This annotated edition of World Brain is meant to stimulate scholars to return to this giant intellect, a writer who, with only microfiche to inspire his understanding of the possibilities of communications technology, imagined a connected and coordinated world sharing a huge knowledge base.Wells was inspired by the needs of a world teetering on the brink of global war, and eagerly met with Stalin and Roosevelt to learn what they knew of the peace process. When he found them without...

We usually imagine environmental concerns in terms of a human-caused litany of losses. We have heard about the loss of biodiversity, deforestation, degradation of land, climate change, toxins in the air, and the disappearance of clean water and soil. Amongst that welter of information, if we were admit the selfish truth, we typically think about how such disasters might affect us. We consider food security, human sperm counts, and endocrine interrupters in the water. Too rapidly for the Pl...

This annotated edition of H. G. Wells' first and justly most famous novel, The Time Machine, is meant to encourage the pursuits of scholars who are either encountering Wells' influential classic for the first time or are returning to it in order to delve more deeply into its antecedents and influences.In a story that continues to have resonance for the modern reader, Wells imagined his future world deeply divided along class lines which had split the human species into two: the Morl...

Although Canada is a country with a huge variety of geographical regions and ethnic diversity, Canadian colonial culture is a soothing, nearly featureless blanket spread across a largely misunderstood terrain and people. From the distance, the blanket appears homogenous, but a close examination reveals the many different threads that make up the whole, and its patchwork nature is more diverse strands than grayish mud, blood, and granite.This homogeneity is less a trick of the eyes ...

Parables are exercises in abbreviation. Like allegories and allusions, parables rely on more than the words on the page as they expand their relevance and reach. They call upon the tropes of oft-told stories, universal narratives, trim story back to its basics, and use familiar characters like those described by Vladimir Propp.A giant becomes an ogre, a young woman a desperate heroine, a child an adventurer or someone who needs saving, and a stalwart man a sword-wielding, cudgel-fl...

When Amy set out to write a novel, and thus establish herself as a writer to be reckoned with, she was faced with a problem. Although most novelists begin semi-autobiographically, her own life in the small town of Crooked River—with its endless cycles of mowing lawns and setting tables—was far too boring. No one could possibly be interested in what she had to say if she were the subject.That drove Amy to tell a thinly-veiled and largely-invented story about Kalicia, easily the most...

This annotated edition of H. G. Wells' second novel, The Island of Doctor Moreau, is meant to encourage the pursuits of scholars who are either encountering Wells' influential classic for the first time or are returning to it in order to delve more deeply into its antecedents and influences. In the novel, Prendick, an aimless gentleman naturalist, becomes shipwrecked on the island where Moreau is creating bestial humans by a cruel and scientifically questionable application of vivisection ...

The desire to live more frugally, responsibly, and environmentally is loose in the land now. Despite the popularity of a minimalism which had its adherents buying more to pretend they had less, many people have a genuine interest in living more carefully. Learning to reduce our impact runs deeper than saving money or using those savings to buy more consumer goods. Instead, people are starting to question the entire consumer enterprise and to suggest alternatives.Much of the interest...

Telling the other side of the adoption and fostering process in Manitoba perhaps inevitably ends up questioning the failures of the government child care system. In this study, I itemize the difficulties dealing with the foster care system that ultimately led to my unsuccessful attempt to become a Manitoba foster parent.Like the impoverished child in the candy store window, both systemic and personal barriers prevented me from becoming a parent. Although I began this journey innocen...

The tale of building my outrigged wooden sailboat is one of limitations imposed by materials, space, money and time, making decisions on the spot, solving problems created by mistakes, and the daily slog which was the building process. I follow this process from the initial idea, research through boat-building manuals, sketching out the design, purchase of the lumber, and completing the build of a five-thousand-dollar sailboat.I began with an unimposing pile of lumber from a local s...

Abandoned on Alpha Centauri's second planet, our inadvertent colonists have to contend with monstrous storms, clouds of plastic-eating insects, mysterious animals haunting the coastline, and a thick forbidding jungle hiding a secret. Resilience looks like it might be in short supply as they face a planet which is both more inviting and dangerous than it first appeared.The worst enemy might be themselves, however, and when the rogue AI returns carrying a grim message and an unknown p...

They escaped from the Corps mining rigs in the asteroid belt only to find themselves trapped as digital signals on an exploration probe. Tumbling from one catastrophe to another, they transferred to the surface before they were found out and a virus was sent after them. Inadvertent colonizers of Alpha Centauri, they find themselves tweaking their code in order to build on the surface, worry that one of them is conspiring against the rest, and fear that the Corps will attack at any moment i...