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A carregar... The Last Revolutionpor Lord Dunsany
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An inspiration to many for his style and prose, Lord Dunsany was a pioneer for fantasy fiction, inspiring such famous writers as H. P. Lovecraft, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Neil Gaiman, to name a few. More than sixty years since its first publication, The Last Revolution is now once again available to readers. In a time before computers were a mainstay of our lives, Lord Dunsany tells the story, which takes place in England, about the revolution of self-reproducing machines. Known to have a profound distaste for the Industrial Revolution, The Last Revolution touches on a topic we know all too well today: What happens if the computers take over? "Good morning Pender. I hear you have made a Frankenstein." This is the line that narrator Pender hears from an inventor, and he is soon playing a robot in a game of chess. Pender's mood changes when he realizes that the computer he's facing has an intelligence far superior to his own. From the introduction of the robots, a tense atmosphere is noted as the robots fight for the attention of their owners. Will these machines be able to coexist with their household counterparts, or will they rise as one and take the first steps against humanity? Skyhorse Publishing, under our Night Shade and Talos imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of titles for readers interested in science fiction (space opera, time travel, hard SF, alien invasion, near-future dystopia), fantasy (grimdark, sword and sorcery, contemporary urban fantasy, steampunk, alternative history), and horror (zombies, vampires, and the occult and supernatural), and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller, a national bestseller, or a Hugo or Nebula award-winner, we are committed to publishing quality books from a diverse group of authors. Não foram encontradas descrições de bibliotecas. |
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Google Books — A carregar... GénerosSistema Decimal de Melvil (DDC)823.912Literature English & Old English literatures English fiction Modern Period 1901-1999 1901-1945Classificação da Biblioteca do Congresso dos EUA (LCC)AvaliaçãoMédia:
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Abelard Pender is an inventor of gadgetry, but in the story has recently turned his brilliant mind to making a brain, using wire to conduct electrical currents. He succeeds in this first step and goes on to give his invention, a body, many arms and other accoutrements that make it look like a spider or a crab that scuttles across the floor. The story is told in the first person by an acquaintance of Abelard Pender who is a member of the same London Club, Pender invites him home to see his invention. The journey out to the Thames marshes finds Penders original invention busy making other machines. On another visit the speaker is soundly beaten at a game of chess by the machine and Pender boasts of its extraordinary intelligence. The speaker soon realises that the invention could be very dangerous and when Pender looses control of it and the machine is able to influence other machines his worst fears are realised. The last revolution will be a revolt of all the machinery. The climax of the story finds the speaker, Pender and his girlfriend along with 12 policemen trapped inside a workman's cottage on the marshes surrounded by the hostile machines.
The novel feels like a short story that has been stretched to novel length, there is some repetition, but the writing flows smoothly enough. It does give the author much space to warn against the danger of the machine age and finally looks back on a bucolic ideal, before the invention of machines. I enjoyed the small town feel of the events and the curious British insularity in a crisis that could lead to the end of the human race. There is some discussion on the mistakes that have been made by too much industrialisation. The author; Lord Dunsany was an Anglo-Irish writer and dramatist with over 90 volumes of fiction, essays, poems and plays to his credit, one can often find a story of his, collected in a science fiction or horror story collection of the time. This would have been fine as a short story and so 2.5 stars. ( )