“In science fiction there is only a handful of books that stretch the mind—and this is one of them.”—Arthur C. Clarke In a moving story of sacrifice and triumph, human scientists establish a relationship with intelligent lifeforms—the cheela—living on Dragon’s Egg, a neutron star where one Earth hour is equivalent to hundreds of their years. The cheela culturally evolve from savagery to the discovery of science, and for a brief time, men are their diligent teachers. Praise for Dragon’s Egg “Bob Forward writes in the tradition of Hal Clement’s Mission of Gravity and carries it a giant step (how else?) forward.”—Isaac Asimov “Dragon’s Egg is superb. I couldn’t have written it; it required too much real physics.”—Larry Niven “This is one for the real science-fiction fan.”—Frank Herbert “Robert L. Forward tells a good story and asks a profound question. If we run into a race of creatures who live a hundred years while we live an hour, what can they say to us or we to them?”—Freeman J. Dyson “Forward has impeccable scientific credentials, and . . . big, original, speculative ideas.”—The Washington Post

A Deleuzian reading of Whitehead and a Whiteheadian reading of Deleuze open the possibility of a critical aesthetics of contemporary culture. In Without Criteria, Steven Shaviro proposes and explores a philosophical fantasy: imagine a world in which Alfred North Whitehead takes the place of Martin Heidegger. What if Whitehead, instead of Heidegger, had set the agenda for postmodern thought? Heidegger asks, “Why is there something, rather than nothing?” Whitehead asks, “How is it that there is always something new?” In a world where everything from popular music to DNA is being sampled and recombined, argues Shaviro, Whitehead's question is the truly urgent one. Without Criteria is Shaviro's experiment in rethinking postmodern theory, especially the theory of aesthetics, from a point of view that hearkens back to Whitehead rather than Heidegger. In working through the ideas of Whitehead and Deleuze, Shaviro also appeals to Kant, arguing that certain aspects of Kant's thought pave the way for the philosophical “constructivism” embraced by both Whitehead and Deleuze. Kant, Whitehead, and Deleuze are not commonly grouped together, but the juxtaposition of them in Without Criteria helps to shed light on a variety of issues that are of concern to contemporary art and media practices.

This is the first English translation of The Adventures of the Ingenious Alfanhui, a picaresque novel in which the hero, a magical little boy, goes in search not of his fortune but of knowledge, growing both wiser and possibly sadder in the process. These are the adventures of a magical little boy which will appeal to both children and adults.

The one remaining human in a world populated with vampires struggles to survive.