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...

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 ...

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...

The Bio Park is the ultimate playground. A fully functioning ecological system almost a mile underground--later converted to an amusement park--it took years to build and hundreds of millions to develop. Unfortunately, it is losing money, so Linked Corporation has decided to seal the thirty foot doors with thousands of tons of blasted earth until the park has accrued in value.The closing party drew a huge crowd of sightseers, thrill seekers, and partiers, even at a thousand dollars ...

As his life fragments, and he is fired from his job and fights with his girlfriend, Mexican vacations cannot cheer the nameless narrator of In Light of Ray. In desperation, he decides to follow the cryptic advice of Ray, a shadowy figure he has only met a few times. His understanding of Ray's obscure suggestions takes him away from his friends and into unemployment, poverty and then homelessness. Drifting around a grittier Vancouver, he begins to think that the only way to fix his life is ...

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...

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...

When Hillside Research offered him fifty dollars for his opinion, he allowed the drug testing company to sit him in a chair. That began his vengeful journey, as he discovered the depths to which they would go to protect their bottom line. His misplaced trust set him on the road to a cross-country revenge, led to his inadvertent fame in the downtown east side, and encouraged him to re-examine the city he called his home.He initially imagined a confrontation with Hillside as thrown Mo...

The first settlers along the river had fled the Miramichi fire in the late fall of 1825. Traumatized by the loss of their homes, they retreated into the placid life of the river and hid from the outside world for long generations. They might have lived that way forever if Wilhelm hadn’t looked at the high ridges that surrounded them and wondered what lay on the other side.The founder of Planeville, Wilhelm was an enigma to his peers. He went into the woods and built his village, and...

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...