This is one of the best
novels about autism I’ve read, even though the author and publisher insist the
main character’s condition is not necessarily autism.
The author, Mark Haddon,
wisely chooses to show us the world exclusively through the eyes of a teenage British
boy named Christopher who is afflicted with the dark gift. Because autistic
brains are always trying to figure things out, always scrutinizing and
analyzing the world in our own idiosyncratic way, Haddon turns the boy’s
encounter with a dead dog into a detective story.
One night, Christopher finds
a neighbor’s dog dead in the yard with a fork sticking out of it. This episode
drives all the events in the book as Christopher begins investigating the
situation. In reality, he is learning about the hidden adult relationships
between his neighbors and his parents, and between his mom and dad, but for
autistic Christopher, these mundane human mysteries take on almost supernatural
importance.
In the end, Christopher must
learn to cope with the dark realities of adult life. But the journey he goes on
is filled with humor, suspense, drama, and love for all the richly drawn
characters. Christopher earns his happy-ish ending, which sheds an empathetic
light on what it’s like to be autistic from the inside.
'Mark Haddon's portrayal of an emotionally dissociated mind is a superb achievement... Wise and bleakly funny' Ian McEwan
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is a murder mystery novel like no other. The detective, and narrator, is Christopher Boone. Christopher is fifteen and has Asperger's Syndrome. He knows a very great deal about maths and very little about human beings. He loves lists, patterns and the truth. He hates the colours yellow and brown and being touched. He has never gone further than the…
The Fifth Season showcases a great new voice and a great new world in
speculative fiction.
The story opens on a broken Earth where some monstrous
calamity befell the planet in the distant past, a calamity that somehow
involves the core of the Earth. Life today is dystopic and repressive, bound up
in systems of control. These control systems are mostly designed to manage the
“orogenes”—humans who are endowed with the ability to create or subdue
earthquakes. The orogenes inspire fear, envy, and covetousness among others,
and an oppressive empire has refined its ability to keep them subdued and
obedient.
The Fifth Season tells the story of one orogene woman who attempts to
find and rescue her kidnapped daughter and what she finds in this dark and
dangerous world.
The novel is a masterpiece of seamlessly integrating world building,
plot, character development, and theme.
At the end of the world, a woman must hide her secret power and find her kidnapped daughter in this "intricate and extraordinary" Hugo Award winning novel of power, oppression, and revolution. (The New York Times)
This is the way the world ends. . .for the last time.
It starts with the great red rift across the heart of the world's sole continent, spewing ash that blots out the sun. It starts with death, with a murdered son and a missing daughter. It starts with betrayal, and long dormant wounds rising up to fester.
The Victorian Internet traces the development
and impact of the telegraph in the United States in the nineteenth century, and
explicitly draws parallels to the emergence of the Internet in the twenty-first
century.
It is a wonderful source of perspective on the tumult and turmoil of
our Digital Age by reminding us that any major new means of communication is
sure to generate social upheaval, including a new generation of winners and
losers.
The book is also very provocative and
enlightening by sharing plenty of anecdotes about how people reacted to the
emergence of the telegraph—how ordinary folks immediately used it for love,
business, and crime, giving rise to entirely new social phenomena and
transforming American industry.
For those of us trying to understand
consciousness, autism, and higher minds, The Victorian Internet is a wonderful
guide to the transformative power of increased connectivity.
A new paperback edition of the book the Wall Street Journal dubbed “a Dot-Com cult classic,” by the bestselling author of A History of the World in 6 Glasses-the fascinating story of the telegraph, the world's first “Internet.”
The Victorian Internet tells the colorful story of the telegraph's creation and remarkable impact, and of the visionaries, oddballs, and eccentrics who pioneered it, from the eighteenth-century French scientist Jean-Antoine Nollet to Samuel F. B. Morse and Thomas Edison. The electric telegraph nullified distance and shrank the world quicker and further than ever before or since, and its story mirrors and predicts…
Neuroscientist Dr. Ogi Ogas
explains how autism works in the brain—and how to fix it. Autism: How It's Made
narrates Ogi’s personal journey of autism: how he discovered he was afflicted
with the dark gift, how he rejected the medical model of autism, mastered
mathematical neuroscience, and discovered the neural source of autism in the
brain. He also shares the techniques he used to overcome his autism, once he
understood its underlying physiology, including the Black Castle Strategy, a
powerful technique for routing around neural circuits damaged by autism.
If you have autism or
suspect you have autism, this book will change your life by changing the way
you think about yourself and your dark gift.
