Maps in a Mirror brings together nearly all of Orson Scott Card's short fiction written between 1977 and 1990. For those readers who have followed this remarkable talent since the beginning, here are all those amazing stories gathered together in one place, with some extra surprises as well. For the hundreds of thousands who are newly come to Card, here is chance to experience the wonder of a writer so versatile that he can handle everything from traditional narrative poetry to modern experimental fiction with equal ease and grace. The brilliant story-telling of the Alvin Maker books is no accident; the breathless excitement evoked by the Ender books is not a once-in-a-lifetime experience. In this enormous volume are forty-six stories, plus ten long, intensely personal essays, unique to this volume. In them the author reveals some of his reasons and motivations for writing, with a good deal of autobiography into the bargain. "One of the genre's most convincing storytellers. An important volume."--Library Journal At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Pop Quiz: • Have you ever woken up and felt bad about yourself for no reason whatsoever? • Have you spent time trying to figure out how to get into the popular group at school? • Have you ever been embarrassed by your dad singing in the car with your friends? • Have you noticed that things are starting to feel different than ever before? • Do you change your opinion—or even your personality around different friends? • Do you get overwhelmed with all of the thoughts and feelings bouncing around inside of you? If you answered yes to even one of these questions, you passed the quiz. That means you’re a normal girl, who is going through the confusing changes of growing up! Sometimes it might feel like you woke up in a whole new world—kind of like Dorothy, in the Wizard of Oz. The good news is, you’re not alone. Melissa and Sissy, the authors of this book, think they can help you figure out some of the big questions in your life. Even if you haven’t asked them out loud, chances are you’ve started to wonder: • Who am I? • What do I want? • What should I do? • Who do I want to be? While they’re no longer teenagers, Melissa and Sissy remember a bit about what it was like to be 11 or 12—almost a teenager. But more than that, they talk with girls who are a lot like you every day—girls who are feeling confused or overwhelmed, who are feeling like they’re changing in ways they don’t understand—physically, emotionally, and spiritually—and they feel like their lives are out of their own control. In this book, Melissa and Sissy, along with girls your age, will share some insight into what’s going on in your life. You’ll find that you’re not going crazy—you’re just growing up and becoming the person God has created you to be.

Maps in a Mirror brings together nearly all of Orson Scott Card's short fiction written between 1977 and 1990. For those readers who have followed this remarkable talent since the beginning, here are all those amazing stories gathered together in one place, with some extra surprises as well. For the hundreds of thousands who are newly come to Card, here is chance to experience the wonder of a writer so versatile that he can handle everything from traditional narrative poetry to modern experimental fiction with equal ease and grace. The brilliant story-telling of the Alvin Maker books is no accident; the breathless excitement evoked by the Ender books is not a once-in-a-lifetime experience. In this enormous volume are forty-six stories, plus ten long, intensely personal essays, unique to this volume. In them the author reveals some of his reasons and motivations for writing, with a good deal of autobiography into the bargain. "One of the genre's most convincing storytellers. An important volume."--Library Journal

An exploration of Spanish culture in Spain and the Americas traces the social, political, and economic forces that created that culture.

This work is a fresh look at the Maps of the Wilderland in The Hobbit, leading to the discovery that Professor Tolkien drew the imaginary maps from the Map of Wales back to front, or in reverse. The maps of the Shire in The Lord of The Rings are drawn likewise, of England. ‘“They are on their way to visit the land of their fathers, away east beyond Mirkwood,” put in Gandalf...’ Gandalf’s talk of the ‘land of their fathers’ is, by translation of its national anthem, Professor J.R.R. Tolkien’s hidden clue to the geography of Wales, which we learn the Professor loved, including its language. The focal point of The Hobbit, the Lonely Mountain, is identified as Cadair Idris of North-West Wales. Many of the topographical features of the Mountain coincide. The volcano-mouth Lake of the Lonely Mountain so resembles Llyn Cau of Cadair Idris. The marvel is that the lake has been overlooked so long: not only by Smaug the Dragon, but also by most commentators on The Hobbit. Which reader remembers there is a lake at all? Stephen interprets many of the allusions borrowed by Tolkien in his fantastic tale, including Beorn at the Carrock, the herons of Wales at Lake Town, and dragon fire at the Withered Heath. The work is divided into nine parts, with three site groupings. His unique focus on Tolkien’s map-making methodology will make his book relevant not only to Tolkien fans worldwide, but those interested in geography too.

