continent named Essos, and follows Daenerys Targaryen, isolated from the others until A Dance with Dragons. Publishing history[edit] Overview[edit]