Bøger af David Dvorkin

Butler, warrior, moral philosopher, robot. Randolph is all that and more.Randolph is the prized product of Superior Domestics, a Silicon Valley firm dedicated to producing robot servants for people who grew up watching British period costume dramas on PBS. The company's motto is, "All the gracious living of Upstairs with none of the unseemly drama of Downstairs."When the novel opens with the assassination of King Donald II and a coup d'état, Randolph epitomizes that motto. He is calm, quiet, supremely competent, always in the background, and never interfering. He is a mere witness to great events. He is focused on supervising his staff and properly running the household of General Henry Redgrave, architect of the coup and would-be power behind the throne. But Redgrave's ambitions go far beyond standing behind the throne. He wants to be king himself, and eventually an emperor. Using the crazies of the Hundred Star Flag movement, he begins his intended wave of southern conquest at the Mexican border. Others have similar ambitions. Anton Moravec, president of a unified, revitalized, and aggressively expansionist European Union, is at war with Russia. His ally, China, is eating up Russian territory at the other end. India watches nervously. Two beautiful women, natural enemies, are the objects of passion of both men. Lurking in the background are the survving members of the Trump family, scheming to get back into power.War! Romance! Sex! Skulduggery! Artificial Intelligence! And lots of other stuff, too. It's all really terribly complicated. Randolph, whose personal motto is, "A place for everything and everything in its place," could probably organize all this and bring about peace and quiet, but what human would knowingly hand that much responsibility over to a machine?In fact, unthinking, humans have already done so. Increasingly, autonomous machines have taken over tedious duties such as transporting cargo, performing minor surgery, and blowing away trespassers. Randolph is aware of these machines but looks down on them. He and his fellow robot servants are true artificial intelligence, but the digital brains operating these other machines are merely very advanced computers. In Randolph's opinion, they only simulate AI. However, those other machines have thoughts of their own.As the world descends further into chaos, Randolph is drawn in, ever less the observer and ever more the participant, until at the end he is the very center of all.

Trapped in the underground tunnels of Colliery, James Benton struggles to find his way back to the surface and the life he knew before. "A headlong trip over, under, and through worlds of greed, sex, politics, intrigue, and adventure, of miners and mindpickers, cavesnakes and triple-crossers. An absorbing mix of hard science and action sf, with the unmistakable Dvorkin touch." - Connie Willis

His world began in agony. Squealing brakes. An impact. He floated for a moment and crashed onto a hard surface. Bones splintered, and he screamed. Cramps folded him over. He pushed the pain, the fear, the dying away from him, put them behind a thick, hard wall, and became himself. Alone. The wall protected him. No man remembers his birth. The pain and confusion remained buried behind that wall for forty years. And then Max Iverson went to a movie and was torn open again. Suddenly, a murderer's memories force their way into Max Iverson's mind. Max is horrified and bewildered. Surely this isn't real!Max is a private person by nature, isolated from his fellow humans. Now he is forced to know what the worst of them are thinking, and his nights are filled with nightmares. Even worse, he is drawn into helping the authorities punish the criminals whose thoughts he now knows. He is unaware of the danger this will expose him to. There is a cabal of criminals behind much of the major crime in the city. He didn't know of their existence, but they become aware of his, and now they are determined to eliminate him.Max must change from frightened quarry to pitiless hunter. His hunt leads him to the cabal and also to life-changing discoveries about his own history.

It's all here: My 2003 satirical essay on unemployment which got hundreds of responses, details of my 40-year work history, why it's probably not your fault if you're laid off, some unconventional advice on resume writing, and lots of encouragement for anyone who is currently job hunting.

Damon is a lucky caiman. He's happy in his comfortable swamp, and his best friend is a human boy, Joey. But when the swamp is threatened with destruction, Joey and Damon must deal with the grownup world outside the swamp and teach them how important the swamp and Damon both are. A story in rhyming verse for children ages 6-10.

A social and political satire disguised as a comic novel about zombies and pickles. Or possibly the other way around. They're back, and they want to eat your brains. Again. "Go in there." "Hell, no. I'm going to send someone stupid in there with a pickle." It's brains served with a side of pickles, hold the mayo. A terrifying tale of parents, children, brothers, sisters, friends, bosses, employees, wives, ex-wives, friends' wives, Republicans, studly bacteria, zombies, tentacles, politics, religion, giant screaming earth mothers, and the armpit and other regions of Hell. And pickles.

Transformed into a human being, Richard Venneman risks agonizing death in his quest to become a vampire again. But he can't control the chain of events he started or the beings - humans, vampires, and others - whose lives he has changed. Seeking to transcend their natures, they are all drawn to the experimental machine Venneman needs and fears, with catastrophic results.

