Bøger af John Hands

Threatened by a global pandemic and by climate change, very many people fear we are facing an existential crisis. The Future of Humankind shows why these fears are unfounded and why we should be optimistic about our long-term future. It evaluates current major predictions for our future in three categories:(1) Extinction by natural disasters (including pandemics), by nuclear war or accident, by artificial intelligence, or by population explosion and climate change.(2) Survival by colonizing space or by extending individual healthspans and achieving immortality. (3) Transformation by uploading individual minds to computers or holograms. Although these categories are very different, they have three things in common:(a) They are speculations starting from the then current level of scientific and technological development.(b) They have a very low, if not negligible, probability of being realized; in those cases where specific predictions can be tested against outcomes, all have been disproven.(c) They make the implicit assumption that the future of the human species is determined by the future of individual humans. By contrast, the unique forecast in this book projects into the future the distinct pattern in the scientific evidence of an accelerating cosmic evolutionary process over some 15 billion years revealed in John Hands's previous book, the award-winning COSMOSAPIENS Human Evolution from the Origin of the Universe.

Originally published: London: Society for Co-operative Dwellings, 1975.

An undercover agent is torn between love and fear when resurgent nationalism threatens to plunge Russia and Ukraine into ethnic warfare. Taras Stepaniak, half Russian half Ukrainian, is a self-serving womaniser recruited by the Russian intelligence service to destabilize the newly independent Ukraine in order to bring it back under Russian control. Stepaniak spins his web of treachery around the aspiring democrats of the new nation. But he finds that the one woman who resists his cynical seduction techniques cares for him deeply. Maria Bondar's selflessness, integrity, and devotion to ideals force him to confront his own duplicity. Too late. He is trapped in a deadly game that is being played out to a terrifying conclusion. "Well researched, compellingly plausible...the climax is explosive." -The European "The suspense is sustained to the very last page." -The Independent "The author's artistry means that the book succeeds not only at the adventure tale level-gripping as the plot line is-but more profoundly... A moving, remarkable book." -The Tablet "A plot to destabilize the newly independent Ukraine is realistic thanks to the...writing of John Hands. It all comes together in a stirring climax which exposes the heart of post-Soviet society." -Oxford Times

John Hands's extraordinarily ambitious cosmological quest brings together our scientific knowledge and evaluates the theories and evidence about the origin and evolution of matter, life, consciousness, and humankind.