Systems Science

The elves took everything. Following a bloodied slaughter of her whole race, and struggling to stay alive, she had no choice but to survive on her own. That was until the world changed. Her entire planet; a whole cluster was introduced to the vast universe by The System, or perhaps God. A universe filled with endless beings and civilizations that fought for power and dominance. After the integration, Blair finds herself in a forest surrounded by unknown beasts, peril lurking, alone. Alone and with nothing but the mentality to survive, she will have to get stronger in this unforgiving world.

Knowing where to start when learning a new skill can be a challenge, especially when the topic seems so vast. There can be so much information available that you can't even decide where to start. Or worse, you start down the path of learning and quickly discover too many concepts, commands, and nuances that aren't explained. What you learn in Linux for Beginners applies to any Linux environment including Ubuntu, Debian, Linux Mint, RedHat, Fedora, OpenSUSE, Slackware, and more.

Since 1980, the number of people in US prisons has increased more than 450 percent. Despite a crime rate that has been falling steadily for decades, California has led the way in this explosion, with what a state analyst called "the biggest prison building project in the history of the world". Golden Gulag provides the first detailed explanation for that buildup by looking at how political and economic forces conjoined to produce the prison boom.

Captain Picard has never encountered an opponent more powerful than Q, a being from another continuum who is dangerous, obnoxious, mysterious, and seemingly all-powerful. But now, Trelane has tapped in to an awesome power source that makes him more powerful than the entire continuum. Q warns that Trelane has become unspeakably dangerous - this time the stakes are all of creation. Read by John de Lancie.

The second brightest object in the sky, after the moon is Venus. It's also the only planet named after a woman. Learn more about bright, beautiful Venus, named for the Roman goddess of love and beauty.

A compelling new set of interviews on our changing and turbulent times with Noam Chomsky, one of the world's foremost thinkers In this collection of conversations, conducted from 2010 to 2012, Noam Chomsky explores the most immediate and urgent concerns: the future of democracy in the Arab world...

The sun's family of planets become a familiar place in this personal account of the lives of other worlds. Sobel explores the planets' origins and oddities through the lens of popular culture, from astrology, mythology, and science fiction to art, music, poetry, biography, and history. This intimate account is filled with fascination, beauty, and surprise.

Few subjects are more fundamental to modern life than electrical power. The systems that generate, transport, and distribute electricity are among the most essential contributors to modern industry, development, and everyday living. As energy demand grows and, with it, the electric power industry, more and more non-electrical professionals must make important policy and administrative decisions regarding the systems that power our world.

Marc and his party have finished their zeppelin and taken it out to try to discover other Safe Zones. Their intent is to set up trade routes between all the different Safe Zones in order to give them a better chance to survive. The second Safe Zone they discover with the zeppelin is nearly as large as Any Port. It even has its own ring of outlier Safe Zones, or a partial ring at least. It appears that several of the smaller Safe Zones have been taken and converted into dungeons. With the safety of the larger Safe Zone at stake, they bring the zeppelin down to help the larger Safe Zone.

The vampires that once haunted Wichita are gone, reduced to ash. But Terry’s real war is only beginning. Topeka is burning, caught in the ruthless crossfire of S-ranked tyrants locked in a game of conquest. While the city suffers, the supers wage war.

In 1983, Thomas Silverstein and Clayton Fountain, both serving life sentences at the U.S. Prison in Marion, Illinois, separately murdered two correction officers on the same day. The Bureau of Prisons condemned both men to the severest punishment that could legally be imposed, one created specifically for them. It was unofficially called "no human contact." Each initially spent nine months in a mattress-sized cell where the lights burned twenty-four hours a day. They were clothed only in boxer shorts, completely sealed off from the outside world with only their minds to occupy their time.

In Systems of Survival, Jane Jacobs identifies two distinct moral syndromes—one governing commerce, the other politics—and explores what happens when these two syndromes collide. She looks at business fraud and criminal enterprise, government’s overextended subsidies to agriculture, and transit police who abuse the system the are supposed to enforce, and asks us to consider instances in which snobbery is a virtue and industry a vice.

Here is the novelization of the premiere episode of Star Trek, Voyager, the unprecedented fourth television series based on Gene Roddenberry's vision of the future. It is the story of the crew of the Starship Voyager, who are hurled far across the galaxy and must team up with their most dangerous adversaries to return home. Read by Robert Picardo, and enhanced with sound effects and an original score!

Most will die. Some will survive. A small few will thrive. The mysterious Overlords destroyed all electronics on Earth, imposed a game-like System, and unleashed ravenous horrors upon the planet. Hi, I’m Zach. I was a production assistant at a Hollywood studio doing my best to make ends meet. That all changed when some unknown programmers imposed The System on Earth and destroyed life as we knew it. Preparing for the end of the world was my dad’s obsession, and I hope I picked up enough from him and the crazy Marksman abilities granted by the System to make it.

To gain his Master Class, John Lee made a deal with the Erethran Empire. Now, the empire has come to collect on the debt, forcing him to appear in their capital after his last fight. Thrown into Galactic politics of a militarized, system-based society, John will have to weigh consequences of the decisions he's been asked to make and confront the warped reality of a system-created empire. When politics, self-interest, and a human's stubbornness collide, the very stars are threatened.

Weaving together cutting-edge social science with riveting stories that take us from the front lines of the Volkswagen scandal to backstage at the Oscars, and from deep beneath the Gulf of Mexico to the top of Mount Everest, Chris Clearfield and András Tilcsik explain how the increasing complexity of our systems creates conditions ripe for failure and why our brains and teams can't keep up. They highlight the paradox of progress: Though modern systems have given us new capabilities, they've become vulnerable to surprising meltdowns - and even to corruption and misconduct.

Melvin is lost when Kalli returns to Gaia. After pushing his friends away, he turns to his newfound skills as a healer for some much-needed solace. Paired with an unlikely partner in crime, Melvin must once again rise to the occasion when an ominous message comes from another world. Kalli is dying.

Alec Karakatsanis doesn't think people who have gone to law school, passed the bar, and sworn to uphold the Constitution should be complicit in the mass caging of human beings - an everyday brutality inflicted disproportionately on the bodies and minds of poor people and people of color. Usual Cruelty is a profoundly radical reconsideration of the American "injustice system" by someone who is actively, wildly successfully, challenging it.

The Commander of Champions thrives in this environment. His powers can only grow stronger from here. Commander Jay Luckrun has a lot of names. One of those names is Beheader of the 72 Immortals. Everywhere he goes, many people and creatures are afraid of him for what he's achieved with his overpowered magic. Their fear is so great that Jay and his pantheon are facing the greatest fight Earth has ever witnessed—A war with the USA.

After an unfortunate accident, Handry is forced to wander a world he doesn't understand, searching for meaning. He soon discovers that the life he thought he knew is far stranger than he could even possibly imagine. Can an unlikely savior provide the answers to the questions he barely comprehends?