Events
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Start: 6:30 pm
As the literature of ideas and imagination, Science Fiction and Fantasy simply demands discussion. Hugo and Locus Award-winning Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge is our read this month. World-famous poet Robert Gu missed twenty years of progress while he nearly died from Alzheimer's. Now, when he awakens in San Diego, in the year 2025, with his mind and health restored, reality's a shock. Books are just about gone. Computers are old news, replaced by "smart" contact lenses that connect him to the Internet via his clothes and wireless nodes just about everywhere. Buildings look low-rent—unless you're wearing. Then they look like whatever you want. Even he is different. He's Seventy-five, but his treatment has made him look almost like a teen. And that's just the tip of the iceberg in the new Digital age. As Gu tries to catch up with his future, a mysterious stranger draws him and other innocents into a conspiracy that could have disastrous consequences. Before he knows it, he's in so deep that even his high-ranking military son and daughter-in-law are clueless. His only hope—the world's only hope—is that his thirteen-year-old granddaughter Miri and her secret friend, Mr. Rabbit, might be able to keep the worst from happening...
Start: 7:00 pm
Co-presented with the GARDNER CENTER FOR ASIAN ART & IDEAS, SEATTLE ASIAN ART MUSEUM and the EAST ASIA STUDIES CENTER, JACKSON SCHOOL OF INTERNATIONAL STUDIES, UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON. Noted biographer Hannah Pakula visits with her major new biographical work, The Last Empress: Madame Chiang Kai-shek and the Birth of Modern China (Simon & Schuster)—an apt subject for this co-presented evening at the Seattle Asian Art Museum. "An ambitious, timely biography of Soong May-ling (1897 - 2003), better known as Madame Chiang Kai-shek. To tell this complex story, Pakula steps back and patiently recounts the twilight of the Manchu Dynasty, when May-long's father was educated by Methodist missionaries, studied in American universities and achieved business success in thriving Hong Kong ... Pakula portrays May-ling from an evenhanded sampling of correspondence, memoir and public record ... A winning combination of measured, balanced research, and critical evaluation—the definitive account of an important figure in 20th-century Chinese politics." - Kirkus Reviews. Free admission. The Seattle Asian Art Museum is at 1400 E. Prospect St. in Volunteer Park on Capitol Hill. For more information, please call Elliott Bay at (206) 624-6600—or see www.seattleartmuseum.org.
Start: 7:00 pm
Presented by the WORLD AFFAIRS COUNCIL. A New Yorker staff writer on global public health, technology, and science since 1998, Michael Specter does an in-depth, big-picture take on the deep-seated fear of science in this country—and its consequences—in his new book, Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives (Penguin Press). "We are bombarded with information and misinformation about the foods we eat, the medicines we take, the water we drink, the very air we breathe. Michael Specter shows us how to accurately assess the impact of science on these and other essential elements of our daily lives. Written in clear and accessible language, this uniquely valuable book explains an often confusing world." - Jerome Groopman, M.D. "Michael Specter has written a lucid and insightful book about a very frightening and irrational phenomena—the fear and superstition that threaten human science and progress. A superb and convincing work." - Malcolm Gladwell. Tickets are $15 ($10 for World Affairs Council members.) For more information, please see www.world-affairs.org, or call (206) 441-5910.
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