Animal Machines

For most of human history the world was a magical and enchanted place ruled by forces beyond our understanding. The rise of science and Descartes's division of mind from world made materialism our ruling paradigm, in the process asking whether our own consciousness—i.e., souls—might be illusions. Now the inexorable rise of technology, with artificial intelligences that surpass our comprehension and control, and the spread of digital metaphors for self-understanding, the core questions of existence urgently require rethinking.

Artist, technologist, and philosopher James Bridle’s Ways of Being is a brilliant, searching exploration of different kinds of intelligence—plant, animal, human, artificial—and how they transform our understanding of humans’ place in the cosmos. What does it mean to be intelligent? Is it something unique to humans, or shared with other beings—beings of flesh, wood, stone, and silicon? The last few years have seen rapid advances in “artificial” intelligence.

Rainbow the Chameleon was very happy with her friends at the zoo. Every day she got to change colors for all of the kids, and they laughed and giggled at all of the different colors of the rainbow that she could change into. Then one evening while sneaking around the zoo (as the animals did when all of the humans went home for the day) her friend Casey the Frilled Lizard found a secret room hidden below one of the buildings, and inside that room was an Amazing Machine! This crazy contraption was able to duplicate things - even animals! But when two different animals went in, out came one ...

Time travel meets urban fantasy. Book 1 of The Time Corps Chronicles The Time Corps Chronicles is a fantasy series that moves from worlds much like our own to those where the mythical is real and the impossible is true. Clockworks, fey, ancient spirits, time machines, talking animals and other things both beautiful and strange wait for the travelers daring enough to find them. But moving between worlds comes at a price. Medical student Felicia Sanchez is only trying to help an injured man when she slips through a time rip and into 19th century New Orleans, one very different than the one ...

Recent years have seen rapid advances in 'artificial' intelligence, which increasingly appears to be something stranger than we ever imagined. At the same time, we are becoming more aware of the other intelligences which have been with us all along, unrecognised. These other beings are the animals, plants and natural systems that surround us, and are slowly revealing their complexity and knowledge - just as the new technologies we've built are threatening to cause their extinction, and ours.

Time travel meets urban fantasy. Book 2 of The Time Corps Chronicles The Time Corps Chronicles is a fantasy series that moves from worlds much like our own to those where the mythical is real and the impossible is true. Clockworks, fey, ancient spirits, time machines, talking animals and other things both beautiful and strange wait for the travelers daring enough to find them. But moving between worlds comes at a price. Time Travelers aren’t born. They’re made. Determined to return a twenty-first-century woman to her own world, Professor Seamus Connor has spent six long years—since ...

Time travel meets urban fantasy. Book 4 of The Time Corps Chronicles The Time Corps Chronicles is a fantasy series that moves from worlds much like our own to those where the mythical is real and the impossible is true. Clockworks, fey, ancient spirits, time machines, talking animals and other things both beautiful and strange wait for the travelers daring enough to find them. But moving between worlds comes at a price. When Astrid, a fledgling psychopomp, sent her cousin Elliot to the Library, she thought she was saving his life. Now he is trapped in an endless building that exists in the ...

There has been a lot of ink devoted to discussions of how robots will replace us and take our jobs. But MIT Media Lab researcher and technology policy expert Kate Darling argues just the opposite, and that treating robots with a bit of humanity, more like the way we treat animals, will actually serve us better.

Time travel meets urban fantasy. Book 5 of The Time Corps Chronicles The Time Corps Chronicles is a fantasy series that moves from worlds much like our own to those where the mythical is real and the impossible is true. Clockworks, fey, ancient spirits, time machines, talking animals and other things both beautiful and strange wait for the travelers daring enough to find them. But moving between worlds comes at a price. The existence of the Time Corps has always been problematic, from the origin of their time machines to the unstable time loops created by their asynchronous relationships. ...

Time travel meets urban fantasy. Book 3 of The Time Corps Chronicles The Time Corps Chronicles is a fantasy series that moves from worlds much like our own to those where the mythical is real and the impossible is true. Clockworks, fey, ancient spirits, time machines, talking animals and other things both beautiful and strange wait for the travelers daring enough to find them. But moving between worlds comes at a price. Astrid dreams of escaping a dull job at the California boardwalk and moving to New York for art school. But after a series of unexplainable events, she is forced into a ...

Sixth book in the Arthur series - Arthur's Cars, Trucks and Monster Machines. 

Marcus is in trouble. He didn’t think his friend Laurence would actually believe him when he said that his super brainy aunt built the very first time machine. He only made up the story in a spur-of-the-moment bid to win a silly argument! Now how on earth will he make the story come true?

Life is hard in the poverty-stricken village of Rabylon, where rabbits work every day from sunup to sundown, earning just enough carrots to survive - except for Mayor Monty Cottonsworth III, who lives in the lap of luxury as his villagers starve. Twin bunnies Remy and Rhea, fed up with working so long and so hard with nothing to show for it, desperately desire a better life, but don't know how to achieve it. Just when they are about to give up hope, they are inspired by the story of a mythical carrot paradise that may exist on the other side of a big, green hill outside of their village.