The images on the Marseille Tarot cards started out as illustrations of Sumero-Bablyonian myths, preserved through the centuries on cylinder seals. They were copied by people who didn't understand them but who also had access to some form, whether written or oral, of the wisdom encoded in those myths and in Bible stories. That wisdom is identical with Sufi teachings as espoused by teachers like Ibn al 'Arabi, Rumi, and others, including Gurdjieff and his teachings about the enneagram. The myths and stories are decoded in this book using the multiple meanings conveyed by Arabic consonantal word roots and by reference to those doctrines and to modern discoveries about conditioning and the hemispheric specialization of the brain. Arabic is the closest existing descendant of the ancient Protosemitic language. The Kabbalah, long rumoured to be linked to the Tarot, is shown to come from the same sources, and originally had eight, not ten, sefiroth. The visual evidence alone is overwhelming: the mystery of where the Tarot comes from has been definitively solved.

A collection of science fiction and fantasy tales by the acclaimed author offers readers ten excursions into the realm of the fantastic and the mythic. Orson Scott Card's Monkey Sonatas: Fables and Fantasies is part of the Maps in a Mirrors series of the author's extraordinary range of collected fiction. Introduction Unaccompanied Sonata A Cross-Country Trip to Kill Richard Nixon The Porcelain Salamander Middle Woman The Bully and the Beast The Princess and the Bear Sandmagic The Best Day A Plague of Butterflies The Monkeys Thought ‘Twas All in Fun Afterword At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Technology doesn't flow smoothly; it's the big surprises that matter, and Yale computer expert David Gelernter sees one such giant leap right on the horizon. Today's small scale software programs are about to be joined by vast public software works that will revolutionize computing and transform society as a whole. One such vast program is the "Mirror World." Imagine looking at your computer screen and seeing reality--an image of your city, for instance, complete with moving traffic patterns, or a picture that sketches the state of an entire far-flung corporation at this second. These representations are called Mirror Worlds, and according to Gelernter they will soon be available to everyone. Mirror Worlds are high-tech voodoo dolls: by interacting with the images, you interact with reality. Indeed, Mirror Worlds will revolutionize the use of computers, transforming them from (mere) handy tools to crystal balls which will allow us to see the world more vividly and see into it more deeply. Reality will be replaced gradually, piece-by-piece, by a software imitation; we will live inside the imitation; and the surprising thing is--this will be a great humanistic advance. We gain control over our world, plus a huge new measure of insight and vision. In this fascinating book--part speculation, part explanation--Gelernter takes us on a tour of the computer technology of the near future. Mirror Worlds, he contends, will allow us to explore the world in unprecedented depth and detail without ever changing out of our pajamas. A hospital administrator might wander through an entire medical complex via a desktop computer. Any citizen might explore the performance of the local schools, chat electronically with teachers and other Mirror World visitors, plant software agents to report back on interesting topics; decide to run for the local school board, hire a campaign manager, and conduct the better part of the campaign itself--all by interacting with the Mirror World. Gelernter doesn't just speculate about how this amazing new software will be used--he shows us how it will be made, explaining carefully and in detail how to build a Mirror World using technology already available. We learn about "disembodied machines," "trellises," "ensembles," and other computer components which sound obscure, but which Gelernter explains using familiar metaphors and terms. (He tells us that a Mirror World is a microcosm just like a Japanese garden or a Gothic cathedral, and that a computer program is translated by the computer in the same way a symphony is translated by a violinist into music.) Mirror Worlds offers a lucid and humanistic account of the coming software revolution, told by a computer scientist at the cutting edge of his field.

With evidence from prose romance, book illustration, theatrical performance, cosmological ceilings, and almanacs, Mirror of the World proposes a new, interdisciplinary literary and cartographic history of the influence of Ptolemaic geography in England.

A study of Perso-Islamic kingship in India, as a way to understanding the political and cultural history of Muslim courts in India and their legacy.