Here are 25 books that Who Owns This Sentence? A History of Copyrights and Wrongs fans have personally recommended if you like
Who Owns This Sentence? A History of Copyrights and Wrongs.
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After experimenting with fictional digitized worlds for the greater part of a decade, my writing journey has led me to discover a new, never-before-tried flavour of science fiction. My name is Louise Blackwick and I am the creator of Neon Science-Fiction – a subgenre of sci-fi that combines stylistic, thematic, and aesthetic elements of Post-Cyberpunk, Cyber noir, and Nanopunk. The reading list I compiled includes five science fiction stories that both influenced and facilitated the birth of this fresh and hopefully thought-provoking new genre. I hope Neon Sci-Fi can be a stimulating new addition for science fiction readers and authors alike.
I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream is the first title on my list that is merely a short story. That said, what Harlan Ellison’s Hugo Award-winning sci-fi tale lacks in length, it makes up in complexity. Set in a post-apocalyptic future, the story follows the horrific ordeal of five humans artificially kept alive by AM (Allied Master computer), a programme responsible for the near-extinction of humanity. AM derives its pleasure and purpose from endlessly torturing the last living humans, rendering them immortal and unable to commit suicide. This unique supervillain became my inspiration for the Neon God – a corrupt, mind games-obsessed A.I. announced in my Neon Science-Fiction novel. Ellison’s story, however, conjures up images of desolation and despair I’ve yet to encounter in a work of science fiction.
"Ellison is a true virtuoso in his genre." PUBLISHERS' WEEKLY By law, one cannot copyright a title. If someone were stupid enough to do it, novels could be written and published with such titles as MOBY DICK, ALICE IN WONDERLAND, or GONE WITH THE WIND. But also, by law, ownership of a title can be guaranteed if it can be proved that the original author has established such a connection with the title that any duplication would infringe that linkage. How famous is this most famous of all Harlan Ellison's books? Well known enough that an English film company was…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
I’ve been a fan of horror stories as long as I can remember. The sense of building dread, and the moment of release when the terrible thing happens. I love stories about people put in impossible situations, and seeing how they overcome them, and that’s what good horror brings to the table. Being an avid reader I always have a book with me. To me, picking the right book to take on a holiday is as important as choosing the right clothing. I certainly hope this list gives you some ideas for your next vacation read.
At one time, H.P. Lovecraft thought The Willows was the finest supernatural story in English literature. It’s pretty hard to disagree with that assessment.
It’s a tale of creeping malevolence, as two men traveling along a river stop on a strange island to rest for the night. As the night wears on, events on the island become more surreal and terrifying.
One of the greatest reading experiences I’ve ever had was reading The Willows in a tent while camping in the rain. It’s a fine short story, and since it’s long out of copyright you can probably find it free to read online. But look for it in a collection of Blackwood’s other works, and enjoy them all.
'They first became properly visible, these huge figures, just within the tops of the bushes -- immense, bronze-colored, moving, and wholly independent of the swaying of the branches. I saw them plainly and noted, now I came to examine them more calmly, that they were very much larger than human, and indeed that something in their appearance proclaimed them to be not human at all. Certainly they were not merely the moving tracery of the branches against the moonlight. They shifted independently. They rose upwards in a continuous stream from earth to sky, vanishing utterly as soon as they reached…
As a lifelong computer nerd, I’m disappointed by the way we’re portrayed in the media. If you believe the stories, nerds are awkward and self-centered, with no room in their compulsive worldview for anything outside of their singular goals. This is absurd. Sure, some nerds are awkward and self-centered, but so are most of the people on this planet. To set the record straight, I’ve written stories about the many nerds I know, all of them with rich lives that extend far beyond their love of computers. These people are adventurers, jokesters, musicians, athletes, motorheads, connoisseurs, and more, with extreme passions that defy nerdiness.
When I’m wearing my uber-nerd hat, I enjoy Doctorow’s stories that are filled with cyber chat.
This story wonders what would happen if the world’s population was drastically reduced to a small collection of nerds. Would they be able to survive, or would they be unfit for life on Earth? Could they learn to farm, repair the planet’s aging infrastructure, and become administrators of a new and budding world? I’m rooting for the nerds here because I know they have the necessary skills.
Please read the legal notice included in this e-book and/or check the copyright status in your country. The heroic exploits of "sysadmins" — systems administrators — as they defend the cyber-world, and hence the world at large, from worms and bioweapons.
