This daring, all-new anthology showcases some of the genre's biggest names and best newcomers--and sets the standard for fantasy in the 21st century. Included are new stories by Neil Gaiman, Harry Turtledove, and more.

This acclaimed book on the Wright Brothers takes the reader straight to the heart of their remarkable achievement, focusing on the technology and offering a clear, concise chronicle of precisely what they accomplished and how they did it. This book deals with the process of the invention of the airplane and how the brothers identified and resolved a range of technical puzzles that others had attempted to solve for a century. Step by step, the book details the path of invention (including the important wind tunnel experiments of 1901) which culminated in the momentous flight at Kitty Hawk in 1903, the first major milestone in aviation history. Enhanced by original photos, designs, drawings, notebooks, letters and diaries of the Wright Brothers, Visions of a Flying Machine is a fascinating book that will be of interest to engineers, historians, enthusiasts, or anyone interested in the process of invention.

Reports of dreams, journeys into the heavens, and other alternate states of consciousness abound in the Old and New Testaments and in extrabiblical literature. While some scholars have considered such reports to be simple literary devices, John J. Pilch a leading expert in social scientific interpretation of the Bible believes otherwise. As Pilch points out, anthropological research on over 400 representative cultures in the world shows that more than ninety percent of these cultures have reported such experiences routinely. Factual or not, he says, biblical accounts of alternate consciousness are both plausible and significant because they constitute a very common, real, human experience in their respective cultures. Drawing on insights from from anthropology, cognitive neuroscience, psychology, and the social sciences, Pilch investigates and interprets Old and New Testament accounts of dreams, visions, journeys into the heavens, and other alternate states of consciousness within their cultural contexts. The result is a fresh and intriguing take on familiar biblical events. Flights of the Soul sheds new light on such things as these: * Ezekiel s prophetic visions * Enoch s sky journeys * Jesus transfiguration and ascension * Resurrection appearances in the Gospels * Paul s ecstatic vision on the road to Damascus * John s heavenly journeys described in Revelation

A pioneering rocket scientist and collector of space images shares his collection of art and photography spanning four centuries of imagination and engineering about space travel. 20,000 first printing.

Explains how the Wright Brothers identified and resolved each technical obstacle to the construction of a flying machine and why they succeeded where so many had failed.