Ian Patterson

On 26 April 1937, the ancient Basque town of Guernica was destroyed by bombs in the Spanish civil war. This book traces the story of terror through World War II to Hiroshima. One of the most terrible ideas of the twentieth century was that of total war - war by the obliteration of whole civilian populations. The first instance of this in Europe occurred on 26 April 1937 when the ancient Basque town of Guernica was destroyed by bombs in the Spanish civil war.Almost at once the town became a media focus, and Picasso''s painting, which rapidly made Guernica the most famous image of total war, was only one of a huge number of paintings, films, novels, poems and plays to explore this new fear of death from the air. Since the first bomb was dropped from an Italian aeroplane over Libya in 1911, bombing became a central weapon in the armoury of European warfare. The zeppelin and bombing raids of World War I showed how effective they could be. Between the wars, apocalyptic ideas of the mass destruction of civilisation gave mass bombing a new currency of fear. This was the context in which news of the bombing of Guernica was received. Ian Patterson brilliantly traces this hidden story of terror through World War II to Hiroshima, and shows how the image of Guernica is just as relevant today, in the world of 9/11 and Iraq.

El ataque de Guernica fue el primer ejemplo de la “guerra total” que caracterizaría el siglo XX. En este libro Ian Patterson analiza Guernica como suceso y como símbolo, y su significado en la cultur

This is a book about books, about the subversive power of reading and the strange, enduring magic of books as objects. Ever since childhood, books have been at the centre of Ian Pattersons life, as a poet, teacher, translator, bookseller and collector. As he constructs the last of many libraries, he makes an impassioned case for the radical importance of reading in our lives - from Proust to Jilly Cooper, from golden-age detective novels to avant-garde poetry. Wise, irreverent and exhilaratingly wide-ranging, Books: A Manifesto reminds us that poems know things that we might not yet know ourselves, urges us to seek out the puzzles alive in the art of translation and celebrates the singular elasticity of the bookshop minute. But even more than this, the book insists on reading not as a luxury but a necessary part of reality: we live within language, and when we think, its with the tools that reading gives us. Our time of cultural and political crisis demands more than books - but without them, and without the breadth of knowledge, sense of history, awareness of alternatives and hope for the future they offer, things will not get better. At once a primer for enriching your own library and a manifesto for why that matters, this book is an invitation to a deeper, richer world of thought and feeling - and a reminder of just how much books matter.

A new world is emerging, one parthenogenetic birth at a time.In a near-future America where women have just achieved asexual reproduction, Samara yearns for freedom from her dying relationship, and a child of her ownfully her own.As parthenogenetic birth takes hold and the role of men in the survival of the species diminishes, protest and outcry sweep across the nation. Sierra, one of the first "partho babies", is bullied relentlessly as she grows up and seeks her place in this new pressure cooker of changing gender roles and norms.And in the aftermath of the "Days of Horror", a period of violent backlash from displaced men, a professor of history looks back on the rise of PG birth in an attempt to understand the impact of this era of upheaval on the world.Together, these three converging perspectives tell the story of a profound societal transformation that asks who gets to have autonomy, who gets to write the future, and who that future is for.

A stand-alone prequel to The Narrator Cycle for fans of mind-bending, darkly humorous sci-fi.Are you so sure youre the painter, and not the painting?Micah has a hangover, a looming deadline, and a very opinionated rat following him around the orbital station. No one else can see itwhich is definitely not ideal.Outside, the wealthy are fleeing Earth on seed ships. Inside, Micahs team has days to perfect their gene-editing tech, or be left behind. On top of that, Micahs unsure if reality is taking an extended vacation, or if his brain has finally short-circuited.Equal parts absurdly funny, sharp-edged, and human, Transition explores the events that started The Narrator Cycle. Long before Nicholas, Dorothy, and Charon, there was Micah, a dying earth, a talkative rat, and a questionis reality such a fixed thing?

2025 Colorado Book Awards Winner: Science Fiction2024 Discovery Editors Choice Award ShortlistFor fans of Red Rising, Altered Carbon, and the Bioshock franchise.How do you bargain sickness for life?Nicholas Fiveboroughs is a Sicko, someone that takes on others illnesses. In a city where diseases can be transferred, the rich buy longer lives without pain, and the poor get a short life of constant sickness. Maybe it was fate, or maybe someone is looking out for him, but after Nicholas barely survives his latest affliction, he gets the chance to try and change things. To finally stop the whole disease transfer network.Tensions escalate as Nicholas infiltrates a higher society he doesnt understand, and starts to fall for the very person he needs to manipulate to be successful. And between run-ins with a talking animal and genetically modified humans, the world around him just keeps getting stranger. Can Nicholas tear down the disease transfer architecture? And can he do it without losing his own humanity along the way?

Nicholas, Charon, and Dorothy are separated, and stranded in a cosmos they dont understand. Behind is a City that would kill them, and the cooling gulf of rage that split them. Their only landmarks now are the distant stars, galaxies, and antique wooden doors that litter the plane. Through each door, the promise of a new world brims with possibility, but all they find are dead ends. A translucent tunnel extends before them and shows their direction. Or does it determine it? Are they in control of their decisions, or is something else guiding them? And who, or what, is the Narrator?Cosmic in scale and scope, Transcendence follows on from the events of Transference. As Nick and Dorothy search the cosmos for each other, and answers, they find the signs of manipulation by an outside hand. Will they reconnect? And how far are they willing to go to be in charge of their own story?