Award-winning author Nancy Fulda returns with a collection of ten brain-twisting science fiction stories, each more thought provoking than the last. In Nexus, a desperate immigrant risks her life for the only friend she's ever had-a creature the universe sees as a monster. In Godshift, the famous scientist Pierre Lefebvre uncovers the secrets of the universe, and finds he has tampered with something far deeper than physics. Castles in the Sky follows desperate foster siblings caught in the crumbling ruins of a galaxy abandoned by its gods, while The Cyborg and the Cemetery reexamines death (and life) through the eyes of a cybernetic grandfather. And then there's the title story, Planetbound, which is really best experienced without preconceptions. PRAISE FOR DR. FULDA'S WRITING Ms Fulda is an accomplished writer, easily sketching out new worlds and drawing the reader in... If you like thoughtful science fiction shorts, I recommend this -- Good Book Alert When I review a story this well-written, I find myself admiring one expression after the other and wanting to quote them all, to tell readers, 'Look at this! Admire this!' -- Lois Tilton, Locus Reviews As engrossing and brief and clever as a Twilight Zone episode, Fulda's story hooks your attention from the first sentence and stays with you, long past the startling, yet fitting, end. -- Tangent Online STORIES INCLUDED IN THIS ANTHOLOGY Planetbound, Nexus, A Soaring Pillar of Brightness, Godshift, The Cyborg and the Cemetery, Metamorphosis, Castles in the Sky, Recollection, A Starscape Slightly Askew, In the Fading Light of Sundown.

A collection of Phobos Award Winner and Vera Hinckley Mayhew Award recipient Nancy Fulda's writings over the past ten years. This book includes tales of computers that invent God, minds that travel through time, electronic ghosts, and deceased extraterrestrials. Some of these stories are award winners. Others are more obscure, but they all share one thing in common: They stem from a love of fiction and a fascination with the endless possibilities of our universe.

I genitori della giovane Hannah stanno valutando un trattamento sperimentale basato su un innesto di nanotecnologie per dare alla figlia, affetta da "Autismo Temporale" una opportunità di “normalità”. Hannah vive in un tempo e in uno spazio che le danno un punto di vista alternativo sulle cose, ma il trattamento neurologico non offre garanzie e potrebbe privarla di alcuni suoi talenti.

This sampler pack brings together three stories by Hugo and Nebula nominee Nancy Fulda. KNOWING NEITHER KIN NOR FOE Kitjaya is a solo mind, bereft of telepathic communication with her siblings and isolated from the only deity her species has ever known. An ancient prophecy foretells that Kitjaya will protect her kin from a malevolent destroyer, but as the day of reckoning approaches, she finds herself unwilling to play out the role demanded of her. THE BREATH OF HEAVEN Sacia's fellow AIs have eradicated all humans from their colony world and are plotting the destruction of the second wave of colonists. Sacia's struggle to smooth the conflict between man and machine revisits questions initially posed by Asimov and Clarke, and casts the HAL 9000 story in an intriguing new light. IN THE HALLS OF THE SKY-PALACE A mysterious presence stalks the hallways of the Sky-King's palace, stealing dreams and condemning the king's dancers to a living death. As the sole remaining bearer of the Gift of Perception, the task of unraveling this mystery falls to young Aesva. But she is uncertain; inexperienced; and the woman most able to assist her has already died.

Six stories about hope, humor, heartbreak and healing. -- Back cover

Award-winning author Nancy Fulda presents six stories of love, heartbreak, humor and dignity. Within these pages, curses transmute into blessings, friends become enemies, possible futures collide with nonexistent pasts, and imaginary friends take on corporeal form. From invisible pets to magical islands, from a child with autism to a dying multimillionaire, these stories will touch your heart and leave your thoughts spinning long after the last page has been read. Nancy Fulda is a Phobos Award winner, a Jim Baen Memorial Award recipient, and a past Hugo and Nebula nominee. During her graduate work at Brigham Young University she studied artificial intelligence, machine learning, and quantum computing. In the years since, she has grappled with the far more complex process of raising three small children. All of these experiences sometimes infiltrate her writing. Stories included in this collection: The Death and Rebirth of Anne Bonny, Saving Sammy, All or Nothing, In the Fading Light of Sundown, The Cyborg and the Cemetery, First Steps

This novelette was a 2011 Jim Baen Memorial Award Winner. Norma Jean Goodwyn is 120 years old and the founder of a most unusual space station. She and her peers -- healthy, vibrant, yet forced into retirement -- built the Gary Hudson Exospheric Laboratory as a haven for senior citizens who refused to grow idle in their old age. Now, political opponents are angling to take control of Hudson Exospheric, and Norma Jean won't have it. Over her dead body, or otherwise.

Kittyhawk Gruff isn't interested in helping the planetary government. All she wants is to stay on her archaeological dig, studying cultures that have been dead for millenia. But when a very large, very live alien emerges from slumber, Kitty's remarkable talents will be put to the test."Assimilate the Shadows." That's the only clue Kitty has been given to help her establish communication with the reclusive Kokkalns, an aqueous species that lives in the planet's upper mantle, perceives radio signals the way humans perceive light, and vaguely resembles a plate of seafood. Armed with this enigmatic phrase, Kitty is expected to unravel a biological puzzle that involves mysterious statues, multidimensional perception, and one very large, very ancient crustacean.It all sounds routine enough, but when a political embassy goes awry, Kitty's life depends on her ability to find the answer.PRAISE FOR NANCY FULDA'S WRITING"As engrossing and brief and clever as a Twilight Zone episode, Fulda's story hooks your attention from the first sentence and stays with you long past the startling, yet fitting, end." - Tangent Online"The Breath of Heaven -- essentially a retelling of the HAL 9000 story, but with a very different outcome -- with its intricate examination of directives was a quite plausible updating of the classic three laws of robotics, and in some ways outshone both Asimov and Clarke in the way the story unfolded." -- Pearson Moore, Sift Book Reviews"Movement is an award-caliber story, and clearly a major breakthrough in the career of Nancy Fulda." -- Aaron Hughes, Fantastic Reviews Blog

The ultimate goal of this research is to empower agents to reason about low level behaviors in order to fulfill abstract natural language instructions in an autonomous fashion. An agent equipped with an embedding space of sucient caliber could potentially reason about new situations based on their similarity to past experience, facilitating knowledge transfer and one-shot learning. As our embedding model continues to improve, we hope to see these and other abilities become a reality.

Hell's newest employee, Lilith Straight, thinks she's got a handle on her job as the Devil's temptress until she finds herself going horns-to-halo with a guardian angel who's determined to rescue Lilith's next victim. To make matters worse, William Darcy, the hottest demon in hell, is trying to undermine Lilith's mission with a few temptations of his own.