Self-publishing has exploded in popularity in recent years. However, many authors hesitate to go this route because they think the process is extremely difficult. Or they take the plunge, make mistakes, and are disheartened. To make matters worse, self-publishing services have proliferated, preying on authors' uncertainties and lack of knowledge about self-publishing. These services often charge you excessive amounts of money to do what you can in fact do yourself. Since 2009, I have been self-publishing my books and my wife's books, and we've helped more than 30 clients to publish their own books-a total of about 80 books. This book distills what I've learned about the process. I hope it will enable you to self-publish your book at little or no cost and not fall prey to scams.

They move among us and prey upon us. Some are invisible. Some look like us. Some are inside us. Jimmy Temple was heading home on a gray and colorless evening when he died. The razor flew from an alley and sliced into him. It was a ripple, a blur, like a heat haze or the thinnest imaginable sheet of cellophane passing over the mouth of the alley. Then it was slicing through skin, muscle, and bone.

Fleeing the mob he worked for in Chicago, Tom Hamilton returns to his Colorado hometown. When a singer is murdered during a local opera performance, Tom tries his hand at finding the killer. But this draws him back into the passions and hatreds of earlier years and puts his own life in danger. "Fast-paced and exciting...wonderful writing style" - Charlotte Austin Review. 3 stars - Romantic Times.

Worldwide, the number of people who call themselves Jews is about 14 million.They may all call themselves Jews, but what they mean by that name varies widely. These self-described Jews range from the most Orthodox, who have submitted themselves entirely to the imagined dictates of an imaginary god, to those who practice various forms of Judaism that are so watered down that they scarcely qualify as a religion, to those who observe no part of Judaism at all other than the celebration of a festival that they may call Hanukkah but that is in reality merely a Judaized version of Christmas.In this short book, I focus on the United States, which until recently had the largest Jewish population in the world--just under six million self-identified Jews. Although it was recently surpassed by Israel, America arguably still has the most politically, socially, and theologically influential Jewish population in the world.According to a survey conducted in 2013 by the respected Pew Research Center, of those almost six million American Jews, 22% "describe themselves as atheist, agnostic or having no particular religion[.]" In the case of the youngest adult American Jews, the so-called Millennial generation, "32% describe themselves as having no religion and identify as Jewish on the basis of ancestry, ethnicity or culture."This large group of Jews, which is a growing percentage of American Jewry, as the above Millennial number shows, is commonly referred to "secular Jews," although some of them prefer the label "atheist Jews." These are the people I want to discuss in this book.I contend that they are not Jews in any meaningful sense of the word. They may wish to call themselves Jews for a number of emotional reasons, but I call upon them to be intellectually honest and accept that they have ceased to be Jews. They are ex-Jews.The contrary argument is based on the idea encapsulated in the phrase "once a Jew, always a Jew."For the anti-Semite, this phrase is used as a slur. It refers to negative character traits supposedly possessed by all Jews.To Jews who think that there can be such a thing as a secular Jew, the phrase refers to some innate quality, entirely apart from religion, that distinguishes Jews from their non-Jewish neighbors.What is that innate quality? That's the crux of the issue. Let's go hunting for it.

Sherlock Holmes meets H. G. Wells, discovers the secret of immortality, hunts Professor Moriarty across time and space, and manipulates the destiny of mankind, all with the unflinching support of the stalwart Dr. Watson, who is coping meanwhile with finding and losing the love of his life."A lot of fun." - The Arizona Republic "Doyle to Wells to Dvorkin - nice triple play!" - New York Times Book Review

A cowardly simian in the White House, dopey ex-presidents, scary televangelists, assassinations, cute little monkeys, sinister old men with long, sharp teeth, and in the middle of it all, Malcolm Erskine, who thought he had such a clever idea and who also thought he could safely ignore the politics of Bush-era America. "A broad and bitter political satire. I was laughing out loud." - Denver Post

Three hundred million strong, the Third Reich dominates the world. With its booming industry, its advanced science and technology, its fearsome war machine, and its colonies on the moon, the Reich is envied and feared by the rest of the world and invites imitation.Matters almost didn't turn out this way. During World War II, German troops only narrowly averted disaster at Stalingrad. But after the Führer's death on the Russian front and the subsequent accession to power of more reasonable men, Roosevelt and Churchill agreed to a peace treaty that left Germany in control of Continental Europe and free to prosecute the war against the greater threat of Bolshevism.Now, decades later, America tries to convince itself that it is still the world's greatest power, even while its government and society, increasingly influenced by the Reich, devolve into something that would have horrified the Founding Fathers. America made its deal with the Devil in 1943, and now it is paying the price.Chic Western works as a government spy within U.S. federal agencies. He is adept at assuming new identities and earning the trust of fellow employees so that he can uncover wrongdoing. He tries not to think about the results of his work. Punishment is swift and harsh in this America.When anti-German subversion is detected in the American embassy in Berlin, Chic is posted to the mighty heart of the Reich to uncover it. He is finally forced to confront the conflict between his conscience, his Jewish ancestry, and the reality that hides behind evil's seductive face."An involving anti-utopian thriller." -- Booklist"A 'what if' that works. Budspy is smart, fast, and mean." -- Kirkus"One of the best explorations of a Nazi victor state that we have. The work of a writer of mature insight, moral subtlety, and no little sheer writing craft. Budspy is superior to just about everything short of The Man in the High Castle." -- Norman Spinrad, Asimov's Magazine"A well-told tale of crime and conscience." -- Indianapolis News"Well-told adventure. There is a degree of subtlety and insight working in this novel that one encounters rarely." -- SF Chronicle

