Showing results by narrator "Richard David" in All Categories

In the year 2057, the last freelance private investigator, partnered with an experimental AI named Harv, solves cases involving androids, future tech wizards, and all sorts of mayhem.... When Ona Thompson, a genetically altered superwoman, media darling, and one of the indestructible Thompson Quads, discovers her sister's murdered body, a freelance private investigator who is wired to an experimental AI named HARV comes to the rescue.

Since 2015 the Pin Drop Short Story Award has discovered new and exciting talent from around the world and showcased new works from more familiar names. This anthology collects the 2017 final short-list, including the winning entry, ‘Morelia Spilota’ by Cherise Saywell - an absorbing tale of a priest, a hitchhiker and a snake together and alone in the Australian countryside; which of them should be most wary of being bitten, and by whom?

Two hundred years after the events chronicled in Deathstalker Destiny, it is a golden age for the Human Empire. Lewis Deathstalker is a remote descendant of the legendary Owen and foremost among the Paragons, an elite force of noble warriors in service to a benevolent constitutional monarchy. The new monarch, Douglas Campbell, grandson of Robert and Constance, and his reluctant Champion Lewis Deathstalker find themselves in deep and treacherous waters on Campbell’s first day in Parliament. 

The fall of the baronies has led Earth deeper into the darkest days of a bitter struggle as old as the planet itself — a war for righteous destiny. As a force of elite rebels dares to break humanity free from the iron chains of alien rule, they face an ever-changing matrix of cunning and retribution. Area 51 remains a mysterious enclave of eerie synergy and unleashed power — a nightmare poised to take the world to hell. A madman has marshaled an army of incorporeal, alien evil, a virus with intelligence now scything through human hosts like locusts. 

Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart. They can lift our lives into locations, people and experiences with a sweep of landscape, narration, feelings and emotions that is difficult to achieve elsewhere. This decade is resplendent with literature and its many prodigiously talented authors who write on as varied a range of subjects as might be thought possible. Yet each is studded with careful literary precision and narrative verve. It is a remarkable decade.

Desperately short of supplies, Ryan and his companions are forced to seek help at the prosperous-looking ville of Amity Springs. Hired on to retrieve a stolen relic, they quickly become caught up in an escalating power struggle between two strong-willed lady barons. Each woman covets the cache of predark goods buried in the ville's backyard. But they are not alone in their desire. And all that stands between a motherlode of buried bounty and the destructive power of unchecked greed is Ryan's grim determination to survive another day.

When a diabolical superfoe acquires a superlaser that uses hypercolor to control emotion, he throws the world into a kaleidoscope of deadly mood swings. CURE goes on red alert. And if things aren't black enough, a rival nation has seen the mind-blowing potential of beaming mood-altering color from satellites...and rendering entire nations defenseless.

Richard David Precht stellt die radikalste Frage unserer Zeit: Wenn Künstliche Intelligenz nicht nur schneller denkt, sondern auch schöpferischer arbeitet als der Mensch – was bleibt dann von Kultur? In seinem neuen Essay entwirft Precht ein eindringliches Szenario vom Ende der geistigen Selbstverwirklichung. Wo früher Kunst, Bildung und Kreativität Sinn stifteten, herrscht nun die Sofortness der Maschine. KI ersetzt nicht nur Arbeit, sondern das Erzählen, das Verstehen, das Menschsein selbst.

Unsere Kinder, die heute eingeschult werden, gehen im Jahr 2070 in Rente. Doch wir überfrachten sie mit Wissensstoff, den sie für ihr Leben kaum brauchen...

What do you get when you cross a maniac with a microwave? An army experiment gone wrong - and a walking power plant with a compulsion to kill. Complete with optical sensors, capacitors and rechargeable batteries, Elizu Roote has been transformed to a bionic monster whose death zaps are nothing sort of...electrifying. Not even a body trained to the perfection that is Sinanju can withstand a jolt from this human lightning bug. Remo's in a coma and now it's up to Chiun and Dr. Smith to find a way to short out this live wire's lethal charge, ASAP.

Invisible swarms of insects are on the rampage, heading toward America's heartland. Immune to pesticides, the creatures are consuming farms, leveling wheat and cornfields. On the frontlines, Remo and the Master of Sinanju face not only the insurgent insects, but the Iowa Disorganized Militia - convinced this pestilence is actually a government conspiracy.

It's become the fastest - and surest - way to get from here to eternity. Somebody is playing the railroads like a giant train set, causing high-speed derailments that strew the rails with headless victims from coast to coast. And could the repeated sightings of a ghostly samurai swordsman be fact or mass hysteria? As the carnage continues unchecked and the body count mounts, Dr. Harold Smith suspects the train terror is merely a decoy for the real target. 

Irishman Doug Monahan runs a fencing crew outside the south Texas town of Twin Wells, digging post-holes and stringing red painted barbed wire for ranchers as protection against wandering stock, rustlers and land hungry thugs. Monahan's fencing operation is opposed by Captain Andrew Rinehart, a former Confederate officer and an old-school open range baron of the huge R Cross spread. With his brutal foreman, Archer Spann, assigned to the violent work, Rinehart wages a barbed wire war against Doug Monahan. And neither side takes prisoners!

Richard III completes the cycle of plays covering the Wars of the Roses. It’s the story of Richard, duke of Gloucester’s villainous plan to take the throne. It is a tale of jealousy, manipulation and deceit based on Sir Thomas More's unfinished - and largely untrue - History of King Richard III.... 

The new body culture is finally bringing its rewards, thanks to a hormone treatment that rapidly restructures body fat to muscle - all overnight, during a true beauty snooze. But it's way-out expensive and only the rich and famous can indulge. After all, what's a thousand bucks a day when the result is a body to die for?

Once a fearsome warrior of the new order, Kane discovers a secret that has damned humanity since the dawn of history. Now banished as an enemy of the state, he joins forces with Brigid Baptiste, keeper of the archives, and Grant, brother-in-arms and innovative weapons specialist. In the place that was once called New Mexico, Kane finds the first hidden clues to humanity's future.

This latest installment in Johnstone's series about frontiersman Jamie MacCallister finds the former gunfighter, now 50, leading a serene life of retirement in Colorado even as his sons are fighting on both sides of the Civil War. Summoned to Washington, Jamie is offered the position of chief scout for the Union by Lincoln himself. But though the rugged Westerner loathes slavery, he loves states' rights more and, after a meeting with Robert E. Lee, he signs up with the Confederacy as commander of a guerrilla band.

Algernon Blackwood was born on 14th March 1869 in Shooter’s Hill, South East London, to a religious middle-class family. His mother was a widowed Duchess and his father was a Post Office administrator. Blackwood was interested in the paranormal and the supernatural at an early age, and had a thirst for anything on Buddhism, other Oriental philosophies, mysticism and occultism. In his writings the weaving of the supernatural into his various works, from ghost stories and children’s stories to plays and long novels is clearly seen.

Valentine sets off from Verona for Milan to see the world. Proteus stays at home because of his love for Julia. She is in love with him, but neither knows of the other's love until Lucetta shows Julia a love letter from Proteus. He is reading her reply when his father, Antonio, sends him to the Duke's court to join Valentine. The lovers take their leave and swear eternal constancy.

After York's claims to the throne, Henry changes the succession and makes York his heir, disinheriting his own son. Henry's queen kills York, and York's son Edward seizes the throne. Henry is imprisoned several times and eventually killed by King Edward's brother, Richard.