Several miles away, the great marble city of Naydalt is in celebration of its hero. The residents of the city feast and cheer for the entrance of Naydalt. Naydalt, one of the oldest humanoids on the planet, has emerged from the mines to partake in the celebration in his honor. Not only is Naydalt one of the oldest but he is also arguably the strongest humanoid. The citizens are also celebrating the finished construction of their great city. Each building is a monolith towering over the once-empty surface of the land. They have yet to be used and do not have a scratch on them; one can almost see their reflection in the fresh marble. At nearly all intersections, there is a fountain bursting with liquid methane, creating a sort of white noise throughout the city. It was, Naydalt thought, beautiful but certainly had more excess than the mines of Staycon, where the humanoids lived and where Naydalt is rising from to see the celebration in his honor.

Sinclair Ross’ 1941 novel As For Me and My House is a masterpiece of Canadian literature, a stunning evocation of the Prairies and their inhabitants during the Depression of the Thirties. With The Lamp at Noon and Other Stories, an original New Canadian Library collection, Ross reveals further dimensions of his fictional universe. A woman’s impulsive infidelity leads to tragedy. A sudden hailstorm destroys hope. A boy learns to conquer a beautiful wild horse. A little girl dreams about a circus. Against the isolated, haunting landscapes of summer droughts and winter blizzards, the men and women of Ross’ stories grapple with fate against almost impossible odds. Marked by a legacy of pride that will not suffer defeat, Ross’ unyielding characters are cut off from their loved ones by obstinacy and defiance. Their tragedy is not that they suffer, but that they suffer alone. The sensitivity, compassion, and subtlety with which Ross portrays human aspirations and failings remain to this day unequalled in Canadian fiction.

This highly original work explores the concept of self-awareness or self-consciousness in Buddhist thought. Its central thesis is that the Buddhist theory of self-cognition originated in a soteriological discussion of omniscience among the Mahasamghikas, and then evolved into a topic of epistemological inquiry among the Yogacarins. To illustrate this central theme, this book explores a large body of primary sources in Chinese, Pali, Sanskrit and Tibetan, most of which are presented to an English readership for the first time. It makes available important resources for the study of the Buddhist philosophy of mind.

Nestled 300 km north of Oslo lies the quaint valley of Hessdalen, home to unique sightings that have puzzled residents and scientists alike. Regular phenomena light up the skies – but are these mysterious lights a portal for communicating with inhabited worlds beyond Earth? For over 30 years, research teams have studied the phenomena yet the secrets of Hessdalen persist. This book explores deeper questions sparked by the valley’s unexplained occurrences. Is Earth an ordinary cosmic body among millions, or somehow unique? We know life emerged nearly four billion years ago but still do not fully grasp the physical and chemical processes enabling this. With expanding resources to study space, might we someday soon detect signatures of extraterrestrial life, whether in our solar system or on distant exoplanets? The final part invites philosophical reflection on the acute fragility of our biosphere and humanity’s place in the vast Universe. As an astrophysicist at the University of Picardie Jules Verne in France, the author weaves empirical science and speculative inquiry to probe Hessdalen’s confounding lights, the exceptional nature of Earth, and the environmental precariousness of this rare life-sustaining planet.