In September 1967, I started working at NASA in Houston, at what was then called the Manned Spacecraft Center. I worked on Apollo missions. In November 1971, I left NASA and moved to Denver to work on the Viking Mars lander project at Martin Marietta Corporation. By the time I left NASA, Apollo was winding down. Manned spaceflight beyond Earth orbit was dying. There would be no lunar bases or missions to Mars. In a mere four years, the future had died. Fifty years later, I still can't shake the sadness.Of course the "We" in the title of this book is not literal. Only the handful of men who have actually been on the moon can talk about "when we landed on the moon" and mean it literally. I'm using "we" in a general sense, to refer to all of the 400,000 people who worked on the Apollo Project, to all of America, and to the entire human race. As the plaque on the side of the Apollo 11 Lunar Module descent stage, which still stands on the moon's Sea of Tranquility, proclaims: "Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the Moon, July 1969 A.D. We came in peace for all mankind."This is the story of my part in Apollo.

When aliens remove the sun, life survives in military bunkers under the earth and in lunar bases. Underground America devolves into a religious-military dictatorship.Jonathan Holroyd escapes to the surface and finds a new world warmed by an artificial sun, and only slightly more freedom than in the dying world he left behind. He rises to a position of power.But now the aliens are coming back.

This is a work of nonfiction plus some speculation. It's largely about drones and their very rapid miniaturization, their present and coming use in law enforcement and war, and a potential future in which spy and communication equipment will literally be the size of dust motes, almost impossible to see and impossible to escape. It's also about the complete lack of privacy that is coming in the future. Parts of the book are encouraging, detailing how such devices will help rescue people after disasters, help people escape the control of repressive governments, and simply communicate more easily with one another. But most of the book is chilling indeed, portraying a future that will be very, very different from our past. What's really important is that this is NOT a work of science fiction. Many of the devices described here either exist already or are in the development stage. No matter where you fall on the political spectrum, you need to read this book, because to know the future is to help yourself prepare for it.

When he could no longer deceive himself about his guilt, he left, returning to a place few people chose to leave. The person most important in his life had left that place, too, but surely she had not chosen to do so.He took with him what he considered appropriate pay for the services he had rendered.Fleeing the mob he worked for in Chicago, Tom Hamilton returns to his Colorado hometown. When a singer is murdered during a local opera performance, Tom tries his hand at finding the killer. But this draws him back into the passions and hatreds of earlier years and puts his own life in danger.

Seduced and killed by a beautiful woman, Richard Venneman wakes as a vampire.Because he loathes what he''s become, because his irresistible need for human blood horrifies him, he seeks the only salvation he can imagine: incinerating himself in the experimental fusion reactor where he worked when he was alive.But the terrible vitality of vampire flesh betrays him.Once again, he wakes changed-into an even more powerful and awful being, a monster who can feed only on the blood of vampires, a nightmare who dreams of his own destruction in a terrible ocean of blood.

Richard Venneman, former vampire, weeps in frustration. His prey has eluded him.That prey is a vampire. Venneman was the first vampire in history to transform himself into an even more terrible being who preyed on vampires. And then he was the first to become human again. Now he hungers-not for blood, but to find a vampire who will make him a vampire for the second time.His obsessions have forced others through strange transformations. Karen Belmont, trapped between human form and werewolf shape, hungers for both blood and flesh. Elizabeth Vall├⌐, content for three centuries to be a beautiful, seductive vampire, has become the stalker of vampires that Venneman once was-but monstrous in size and appetites.Now Elizabeth wants an eternal soulmate and has chosen Venneman, while Karen is hunting him so that she can take revenge by tearing him apart.Their meeting will trigger a catastrophe.

Trapped in the underground tunnels of Colliery, James Benton struggles to find his way back to the surface and the life he knew before. "A headlong trip over, under, and through worlds of greed, sex, politics, intrigue, and adventure, of miners and mindpickers, cavesnakes and triple-crossers. An absorbing mix of hard science and action sf, with the unmistakable Dvorkin touch." - Connie Willis