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
Sometimes I have to take a trip back to my reading "roots": gothic mystery and suspense. This list is a deep dive into some of my very favorite vintage gothic authors and ones that I consider to be icons of the genre. These writers formed the foundation not only for my reading tastes but also for who I have become as a writer. The memories of my younger self come flooding back when I revisit these authors and their works as I have done with this list. Some of these novels are hard to come by now but, in my opinion, the older and more beat-up paperback, the better.
I spent so many summer afternoons as a teenager reading Barbara Michaels’ novels.
She is another writer who managed to set in stone my love and fascination for tales gothic and truly inspired and informed my own writing.
This one with a copyright of 1973 has it all. Isolated, rural setting with a historic stone cottage, creepy, almost folk horror-esque townspeople, a twisted villain, and a supernatural edge.
But it also has something that Michael’s specialized in: dialogue that captures relationships in a very approachable and identifiable way despite the vintage year.
Witch captures her mastery of the gothic and ticks all the boxes of a great read in the genre.
A wonderful Gothic suspense story filled with clever twists and turns, Witch by Barbara Michaels will have you on the edge of your seat.
It was more than her dream house. For divorcee Ellen March, buying the secluded old house nestled in the pine woods marked the start of a new life. Now she could put her failed marriage behind her, enjoy the quiet solitude of small town life in Virginia, and get to know her new neighbour, the handsome Norman McKay.
But strange visions began to cloud her mind - the shadowy figure of a woman, a ghostly white…
I’m a professor of economics at the University of Houston, with a focus on long-run growth and development rather than things like quarterly stock returns. I write a blog on growth economics where I try hard to boil down technical topics to their core intuition, and I’m the co-author of a popular textbook on economic growth.
This is a good book to understand the pervasive existence of “rents” in the economy. From the literal rents that homeowners in popular areas can charge, to the rents that accrue to copyright or patent holders, to the rents earned by firms using regulation to block competition, the authors document all the places in our economy where this restricts innovation. It is ultimately a book asking “what is fair?”.
For years, America has been plagued by slow economic growth and increasing inequality. In The Captured Economy, Brink Lindsey and Steven M. Teles identify a common factor behind these twin ills: breakdowns in democratic governance that allow wealthy special interests to capture the policymaking process for their own benefit. They document the proliferation of regressive regulations that redistribute wealth and income up the economic scale while stifling entrepreneurship and innovation. They also detail the most important cases of regulatory barriers that have worked to shield the powerful from the rigors of competition, thereby inflating their incomes: subsidies for the financial…
I have lived almost all my adult life in France, and have spent that whole time wondering what makes the French so French. One of the answers is their attitude to their own history. The French have got a lot of upheaval to process: at least five revolutions since 1789, and two World Wars fought on their soil, including a Nazi occupation that they still haven’t digested. I didn’t start writing about the French until I’d been living in France for about 10 years – I didn’t want to write like a tourist, and it took me that long to unweave the first strands of their DNA. I’ve never stopped writing about them since, half a dozen Merde novels and as many non-fiction books later.
Young was an English agriculturalist who took time out from farming to analyse life and developments in the countryside. He toured Britain, then Ireland, and finally France. Here, he lucked in. He wandered the fields, lanes, and city streets of France as the Revolution was brewing and then erupting. Although not an aristo himself, he frequented nobility and royalty, and was amazed at the blissful indifference of the idle rich about what was going on around them. He saw the extreme poverty of the peasants, who were being worked and starved to death by their absentee landlords. He witnessed the actual events of the Revolution and had to talk himself out of getting lynched as a potential aristo spy. It’s a book to browse rather than consume whole, and contains whole pages about crop yields and diseases, but at times it is the most measured first-hand view of the Revolution…
Arthur Young (1741-1820) was an English writer on agriculture, economics and social statistics. At the age of seventeen, he published a pamphlet On the War in North America, and in 1761 went to London and started a periodical, entitled The Universal Museum. He also wrote four novels, and Reflections on the Present State of Affairs at Home and Abroad in 1759. Young produced around 25 books and pamphlets on agriculture and 15 books on political economy, as well as many articles. He was famous for the views he expressed, as an agricultural improver, political economist and social observer. Amongst his…
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…
The traditional way of commercializing an invention — patenting, prototyping, then marketing it — doesn’t work very well and never has. When I found an easier way to share my creativity with the world, it changed my life, because the feeling you get when you hold something in your hand that you first imagined in your head is second to none. My 10-step process breaks down barriers so that everyone who has an idea — young or old, rich or poor — can get in the game of bringing it to market. I’ve published 5 books, 1,000 articles, and more than 700 videos to help others take advantage of the power of open innovation.
