Machine World

In the fourth book of the series, James McGill is up for promotion. Not everyone is happy about that, and McGill must prove he's worth his stripes. Deployed to a strange alien planet outside the boundaries of the Galactic Empire, he's caught up in warfare and political intrigue. Earth expands, the Cephalopod Kingdom launches ships to stop us, and a grand conspiracy emerges among the upper ranks of the Hegemony military.

Passengers get bumped from flights. Phone menus disconnect. Automated financial trades produce market collapse. Of all the challenges in modern life, some of the most vexing come from our relationships with automation: a large system does us wrong, and there’s nothing we can do about it. The problem, economist Dan Davies shows, is accountability sinks: systems in which decisions are delegated to a complex rule book or set of standard procedures, making it impossible to identify the source of mistakes when they happen.

In this “spectacularly smart space opera” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) set in the same universe as the critically acclaimed White Space series and perfect for fans of Karen Traviss and Ada Hoffman, a space station begins to unravel when a routine search-and-rescue mission returns...

"The Machine Stops" is a short science fiction story. It describes a world in which almost all humans have lost the ability to live on the surface of the Earth. Each individual lives in isolation in a "cell", with all bodily and spiritual needs met by the omnipotent, global Machine. Most humans welcome this development, as they are skeptical and fearful of first-hand experience. People forget that humans created the Machine, and treat it as a mystical entity whose needs supersede their own.

The breathtaking vision and incomparable storytelling of Brian Herbert and Kevin Anderson's Dune: The Butlerian Jihad, a prequel to Frank Herbert's classic Dune, propelled it to the ranks of speculative fiction's classics in its own right. Now, with all the color, scope, and fascination of the...

Zero Dark Thirty meets The Social Network in this “clever…gritty” (Ken Liu, author of The Grace of Kings) science fiction thriller about artificial intelligence, sentience, and labor rights in a near future dominated by the gig economy—from Hugo Award nominee S.B. Divya. Welga Ramirez...

Chatbots such as the infamous ChatGPT, robotic warehouses, computerized call centres and patient diagnosis. These are just a few of the areas where Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning are being used to boost revenues, cut costs, save lives and improve customer experiences. As a result, organizations that understand these tools and know how to use them are benefiting at the expense of their rivals. This book cuts through the hype and technical jargon that one often finds when talking about AI and Machine Learning. It delivers a short, concise and non-technical guide for ...

From the king of modern space opera comes a new adventure in the Prefect Dreyfus series—Machine Vendetta is a thrilling tale of deadly conspiracies and old enemies that refuse to die. Panoply is a small, efficient police force, dedicated to maintaining the rule of democracy among the ten...

Colonel Sthykar Karwyk never imagined that he would be ordered to take his Mountain Division deep behind enemy lines for a secret rescue operation. Narducat Imperial Fleet has invaded Karaln Nation – whose scientists alone had mastered the deep mysteries of Atom – and now The Empire commands the sole Atomic arsenal in the world. But there are rumors of a secret base of Karaln scientists, hidden inside the territory occupied by the fearsome Imperial Special Army. Colonel Sthykar and Starfire Kingdom’s Mountain Troopers must find and rescue the atomic scientists even as they battle an ...

Today, a vast majority of us live under the economic system called capitalism―it touches almost every aspect of our lives, and most people alive have never known another. Yet, a cursory look at the world around us reveals that things can't stay this way forever: an economy built on infinite...

The classic, nationally bestselling book that first articulated the principles of lean production, with a new foreword and afterword by the authors. When The Machine That Changed the World was first published in 1990, Toyota was half the size of General Motors. Twenty years later Toyota passed...

Read by George Newbern "George Newbern provides a convincing, conversational narration of this audiobook about robot intelligence. There's a lot to digest. Much of it deals with speculation as to who will be right: those who believe in AI (artificial intelligence machines that may eventually...

Read by award-winning narrator, L.J. Ganser. Bestselling author of The Arsenal of Democracy and The Accidental President, A. J. Baime returns with the incredible story of the airplane that ended World War II, the B-29 Superfortress, the rise of American airpower, and the man who made it all...

Machine learning systems are both complex and unique. Complex because they consist of many different components and involve many different stakeholders. Unique because they're data dependent, with data varying wildly from one use case to the next. In this book, you'll learn a holistic approach to designing ML systems that are reliable, scalable, maintainable, and adaptive to changing environments and business requirements. Author Chip Huyen, cofounder of Claypot AI, considers each design decision in the context of how it can help your system as a whole achieve its objectives.

Explore the rise of artificial intelligence and the dangers of advanced technology in Robot Revolt: Classic Tales of Artificial Intelligence. Featuring Watchbird, The Machine That Saved the World, and Defense Mech, this classic science fiction collection brings together unforgettable stories by...

Winner of the FT and Schroders Business Book of the Year Award Named a Best Book of 2025 by The Economist “Framed as a biography of Jensen Huang, the only CEO Nvidia has ever had, the book is also something more interesting and revealing: a window onto the intellectual, cultural, and economic...

The electrical grid is the most complex machine humanity has ever built—a continent-spanning network that must balance supply and demand in real time, every second, at exactly 60 hertz. We inhabit a 21st-century digital civilization powered by a 19th-century thermal machine jury-rigged to stay alive. In 'The Grid', systems expert Thomas Keel pulls back the curtain on the terrifying physics of our daily existence. From the nine seconds that plunged 55 million people into the 2003 Northeast blackout to the thermodynamic collapse of the 2021 Texas freeze, Keel explains the 'engineering veto'...

Liam Chapman cannot believe his good fortune. He just bought a real, working time machine at a garage sale for $3. Sure, it’s labeled “World’s Worst Time Machine,” but how bad could it be? The time machine, as it turns out, is so much worse than Liam could have imagined. First, it summons Thomas Edison, but not that Thomas Edison. This Thomas Edison is a 10-year-old aspiring gangster from 1933 who demands to be called “Tommy Twinkles” and is also very interested in robbing a bank of the future. 

In 1940, as Nazi Germany spread its wings of war, France stood secure in the knowledge that they possessed the largest, most formidable, and best equipped army in Europe. France also had a stalwart ally in Britain and the support of Holland and Belgium. But they were all about to face a new kind...

In today's data-driven world, real-world information rarely arrives in a single format. Documents contain interleaved text, tables, images, and diagrams; customer feedback spans written reviews, screenshots, and voice recordings; scientific reports integrate charts, figures, and narrative explanations. Mastering multimodal data analysis is no longer optional—it's essential for building intelligent, production-ready AI systems. Master Multimodal Data Analysis with LLMs and Python, written by Stone Fox, is the definitive hands-on guide for developers, data scientists, and AI engineers who ...