A graphic novel about the promises and perils of AI. Hugo, a Parisian entrepreneur, has launched his startup on Large Language Model technology at the heart of the revolution embodied by ChatGPT. On the verge of securing the deal of the century with the digital giant REAL, he wonders about the latter s real motivations: is this the making of a dream or a nightmare? Could Hugo s developments be used for social and political control? REAL s plans for the international launch of their immortality game seem to be increasingly opaque, and as useful and efficient AI promises to be, he begins to realize it may also be a potential source of catastrophic outcomes and indecent concentrations of wealth.

Full of playful graphics, provocative questions, and curious facts, this book asks what makes a city and how we might make them differently. What makes a city a city? Who says? Drafted over decades out of a dialogue between artist and author Nika Dubrovsky, the late anthropologist David Graeber, and Nika s then four-year-old son, this delightful and provocative book Cities Made Differently opens a space for invention and collaboration. Fusing anthropology, literature, play, and drawing, the book is essentially a visual essay that asks us to reconsider our ideas about cities and the people who inhabit them. Drawing us into a world of history and myth, science and imagination, Graeber and Dubrovsky invite us to rethink the worlds we inhabit because we can, and nothing is too strange or too wonderful to be true. With inspired pictures and prompts, Cities Made Differently asks what a city is, or could be, or once was. Sleeping at the bottom of the ocean? Buried in lava? What were those cities of long ago, and what will the cities of the future be? They might be virtual, ruled by AI, or islands of beautiful architecture afloat in seas of greenery. They might be utopian places of refuge or refugee camps as far as the eye can see. On land, underground or aloft, excavated or imagined, cities, this book tells us in provocative and funny ways, can be anything we want them to be and what we want them to be can tell us something about who we are, what it is to be human, and what s possible when we make way for wonder.Cities Made Differently exists in two versions, one for reading and thinking, the other, downloadable at a4kids.org, for drawing and dreaming.

The first volume of two in a new, updated edition of the 2012 book Playing at the World, which charts the vast and complex history of role-playing games. This new edition of Playing at the World is the first of two volumes that update the 720-page original tome of the same name from 2012. This first volume is The Invention of Dungeons & Dragons, which explores the publication of that iconic game. (The second volume is The Three Pillars of Role-Playing Games, a deeper dive into the history of the setting, system, and character of D & D.) In this first volume, Jon Peterson distills the story of how the wargaming clubs and fanzines circulating around the upper Midwest in the 1970s culminated in Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson s seminal role-playing game, D & D. It augments the research of the original editions with new insights into the crucial period in 1972 3 when D & D began to take shape. Drawing from primary sources ranging from eighteenth-century strategists to modern hobbyists, Playing at the World explores the origins of wargames and roleplaying through the history of conflict simulations and the eccentric characters who drove the creation of a signature cultural innovation in the late twentieth century. Filled with unparalleled archival research (from obscure fanzines to letters, drafts, and other ephemera), this new edition of Playing at the World is the ultimate geek s guide to the original RPG. As such, it is an indispensable resource for academics and game fans exploring the origins of the hobby.

In this fantastical picture book perfect for fans of Aaron Becker's Journey, a human child and a child from another planet discover that no matter where you live or what your books are like, reading�and sharing�are universal. A cosmic celebration of the joy of sharing books and having new experiences awaits readers in this captivating wordless picture book for ages 3 to 6. A child busy reading in a treehouse spots a family who seems to have just arrived on Earth for a picnic. The youngest member of the alien family holds a mind-bendingly strange object. Could it be a book from outer space? At the end of this gorgeously illustrated tale, each child returns home with a book from far away to remember a kind stranger. Sure to take its place among gently fantastical favorites like Sophie Blackall's If You Come to Earth and Carson Ellis's Du Iz Tak?, this picture book will enchant and delight curious kids and book lovers everywhere.