In Four Lost Cities, acclaimed science journalist Annalee Newitz takes readers on an entertaining and mind-bending adventure into the deep history of urban life. Investigating across the centuries and around the world, Newitz explores the rise and fall of four ancient cities, each the centre of a sophisticated civilisation: the Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük in Central Turkey, the Roman town of Pompeii on Italy’s southern coast, the medieval megacity of Angkor in Cambodia and the indigenous American metropolis Cahokia, which stood beside the Mississippi River where East St. Louis is today. Newitz travels to all four sites and investigates the cutting-edge research in archaeology, revealing the mix of environmental changes and political turmoil that doomed these ancient settlements. Tracing the early development of urban planning, Newitz also introduces us to the often-anonymous workers—slaves, women, immigrants and manual labourers—who built these cities and created monuments that lasted millennia. Four Lost Cities is a journey into the forgotten past but, foreseeing a future in which the majority of people on Earth will be living in cities. It may also reveal something of our own fate.

Poor or marginal whites occupy an uncharted space in recent identity studies, particularly because they do not easily fit the model of whiteness-as-power proposed by many multiculturalist or minority discourses. Associated in mainstream culture with "trashy" kitsch or dangerous pathologies rather than with the material realities of economic life, poor whites are treated as degraded caricatures rather than as real people living in conditions of poverty and disempowerment. White Trash situates the study of poor whites within the context of several academic disciplines, public-policy analysis, and popular or mass-media representations. Arguing that white racism is directed not only against people of color but also against certain groups of whites, the contributors to this volume explore the ways in which race and class in America are often talked about and represented in hidden, coded, or half-realized ways. In so doing, they demonstrate why the term white trash itself embodies yet another way in which some whites generate a debased "other" through pejorative naming practices.

This collection is devoted to exploring stereotypes about the social conditions of poor whites in the United States and comparing these stereotypes with the social reality, unmasking the racial and class assumptions behind the term 'white trash'.

In Four Lost Cities, acclaimed science journalist Annalee Newitz takes readers on an entertaining and mind-bending adventure into the deep history of urban life. Investigating across the centuries and around the world, Newitz explores the rise and fall of four ancient cities, each the centre of a sophisticated civilisation: the Neolithic site of Catalhoeyuk in Central Turkey, the Roman town of Pompeii on Italy's southern coast, the medieval megacity of Angkor in Cambodia and the indigenous American metropolis Cahokia, which stood beside the Mississippi River where East St. Louis is today. Newitz travels to all four sites and investigates the cutting-edge research in archaeology, revealing the mix of environmental changes and political turmoil that doomed these ancient settlements. Tracing the early development of urban planning, Newitz also introduces us to the often-anonymous workers-slaves, women, immigrants and manual labourers-who built these cities and created monuments that lasted millennia. Four Lost Cities is a journey into the forgotten past but, foreseeing a future in which the majority of people on Earth will be living in cities. It may also reveal something of our own fate.

100 years after Karel Capek coined the word, "robots" are an everyday idea, and the inspiration for countless stories in books, film, TV and games. They are often among the least privileged, most unfairly used of us, and the more robots are like humans, the more interesting they become. This collection of stories is where robots stand in for us, where both we and they are disadvantaged, and where hope and optimism shines through. Including stories by: Brooke Bolander * John Chu * Daryl Gregory * Peter F. Hamilton * Saad Z. Hossain * Rich Larson * Ken Liu * Ian R. Macleod * Annalee Newitz * Tochi Onyebuchi * Suzanne Palmer * Sarah Pinsker * Vina Jie-Min Prasad * Alastair Reynolds * Sofia Samatar * Peter Watts

From science fiction visionary Annalee Newitz comes The Terraformers, a sweeping, uplifting, and illuminating exploration of the future. Destry's life is dedicated to terraforming Sask-E. As part of the Environmental Rescue Team, she cares for the planet and its burgeoning eco-systems as her parents and their parents did before her. But the bright, clean future they're building comes under threat when Destry discovers a city full of people that shouldn't exist, hidden inside a massive volcano. As she uncovers more about their past, Destry begins to question the mission she's devoted her life to, and must make a choice that will reverberate through Sask-E's future for generations to come. A science fiction epic for our times and a love letter to our future, The Terraformers will take you on a journey spanning thousands of years and exploring the triumphs, strife, and hope that find us wherever we make our home. 'The Terraformers is so engaging, you could almost miss the pyrotechnic worldbuilding and bone-deep intelligence. Newitz continues doing some of the best work in the field' James S. A. Corey 'A complete reimagining of the great galactic story of terraformers. Startling fun!' Kim Stanley Robinson 'Newitz always sees to the heart of complex systems and breaks them down with poetic ferocity' N. K. Jemisin Also by Annalee Newitz Autonomous The Future of Another Timeline

'Autonomous is to biotech and AI what Neuromancer was to the internet' NEAL STEPHENSON 'Something genuinely and thrillingly new' WILLIAM GIBSON 'Holy hell. Autonomous is remarkable' LAUREN BEUKES WINNER OF THE 2018 LAMBDA AWARD FOR SFF SHORTLISTED FOR THE NEBULA AWARD 2018 SHORTLISTED FOR THE LOCUS AWARD FOR BEST DEBUT 2018 Earth, 2144. Jack is an anti-patent scientist turned drug pirate, traversing the world in a submarine as a pharmaceutical Robin Hood, fabricating cheap medicines for those who can't otherwise afford them. But her latest drug hack has left a trail of lethal overdoses as people become addicted to their work, doing repetitive tasks until they become unsafe or insane. Hot on her trail is an unlikely pair: Eliasz, a brooding military agent, and his indentured robotic partner, Paladin. As they race to stop information about the sinister origins of Jack's drug from getting out, they begin to form an uncommonly close bond that neither of them fully understands. And underlying it all is one fundamental question: is freedom possible in a culture where everything, even people, can be owned?

