A dead man hangs from the portal of St Paul Chapel in Damascus. He was a Muslim officer and he was murdered. But when Detective Barudi sets out to interrogate the man’s mysterious widow, the Secret Service takes the case away from him. Barudi continues to investigate clandestinely and discovers the murderer’s motive: it is a blood feud between the Mushtak and Shahin clans, reaching back to the beginnings of the 20th century. And, linked to it, a love story that can have no happy ending, for reconciliation has no place within the old tribal structures. Rafik Schami dazzling novel spans a century of Syrian history in which politics and religions continue to torment an entire people. Simultaneously, his poetic stories from three generations tell of the courage of lovers who risk death sooner than deny their passions. He has also written a heartfelt tribute to his hometown Damascus and a great and moving hymn to the power of love.

The endurance of Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon on the Billboard Top 100 Chart is legendary, and its continuing sales and ongoing radio airplay ensure its inclusion on almost every conceivable list of rock's greatest albums. This collection of essays provides indispensable studies of the monumental 1973 album from a variety of musical, cultural, literary and social perspectives. The development and change of the songs is considered closely, from the earliest recordings through to the live, filmed performance at London's Earls Court in 1994. The band became almost synonymous with audio-visual innovations, and the performances of the album at live shows were spectacular moments of mass-culture although Roger Waters himself spoke out against such mass spectacles. The band's stage performances of the album serve to illustrate the multifaceted and complicated relationship between modern culture and technology. The album is therefore placed within the context of developments in late 1960s/early 1970s popular music, with particular focus on the use of a variety of segues between tracks which give the album a multidimensional unity that is lacking in Pink Floyd's later concept albums. Beginning with 'Breathe' and culminating in 'Eclipse', a tonal and motivic coherence unifies the structure of this modern song cycle. The album is also considered in the light of modern day 'tribute' bands, with a discussion of the social groups who have the strongest response to the music being elaborated alongside the status of mediated representations and their relation to the 'real' Pink Floyd.

The liberation of Summersun brings the wrath of the universe upon the Silver Dragon crew. Sandmen stole away Commander Reynard, and not a single myth in the galaxy speaks of them taking anyone alive—ever. Political tensions mount across the galaxy, caused by the crew’s direct participation in the assassination of Commodore Micah Donkor and the kidnapping of Princess Aurora. VP-Admiral Maxtin, with the looming death of his old ally and superior Vice-Presidential Admiral Easter, enters a power struggle with Easter’s war-eager new favorite: Admiral Kantian. While the Silver Dragon crew tries to find a way to search for Reynard and navigate the political upheaval they helped set in motion, the Sandmen besiege them. They manipulate the crew’s already fragile relationships. When crew members begin sabotaging one another, trust wears thin. The crew members journey across unknown planets, dreamscapes, and even hostile alternate realities to come together and fight beings who use their darkest fears and desires against them.

The Dark Side of Technology is intended as a powerful wake-up call to the potential dangers that could, in the near future, destroy our current advanced civilizations. The author examines how fragile our dependence on electronic communications, information storage, and satellites is, as vulnerability increases in an age of raising security concerns. This weakness is evident from the exponential rise in cyber-crime and terrorism. Satellites are crucial to modern-day living, but they can be destroyed by energetic space debris or damaged by solar emissions. Destruction of data, communications, and electrical power grids would bring disaster to advanced nations. Such events could dramatically change our social and economic landscapes within the next 10-20 years. New technology equally impacts employment, agriculture, biology, medicine, transport, languages, and our social well-being. This book explores both the good and the bad aspects of technological advances, in order to raise awareness and promote caution. Technology may be impressive, but we need to be mindful of potential negative future effects. We ought to seriously consider the long term consequences of an increasing failure to pursue healthy life styles, use of ineffective antibiotics, genetic mutations, and the destruction of food supplies and natural resources. The diverse topics covered aims to show why we must act now to plan for both the predictable downsides of technology, and also develop contingency plans for potential major catastrophes, including natural events where we cannot define accurate time scales.

Slow to rise in the literary world, Octavia Estelle Butler cultivated musings on earth's future, reaching massive critical acclaim in the process. This companion will complement book club discussions and classroom lessons for the closest possible readings of Butler's science fiction and her texts on racism and pollution. A maven of speculative fiction so prescient that it hovers between tocsin and prophecy, Butler survives through her print stories, essays, novels and musings on individualism and compromise. This book guides the reader on a variety of Butler pieces, from her most obscure titles to her historical entries and pieces that speculate upon science, metaphysics, linguistics, psychology, writing and religion. The text serves as a guide through the depths of Octavia Butler's works and reinforces the reasons for which her name so often appears on reading lists for higher learning.