This is the best book I have read about how to become a profitable toy inventor. Richard Levy, the toy inventor responsible for the Furby and many other massive successes, is the real deal. His inventing tips and advice are absolutely priceless. He is the perfect example of the right person to take inventing advice from! By that I mean, he is an inventor who has achieved repeat commercial success.
Presents information on how to successfully market an invention covering such topics as licensing options, negotiating deals, patents and trademarks, and copyrights.
I am an author of literary fiction and nonfiction on the creative writing process. My passion is to provide resources for writers who want to create stories as artful literature that will last. A few years ago, I created a website that contains all my fiction and non-fiction, a newsletter, a workshop, and a blog. The website has received over five million visits. I've published six novels, thirty-seven short stories, thirty essays, twenty-six interviews, and dozens of literary quizzes. My fiction has received over fifty+ awards. I’ve written and presented an online video course: Creating Literary Story with Thinkific. I continue to serve writers who are eager to improve.
This is the second of four books of the collected interviews of famous authors from the Paris Review. Hemingway, Moore, Porter, Ellison, and Huxley are among the fourteen included in this book. Other books in the series include Forster, Faulkner, Warren, Bellow, Welty, Dinesen, Steinbeck, and many others. You may be amazed at how different successful writers are in their thinking about writing and success in their careers. In my studies in over a hundred workshops and many lectures and seminars, I was fortunate to meet and know teachers and students who knew, or studied, with many of these authors. Experiences that make me think you’d value most of Plimpton’s work in this series.
TWO BOOK OFFER. "Writers at Work -- The Paris Review Interviews: First Series and Second Series". Viking Press Paperbacks, copyrights 1957 and 1963; Compass Books Editions issued in1961 and 1965. First Series (Compass No. C52) 3rd printing Nov 1961, 309 pp. Second Series (Compass No. C175) 3rd printing July 1966, 368 pp. Both books size 7 3/4" by 5" by about 3/4". Bindings intact; no loose or missing pages; spines not creased. First Series volume is in only GOOD condition: covers and pages are clean and unmarked EXCEPT the covers show moderate shelf wear, the front cover opens wide, and…
My interest in political economy dates back to my student years where I combined the study of the history of political economy, economics, and philosophy. Whether apologists or critics of capitalism, both groups appreciate the centrality of economic exchange among people who live in communities where absolute autonomy and self-sufficiency are unattainable. My concern with reframing political economy is also informed by the all too hushed scandal of capitalism, namely, the reliance on slavery for the accumulation of wealth for more than a century after the establishment of the USA. The reckoning with this atrocity animates much of my present thinking about political economy in general and capitalism in particular.
Lessig’s book argues that the pretense we live in America in a capitalist economy that follows the rules of the markets, with profit maximization and copyright protection (dating back to the Constitution), is by now completely discarded. Focusing on the entertainment industry and the arts, Lessig illustrates the limits of such thinking given the conduct of millions who download music, films, and videos without permission and continue to “remix” them within the legal limits of “fair use.”
The reigning authority on intellectual property in the Internet age, Lawrence Lessig spotlights the newest and possibly the most harmful culture — a war waged against those who create and consume art. America's copyright laws have ceased to perform their original, beneficial role: protecting artists' creations while allowing them to build on previous creative works. In fact, our system now criminalizes those very actions. Remix is an urgent, eloquent plea to end a war that harms every intrepid, creative user of new technologies. It also offers an inspiring vision of the postwar world where enormous opportunities await those who view…
This book follows the journey of a writer in search of wisdom as he narrates encounters with 12 distinguished American men over 80, including Paul Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve, and Denton Cooley, the world’s most famous heart surgeon.
In these and other intimate conversations, the book…
As a former librarian I have long been fascinated with Borges’s view of books: their metaphysical shape and their tendency to open into the uncanny and the infinite. Illness early in life drove me to books, to their particular isolation. Since then, I’ve found that worlds can open almost anywhere in literature by way of a mood, a patina of language, a vision, a set of images completely beyond the control of the writer. Now, I read these books to remind me of what fiction can do, the places it can go, the worlds it will open.
Borges loved this 29-volume “book” and consulted it with near religious fascination.
Through all the volumes flows the colonial mind of the British Empire. Its desire to gather “all knowledge” and present it with an index.
What comes forth now are the fascinating, individual voices of the writers (whose work has been used to build Wikipedia) sounding out of the void.
The thing is, they’re all different. Some are clear and calm, some youthful and manic, others stodgy, snobbish. Maps of the States in 1906 have almost no highways, only topography.
A full-page plate, under “Cats,” where no cats appear, only their skins, showing the different patterns of their stripes.
This is a work of world-building, a terraforming “real” fiction. Repulsive, time-folding, fascinating.