Destry's life is dedicated to terraforming Sask-E. As part of the Environmental Rescue Team, she cares for the planet and its burgeoning eco-systems as her parents and their parents did before her. But the bright, clean future they're building comes under threat when Destry discovers a city full of people that shouldn't exist, hidden inside a massive volcano. As she uncovers more about their past, Destry begins to question the mission she's devoted her life to and must make a choice that will reverberate through Sask-E's future for generations to come.

"Do you remember when we had the vote?" In a world that's just a step away from our own, time travel is possible. But war is brewing - a secret group is trying to destroy women's rights, and their access to the timeline. If they succeed, only a small elite will have the power to shape the past, present, and future. Our only hope lies with an unlikely group of allies, from riot grrls to suffragettes, their lives separated by centuries, battling for a world where anyone can change the future. A final confrontation is coming. The Future of Another Timeline is a breathtakingly original novel from Annalee Newitz, founding editor of io9, about the lengths we'll go to make history. 'A revolution is happening in speculative fiction, and Annalee Newitz is leading the vanguard' Wil Wheaton, actor Star Trek and Big Bang Theory 'Clever, compelling and utterly original' Laurie Penny "Smart and profound on every level, this is a deeply satisfying novel' Publishers Weekly, STARRED review 'A glorious tale of hope in the face of outrage, an anthem of timeless resistance against the powers that would lead us to our worst futures' Ken Liu 'A page-turner and an ambitious feminist lens on the time-traveler story' Kelly Sue DeConnick, screenwriter for Captain Marvel 'Exciting and urgent in the here and now' Saladin Ahmed 'Secret history becomes a thrilling secret war' Nicola Griffith

Several thousand years from now, advanced humanoids known as the Makers will implant clockwork devices into our heads. At the cost of a certain amount of agency, these devices will permit us to move unhindered through time and space, and to live complacent, well-regulated lives. However, when one of these devices goes awry, a "clockwork man" appears accidentally in the 1920s, at a cricket match in a small English village. Comical yet mind-blowing hijinks ensue. Considered the first cyborg novel, The Clockwork Man was first published in 1923 -- the same year as Karel Capek's pioneering android play, R.U.R.

In Pretend We're Dead, Annalee Newitz argues that the slimy zombies and gore-soaked murderers who have stormed through American film and literature over the past century embody the violent contradictions of capitalism. Ravaged by overwork, alienated by corporate conformity, and mutilated by the unfettered lust for profit, fictional monsters act out the problems with an economic system that seems designed to eat people whole.Newitz looks at representations of serial killers, mad doctors, the undead, cyborgs, and unfortunates mutated by their involvement with the mass media industry. Whether considering the serial killer who turns murder into a kind of labor by mass producing dead bodies, or the hack writers and bloodthirsty actresses trapped inside Hollywood's profit-mad storytelling machine, she reveals that each creature has its own tale to tell about how a freewheeling market economy turns human beings into monstrosities. Newitz tracks the monsters spawned by capitalism through b movies, Hollywood blockbusters, pulp fiction, and American literary classics, looking at their manifestations in works such as Norman Mailer's "true life novel" The Executioner's Song; the short stories of Isaac Asimov and H. P. Lovecraft; the cyberpunk novels of William Gibson and Marge Piercy; true-crime books about the serial killers Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer; and movies including Modern Times (1936), Donovan's Brain (1953), Night of the Living Dead (1968), RoboCop (1987), The Silence of the Lambs (1991), and Artificial Intelligence: AI (2001). Newitz shows that as literature and film tell it, the story of American capitalism since the late nineteenth century is a tale of body-mangling, soul-crushing horror.

Geeks may be outcasts in mainstream society, mocked for their lack of social graces, but they're still taking over the world. The geeks we hear about are men like Bill Gates and George Lucas. But where are the stories about the triumphant female geeks whose software has invaded desktop computers across the globe and whose inventions will change the future? She's Such a Geek is a groundbreaking anthology that celebrates women who have flourished in the male-dominated realms of technical and cultural arcana. Editors Annalee Newitz and Charlie Anders bring together a diverse range of critical and personal essays about the meaning of female nerdhood by women who are in love with genomics, obsessed with blogging, learned about sex from Dungeons and Dragons, and aren't afraid to match wits with men or computers. Some contributors, like scientists/technologists Ellen Spertus, Roopa Ramamoorthi, and Corie Ralston, work in traditionally male-dominated professions. Cyberlaw professor Wendy Seltzer describes how her involvement with law and politics started with a love for building computers. Others consider themselves cultural nerds: Devin Grayson writes comic books, while other contributors read science fiction and play in professional videogame competitions. The collection includes essays by high school girls, as well as nerdy mothers who are balancing childrearing with their careers. Celebratory, polemical, wistful, angry, and just plain dorky, the women of She's Such a Geek explain what it means to be passionately engaged with technical or obscure topics that are supposed to be "for boys only," while busting stereotypes of what it means to be a geek and what it means to be female. More thananything, She's Such a Geek is a celebration and call-to-arms: It's a hopeful book that looks forward to a day when women will invent molecular motors, design the next ultra-tiny supercomputer, and run the government.

Life on Earth has come close to annihilation - humans have, more than once, narrowly avoided extinction during the last million years - but every single time a few creatures survived, evolving to adapt to the harshest of conditions. This speculative work of popular science focuses on humanity's long history of dodging the bullet, as well as on new threats that we may face in years to come.